E-Commerce Sites:

Selling your products through the Internet on your e-commerce site (on-line store) is the way of the future. Your customers will be able to shop from the convenience of their own homes or offices. You can reduce your overhead because you don't necessarily need to maintain a physical store staffed with sales people. Whether you are a small home business with a limited number of items, or a large corporation with a huge line of products, an on-line store can greatly improve your profitability.

The steps to setting up your e-commerce site or on-line store are:

PHASE I:

• Decide what products you are going to sell on-line.
• Decide what kind of descriptions you will need for your products.
• Decide what price you will charge for each product.
• Decide if you will need to have photographs or drawings of your products made.
• Determine the shipping and handling charges you will have for delivering your products.

PHASE II:

• Set up a Merchant account with your bank to take credit cards, and decide which credit cards you are going to accept.
• Select your Shopping Cart software. This will usually be an additional fee from your hosting company. The prices can range from about $40 a month for a basic site to $125 a month for a deluxe site with hundreds of items.
• Have drawings or photographs of your products created, if you will need them.
• Create and enter your database of product information into your web site.
• Select your credit card processing company. The cost for this is typically a percentage of the transactions plus a a small transaction fee. There is also usually a minimum charge per month (about $25) if your volume is low. Different banks or merchant businesses charge different percentages and fees. There may also be a charge to rent the electronic equipment to transmit your transactions to the bank, or an additional fee if you elect not to transmit electronically. You would be billed directly by the card processing company for this.

PHASE III:

• Market your site, both on the internet and through traditional marketing methods. The marketing phase can actually begin while the site is being built, so that the traffic is lined up and waiting when you open your on-line store. Some marketing tools to consider are:
  • Meta file creation
  • Search engine registration
  • Customer referrals
  • Newsletter
  • Mailing lists
  • List your web address (URL) on your printed materials, such as business cards, brochures, letterhead, mailings, etc.
  • Media advertising, such as magazines, radio and TV
  • And don't forget, word of mouth
• Update your site frequently to keep your customers coming back to see what's new.