An Ecommerce Tutorial

Introducing ecommerce: a brief tutorial to selling online.

What Is Ecommerce?

Ecommerce simply means selling over the Internet — goods, services, information, whatever. Such businesses began in 1995 and are expected by 2007 to generate sales in the USA of $ 105 billion. Yes, that's $105,000,000,000 in the USA alone.

How do you get your share of the action? Easy. You create a website that promotes your products, obtain an Internet address, hire space on a web-hosting company, upload your pages, add a payment system and then use various promotion services to get your site noticed.

Building the Website

You'll be familiar with websites — collections of HMTL pages grouped around some URL like http://www.companyname.com. Websites can be very ambitious, with stunning graphics, animation, sound, database search systems, customer recognition and a good many other features. But they don't need to be. Many successful ecommerce sites are half a dozen pages extolling the virtues of the product. More can be less, and 'wow' sites will only hinder customers getting to your products, and make promotion more difficult.

But your site still needs to look professional. How do you create something convincing? You can:

1. Hire a web design company. Thousands exist, conveniently collected into directories.

2. Build your own pages using HTML-editing software. Easy-to-use editors exist for all pockets, some of them shareware or even free.

3. Purchase an out-of-the-box shopping cart program that builds the whole site for you, including an online catalogue with payment facilities in place.

4. Rent space on a web-hosting company offering site build online. Much like the out-of-the-box solution, the hosting company gives you templates and wizards to create a distinctive and professional-looking site.

Finding an URL or Internet Domain

The URL (uniform resource locator) is your address or domain on the Internet. You'll want something that identifies your company and possibly your line of business. How do you get a domain?

You visit an online company offering domains for sale. As you're a commercial concern, you'll go for a dot-com, or possibly a dot-biz domain. You'll try possible names in the search box provided until you find a suitable one available.

Suppose your company is Acme Diving Equipment Ltd. You find that acme.com has been taken, and so has diving.com, both a long time ago. But acme-diving-equipment.com is still free, and you therefore take that domain for a few dollars a year. An online credit card facility accepts your order, and an email a few minutes later confirms the purchase. Just as soon as ownership is recorded by the relevant authorities, usually within a couple of days, the domain is yours to go on with to the next stage.

Hosting Your Site

You're halfway there. You have the site built, and a domain name to host it under. Now you have to upload the site to a web-hosting company that will display it on the Internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thousands of such web-hosting companies exist, and there are now web-hosting directories that enable you to select by cost, platform type, facilities, etc. — all of which are explained by on-site notes. You make your choice of hosting company, click through to their site, pay their hosting fee, and can then upload your site to that company's server. The hosting company will explain how. It's very simple, but you'll need a cheap or free piece of software called an ftp program. This you can obtain from any software supplier, and use it to maintain your site thereafter. Once uploaded, your site goes 'live'. You're on the Internet.

Of course if your site has been built by a web design company, then they'll upload it for you. And if you've built your site online, then all you need do is email the hosting company that you're ready to start trading.

Taking the Money

In selling something you'll want to be paid as quickly, safely and painlessly as possible. Ecommerce now has many options. Starting with the simplest, these are:

1. Display your goods online, but take payment off-line — by check, bank transfer, credit card details given over the phone.

2. Display your goods online and take payment online through some simple wallet system.

3. Display and take payment online, but employ a payment service provider. A link to your shopping cart or catalogue will seamlessly transfer the customer to the payment provider for immediate card processing, transferring the customer back for you to handle the purchase. You can use your online merchant account if you possess one, but that is not required. The payment service provider will verify the credit card purchase, collect the payments, deduct the commissions, and send you the balance, usually by bank transfer monthly.

4. Display and take payment online, but use your own online merchant account, which you have obtained from your local bank or from a Merchant Account Provider.

Wondering how to link your site to the payment process? Links will be built in automatically if you use an out-of-the box shopping cart, employ a web design company, or rent space on an online ecommerce-hosting site. Otherwise — if you've built your own site — you'll have to add code to the pages concerned. With payment service providers that's fairly easy: they'll supply a snippet of code for you to paste in. Using your own merchant account, particularly if you're hosting the site on your own server, will require liaison with the credit card processing company, and good programming experience. You'll probably have to employ a professional.

Promoting Your Site

With hundreds of new ecommerce sites appearing every day on the Internet, it's getting mighty crowded out there. How is your site going to be noticed? By:

1. Getting out a press release.

2. Featuring in business directories, in online and off-line versions.

3. Submitting to the search engines, perhaps employing a site optimization company to get a high ranking.

4. Using the pay-per-click search engines, which charge a few cents to a few dollars for each visitor that clicks through to your site with a particular search phrase.

