Never before has an industry grown to such a global
economic stature in such a short time as has internet commerce. Experts
say that on-line revenues for 1999 were in the neighborhood of $30 to
$40 billion. Needless to say, many businesses who had previously snubbed
their noses at the internet are beginning to explore the possibilities
that the new global economy presents. Retailers are finding that a
combination of their retail outlets and an on-line presence allows them
to better compete on both fronts. In fact, e-tailers who also have
retail locations have proven in many instances to be more reliable and
successful than companies with only internet based operations.
I like to think of establishing an internet presence
as opening a new global location on the internet. You cannot just throw
up a web page and start taking orders…you have to carefully plan,
implement and market your new location, just as you would a new retail
location. Instead of shelves and display racks, you need a good hosting
service. Instead of hiring sales clerks, you hire designers, artists,
programmers, and photographers. A good web developer can bring all these
elements together, along with marketing support, to help you to take
advantage of the new global economy.
Here is my getting started in
E-Commerce Checklist:
- Decide on domain name(s)
First step is to secure a domain name (or
several) with Network Solutions. It’s a good idea to arrange your
hosting prior to registering your domain name(s) as it costs more to
reserve a name than it does to register it, and you have to have
numbers for where your site will be located in order to register your
name. You may want to register several if there are multiple available
names that particularly suit your business
Arrange Hosting
There are a multitude of hosting options
available to you. The most important factors to consider are the
amount of disk space included, e-mail accounts, band-width
availability, but most importantly if your host supports the
applications that you are developing. If you are going to build an
e-commerce site, you will want to be sure that your host supports
Active Server Pages (ASP), and if you have more than a hundred or so
items, you will want to have SQL Server Database support. SQL Server
adds to your hosting bill, but is well worth the extra expense for
speed and reliability. If you are planning to have real-time automatic
credit card processing, you will need to set up your merchant account
separately with a processing service like AuthorizeNet. Your web
developer should be able to assist with this as well.
Plan the structure of your site
You need to break your products into
categories. Each category or department may have multiple
sub-departments. This map is essential to being able to build your
site in an organized manner. You need to think about things like which
types of items go with which others to allow promotional campaigns and
suggestive selling…which fries go with which sandwiches, so to
speak.
Gather content for your site
You will need to gather item numbers,
short and long descriptions, prices, shipping weights, and digital
images of every item that you want to sell on your website. You will
need to process each image into several different sizes and name them
by the item number. If you have a database that contains this data,
you can save a considerable amount of time by converting the database
into the format that you need for your commerce package rather than
entering the data by hand. Sometimes your vendor will have digital
photographs available that you can use, if not, you will have to have
digital pictures taken or have them scanned and processed.
Prepare your offices and your staff
You need to make sure that the staff
members that will be handling the incoming orders are properly
equipped and trained. They will need a modern, fast computer,
full-time internet connection, e-mail programs, and the computer
skills to process the orders. If you have powerful contact management
software like GoldMine, and a good technical person, you can automate
many of the tedious customer service tasks. A good web developer can
offer assistance in this arena as well.
Begin marketing your site
Once the structure of your site is in
place, you will want to begin marketing your site. The first step is
to include your website address in everything that you do. It should
be on your business cards, letterhead, e-mail, and all marketing and
advertising materials. After your signature on a letter should be,
"visit our website at www.yourdomain.com. The best place to start
is your current and past customers. Develop systems that make it
easier for them to do more business with you. Build in referral
programs to entice your customers to send their friends to the site.
Submit your site to search engines and link sites
First, you need a complete list of every
possible search word or phrase that you can think of that a
prospective client of yours may search for when looking for the
products that you sell. These are set up in the html code on your
website as meta-tags. These are the descriptions that are used by the
search engines as search criteria. A good web developer will have
programs that will automatically submit your site to hundreds of
search engines and link sites. Otherwise, you can visit each site that
you wish to be added to and fill out a form to submit your site. Even
if you use automated submission programs, you need to submit to the
top ten or twenty by hand occasionally, as these submissions are
handled with a higher priority by the search engines. You have to
submit on a regular basis for quite some time in order to raise
yourself higher on the list. The more unique your product or
service, the faster you can expect to raise up to a higher ranking on
the search engines.
Arrange reciprocal links to and from related sites
A good way to get this started is to
create a links page on your site and offer to put links to other sites
in return for them placing links back to yours. Other businesses with
related lines of products or services that are not in direct
competition with you are normally happy to enter into this type of an
arrangement as it increases traffic to all sites involved.
Advertising banners
As you surf around on the net, you will
see advertising banners everywhere. These banners vary greatly in
price depending on the number of visitors and visibility of your
banner. This type of advertising can be very expensive and should be
carefully targeted to the appropriate types of sites with the right
demographic user-base to attract the right type of prospects. You will
want to have several different banners professionally designed and
carefully test and track results in order to get the maximum bang for
the buck.
Marketing after the sale
Once you have attracted a customer to your
website and made an initial sale, you will want to market related
products to them on a regular basis. A good e-commerce package will
have features built in to allow you to automatically send e-mail
advertisements to previous customers, based on the category of
merchandise that they have purchased in the past, promoting related
products and special offers. You may wish to market to them by direct
mail as well.
The right developers for the project
You may be getting the picture that there
are a lot of details that have to be taken care of in order to make
your on-line venture a success. If you just want to build a
first-class e-commerce site, you will need to be sure that you are
dealing with web developers who have the experience and knowledge to
make it happen. It is a very complex business and requires a
substantial amount of experience and technology in order to project a
professional image and to ensure the reliability and security of the
system. If you are building a small static html website without
on-line ordering capabilities, you may be able to hire some High
School kids to build your site for you inexpensively. If you are
building a real web presence and plan to sell product through your
site, you will want to hire professionals.
Consumers are increasingly moving to on-line shopping
because of the convenience of having no crowds to fight, no parking
shortage, and no salesman to deal with. If you are not on-line, these
consumers are going to purchase from someone else who has the vision to
accommodate their needs. E-Commerce truly is the future of
business…Are you ready to step into the 21st century and take
advantage of the opportunity that the new global economy presents?
Commerce Developers can get you there in short order.
I hope that this checklist has enlightened you as to
what is involved in establishing an internet presence. Find out what it will take to
establish an on-line presence for your business today! We offer you a no obligation free
consultation...so what have you
got to lose?
