E-Commerce Guide

Introduction

Do you want to put your business on-line and offer your products for sale to your web site visitors?

Do you feel left behind in the Internet revolution, you want to put your business on-line but don't know what to do to create an effective web site?

Do you want to start an on-line store but don't know how to get started

This e-commerce planning guide should help answers some of your questions about what you will need to do to create a successful e-commerce web site.

What You Will Learn

Myths and Facts About E-Commerce On the Web.
What is Involved in Creating a Business Web site
Identify the Focus and Goals of Your Web site
How to Turn Visitors From Browser's To Buyers

You can increase your chances for success on the web by realistically looking at the current state of business on the web. So lets get started by looking at the myths and facts about doing business on the web.

Myths and Facts About E-Commerce on the Web

The Internet has enjoyed an explosion in growth and popularity rivaled by nothing else in recent history. If you are like many other people, you are probably trying to make sense out of how the World Wide Web will affect your business. Alternatively, maybe you are thinking of starting a business and see the Internet as a easy way to get going.

Whatever your reason, this section of our E-Commerce Planning Guide will help you to separate fact from fiction

Fact: If it were only that easy! There is nothing magical about an Internet Business, no special formulas. The fact is, most of the same factors that make a successful On-line business are the same factors that lead to successful with traditional businesses.

1. A good business plan and marketing strategy
2. Excellent Customer Service
3. Understanding the unique demographic and psycho-graphic factors that are in your market place (in this case, the market place is the Internet).
4. Offer a reason for people to buy from you rather than your competition.

This does not imply that there are no advantages to an Internet business. More often than not, it is easier to get an Internet business up and running with less startup costs and operating expenses. In addition, the Web can allow you to grow your traditional business by taking advantage of the Internet's unique features. From Browser's To Buyers explores the Internet's unique features and how to use them to grow your business.

Fact: Many businesses and organizations, both large and small are benefiting from the Internet. The fact is, that e-commerce is currently enjoying a growth rate of over 145% with sales topping 36 billion dollars (source: cyberatlas.com).The Internet offers several unique opportunities for businesses:

1. Instant Access to Information About Your Company's Goods and Services.
2. Better Customer Feedback though response forms, on-line discussion and focus groups.
3. A Business that is highly adaptable to your customer's needs.
4. Services that are not possible with traditional businesses. such as customer reviews of products and services, or computer generated suggestions of products based on customer preferences.
5. Sell Your Product 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from the comfort of the customer's living room or bedroom.

Fact: Actually, unless you have bad credit, getting a Merchant Account in order to take Mastercard, Visa and American Express is not that difficult. It can, however, be daunting trying to find someone who can offer you a merchant account. Most banks and financial institutions do offer their small business customers merchant accounts, and if you bank offers this service, in the long run, this will probably be the best way to go. Beware of third party merchant providers that lure you in but offering easy to setup internet "gateways' but offer you outragous fees for this service.

Fact: "Build it and they will come" may work in the movie Field of Dreams, but not on the Web. Building a web site and putting it on the World Wide Web is analogous to putting up a billboard on a highway covered with billboards as far as the eye can see. On the other hand, version 2 of the Myth is also false. True, many people do spend a lot of time building their web site only to find that no one is looking at it.

But the fact is, that with some work, you can drive a moderate amount of traffic to your web site.The unfortunate fact is that many web sites that enjoy little or no traffic. There are also web sites that enjoy over a million hits a month. What makes the difference is having a good marketing strategy and having compelling content so that you can drive traffic to your site and keep them interested.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your web site. Some are traditional and some are unique to the Internet If you are trying to expand your traditional business on the net, one method is to promote your web site in your traditional advertising.

Alternatively, you can use Internet based methods. The most expensive is Banner Advertising (typically $20 to $40 per thousand page views with an average click through rate of 0.5% to 2%). Less expensive methods include reciprocal links with other companies offering complementary services and of course, optimizing your web site to increase your search engine rankings.

What is Involved in Creating an E-Commerce Web site

If you are like many people, figuring out what you need in order to put together an e-commerce web site is often confusing. In this section, we will try to dispel the confusion by clearly identifying what you will need to get started in e-commerce.

