What are the first things I need to know about setting up in e-commerce?
First what is ecommerce? The online world designates web sites devoted to retail sales as an e-commerce site. ecommerce sites sell either information or hard goods Like electronics or clothing. ecommerce sites also have Shopping Carts and Payment Gateways attached to them that non-sales web sites do not need.
Ok……so you want to develop an ecommerce site. You might be asking do you have enough skill to be successful.
Well if you have average intelligence, you could have an e-commerce web site. All that is required is the willingness to learn a few things, patience, and the determination to apply yourself.
Let’s begin. We first need to discuss the basics components you will need.
1. Computer that is a Pentium 4 or above to run graphic programs
2. Internet connection to publish your site on the internet
3. Site building software, this could come from your shopping cart company.
4. Graphics Software to publish you own graphics, like a Logo
5. Web hosting company, could also come with a shopping cart company
6. Shopping cart, either a package deal or one you do yourself like Zen Cart or
OS commerce
7. Payment gateway to collect from credit cards
Just to get started. The above are where most people stop when they think of what they will need when they want to start an ecommerce site. However, there are other things that need to be considered, such as getting legal and product sourcing.
Items 1 and 2 above are pretty straight forward and people know why they
are necessary. The other items however are a little more complex. Site building
software allows the beginner to construct a web site without knowing html
programming code. HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the programming language
of the internet. The two best software programs currently available to write
Html are Microsoft’s FrontPage 2003, but it is no longer supported by Microsoft
so it is giving away to Macromedia’s Adobe’s Dreamweaver. These programs
are more correctly known as HTML Editors. There are other web elements you might
need to put on your website like Java scripts. A way to collect email addresses
(list building).
Most professional web site developers, however consider Dreamweaver the better of the two because some claim it has more features, but I find FrontPage less complicated to use. I would recommend that you surf the internet and read the reviews on both of these programs and make you own choice. If you hire a website shopping e-cart company you can avoid some this and what follows.
Next you will need a good graphic program such as Adobe Photoshop 10. A
graphics program allows you manipulate the size of images create images in
different formats and create special effects. “PhotoShop 10” is the current
version from Adobe and is the best software program for graphics. Adobe
“Photoshop Elements” can also be used, but is a limited version of the full
Photoshop software. The programs from Adobe are expensive so shop around for the
best price. However you can download both Photoshop and Dreamweaver for a 30 day
trial you can visit there on-line store by
clicking this link
Adobe USA Store
.
Web hosting is very important and you need to comparison shop for features
first, not on price. Web hosting and ecommerce are extremely related. The web host company is the company that rents room on their server for
your web site, but they can be much more. They can offer an integrated shopping
cart. If nothing else they should support database like MySQL, SSL certificates
to secure your website to take credit cards or other private data. You should
get at least 5 emails, you will need them for customer support, customer list.
News Letters and more. someone like www.GoDaddy.com
will work and they are competitive.
The shopping cart is the heart of the ecommerce web site. The shopping cart for all intents and purposes runs your ecommerce web site so it is critical to get a good one. It contains and displays the products you intend to sell. It also does other neat administrative functions that will make your store easier to run. There are some stand alone shopping carts for sale but most come with web hosting service attached. There are many features you might want to consider. There are too many to go into it here as it would constitute a whole e-book on it's own. You will find it easier to go with some one like 123 eCart who can take care of the programming for you. I don't know about you, but I don't want to learn PHP, Java or some other programming language.
The "Payment Gateway" is the cashier in the store and is also known as a "Merchant Account." This is basically a business credit card account. The payment gateway allows your se store to accept credit cards and transfer money to you. Merchant Accounts are very important and you should also carefully review their services and prices. If you do not get a merchant account you are pretty much limited to PayPal. Search the web and check out the available shopping carts and payment gateways.
Now what are you going to sell, and where are you going to get it? You can look every where for the products you want to sell. How do you know what will sell well? You need to do some market research. Not everything sells well, including electronics. If you have no preference on what to sell, find some marketing software that will allow you to determine which products will sale well online. Everyone is selling on the internet so you will have allot of competition (i.e. consumer electronics, apparel and so on), you will need to do some research to find a demand that is not being met, so you can have your own niche market.
Next, you will need a source for those products. Assuming you are not making them yourself. The easy way is to drop ship them. The trouble is finding a reliable drop ship source and avoiding the imposters. and what they claim to be wholesale may not be true and you find yourself in a spot were you can't compete on price. I have listed some good ones on this website like DropshioOnAuction.com. Look at the what do I sell page to get some Ideas. Another way to get the low price is to set yourself up with the manufactures, but the usually have minimums that you have to buy so you are investing two ways, money tide up in inventory and storage for the inventory. And larger companies are going to be able to get discount shipping because of the volume they ship.
Once you find you product source you need to open an account and stock your store and start selling. There is munch more to an ecommerce store then can be explained in a brief article format. As someone who recently went from zero to an online store (http://shop.nilandsplace.com), I know first hand of the pit falls that await the beginning ecommerce site builder. There are other ways I would have done things. one thing I would have done different it to stick to eBay for a while longer just to find out what sells good and can make a profit on it. I would go with a package deal were you get everything you need.