Name:-Yogita

Bangera Roll No:-

02/Two Class:-
S.Y.BBI
Subject:-I.T
Definition of E-Commerce
Electronic Commerce means buying and selling of goods and services across the
internet. An e commerce site can be as simple as a catalog page with a phone no, or
it can range all the way to a real time credit and processing site where customer can
purchase downloadable goods and receive them on the spot.

What is E-Commerce
Electronic Commerce (EC) is the paperless exchange of business information using
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and related technologies. If you are familiar with
Electronic Mail (E-Mail), computer bulletin boards, facsimile machines (faxes),
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) You can very wellunderstand what is e-commerce.
These are all forms of EC. All EC systems replace all or key parts of paper-based
work flow with faster, cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable communications
between machines. In today's Defense Department procurement arena, however the
most important EC technology to know about is Electronic Data Interchange, or
EDI.

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of

the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the
Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted
electronically has grown extraordinarily since the spread of the Internet. A wide
variety 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. Modern electronic commerce
typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's
lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as
well. A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically
for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic
commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online
retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-
tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide
Web.

Electronic commerce that is conducted 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 (private

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electronic market). Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales
aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing
and payment aspects of the business transactions.

History
Template:Malaika&&ShelbyThe meaning of electronic commerce has changed over
the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of
commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both
introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like
purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit
cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were
also forms of electronic commerce. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce
would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining
and data warehousing.

Perhaps it is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office, or maybe not.The

earliest example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the
Boston Computer Exchange, a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982.
The first online information marketplace, including online consulting, was likely the
American Information Exchange, another pre-Internet online system introduced in
1991.

Although the Internet became popular worldwide in 1994, it took about five years to
introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet.
And by the end of 2000, a lot of European and American business companies offered
their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a
word "ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the
Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.

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What to do to get started in E-commerce without a heavy
investment ?

'Todays scientific and economy worlds demands unique ways for most kinds of job
completion. Vendors and service providers will continually try to find unique ways
to provide low-cost services to small businesses. One quick example is the numerous
websites offering free development and hosting. For example, the sites offer a web
development application in a "wysiwyg" (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) style that
allows each person the ability to create their own type of website. Other options
include participation in an online marketplace. These mechanisms are roughly
designed to simulate a real marketplace that will attract customers due to a shop-at-
once mentality instead of surfing the Internet for different goods and services. A fast
developing theme among new and old participants in the digital economy is the use
of ASPs (application service providers). These service providers allow you to
purchase many of the off-the-shelf operating applications that you may use to run
your business (finances to human resource management to inventory processing) at
a much lower cost as well as have someone else manage and host the data. It also
reduces the time and labor force necessary to run such types of operations. A final
recommendation is the notion of partnering. Finding similar organizations that can
share resources and expenses can help you achieve your goals in the digital economy.
The key role of the digital economy and electronic commerce is to help your
traditional organizational processes and daily routines and automate them through
the Internet. The use of electronic commerce can very well share the burden burden
and can help minimize the expense and difficulty. It stimulate a potential
relationship for furthering business behavior

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The Roles Within Commerce
A commerce transaction is a communicative transaction; that is, if two parties
engage in a commercial transaction -- buying and selling something -- then that
event is actually based not solely on the exchange of goods but also on linguistic and
social role-playing. Commerce is governed by social rules (in any culture, a seller
follows certain rules of behavior that are different from the buyer's rules of
behavior), and by linguistic rules (certain words, gestures and tones have meanings
specific to a discussion about buying something).

A commerce transaction has two roles: seller and buyer. Each of these roles has its
own agenda, but the logical assumption of a commerce transaction is that both
parties want to cooperate to find a mutually acceptable solution. Each of these roles
has a set of beliefs and expectations about its own purpose and agenda in a
transaction, as well as beliefs and expectations about the other role's, well, role.

Both buyer and seller roles have "comfort zones" built into the relationship based
on their expectations and experience: perhaps the buyer believes that s/he can trust
a car dealer only so far, or perhaps a merchant will extend credit to people whom
s/he knows are from the neighborhood; these roles allow for some relaxation or
flexibility of the rules they use to govern their participation in the transaction. This
flexibility can be exploited by dishonest participants, but should one of the parties
have reason to doubt this search for a mutually acceptable outcome, the entire
commerce transaction becomes more difficult and may fall apart in distrust.

