ecommerce

Venturing into the Exciting World of Ecommerce15 November 2011

It all started in 2001 with 800 DJ Promo Disco Vinyl Records. We had them - how do we sell them?

I had been online since 1998 as a graphic designer so I was not a newcomer to the internet nor of selling my talents. But selling a specific product was not something I had ever considered. Where do I sell these records? How much are they worth? Who would want them? How do I get started?

Online Shopping was just getting off the ground and Ecommerce was new and exciting to think about. Knowing nothing about Ecommerce I spend quite a lot of time reading whatever I could find to educate myself to its pros and cons. A friend told me about eBay which had been around since 1997. I had never been to eBay - had no idea what it was all about - but I pointed my browser to the site and never looked back.

Learing the ropes of eBay was not hard. Read all of the directions, learn how to list, open an eBay store and you are in business.

My partner and I spend hours and hours searching for information about vinyl records, We learned how to grade them, what genre each record fell into, and histories of the artists.
We took pictures of the records to be uploaded to our eBay store and listened to every records so we could grade it accurately. We researched each record to learn everything we could about the artist, the lable, the producer. Finally we felt qualified to start listing on eBay.

Oh, the thrill of that first sale!! We were hooked. During the next two years we listed records on a non stop basis. We sold almost all of them and made a very good profit. When we ran out of records to sell we started looking around the house for things to list. We sold off collectibles, dishes, clothes, shoes, and whatever else we could find that we didn't want anymore. Finally we just ran out of stuff to sell.

A friend of ours said she had started making Italian Charms. Georgia foundation repair . Well, frankly,I had no idea at all what Italian Charms were!! I checked them out online and found out that they are small rectangular interchangeable charms featuring a design on the face of them. I determined that if she could make them so could I.

I thought my backgound as a graphic designer would come in handy in designing for these little charms. It never crossed my mind to just buy ready made enamel and laser charms to resell - I wanted to make something different and unique.

I started making designs of butterflies, flowers, animals, places, etc. michigan . After many trials and errors we learned how to affix them to the base stainless steel charm and cover them with a clear, waterproof acryllic coating. We listed them on eBay and to our utter amazement they sold!!

Most of our time from then on was taken up by creating designs and making the charms. The nice thing about all of this is that we didn't need to make the charms until they were ordered so there was no inventory to keep except the raw materials needed. And, we loved making them!

After another year we decided to branch out and get our own website. We put up one page and redirected it to our eBay store. We soon decided that it was time to get out of eBay and concentrate on building up our website.

I knew absolutely nothing about shopping carts. That was an adventure in itself but I read and researched and finally had a rudimentary understanding of what they were all about.

I started building our webstore. Since I was a graphic designer and had built quite a few personal websites for other people I figured I knew what I was doing. I did not use one of the ecommerce hosting sites. I used a private host and had to implement everything myself. Page by page it began to emerge right before my eyes until I had over 400 pages of Italian Charms.

Putting up a website is the easy part - learning how to successfully sell your product is not. Since I was used to Paypal from my days on eBay and I signed up for their Website Payment Pro service and used a shopping card that was intergrated with Paypal. It took me well over a week to configure the shopping cart for my use but when I was done adding the html code to each and every charm I had an online webstore. I notified all of my former eBay customers that we had opened out store and waited for the orders to rush in. And waited. And waited.

Ok, now what? I had never heard of SEO, keywords, optimization, css style sheets or anything else a successful online business needs to know.. So I researched again. I read everything I could find -

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Electronic commerce19 September 2011

Ecommerce or e-comm. refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. However, the term may refer to more than just buying and selling products online. It also includes the entire online process of developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing and paying for products and services. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

Adding E-commerce encompasses so much more than a variety of templates and colors that attempt to match the look and feel of your current website. A few text rollover effects, animated graphics, brief descriptions, thumbnails and photos of the products really only provide you with an online catalog. Such issues as user interfaces, marketing, branding, merchandising, navigation systems, website architecture and data flow is of prime consideration in establishing a successful Internet presence.

E-Commerce is all about transforming your key business processes with Internet technologies. For it to be effective, E-Commerce must be totally integrated into every area of your business. It's everything you need to sell your own products or resell a catalog of products direct from your web site. It can also be everything you need to connect employees, partners, suppliers, resellers, buyers, and others so that you can do business more efficiently via the Internet. Part of the reason that ecommerce has been so successful is that it minimizes human contact. E-commerce are becoming very popular these days, all sales are done directly.

Electronic commerce that takes place between businesses is referred to as business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants. Electronic commerce that takes place between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is referred to as business-to-consumer or B2C. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as Amazon.com.

The term electronic commerce (commonly known as e-shopping, E-commerce or ecommerce) meant the process of execution of commercial transactions electronically with the help of the leading technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) which gave an opportunity for users to exchange business information. E-commerce are becoming very popular these days, all sales are done directly. The ability to use these technologies appeared in the late 1970s and allowed business companies and organizations to send commercial documentation electronically.

