e-commerce

e-commerce - electronic commerce - A term that refers to the growing retail, service and business to business industries on the World Wide Web. E-commerce websites facilitate the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet. [source - Internet Glossary]

Buy and selling goods and services online has been growing dramatically over the past few years. If you're thinking about opening a virtual store online, here are some things to consider and suggestions.

If visitors are interested in the products on your website, don't lose their business because your site is hard to navigate or customers have trouble buying your products!

There are many e-commerce tools available, from free open-source shopping carts to commercial cart software to dedicated e-commerce solutions to eBay stores. While you can "piece together" the different components needed for an e-commerce site, DoctorGeek recommends an integrated solution: each component of your e-business site is designed to integrate with all of the other components, and your costs are clear.

web shopping cart features

Shopping carts track customer purchases and prepare transactions. There are many features that can be included on a shopping cart. Only some of those listed below are essential for any online transaction.

• flexible site design compatible with your product line
• catalog generator to display your products
• product number limitation that matches your product line
• integration with UPS, Fedex, USPS to calculate shipping
• sales tax calculator and reporting
• product image gallery
• gateway to a credit card processor for your merchant account
• 30-day money-back guarantee option
• adding handling charges
• a variety of payment options (i.e., real-time credit cards, PayPal, offline credit processing, payment in any currency, checks, telephone orders, and P.O.)
• international shipping
• sales reports
• ability to set quantity discounts
• newsletter manager
• site traffic statistics
• automated confirm emails
• live order tracking
• repeat customer recognition and accommodation
• useful effective site marketing techniques, for example featured products ("What's New" or What's Hot"), coupon codes and gift certificates, free shipping with a price barrier, etc.

web server to host your shopping cart can feature

• security for online transactions
• sufficient disk space for your catalog
• sufficient bandwidth for your customer load (3GB accommodates approximately 300 customers per day)
• email accounts
• regular backups (once per day recommended)
• search engine optimization

Internet merchant account

This is a bank for your credit card transactions. There are many options. A merchant account is separate from a shopping cart and may involve additional fees, for instance

• discount rate - a percentage of the sale price
• transaction fee - a small fee for each sale
• statement fee - monthly accounting of your sales activity
• Virtual Terminal Gateway fee - monthly fee for real-time approval of credit card transactions
• set-up fee

Interested in opening up a store online? Contact DoctorGeek for a free consultation!