Online commerce is still new enough that participants are still trying to get a handle
on how the rules of commercial interaction apply to this new medium. The burden
of smoothing the transition to online commerce falls to the creators and owners of
ecommerce sites, because when a commercial transaction falters through
misunderstanding or distrust, a typical buyer-to-be won't spend any effort analyzing
the contradictory message cues or violated role-playing expectations. When a
potential customer is frustrated, s/he will exit; the merchant has the investment in
fostering the relationship, and so had better understand the mechanics of the
relationship, starting with the roles.

The Buyer

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From The Point-of-View of the Buyer

Buyers expect three important actions from a typical transaction: they want to
make the decision to purchase something, they want to effect payment for this
something, and they want to assume ownership of what they purchased. Anything
that interferes with these three actions is going to bother the buyer.

The first action, making the decision to buy, has some implicit hurdles. The buyer
must find what they want, evaluate their budget, evaluate their trust of the
merchant, etc. The buyer weighs a lot of factors and faces a basic fact of inertia that
it is often easier to not buy than it is to buy; some merchants make the buying
process absurdly difficult with such design decisions as forcing the user to register
and log in before accessing the shopping cart function or requiring a specific
browser for buying from their site. After all, the buyer expects to give their personal
information, if they give it at all, when they pay, not when they're just shopping.
When was the last time that you had to give your name when you walked into a
store?

Buyers don't want to buy without knowing they have bought. Buyers face some
violations of the decision to buy from "slammers" and the illegal use of credit cards.
Making it too easy for a buyer to purchase from your site -- for example through an
"express lane" commerce track -- may backfire if the buyer thinks they have been
tricked into the purchase.

Buyers also consider themselves as having entered into a tacit contract with the
merchant: when the buyer decides to buy something, s/he does so with an
expectation about the availability of the something. Merchants declare the
availability of their products, "available right now for immediate shipping" or "this
will ship out in 5 days", and the buyer uses that availability in their process for
deciding to buy. If the availability promised by the merchant proves false, the buyer
will re-evaluate their decision to buy, even if they have already entered the ordering
process.

The second action, the payment, has some explicit trouble spots. The buyer needs
feedback from the process that payment has been correctly made; the buyer needs to
know that the totals are correct, that their credit card (for the sake of argument,
consider this the predominant payment method) has been correctly charged, that
the transaction is secure, and that they are protected in case something goes wrong
with the transaction. If the user receives ambiguous feedback during this payment
phase, they will be frustrated and worried, and will experience doubt towards every
aspect of the transaction. This is such a simple milestone for the buyer, the payment
phase, but online there is little reassuring feedback. In person, the buyer can
confirm with a salesperson, online they have at best error messages and an email
address for "customer service".

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The third action, assuming ownership, is especially full of frustration for the buyer,
because s/he has committed to the purchase -- they've already paid -- and now they
are at the mercy of the merchant for the delivery of their purchase. Up until they
receive the order, buyers want to know the status of the order; providing useful
order status information should be a requirement for any ecommerce site, but few
sites display this information in ways that are useful for the buyer. I would suggest
that most buyers want to know what has been paid for, how much has been paid,
when the order (or separate items on the order) will be shipped, and when the order
will be delivered.

If the merchant fails to meet the buyers expectations -- whether the expectations are
fair or accurate -- the buyer will be dissatisfied. Delayed orders face the possibility of
cancellation.

Most users understand that they have responsibilities when they become buyers,
and most seem willing to forgive a great deal of shaky commerce systems and rough
shopping experiences to buy online. The issue here, though, is that users shouldn't
have to endure uncomfortable experiences to buy online, and it is up to ecommerce
merchants smooth out the rough edges of the user experience.

From The Point-of-View of the Seller

The larger ecommerce web sites tend to treat individual buyers as statistics;
individual users are difficult to deal with when the bottom line is the bottom line.
Sales count as indications of trends: more click-throughs, more page hits, more
traffic all mean more revenue. Pleasing the individual user is usually not a priority.
Getting the users to recognize the site's branding is a priority, however, because the
assumption is that exposure will translate to patronage.