Julie is an avid entrepreneur and pushes for online business in the Washington. She has a team of Virtual Personal Assistants who help her run her website as well as manage her many blogs that she runs. If you're interested in Julie's business world or you would like to find out more on how her Virtual Personal Assistant works, visit her website Virtual Personal Assistant

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Webhosting for Ecommerce30 August 2011

An ecommerce web hosting service is the primary requirement for starting up a business on the internet. They help you handle huge traffic and garner neat profits. Many service providers are now offering the services at various prices, and as such, selecting the best provider can be difficult.

You will see that various service providers provide several packages to suit your needs. Easy to install "shopping carts" are also put on sale by others. All of these are part of their web hosting services and it is upto you to find out which price and package will suit you the best. The best way to determine is to use a search engine to know more about these services and make the choice accordingly.

Never miss out on customers who are potentially valuable.

Never choose e-commerce web services who serve multiple websites at the same time. This is because if your provider has many websites then it is a fact that your page may take loads of time to download which might turn your customer off. Remember time is important to all. Your customer might switch over to any other page which downloads much more easily. In fact quick loading pages are an useful way of attracting customers. The more time your page takes to download the more will your customers be repelled.

This ecommerce website turns into a necessity when you want to sell anything online. It's the best form of business sitting at home and functions just like any regular shop. But it is more advantageous as you do not need the investment of a regular shop setup.

You should make a note of a few things if you want to convert from a normal website to an ecommerce website.

Firstly an online business is much different from any regular traditional business. The ecommerce web hosting however allow you to define your aims and objectives and helps you learn how to make use of the various hosting packages that are on offer. However your success will also be affected by the type of software that you are using for your hosting purpose.

It therefore is very important for you to analyze the ecommerce package for making sure that it is in conformity with your business needs. Ecommerce opens up many doors for your success, and it's only up to you to recognize how big a role ecommerce can play in defining your success. Also ensure that whichever ecommerce company that you select, can give you a guarantee that it cares for you as a customer.

Below are some other points that you should keep in mind.

Available tech support: you should carefully assess this system critical parameter. A webmaster has to carefully consider this aspect in order to be able to run an ecommerce business. Every website has its share of problems, and an ecommerce website is no exception, with its typical problems and bottlenecks. It's always helpful if technical support is available at hand to sort out any problems that you might have.

Ultra-quick connection speed: Speed is a necessity for an ecommerce web portal. Only high speed can guarantee customer satisfaction. A customer is bound to be pleased if he can browse through the site at a fast rate. Since most people have to do several things nowadays, you will strike a hit with the customers if you can allow them to complete the transaction quickly. A quick exit through the payment gateway usually contributes towards customer goodwill.

Disk space and bandwidth:

Ensure that you have plenty of disk space and bandwidth so that your business does not suffer for the lack of it. Some people end up losing out on their business despite getting a lot of traffic because they don't have enough disk space or bandwidth. It's a good idea to get an ecommerce web-hosting site that guarantees unlimited bandwidth and disk space.

* Intelligent technical support staff: You will benefit if the technical support staff of the company you have selected is knowledgeable and qualified, since being aware of the latest techniques and technologies, he will be able to help you in a very good manner. This will result in your queries being solved very quickly.

* Payment processing system: Almost all the online transactions operate through a payment gateway or w web portal which requires using of a credit card. If you follow this method as well, then make sure that safety and security is never compromised on, since the credit card details collected online from the customers are very sensitive. Most of the ecommerce web-hosting providers include the security package in their offer. Keep in mind that security is as important an issue as the other ones mentioned above, since being secure is the bottom line for the customers.

* SSL certificates: An SSL Server certificate is a safe and a digital certificate which helps in securely encrypting sensitive data on the server of the web host. Besides, it makes the system of online payment safe and secure. It saves the illegal leakage of data from the website to internet hackers. A 128-bit encryption offers a very good amount of safety to the site.

Shopping cart software maintenance and management: This is a crucial feature of an online business because this is where the customers gather their products for further processing. This software lets you maintain, manage, build and edit ecommerce storefront details and information in the management panel of the administrative sector. Remember to choose an ecommerce web-hosting service that provides regular maintenance and updates. The idea is to do all these things as soon as possible.

* Cost of Online Payment Acceptance system: this is an important factor that will determine the amount of budget that you allocate. Different ecommerce web-hosting service providers charge differently for an efficient payment gateway system. Compare the prices on offer to ensure that you get the best deal.

Cost:

Remember that the main motive behind an online business lies in the profits. It's essential to keep your affordability in mind so that you don't end up losing money in the process. There are companies which offer web-hosting services @ $7 per month. These plans are perfectly capable of handling small and medium sized businesses.

Ensure that your ecommerce web-hosting plan allows you to back up your data on a daily basis. Also demand two unique and special IP addresses which will enable you to stay on air 24X7.

Finally, keep yourself acquainted with the business risks as well. In business, you can never shy away from risks, but can take sufficient steps to counter them!

Matt Ewing is a staff writer for WebHostingMadness.com and web hosting industry analyst. Visit WebHostingMadness.com to join him on his search for the top web hosting companies each month.

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