Ecommerce Web Developer

E-commerce plays an increasingly important role in the way in which products and services are purchased.

E-commerce systems such as your website can be used to market and sell to customers, and to provide after-sales support. E-commerce can also be an important part of strengthening relationships and improving the efficiency of your dealings with suppliers and other key trading partners.

Identifying e-commerce opportunities for your business

There are several ways you might use e-commerce in your business.

Direct sales

Many businesses use e-commerce for the direct selling of goods or services online. For some businesses such as those selling software or music, the actual sale and delivery of goods can be made online. However, for most the supply of goods will continue to require a physical delivery.

If you plan to sell online, you may need to rethink many of your business activities. This is because you will fundamentally change the way in which you interact with your customers - for example, if customers place orders online instead of talking to a salesperson. You will also need to work out how every aspect of a transaction is handled - including order confirmation, invoicing and payment, and deliveries and returns.

Pre-sales

You can use your website for pre-sales activities - exploiting the widespread use of the Internet to generate sales leads. At its most basic this can be through the use of "brochureware" - having an online version of your promotional materials on your site. Other options include email campaigns or online advertising to attract visitors to your own website where you can promote your products.

Post-sales support

You can also use the Internet to automate aspects of your customer support to reduce the number of routine customer service calls. This can be achieved by using your site to answer the most frequently asked questions, or by putting technical information online.

However you decide to use e-commerce, it is important to define your expectations from the outset. What level of sales are you hoping to make? How many sales leads are you looking to generate? What percentage reduction in customer telephone calls are you expecting to achieve? Ensure that targets are put in place so that you can measure the success, or otherwise, of your e-commerce facility.

Then there are the people that search the internet for things that they can not find in there own city or country. Say a favourite childhood book for example. Someone may want to have the book to read to their child but can't find it. This is when the internet comes into the equation. If you search on the internet for something, you will find that so many places are selling what you want, and all at different, competitive prices. You can even buy something off the internet from the other side of the world.

After tracing what they want, a visitor simply “adds” it to their virtual shopping basket. Items within this basket can be added or deleted, just like if you were to go shopping you add to it, or if you don't want something in the end, you take it out. After choosing everything they want from the website, they go to the “checkout”. The virtual checkout, which has your complete total, will ask for your name, address, etc. and then will lead on to ask for your method of payment, usually people pay by credit or debit card (which will be transmitted securely). Some places, such as ebay (this being a big e-commerce site), allow you to pay by paypal.

Nobody can quite believe the amount of stuff that can be ordered online. Things such as airline tickets, hotel bookings, shopping, movie rentals and even something like booking a builder. The list is endless.

The growing popularity of e-commerce is understandable considering the time and hassle involved in running from store to store, searching for an item in the real world. It not only takes valuable time and energy, but gasoline. With today’s crowded cities and high gas prices, shopping online whenever the mood strikes—even in the middle of the night—has unarguable, unbeatable advantages. You have the comfort of sitting in your own computer chair, searching the internet for specific products. You may even come across an item you never thought of, and end up buying it.

E-commerce also has other advantages. Employee overhead is virtually non-existent, and the yearly fee for an e-commerce website is nominal. Compare this to rental of storefront property, particularly in a busy mall. To top it off, most transactions are handled by software processes, never requiring a real person until the item is ready to be packed and shipped. This translates into real savings to the customer. As a result, real world businesses often cannot compete with their e-commerce counterparts, though one does have to watch for inflated shipping fees that might negate savings.

When buying from an online website, you should check that the owner is trustworthy. You can do this by reading their testimonials. If they are bad, you know they are not worth buying things off, even if it is a product you have so desperately wanted for so long. If their testimonials are good, you know you can trust them to buy products from. You also need to make sure that when putting in your bank/credit card details, that the web page is locked so people can not access your details.

If you already sell products and services offline, e-commerce can give you access to new customers, many of them in other states, even other countries. You can increase your revenue by opening up entirely new markets that would be difficult and costly to penetrate with a conventional bricks-and-mortar store.

If you plan to sell online only, you can create a thriving business with lower costs than many offline businesses. For example, you can run your online store out of your home instead of renting a retail space, and you can take orders 24/7 without hiring employees to staff your site around the clock.