Most commerce sites don't seem to be designed for any typical user; these sites
haven't built sample user profiles and then optimized site behavior for the expected
behavior of these users. As online competition matures, though, we should see more
sites carefully targeting their niche audiences.

My guess is that ecommerce sites can't get a handle on the shear heterogeneity of the
web's client-server interaction. So many browsers and platform combinations exist
that no single system is going to accommodate every possible user, so ecommerce
strategists have been allowed to think in terms of sectors of users and specific
audiences. The truth, though, is that selective targeting is actually selective
exclusion, based not on the audience's ability to be purchasers but on the
ecommerce site's ability to scale its infrastructure and technological support.

The Seller

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From The Point-of-View of the Buyer

Online, the basic operative metaphor for ecommerce sites is that of the "store",
based on experience gained shopping in the real world. Ecommerce ventures can be
grouped into sites of companies that exist primarily on the internet, and those that
have real-world "brick-and-mortar" stores that have opened up sites (channels) on
the internet. The attitudes users display towards these different categories of stores
seem inconsistent at best.

From what I've read and experienced, I think that any company on the web,
whatever their history separate from the web, is judged according to a set of values
and priorities derived from the web culture. Especially hard hit are companies that
have made their stores into destinations that foster community; for example, there is
a huge gap between deciding to shop for a book online, and deciding to drive over to
my local Borders Books and Music store. With all the emphasis placed on
"community" by ecommerce sites, the term destination seems particularly
irreconcilable with the fact of web sites as collections of documents and files; there is
no meaningful there there, and that seems to hurt companies that have established
themselves as destinations for shoppers.

From The Point-of-View of the Seller

The ecommerce site is out there on the web to make money. The goal is to generate
always increasing traffic, so visibility is essential. Advertising, press releases, media
exposure, partnerships -- these all are tremendously important for creating and
maintaining public awareness of the site. The critical concerns governing the
decision making process become: will a proposed change drive traffic to the site, and
will it interfere with the basic ability to purchase from the site?

The Other Players

There are other roles involved in the entire chain of events when a buyer makes a
purchase form a seller -- somebody may process the merchandise in the warehouse,
somebody may ship the merchandise, somebody may deliver it -- but these roles are
ancillary to the commerce transaction, and in fact are more appropriately parts of
the relationship the seller has with his backend and fulfillment procedures. After all,
when you walk into a store to buy a book, the mailman isn't standing next to the
seller and participating in the transaction.

A very important element in the commerce transaction is the merchant's customer

service team, although it is unclear what role the presence and quality of customer
service plays in the buyer's decision to purchase from a merchant. What is clear is
customer service's important function as the representative of the online merchant:
customer service is often the only contact for the customer, and usually the only way

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for the merchant to salvage a negative user experience or complaint into a positive
reflection of the company's quality service.

Recognizing Who's Who

As obvious as these roles of buyer and seller may seem, it's not always easy to
identify who is playing what role. In the offline world, different stores (and often
different types of stores) have their own rules for dress and comportment of the sales
staff, which can create interesting dynamics with the customers. While appearance
and judgments based on appearance can have an effect on the tenor of a business
relationship, appearance often provides useful cues for identifying the roles and
players.

The most common version of this buyer-seller relationship is that of the merchant,
or store. If you walk into a book store, you are faced with some quite formal cues
and rules. You know that the store has products for sale, and you can easily find the
prices of the books. You can usually identify the employees, and while you may not
see one specific "seller" you understand that the employees are all acting as agents
for the merchant. You will probably see posted notices delineating the commerce
rules for the merchant, such as return policies.

An important part of the commerce relationship is the need to authenticate the

other party: Is the seller reputable? Can he follow through with his promises? Does
the buyer have good credit? The buyer and seller sound each other out during their
commerce conversation; they weigh each other's manner and tone and body
language. They look for social cues like seals of approval or credit ratings. They look
to the people they know and past customers for a vetting of trust. They form
judgments based on their perceptions and intuition, and they ultimately decide
whether to complete the transaction. And you may even realize that the store
employees have likely been taught how to treat and respond to customers, rules
ranging from how to answer the phone to how to gift wrap purchases.

