Stop! Don't read any further if you are not seriously looking for a really good, effective but affordable e-commerce solution, a package that will let you relax while your sales are being taken care of by your E-commerce website. This article will provide you an insight into the do's and don'ts of selecting an e-commerce package suitable for you.
1) What not to look out for?
Most people who search for "affordable e-commerce solutions" will input "cheap e-commerce solutions" as their search phrase on yahoo/msn/google or any other search engine and end up with a lot of websites providing cheap e-commerce packages. But one should keep in mind that everything good comes at a price. Cheap website hosting providers will advertise their website as "cheap & easy", but beyond the advertising lies the 99% failure rate of old-fashioned Web hosting. If you still want to trust a cheap e-commerce service provider please check their track record before you sign-up.
2) What to look out for?
It has been rightly said, "If we fail to plan we plan to fail". This holds true with every project small or big. So lets chalk out what we will to decide which is the best e-commerce solution for your website. Take a pencil and paper and list these points:
1) Product and Customer: Keeping your product/products in mind think of what your customer will be looking for. Not and highlight the points that come to your mind. Do you have an international market for your product?
2) Payment Options: What payment options you will be required to provide the customer. There are many available like paypal, firepay, xoom etc
3) Shopping cart: Do you need one? It's a necessity if you have more than one product if you have a single product then you might opt out of this feature.
4) Advertising & Promotion: How you are going to advertise and promote your website for attracting customers and increasing sales. There are a number of ways of doing this like banners, advertisements etc you will need to hole in on a few.
5) Your Budget: There are a lot of e-commerce solution providers available on the Internet but you should be having an idea of the dollar that you are ready to spend on them before you take the big leap as some of them have hidden costs. You may choose a package and then know that a few features that were not included cost you a lot when you buy them.
Depending on these points we can shortlist some basic features to look out for in our e-commerce solution service provider
1) Payment Options: What are the payment options available with the e-commerce service provider (ESP)?
2) Shipping: For international trade this is a necessity. Is your ESP providing it to you?
3) Web design/Hosting: How would you like the over all design of your store? Is the layout provided by the e-commerce service provider easy to use and understand for the customer?
4) Features: What extra features will you be looking for in your e-commerce package? Will you be content with payment, security, tax and shipping solution only or do you require more? This will require a thorough review of at least a few e-commerce solution providers and what you really need.
If you are a corporate body you will need to bring all your departments together to get their ideas on sales/promotion/advertising etc. It will be a day's hard work but the rewards will be substantial if proper planning is met with efficient execution.
These are a few different scenarios that you will find yourself in after you have listed all the points.
Should you opt for:
1) A ready to use e-commerce package.
2) Rent a space/store in a network-based e-commerce solution.
3) Ask a web designing company to build you a website from scratch
Most of the e-commerce solution providers will have a basic scheme where you can add a product/category, delete a product/category, check the order status, calculate shipping cost deducting taxes if any, owner can see all the list of purchases, he can make the item shipped, out of stock, credit card denied, etc.
