ecommerce Marketing

When choosing to create an ecommerce store, there are 3 important questions to ask yourself.

1) Do I need ecommerce? This is important. Generally speaking, consumers are comfortable making purchases online for under $250. If your product or service costs more than that, then you may be better served creating a "Lead Generation" web site and an eSales team who are comfortable working with internet based leads.

2) How much time do I have? Setting up an ecommerce store is relatively easy for any experienced web designer and can be done and out to market in a couple days, assuming you have a limited number back end products in place and ready to be shipped. But, if you are a newbie, then you face a substantial learning curve. We encourage everyone to learn HTML, and to be entrepreneurial in their endeavors, but it does take a large time commitment to learn enough to succeed. Also, keep in mind, that the learning is never done. There are always new technologies effecting the Internet and the way people buy and sell online and you need to keep up to date with them to succeed. Another thing to keep in mind is internet marketing. If you plan on acquiring sales through the search engines, then you need an seo strategy that works. For starters read Serr.biz

3) What is your budget? Everyday you hear of people making millions online by just having an ecommerce enabled web site that they got for free. We would like to dispel this myth. It's simply not true. There are technology costs associated with operating an ecommerce site, not to mention the cost of products, fulfillment, standard overhead costs, and marketing. The old idiom of "It cost money to make money." is 100% true. However, starting an ecommerce store is generally less expensive than a traditional brick and mortar, especially if you have a successful brick and mortar business already. However, the bare bones start up costs associated with an ecommerce store is the cost of your computer and ISP. This is possible, but not very probable. In truth, you should expect to spend somewhere in the range of $50-$1000 a month in technology costs alone. That does not account for variables listed above.

If you have thought about the questions above and still want to proceed, here is a quick check list of things you recommend you have.

1) Product or service to sell.
2) Web site and hosting company with email.
3) Shopping cart with a secure check out.
4) Merchant account so you can accept credit cards.
5) Back end technology and order fulfillment in place.

Choosing an Ecommerce Product or Service To Sell

Choosing which ecommerce product or service to sell is usually dictated by your existing brick and mortar store or business. However, once you get started, you will discover it's relatively easy and fun to sell online and you may want to expand your inventory list, or start a new 100% web based business. A couple guidelines to consider are as follows:

Retail price: Most consumers are comfortable spending $250 or less online. Your product or service should fall in this price range if you want to make instant online sales. If not, we recommend creating a "Lead Generation" we site, which is designed to produce leads.

Shipping costs: Whatever your product, be sure you have adequate shipping, and that the shipping costs do not outweigh the cost of the product. Consumers become annoyed, and may shy away from you product if shipping cost to much.

Cost of Product: It's important to choose a product that does not have a high wholesale cost. Market saturation and competitiveness may influence your choice of what to sell.

Drop Shippers: If you choose to use a drop shipper, make sure they have excellent order fulfillment. You do not want to make more sales than you have product or than the drop shipper can handle. Also, you should negotiate some type of exclusive, or co-branded marketing material for the out bound shipping containers.

Choosing a Web Site Design, Hosting with Email

Which ever you design and hosting company you choose, we stress that you establish an email account that uses the web site name. If a client needs to ask a question about your product and service, and you only have an AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo email account, you will immediately undermine the potential sale with a lack of credibility. If you hosting company does not provide Pop 3 email and SMTP mail, switch hosting companies immediately.

Choosing the right shopping cart for Ecommerce Store.
There are literally 1000's of ecommerce shopping carts for you to choose from when establishing your ecommerce store. However, the number one thing to keep in mind when choosing your cart, is scale-ability. Given the ever changing nature of the internet, and just running a business, you need to choose a cart that can change as you need it to. Your cart needs to be scaleable.

A good shopping cart should have the following features.

1) Integrate easily with you merchant account credit card processor.
2) Allow graphical customization and have a relatively open source code for true special customization and upgrades
3) Be hosted on you site.
4) Have point and click and mass upload import - export features,
5) Up sell - cross sell features
6) Affiliate features,
7) Price group features.
8) Basket features such as add, remove, change products.
9) UPS, Fed ex, shipping integration at the least.
10) Sales Tax features as the law is rapidly changing and some states require sales tax on all internet sales regardless of business state and ship to state.

Ecommerce Tutorial Merchant Accounts

An ecommerce merchant account is the service which allows you to accept credit card payments online. The service includes a virtual terminal and secure processing gateway that allows the customer to enter their credit card information and send it to the bank for processing. The bank in turn checks with their credit card company and retrieves an authorization code or decline notice. This service protects both the customer and your business. Either way, you and the customer are informed of the success or failure of the credit card transaction.

Additionally, the processing bank of the merchant account will provide tracking of all orders through a virtual terminal and a monthly hard copy of your history called a bank statement.

In truth, there are only about 7 banks that conduct the actual transaction. Chase, First data, NPC, Provident, are the top providers. However, there are literally thousands of agents representing one or more of these banks. Who choose to establish an ecommerce merchant account through is up to you.

When choosing an ecommerce merchant account provider you should expect pay in the range of 2.29% per transaction, $.35 per transaction, $10-$15 dollar bank statement, and approximately $20 a month for the virtual terminal and gateway combined. This is far market value and these rates should assure quality customer service.

Some other variables to keep in mind are set up fees, programming fees, monthly minimums and annual fees. However, these are mostly negotiable and can be avoided.

Who ever you choose, be conscious of the fact you are giving the processor your business. They will make money from every transaction you make. They should be willing to negotiate , within reason. If they are not, then we would say greed is their core motivation, and you can be sure to pay for it the long run. Conversely, if you choose the lowest rates available, you can be sure to pay for it in bad customer service. And, you will need good customer service, especially in the start up phase of your ecommerce store.

Ecommerce Tutorial Back End
Before you open an ecommerce store, be sure you have set up all your back end technology and be prepared to change.

Change is a huge constant in all business types. Especially with an ecommerce store. Products change, technology changes, costs change. Everything changes. It's important to keep this in mind when setting up your back end technology. What ever you choose, make sure it' is "Scalable". This means that it can grow with your business. If it's not, you may suffer set backs and out outrageous costs when it's time to grow, and if you prepare and execute your marketing plan sales, fulfillment, accounting and customer service correctly, you should be growing rapidly.

The primary back end technology you need to have in place before launching your web store is accounting, warehousing, merchant processing, fulfillment, phone systems, and CUSTOMER SERVICE. There is nothing more detrimental to a business than bad customer service. Be sure you have some sort of ticketing system in place. It can be as simple as a email box and using your email software tasks and reminders. Outlook from Microsoft has a very good task features. Though, it is limited and you need to be prepared to grow.