The adoption of appropriate roles isn't always smooth. While working in a Borders
Books store, I would routinely deal with customers who didn't understand that we
were a book store. The well-lit spaces, the natural wood shelves, the comfortable
chairs and sofas scattered through the space all indicated to these folks that we were
a library. People would ask us where they could sign up for a card in order to
borrow books.

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E-commerce advantages and disadvantages
E-commerce provides many new ways for businesses and consumers to
communicate and conduct business. There are a number of advantages and
disadvantages of conducting business in this manner.

E-commerce advantages

Some advantages that can be achieved from e-commerce include:

 Being able to conduct business 24x7x365 -E-commerce systems can

operate all day every day. Your physical storefront does not need to be
open in order for customers and suppliers to be doing business with
you electronically.
 Access the global marketplace -The Internet spans the world, and it is
possible to do business with any business or person who is connected
to the Internet. Simple local businesses such as specialist record stores
are able to market and sell their offerings internationally using e-
commerce. This global opportunity is assisted by the fact that, unlike
traditional communications methods, users are not charged according
to the distance over which they are communicating.
 Speed -Electronic communications allow messages to traverse the
world almost instantaneously. There is no need to wait weeks for a
catalogue to arrive by post: that communications delay is not a part of
the Internet / e-commerce world.
 Marketspace -The market in which web-based businesses operate is
the global market. It may not be evident to them, but many businesses
are already facing international competition from web-enabled
businesses.
 Opportunity to reduce costs -The Internet makes it very easy to 'shop
around' for products and services that may be cheaper or more

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 effective than we might otherwise settle for. It is sometimes possible to,
through some online research, identify original manufacturers for
some goods - thereby bypassing wholesalers and achieving a cheaper
price.
 Computer platform-independent -'Many, if not most, computers have
the ability to communicate via the Internet independent of operating
systems and hardware. Customers are not limited by existing
hardware systems' (Gascoyne & Ozcubukcu, 1997:87).
 Efficient applications development environment -'In many respects,
applications can be more efficiently developed and distributed
because the can be built without regard to the customer's or the
business partner's technology platform. Application updates do not
have to be manually installed on computers. Rather, Internet-related
technologies provide this capability inherently through automatic
deployment of software updates' (Gascoyne & Ozcubukcu, 1997:87).
 Allowing customer self service and 'customer outsourcing' -People can
interact with businesses at any hour of the day that it is convenient to
them, and because these interactions are initiated by customers, the
customers also provide a lot of the data for the transaction that may
otherwise need to be entered by business staff. This means that some
of the work and costs are effectively shifted to customers; this is
referred to as 'customer outsourcing'.
 Stepping beyond borders to a global view -Using aspects of e-
commerce technology can mean your business can source and use
products and services provided by other businesses in other countries.
This seems obvious enough to say, but people do not always consider
the implications of e-commerce. For example, in many ways it can be
easier and cheaper to host and operate some e-commerce activities
outside Australia. Further, because many e-commerce transactions
involve credit cards, many businesses in Australia need to make
arrangements for accepting online payments. However a number of
major Australian banks have tended to be unhelpful laggards on this
front, charging a lot of money and making it difficult to establish
these arrangements - particularly for smaller businesses and/or
businesses that don't fit into a traditional-economy understanding of
business. In some cases, therefore, it can be easier and cheaper to set
up arrangements which bypass this aspect of the Australian banking
system. Admittedly, this can create some grey areas for legal and
taxation purposes, but these can be dealt with. And yes these
circumstances do have implications for Australia's national
competitiveness and the competitiveness of our industries and
businesses.

E-commerce disadvantages

Some disadvantages of e-commerce include the following.