Make a Plan

The road map to any successful business venture is a good plan. A web site is no different. Do your homework, know what you want, know your competition and understand your customer. Here is a basic list of things you should consider doing before actually doing your web site:

• Identify the Goals and Focus of Your Web site (click here to read our section on this).
• Identify the Needs of Your Customer (read our article on Customer Oriented Web sites)
• Look at What Your Competition is Doing and Identify Your Own Competitive Edge
• Read Case Studies on What Works and Doesn't Work on the Web for Your Type of Business or Organization
• Develop a Realistic Marketing Strategy

Doing your homework will help you to develop a sound business strategy. You may find that your idea is terrific or you may find that it is unrealistic. Even if you find that your original idea is not going to work, you haven't necessarily wasted your time. The information you gathered from your research may steer you into a successful direction that you might otherwise never considered.

• Choose an Internet Service Provider
• Register a Domain Name
• Choose a Web site Design Firm.
• If You Want to Sell Goods Over the Internet, You will need a Merchant Account.
• Implement a Fulfillment Strategy

Choosing an Internet Service Provider:
There are several factors you should consider when choosing Internet Service Provider to Host your Web site:

• Do They Provide a Complete Service?
• How Long Have They Been In Business?
• Are There Prices Reasonable (i.e. do they offer Value)?
• Do They Offer the Services You Need?

Celestial Graphics works closely we Acquired Knowledge Systems. By choosing Acquired Knowledge Systems as your web host and Celestial Graphics as your web site design firm, you will have a complete web site design and hosting solution custom tailored to the needs of your organization.

Registering a Domain Name:
You will first need to find out whether or not the name you wish to register is already taken.  There are many sites where you can search for you domain name and register it at a reasonable price. Until recently Network Solutions (now owned by Verisign) was the exclusive domain name registrar. Now there are many official domain name registrars to choose from with prices varying from $9 per year to $30 per year.

Choose a Web Site Design Firm:
 There are many good web site design agencies out there. Choose a quality, professional web site design firm that will work with you to develop content, a marketing strategy and do much of the strategic planning for you. A good web site design firm will be able to not just create a web site, but to also create a web site application framework and web business model that will help to use the web to streamline your business practices. Of course, we hope that you will consider Celestial Graphics as your web site development company.

A Merchant Account:
If you want to successfully sell goods on the Internet, then you need to take credit cards. Almost all Internet Commerce is done by credit card. Credit Cards transactions are handled by Credit Card Processors that act as a bridge between you and your bank. These card processors issue merchant accounts through financial institutions to you. Generally they charge some minimum monthly fee plus a percentage of each transaction (typically 2 to 3%). You bank may be the best source for issuing your merchant account. Note that your bank may use card processors to actually administer the account for them.

So How Do You Choose a Merchant Account? We recommend you choose your bank as your merchant provider if they offer this service. Make sure that their internet gateway is easy for your web site design firm to set up and administer because setting up a Merchant Account can be tricky. Some Internet Service Providers have Card Processors they already work with so setup time and costs are minimized, however the terms may not be as favorable as working with you financial institution.

Implementing a Fulfillment Strategy
So you’re about to launch your web site, so what do you do with the customer orders, customer feedback and inquiries? Developing a sound fulfillment strategy is just as important as developing a good web site.

If you already have an established business or institution, then you may need to integrate the web site orders into your current order entry system. In addition, you should plan on sending out auto-reply e-mail's acknowledging the customer's order or request as well as auto-reply e-mail's acknowledging that the order or request has been filled.

If you have a new business, then you will either need to plan and budget this infrastructure or hire a fulfillment service. A fulfillment service will process orders, and answer phones for either a fixed fee or percentage of sales.

The most important thing for either a new or established business to develop a fulfillment work flow. You can develop a simple work flow with pencil and paper by charting out all of the possible types of requests a customer can make and how you would respond.

Putting it All Together

Of Course, we hope you will consider Celestial Graphics to fill all of your internet needs. We will help you develop an e-business strategy that makes sense for your organization and for your budget.

Identify the Focus and Goals of Your E-Commerce Web site

Before you start to build your web site or hire a web design firm to build your web site for you, it will be extremely valuable for you to identify your Goals and decide of a focus of your web site. This section of our e-commerce planning guide will help you do that.

Identifying Your Goals

You first step toward creating an effective web site will be to articulate your goals. By doing this, you are creating a clear set of guide lines which will help you to determine whether your web site is accomplishing the things you want it to accomplish.

Do the following exercise:

Here are some examples:

I want to sell my company's products on the Internet.
I want to promote by company's service.
I want to let people get the latest information about my governmental agency.
I want to share the knowledge my organization has collected with as many people as possible.
I want to increase the sales of the "widgets" my company produces by 5000 units per month.
I want to provide automated customer service.