5. Signing up other sites as affiliates, paying them a commission on the sales they achieve for you.

6. Using search engine ads.

7. Persuading other sites to link to yours, possibly through a reciprocal links directory.

8. Winning awards for your site.

9. Offering online competitions, introductory deals and promotions.

10. Providing free and helpful information on your site.

11. Advertising off-line in newspapers and specialist magazines.

In Detail

Each ecommerce business is different, of course, and brings further considerations into play. To get a broader perspective we suggest you read the help-sheets located in the top right panel of the site, and consult the directories for ecommerce resources and product comparisons.

Will The Business Be Successful?

Now the vital question. Having followed these steps faithfully, you can surely expect your site to be successful?

Possibly — if you're in an especially favorable position. You're the sole suppliers of spare parts for some particular machinery. Or yours is the only guest house in a popular tourist area. Yes, in those cases, free information may be all you need. Similarly if you have only an academic interest in commerce, and are not running an e-business yourself.

But in all other cases we have to issue this stark warning. Ecommerce is not easy, and if you follow the blandishments of advertising and ecommerce journalism it's unlikely that you'll even get your expenses back.

The early e-business casualties believed otherwise, of course, and there are still many sites, books and e-books that assure you that ecommerce is entirely a matter of following certain procedures. It isn't, and you can readily see why.

1. Ecommerce is an extremely crowded marketplace. In many areas you'll need a well-researched strategy backed by a large marketing budget.

2. It's easy to get locked into the wrong goal or business model — as the spectacular dotcom failures discovered (read about them in our e-book).

3. You've built a site and then thought about promoting it. Wrong. Your site has to be a selling machine, which means, from the very first, designing around some well-honed selling proposition. That in turn calls for careful thought, competitor research and detailed analysis.

4. The number of ecommerce products and services is immense, and all are heavily promoted. Without specialist advice you'll make the wrong choice, which is costly in time and money.

5. Ecommerce has its own insider knowledge, which sets newcomers at a disadvantage. You need to look beyond the 'How I made a fortune and so can you' sort of guides, which generally enrich their authors more than purchasers.

What Then?

Why is ecommerce such an uphill battle? It isn't if you go forearmed with the right outlook and information. You have to learn from other e-merchants, and then go one better. Magazine articles and scattered references are hopelessly inadequate for that task, and too many e-merchants come to grief because their strategies didn't include informed, detailed and realistic planning.

Hence this site, which offers our ADVANCED GUIDE TO ECOMMERCE.

An overview . . .

• The Internet's most detailed guide to ecommerce: 200,000 words / 633 pages in pdf format.
• 160 reference sheets summarizing a particular aspect, with advice and resources as appropriate.
• Over 3,200 resource listings grouped under 260 headings: each hand-picked on its merits.
• Fourteen comparison tables in key product areas.
• A proven approach to planning ecommerce.
• Practical advice on improving sales and conversion ratios.
• An extended guide to pay-per-click and sponsored listings.
• Use of business blogs, advised and ill-advised.
• Practical security aspects: keeping yourself safe.
• Testing sites and ideas at negligible cost.
• Some 100 case studies, both general and dotcom failures.
• Notes on ecommerce strategies and use of the resource listings.
• Tutorials on AdSense, ePublishing, eBay, RSS feeds, commercial blogging, ecommerce for free and using ppc effectively.
• Ten up-to-date surveys of ecommerce prospects worldwide.
• Insider information based on Internet research and our own studies.
• Strategies to test customer behaviour and improve sales.
• Comes as an interlinked webpage ebook (2 Mb) and as a pdf document (9 Mb).

Click here for a full contents listing of the current edition.

Our $37.50 e-book comes with a 30-day, no-questions-asked guarantee. If not fully satisfied, then simply email us for a prompt and full refund. Material is continually being checked and extended, and purchase includes free updates.

The e-book comes as interlinked webpage compilation for ready reference (2Mb) and as a PDF document (9Mb, 633 pages) for extended reading. The PDF document can be read on all platforms, but the interlinked webpage compilation can only be read on Windows platforms ( Windows 98x, Me, 2000 and XP machines). The one-time subscription gives you both.

Our July 2009 free update will include an extensive tutorial on 'widgets and similar enhancements'.

Ordering is simple. Simply pay through your account or credit card on Paypal's secure order page for immediate downloading.

 

 

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