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 Time for delivery of physical products -It is possible to visit a local
music store and walk out with a compact disc, or a bookstore and
leave with a book. E-commerce is often used to buy goods that are not
available locally from businesses all over the world, meaning that
physical goods need to be delivered, which takes time and costs
money. In some cases there are ways around this, for example, with
electronic files of the music or books being accessed across the
Internet, but then these are not physical goods.
 Physical product, supplier & delivery uncertainty -When you walk
out of a shop with an item, it's yours. You have it; you know what it is,
where it is and how it looks. In some respects e-commerce purchases
are made on trust. This is because, firstly, not having had physical
access to the product, a purchase is made on an expectation of what
that product is and its condition. Secondly, because supplying
businesses can be conducted across the world, it can be uncertain
whether or not they are legitimate businesses and are not just going to
take your money. It's pretty hard to knock on their door to complain
or seek legal recourse! Thirdly, even if the item is sent, it is easy to
start wondering whether or not it will ever arrive.
 Perishable goods -Forget about ordering a single gelato ice cream
from a shop in Rome! Though specialised or refrigerated transport
can be used, goods bought and sold via the Internet tend to be durable
and non-perishable: they need to survive the trip from the supplier to
the purchasing business or consumer. This shifts the bias for
perishable and/or non-durable goods back towards traditional supply
chain arrangements, or towards relatively more local e-commerce-
based purchases, sales and distribution. In contrast, durable goods
can be traded from almost anyone to almost anyone else, sparking
competition for lower prices. In some cases this leads to
disintermediation in which intermediary people and businesses are
bypassed by consumers and by other businesses that are seeking to
purchase more directly from manufacturers.
 Limited and selected sensory information -The Internet is an effective
conduit for visual and auditory information: seeing pictures, hearing
sounds and reading text. However it does not allow full scope for our
senses: we can see pictures of the flowers, but not smell their
fragrance; we can see pictures of a hammer, but not feel its weight or
balance. Further, when we pick up and inspect something, we choose
what we look at and how we look at it. This is not the case on the
Internet. If we were looking at buying a car on the Internet, we would
see the pictures the seller had chosen for us to see but not the things
we might look for if we were able to see it in person. And, taking into
account our other senses, we can't test the car to hear the sound of the
engine as it changes gears or sense the smell and feel of the leather
seats. There are many ways in which the Internet does not convey the
richness of experiences of the world. This lack of sensory information

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 means that people are often much more comfortable buying via the
Internet generic goods - things that they have seen or experienced
before and about which there is little ambiguity, rather than unique or
complex things.
 Returning goods -Returning goods online can be an area of difficulty.
The uncertainties surrounding the initial payment and delivery of
goods can be exacerbated in this process. Will the goods get back to
their source? Who pays for the return postage? Will the refund be
paid? Will I be left with nothing? How long will it take? Contrast this
with the offline experience of returning goods to a shop. Privacy,
security, payment, identity, contract -Many issues arise - privacy of
information, security of that information and payment details,
whether or not payment details (eg credit card details) will be
misused, identity theft, contract, and, whether we have one or not,
what laws and legal jurisdiction apply.
 Defined services & the unexpected -E-commerce is an effective means
for managing the transaction of known and established services, that
is, things that are everyday. It is not suitable for dealing with the new
or unexpected. For example, a transport company used to dealing
with simple packages being asked if it can transport a hippopotamus,
or a customer asking for a book order to be wrapped in blue and
white polka dot paper with a bow. Such requests need human
intervention to investigate and resolve.
 Personal service -Although some human interaction can be facilitated
via the web, e-commerce can not provide the richness of interaction
provided by personal service. For most businesses, e-commerce
methods provide the equivalent of an information-rich counter
attendant rather than a salesperson. This also means that feedback
about how people react to product and service offerings also tends to
be more granular or perhaps lost using e-commerce approaches. If
your only feedback is that people are (or are not) buying your
products or services online, this is inadequate for evaluating how to
change or improve your e-commerce strategies and/or product and
service offerings. Successful business use of e-commerce typically
involves strategies for gaining and applying customer feedback. This
helps businesses to understand, anticipate and meet changing online
customer needs and preferences, which is critical because of the
comparatively rapid rate of ongoing Internet-based change.
 Size and number of transactions -E-commerce is most often conducted
using credit card facilities for payments, and as a result very small
and very large transactions tend not to be conducted online. The size
of transactions is also impacted by the economics of transporting
physical goods. For example, any benefits or conveniences of buying a
box of pens online from a US-based business tend to be eclipsed by the
cost of having to pay for them to be delivered to you in Australia. The
delivery costs also mean that buying individual items from a range of

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 different overseas businesses is significantly more expensive than
buying all of the goods from one overseas business because the goods
can be packaged and shipped together.

