For Small Businesses and Home Based Businesses

Things you need to start an online business —

Great Idea:

Combine a business idea with passion and you have a potentially great idea for an e-commerce business. Now you just have to figure out if it can make money online and how to make it a reality.

Business Plan:

Turn a great e-commerce business idea into a successful reality by starting with a business plan that identifies your products, marketing strategy, finances, etc. If you're not sure where to start, E-Commerce 101 outlines how to create an Online Business Plan. Help is also available at The Small Business Administration (SBA) and at SCORE.

Implementation Plan:

Serve your customers effectively by building an online business website according to a well defined implementation plan, which includes selecting a website hosting service, setting up a shopping cart, arranging a merchant account to process credit card payments, designing the website layout, etc. The E-commerce 101 Implementation Plan provides information on preparing a plan. Additional help is available at "How To" Articles and Q & A.

Things to do —

Name Your Business:

An E-Commerce business has two names:

1. A Business Name
2. A Domain Name

See Naming Your Online Business Website for additional information.

Select a Designer and/or Developer:

You should decide early in the website process if you will design and build your e-commerce website yourself, you will hire a professional or some combination of the two. The reason to decide this early in the process is that your options and approach to building your website are different. See Do-It-Yourself versus Professional E-Commerce Website.

Find a Hosting Service:

Even though an e-commerce store is a "virtual" store, that is it doesn't have walls, windows or shelves, it still needs a structure and a location. You can either "rent" or "buy" a structure.

• Buy: Design and build your website to your exact specifications
• Rent: Design and build your website from a menu of options/templates on a "canned" or "social" website

Once you've made your "buy or rent" decision, select a "hosting" service that suits your website features.

Significant Design Decisions —

Website design is influenced by aesthetics, functionality, operating costs and technology. Key elements include:

Layout:

The primary objective is to provide visitors with the information in a format that illustrates the features and benefits of your products/services and relates to your target market.

Maintenance:

To ensure your E-commerce website does not become stale and obsolete, make regular updates, including product details and presentation modifications.

Search Engine Optimization:

Search engines are potentially a major website traffic source. To increase the amount of traffic a website must be search engine friendly.

Consult your website designer/developer to ensure that the best combination of content, design and technology are selected to meet your objectives.

A process you need to understand —

The key shopping cart attributes are security and ease of use and involve three functional components:

Shopping Cart: Component used by website visitors to select and hold products. Options could include: color, size, quantity, etc.

Customer Information:

Entry form for billing and delivery information.

Payment Processing:

Selection of payment type and payment details, such as credit card number, plus authenticating and/or collecting funds.

Critical issues in implementing a shopping cart process are:

• Hosting service security
• Shopping Cart & payment processing security
• Merchant Account requirements and features

Who will handle the order —

Depending on the size of your business, Order Fulfillment may be a manual process, an automated process or an outsourced process or some combination of all three.

Order Shipment:

Determined by the location of the product stock, which may be local, remote or a drop shipper arrangement

Customer Notification:

Needs to be done by someone or some system when the order status changes

Customer Service:

A telephone number on your website is recommended. Sales can be lost if potential customers aren't comfortable with the contact options offered. Wouldn't you be uncomfortable giving your money to someone you can't contact if there is a problem?

Do or Die Tasks —

Promoting your online business is critical to the success of your website and it requires using multiple methods. Three low-cost or no-cost options are:

Search Engine Optimization:

Be sure your website is "search engine friendly" and has content that offers value to visitors. One without the other will not get your online business listed in the top results of a search engine. See E-Commerce Marketing Strategy: Search Engine Optimization.

Backlinks:

Search engines want to list popular websites. Popularity is judged by the number of relevant links on the Internet that point to your e-commerce website. Links can be create by submitting articles and adding entries to blogs and forums, which include a link to your website in the your signature. Exchanging links to complementary online business website can be helpful, but only if the website relevant. See E-Commerce Marketing Strategy: Backlinks.

Word of Mouth Marketing:

Talk about your business and send out emails -- even just a link in your email signature is helpful. Don't become a spammer. If you do bulk mailings, comply with proper mailings etiquette or suffer the consequences. See E-Commerce Marketing Strategy: Word Of Mouth.

Traffic and conversions —

First you need to get traffic to e-commerce website and then you want to convert them to customers.

Activity Reports:

Review the reports that come with your hosting service and/or other service your website is linked to, such as Google Analytics. Find out how visitors came to your website, what they look at and how long they stay plus other important statistics.

Availability Reports:

Keep track of how often your website is down and how the response time is. If your site isn't available or slow, you can lose sales.

Making Money —

If you website is attracting a lot of traffic, you can generate extra revenue by linking to websites that your visitors may interested in.

Affiliates:

Direct traffic to e-commerce website and get a sales commission.

Ads Links:

Display ad links on your e-commerce website. When visitors click on a link, you make money. But be sure to play by the rule or you can be blocked.