how to Build your online shop

The Internet is great to level the playing field for businesses. Where else can you create a website and immediately compete with large international companies?

What is

E-commerce, clearly termed as web commerce, basically means the sale of goods or services over the Internet with electronic transactions and also through a secure network. And not just the purchase and sale or provision of services but is also a method of advertising and marketing through an electronic system as well. E-com also means facilitating the progress of commercial transactions electronically. Now with e-technology is well established in all major countries. In most cases internet marketing requires you have your ecommerce store for maximum return.

Requirements for an ecommerce store

Build an online store is not an easy task. Software is needed that can manage customers and their needs. E-commerce software should be able to handle inventory, shipping and handling costs, taxes, shipping and payment processing customer orders. You can find many options when preparing to build an ecommerce store. Before choosing any one of them is important to have a clear vision of their needs. The technical specifications may include coupons, tracking systems, client login options or any number of other things. Other requirements include the type of impression you want to give their valuable customers.

Study the sales and marketing cycle to determine their needs

Before opting for any of the solutions for building e-commerce store, study the basic model of electronic commerce that represents the entire sales and marketing cycle. The first building block of this cycle is public in which you define what kind of customers you will target. Second are commodities, which characterizes the types of products you will put on the market. The third is customer support, which will answer questions and offer solutions to customers or potential problems. Next are marketing, advertising and endorsement of a company that promotes products or services. Then there is the processing of transactions, the most important technical phase of the cycle, which will handle orders, taxes, payment processing and delivering orders. Transactions can be automatically or manually. In manual processing you have to enter credit card information manually through a terminal off-line. In the case of automatic processing of a customer order form will be configured with a program that processes and charge credit card for you. After that, there are post deal services regarding how you provide solutions and services after the sale. Last but not least is the brand name with which you will create a company image to correspond with specific customers. Nobody will pay attention to your online store unless something catches your eye.

Research your options

Once you have defined your needs, then you can start researching your options. There are two basic ways that you can follow to build a shop e-commerce - or buy the software prepared or build a custom system with components and parts according to your needs and budget.

Flexibility

Some commercial companies offer these products and best placed to drive marketing approaches. This requires an e-solution to be flexible enough to allow multiple gifts, coupons and promotions. Also, if the product comes in a variety of designs and styles, with different options and different prices, so you must communicate these factors and portray them distinctly in their online store. A true entrepreneur will certainly follow the standards of his or her regular customers as well as those who directly visit the site. Tools for tracking Web statistics can be a great help to this end.

Ease of use

Some e-commerce stores are very easy to use and requires only minutes to learn, while others are more complex, with so many resources that can be overwhelming. Being able to see a demonstration of the software before buying it is a great help to determine the ease of use.

Scalability

Being able to grow with your company is very important. If you choose a very simple solution now, then require a more robust solution on the road, you will lose time converting your store. If the URL structure of your store is not consistent, you can also lose search engine rankings, changing e-commerce solutions. Therefore, it is important to choose an ecommerce solution that can grow with you. For example, some shop owners may not want coupons early, but then decide that the road is a good idea. Some stores may also have limits on the number of products, inventory control and monitoring of the road will be very important.

Security

Extremely important for online stores is the security of the transaction. The priority for any business enterprise must be secure transactions. Thanks to Netscape for the introduction of SSL (secure socket layer), data can be protected by the owners of online shops. SSL is an encryption technology that encrypts a message and the receiver decrypts using RSA security. To enable SSL on your web server you need a digital ID (a form of identification that will recognize it). Many web hosts provide SSL setup for anywhere from a few dollars to several hundred dollars per year.

In general, you want flexibility, ease of use, security and scalability in your store. Research your options before making a final choice, and whenever possible, get a free trial before you buy your solution.