Benefits Of Ecommerce
E Commerce is one of the most important facets of the Internet to have emerged in
the recent times. Ecommerce or electronic commerce involves carrying out business
over the Internet with the assistance of computers, which are linked to each other
forming a network. To be specific ecommerce would be buying and selling of goods
and services and transfer of funds through digital communications.

The benefits of Ecommerce:

 Ecommerce allows people to carry out businesses without the barriers

of time or distance. One can log on to the Internet at any point of
time, be it day or night and purchase or sell anything one desires at a
single click of the mouse.
 The direct cost-of-sale for an order taken from a web site is lower than
through traditional means (retail, paper based), as there is no human
interaction during the on-line electronic purchase order process. Also,
electronic selling virtually eliminates processing errors, as well as
being faster and more convenient for the visitor.
 Ecommerce is ideal for niche products. Customers for such products
are usually few. But in the vast market place i.e. the Internet, even
niche products could generate viable volumes.
 Another important benefit of Ecommerce is that it is the cheapest
means of doing business.
 The day-to-day pressures of the marketplace have played their part in
reducing the opportunities for companies to invest in improving their
competitive position. A mature market, increased competitions have
all reduced the amount of money available to invest. If the selling
price cannot be increased and the manufactured cost cannot be
decreased then the difference can be in the way the business is carried
out. Ecommerce has provided the solution by decimating the costs,
which are incurred.

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 From the buyer’s perspective also ecommerce offers a lot of tangible
advantages.
1. Reduction in buyer’s sorting out time.
2. Better buyer descisions
3. Less time is spent in resolving invoice and order discrepancies.
4. Increased opportunities for buying alternative products.


 The strategic benefit of making a business ‘ecommerce enabled’, is
that it helps reduce the delivery time, labour cost and the cost
incurred in the following areas:
1. Document preparation
2. Error detection and correction
3. Reconciliation
4. Mail preparation
5. Telephone calling
6. Data entry
7. Overtime
8. Supervision expenses

Operational benefits of e commerce include reducing both the time and

personnel required to complete business processes, and reducing strain on
other resources. It’s because of all these advantages that one can harness
the power of ecommerce and convert a business to ebusiness by using
powerful turnkey ecommerce solutions made available by ebusiness
solution providers

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Four Ecommerce Ingredients
Many business owners who want to set up an ecommerce site get so involved with
finding the right web developer but rarely know the right questions to ask. When
you ask the right questions, you're more capable of selecting the right web developer
for your ecommerce web site. Below is a list of four items to consider when starting
your ecommerce business.

1. A shopping cart -There are many software shopping cart programs available
today that empower you to add in your own products and manipulate the pricing,
discounts, inventory, etc. without relying on your web developer. Especially if you
plan to have over 20 products on your site, you'll want to select an easy to use
shopping cart that has all the tools you need to manage your products. Consider the
following when selecting your shopping cart

• Can I upload my product images easily?

• Can I change my prices and offer discounts or promo codes?
• Do I need to integrate directly with UPS or another shipping company to
calculate my shipping information?
• Does the software help me calculate sales tax?
• Can I group my products into categories?
• Can I select some products as featured products to show in a special section?
• Can I add features to products such as a size or color?
• Can I manage my product inventory through the software?
• Can I set up an auto responder email to send an email confirmation to all
online customers?
• Does the shopping cart have a way of saving all customer data for my
records?

2. Merchant Account -To sell anything online you'll need to consider how you'll
collect money into your business bank account. Start by first contacting your bank

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to check their set up fees and prices for using their merchant account provider.
Listen for a merchant account set up fee and payment gateway or online set up fee.
Also listen for the per transaction fee and the discount rates. Decide whether you
want to accept American Express and check the setup fee for accepting these cards.
Some merchant accounts will charge more for credit cards with rewards programs,
and apparently around 50% of cards these days have rewards programs. So make
sure to ask about the discount rate for these kinds of cards. Check for monthly fees
and make sure to ask for monthly minimum amounts. If you don't ask the questions,
your provider will leave out important costly details. So if you don't like your bank's
merchant account solution check with PayPal (which tends to be light on the set up
fees but heavy on the discount rate), Charge.com, and providers who work with
First Data. You have tons of options but not all are long standing companies. Choose
your merchant account provider carefully. Some may keep you in year long
commitments.

