What Does a Small Business Need to Do to Start eCommerce?
Conducting business online, which is often referred to as e-commerce, promises more sales, new customers and lower expenses. An effective e-commerce website and strategy allows you to more rapidly interface with customers, show your products to a worldwide audience and even reduce costs of mailing and printing. Before spending thousands of dollars on developing a shopping cart website, think about how you plan to use e-commerce and what it will take to make this part of your business successful.
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Features
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The features of your e-commerce storefront or website depend on the needs of your business. Service businesses using the Internet to accept payments, generate invoices and schedule appointments online need a different set of features than a website that sells products for delivery. When planning your e-commerce site, think about the things you'd like your customers to be able to do online. If you're selling products, in addition to a basic shopping cart, you may want to consider an account registration to save a customer's information for future purchases or promotional codes for discounts or for offering related items to a customer at checkout. If your business centers around service, decide how much of a benefit your business receives by letting clients pay invoices online or initiate service requests.
Hardware & Software Needs
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Operating an e-commerce site requires additional hardware and software items to securely and efficiently conduct business online. If you're hosting a website on a third-party server, make sure you have support for secure sockets layer (SSL) to encrypt credit card data, and perhaps even a database to support more advanced shopping cart features as described above. To accept payments online, you need a payment gateway that serves as your real-time virtual terminal to authorize a credit card and transmit the message to your merchant account to be sure the funds get deposited in your bank account. Hardware and software solutions can be customized to meet your specific business needs or you can rely on third-party vendors and off-the-shelf products to facilitate your e-commerce business.
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Business Process Needs
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Conducting business online presents an additional set of business process needs and challenges. If you're selling products, customers expect products to be shipped in a timely fashion and have tracking information available. If you offer the ability to accept payments or schedule appointments on your website, customers expect the request to be honored as if they had called in and spoken with a representative on the phone. If you're not prepared to address these issues, you can expect a high level of customer dissatisfaction and experience roadblocks in building your e-commerce business
Effectively Using E-Commerce
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Once you've invested in developing your storefront or website and have your business processes in place to handle e-commerce transactions, start using these new tools immediately. Many times, companies invest heavily in an e-commerce infrastructure only to have it lie dormant. Conducting business via the Web in many cases is more efficient and less costly than conducting business in person. Be sure to have a well-thought-out plan to drive traffic to your website. Search engines, banner advertisements and even emails to your existing customer base introduce them to these new features and e-commerce offerings.
Evaluation & Optimization
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The Internet continues to evolve --- as do people's expectations of how a website should work. Being successful in e-commerce is no different than being successful in any other business: It takes time, energy and innovation. Once your site is up and running and producing business, consider using third-party tools to understand how people interact on your site. If you're selling products, look at competitor websites to make sure your prices are in line with what other sites are offering. If you take the time to better understand your customer and how they're interacting with your website, you'll be able to add new items, features and enhancements to enjoy greater success.
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References
- Free Management Library: Basic Guide to E-Commerce (Doing Business Over the Internet/Web)
- Entrepreneur.com: How to Set Up an E-Commerce Site
- Computer Weekly: Guide to Setting Up an Ecommerce-Enabled Website
- Internet.com: Show Me the Money: Setting Up Payment Methods
- Harvard Law School, Berkman Center for Internet & Society: E-Commerce: An Introduction: Session 2 --- Set Up
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
