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With just about everyone in the company having access to the internet, someone struck on a great idea to put up a personal website in place of a calling card.  Even students have been known to put up their own on free hosting sites to get their CVs up as a static website offering possible employers all the information they need to evaluate their credentials.

Well, why not.  You only need to send an email with your site URL.  Solicitations to a company’s purchasing department or advertising department can be done with a website about your small start-up company or yourself with little or no expense, except the time it takes for your compose your site. 

No designing talent?  There are free webpage templates that you can download or use together with free web host bureaus.  Nothing could be better to start out your online presence.

After designing your website and getting traffic to it, your next challenge is to make the customer happy as he shop on your site. There are a couple ways to do this:

• Offer freebies, discounts and incentives.  You can have a free shipping day on a holiday or offer discounts at certain times of the year, like on anniversaries or you can give incentives like discounted coupons in partner sites. The point is to sweeten the deal. 

• Be sure your product can be had more cheaply than in the malls.  Online commerce gets an edge by not paying middlemen, traditional advertisers and having to spend overhead on physical stores.  That means you should be able to sell at lower prices. 

• Reward loyal customers.  Have a loyalty program like what airlines do for frequent flyers.  Get a system to track purchases and award points to your customers that they can accumulate and eventually use to redeem an item.

• Apologize when you goof.  Nothing and no one is perfect. Payments could double, shipment damaged or never arrive.  Apologize and make an attempt to win back your customer by correcting your mistakes. If that means delivering anew a product they never received, do it.  Dissatisfied customers have a multiplier effect through word of mouth.

There are books about e-commerce as well as online resources that help novice get a better grip about what web commerce is all about.  For new businesses just getting into it, it is wise to get consultancy services that can equip the young management team with what to expect and what not to do in online commerce. 

Often, getting your hands dirty is the best.  That means registering in Amazon or eBay and making your first purchases online to give the business owner a hands-on feel about transacting on the net.  Then you can experience getting email alerts, next purchase recommendations, customer loyalty discounts and all the things seasoned online retailers do.  You next step is to get the technical staff to do the site for you with what you’ve come to like or not like from your online shopping experience.

Just like any traditional business, repeat customers is a healthy sign that you are doing right with your e-commerce site.  This reminds me of the constant emails I get from Amazon after I made my first purchase from them.  It’s as if someone was looking after my account as the emails gave suggestions on similar items I bought the first time as well as the items I’ve searched on their sites.  Even offering me discounts on my next purchases.  Needless to say, I’ve been a regular Amazon customer since getting my first CD and DVD from them.

The key is letting your customers feel how valuable they are to your business.  That assumes you haven’t fouled up your first transaction with them, like damaging the product you delivered, in which case a lot of apologies are in order.  When Amazon goofed and I didn’t receive my ordered DVD, I got a profuse apology on email and got another delivery that they shouldered and got it the next time.   That’s customer service – expensive but it guarantees customer loyalty.

One of the best things that ever happened to researchers is the internet.  It makes surveys that used to cost a lot with people, travel and paperwork not only a real pain but can last weeks or months to get any result.  Doing it online gets the results in a snap. 

Businesses have been known to take to the streets or over the phone to conduct market surveys on their products and services.  With software like Vovici tailored made for the purpose of getting statistical data from consumers and clients right from the comfort of their homes or offices. For customers, taking a web survey is now a breeze and business can get a more reliable and consistent result from a large sample size than they can do outside of the internet.

Creating your e-commerce site these days can cost almost nothing.  From getting a basic website up all the way to putting the elements for making money online can be had with the least expense.  Having a shopping cart is one element that no e-commerce site can do without.  It’s the only way to accept online orders and get it processed for fulfilling your customer’s online orders.  This is also your basis for decrementing your inventory as well as invoicing the customer and accounting your revenues.

There are free open source shopping carts you can use alright.  Just be prepared to get around integrating it into your e-commerce website.    Setting up the software and maintaining it can easily eat up all your time and effort if you don’t have the people who know the open source to start with. 

Don’t expect any technical support from open source software except in open source forums that discuss about your software.  Freebies often mean they don’t have all the features of a good shopping cart, like security and regular updates.  In short, you get what you pay for, or not.

The Shopping cart can be designed and developed as an integral part of your e-commerce webpage right form the start.  Alternatively, if you are enhancing your website to become an e-commerce portal, you have the option of purchasing off-the-shelf shipping cart software that your IT department can link to your website.

Either way, it is important that your shopping cart is well integrated in all aspects of web commerce, from registering customers, getting a handle on your product prices and geographic shipping details, taking their orders, incrementing the orders, changing orders and tracking previous sales as well as monitoring shipping. 

That means getting it integrated or seamlessly linked to your inventory management system, payment and shipping monitoring system as well as your accounting system.  Quite a tall order, but without a mature shopping cart, your e-commerce site is sure to fail.

Businesses embarking on internet commerce have a wide choice of firms that specialize in designing commercial websites.  Many large companies rely on their in-house advertising agencies to do this.  But it’s interesting to note that they are getting wiser by subcontracting this to smaller design houses that specialize on them, even getting freelance designers with a proven track record of developing successful e-commerce websites.

That brings us to one criterion that you should look for – a track record.  It doesn’t matter much if it’s a large or small graphics house or even a freelancer with a body count of one.  Sometimes a freelancer who can get a firm grasp of your business and has the creative muscle on the side can do a better job at a cheaper cost.   I would think that when it comes to designing web pages and commercial sites, small is better, provided you are confident about their track record.

This is basic for most seasoned webmasters but should benefit new ones who haven’t heard of them.  One of the things to remember is never to be a show-off.  You could be tempted to overindulge in your design with your creative skills in Flash but bear in mind you will have difficulty optimizing that for search engines, unless you get paid for it. 

Be simple and work within the parameters defined by the site owners.  You should strive at originality but not at the expense of simplicity and usefulness of the site.  There’s no point having an original site that can’t be used.  Simplify your site and bring down your page file size so they load easily.  Spell check your website; spelling and grammar errors speak badly of you and the site owner won’t be happy with that.

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers to get a good grip of what design elements should be in your website.  You might consider readability if your have a target audience in their 60s or above.  You may want to spice it up with a hip design if you are considering the youth market.  But at either extreme, you want your web design to be both appealing but simple enough so it loads fast and has all the information right at first glance.  Bear in mind that most surfers don’t have all the time in the world.

You can be fancy with images and videos, but leave the text in its most readable font against a contrasting background.  No fancy fonts with shadows nor have them drown in the background.  Readability is another trait of a good website.
Credibility is important in any e-commerce site advertising a product or service.  Most sites use testimonials to lend some air of credibility to what is offered online.  Be sure to make the testimonials credible with contact details so your visitors can verify their testimonial claims.