3. Payment Gateway -Your merchant account provider, once carefully selected, will
work with a Payment Gateway. The Payment Gateway communicates the purchase
order online through the merchant account to your bank. Popular payment
gateways are Authorize.net and PayPal (which is a merchant account and gateway
in one). Check to make sure that your web developer is comfortable with integrating
your payment gateway with your shopping cart. Without a properly integrated
payment gateway, your customers will be placing orders without fully paying you.

4. SSL certificate -An SSL certificate (Secure Socket Layer certificate) is the piece of
the ecommerce pie that puts the yellow padlock and the https on your site to ensure
to your customers that they're checking out with their credit card information in a
secure environment. The installation of an SSL certificate is important as it sets up a
data encryption process that prevents hackers from being able to steal your
customers' credit card information. A smart online shopper will not proceed
through checkout without first looking for the https (vs. http) or the padlock in the
bottom right of the browswer window. Ask your merchant account provider if they
have an SSL certificate for you to have your web programmer install on your site. If
not, you can purchase them online. Check out rapidsslonline.com and thawt.com.
You'll need to consider the annual cost of having an SSL certificate and the
installation cost. Having an SSL certificate is a renewal service just like renewing
your domain name ever year or every 5 years.

With this information on the four ingredients to setting up your ecommerce

business, you should have all the questions prepared to start working with the right
web developer. Now you just need to make sure you like their design capabilities.

I hope this helps your ecommerce business get off on the right foot...next is
marketing.

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Ecommerce Tips For Beginners -How to "Fill the Need" For
Giant Ecommerce Profits

The product or service that you would like to sell is the basis of your business. The
commerce part is the action of the business. Ecommerce tips for beginners abound,
but they rarely start by talking about the item you will be trying to sell. Generally,
you can sell anything in an ecommerce format but selling something that people
want or need is a better then selling something that is just a thing to sell. Advice
givers will rarely come out and say this, instead relying on more advanced tips that
sound important and some times are, but this is where to begin.

What people want?

Finding where the need lies is one of the first ecommerce tips for beginners that
should be given. Start by carrying a pad and writing down a need when you try to
do something unique, interesting or try to do that seems annoying or could be done
easier. Ecommerce tips for beginners should be oriented toward the simple rather
then complex. After all, it is usually the simple things that sell and the simple
techniques that sell them.

Would you buy this?

One of the best ecommerce tips for beginners is to not be shy about your research.
Remember that you are selling to people, not a computer screen. You may think a
product is simple and fills a need, but does it? Do some research by stopping people
on the street and asking a yes or no question. Would you buy a "enter your product
here"?

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Ecommerce Tips For Beginners -For Doing Ecommerce

Regardless of the project you are getting into, the first tip that anybody involved
with the same type of project will give you is to enjoy what you are doing.
Ecommerce tips for beginners are no different. If you do not enjoy what you are
doing there is really no reason to start getting involved in the project in the first
place. There are whole arrays of ecommerce tips for beginners but they would be
pointless if you began the project and then stopped because you lost interest or just
hated doing the work.

Go slow from the start

Ecommerce tips for beginners abound on the internet today. Be careful not to get
caught up with all the books and programs you will see there. Continue doing what
you are doing right now, until you start to get a sense of what the whole ecommerce
thing is about. Then, if you feel the need, invest in one of the ebooks to find a few
experienced based tips. Eventually, however, you may feel that you could write the
book.

Remain true to your customer

Ecommerce tips for beginners often shoot the beginner straight into the marketing
and commerce aspects of selling to quickly. Usually, the old marketing adage of
KISS (keep it simple stupid) is a better piece of advice for the beginner rather then
getting all wrapped up in the pricing and collateral advertising aspects of
ecommerce. In the end; enjoying the process, your product and the fun of the chase
are the best tips for anybody getting into the ecommerce game. They will show up in
your end results.

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