Next, organize the list by category. Give each item a rank, by order of priority:

1. Essential
2. Desirable
3. Optional

Look at each item that you ranked essential, and create a simple statement that articulates your essential goals.

Now you have developed a single statement that clearly states the essential goals of your web site. This statement in essence defines what you consider success or failure. Second, you have created a list of all of the things you would like to achieve with your web site and ranked their importance.

Creating Your Web site's Focus

Now that you have identified what you want to achieve with your web site, you will want to identify how you want to present your web site in order to achieve these goals. Keep in mind, that the Internet is one of the ways which your customers will use to judge your organization. A poorly executed web site that frustrates customers can diminish the reputation of even the best companies. Your web site is part of your corporate branding, used properly it can help build your business.

It is essential, that you clearly focus on what you want to achieve with your web site.
This will help you to develop a cohesive well organized web site. There are too many web sites that are poorly designed and add no value to the company that it represents.

How Do You Create A Web site that is Clearly Focused ?
Create a list of content that you can include on your web site that will help accomplish the essential goals you have identified.
Create a Cohesive theme that creates strong corporate branding and that ties all of these elements together.
Use consistent easy to identify navigational elements throughout the web site.

If you web site is clearly focused, your customers should enter your web site and immediately be able to grasp what your company and web site is all about. Remember this very important fact: Visitors to your web site will often make instantaneous decisions whether they are going to stay or go. These decisions are often made based on the following factors:

Is this web site interesting (or appealing).
Is it useful to me
Will I be able to find the information I want.
Will I be able to find the information I want without investing a lot of time and effort.

A clearly focused web site, strongly branded web site will allow you to convey your message to your visitor in a clear, concise, no non-sense manner.

In the next section, we will look at how to turn those who visit your web site from browsers to buyers.

How to Transform Your Visitors from Browsers to Buyers

A key question you may ask yourself when planning your e-commerce web site is how do I turn visitors to my web site from "window shoppers" to buyers of my product or service. This section of our e-commerce planning guide will explore this.

Psychological Factors which Effect Internet Purchases

Price-not necessarily the number one factor.
Many people would argue that price is the number one factor motivating people to purchase on the web. Certainly, price is an important.

According to the GVU 10th Internet demographic survey (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu), the most important factors are convenience and variety.

Main Factors web sited for not purchasing.
In the same survey, respondents said that the main factors for not purchasing were security, lack of privacy and quality.

The Psychological Landscape of the Internet

The number one concern of Internet surfers is privacy. Look at the backlash against things such as mass e-mailing (junk mailing or "spamming"). Why is this?

Because the Internet is a very personal medium. It is different than an other interactive medium in the sense that you surf the Internet from the privacy of your own home, from your living room, bedroom or den. You have control over the content that comes to you. Unlike television you actively interact with this content. The computer exists within your personal space. When you go to an e-commerce web site, you interact anonymously, without obligation.

These psychological factors should not be dismissed. Many large corporations have, with near disastrous results. A good example of this is Intel's near disastrous introduction of the Pentium III. Intel put a unique "electronic serial number" inside each chip in order to reduce fraud in on-line credit card transactions. What Intel thought would be a boon to electronic commerce turned out to create a tremendous outcry in the on-line community. Many people felt that they would loose control of their privacy. The public outcry began to overshadow an otherwise positive product introduction. Intel withdrew the passive implementation of this feature (a user must now actively turn this feature on if they want it).

People expect information to be easily accessible and without charge or obligation. People view the web as a grand repository of free information. You will generally produce more ill will than income by asking people to sign-in and divulge personal information or pay in order to get information that they can access for free from else where on the web. Of course there are exceptions. Examples are a company such as Jupiter Communications or Lexus/Nexus that are well know for there extensive and reliable information databases, then you can charge for your on-line service

What You Should Do?

Gain your customers trust by:

• Make you web site personal, engaging and appealing.
• Let your customers know who you are.
• Respect Your Customers Privacy
• Make Sure to Clearly Indicate That There Orders are Secure
• Give Your Customers Real Value from Your Web site
• Give Your Customers a Clear Reason to Order From You Rather Than Your Competition

Last Word

We hope that you have found this e-commerce planning guide valuable. You can find more information that may be of value by following the links below. We value your feedback. Send us your comments. You comments are completely confidential see our privacy policy for more information.

Celestial Graphics will be happy to discuss with you the specific e-commerce needs of your business, governmental or non-profit organization.