The Online Selling Game

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1999 by Amee Abel

Opening an e-commerce store is no trivial pursuit. To win, you'll need a bit of luck and a lot of skill. We'll teach you all the rules

BACK IN THE OLD DAYS--SAY, 1998--SELLING ONLINE WAS ONLY FOR TECH-SAVVY Web startups and deep-pocketed big businesses. First-generation server software packages were costly, hard to use, and demanded more technical and administrative care than the average home-based business owner could give. Although many of these products were good then and have improved since, the prospect of having to build and run online stores prevented many Web entrepreneurs from getting in the game early on.

But today, a tidal wave of e-commerce hosting services has hit the Web. Got a computer and an Internet connection? For less than $100 a month, heavyweight hosts like Yahoo and IBM will let you open a slick-looking store within an hour. These and other commerce service providers (CSPs) handle all the technical aspects of your site, freeing you to concentrate on inventory, customers, and site promotion. Suddenly, the playing field is truly level, and just about everyone who wants can play.

But that doesn't mean you should jump in and sign up with the first CSP that flashes a tempting banner ad across your screen. Choose carefully and consider both the longevity of the company and scalability of the product offering; will the provider still be around next year, and will its whizbang solution keep pace as your business booms?

Another key issue is simplicity: The product must make it easy both for your customers to buy and for you to process their orders. Your definition of "easy," in turn, depends on whether you're starting a Web business from scratch or gearing up to sell items on an existing site.

If you have thousands of items in an existing database, simplicity means integrating your online store with that database. If you have a multimedia product presentation, simplicity means letting you upload multimedia. If you're short on artwork, it includes the ability to generate graphics. If you sell items that ship directly from the manufacturer, simplicity means an order-processing component that handles direct shipments.

Even so, modern hosting services make e-commerce almost too easy. It's nice to be able to open an online store in an hour, but what you really want to do is launch and grow a Web commerce business that competes successfully against countless other home-based businesses, small businesses, and on up the food chain. That's a tall order, one that takes a thorough understanding of each stage in the e-commerce cycle--what happens, and what needs to happen, from the first time a site visitor clicks your Add to Cart button to the time merchandise is delivered to his door.

That's where we come in. Whether you're using an e-commerce software package or a super-easy hosting service, the anatomy of an online transaction includes basically the same four parts: a Web site, store building, order processing, and transaction processing.

Just as every brick-and-mortar shop has a showroom and a stockroom, every e-store has both a public display and back-office procedures. To make the concepts involved easier to grasp, we'll go behind the scenes of a typical e-commerce transaction, tackling the issues involved and showing you ways to ensure that the purchasing process goes smoothly--and that new customers become repeat buyers.

1: YOUR WEB SITE

A visitor arrives at your site and begins browsing your product catalog.

Making a Name To buy from you, customers have to be able to find you. Try to come up with a short and simple Web address for your store that's easy to remember. Domain names are inexpensive to register--$70 for the first two years--and essential to store recognition.

If you don't already have a site, your CSP can help you select and register a domain through InterNic, the official domain-name sanctioning body. Or you can contact InterNic directly at the Network Solutions Web site (www.networksolutions.com).

One alternative is to accept the free domain name that many CSPs offer as part of the service. Although you'll save money by doing this, you'll also end up with a cumbersome address such as manypages.hostname.com/ yournamehere. Spend the money for a real domain name instead.

Which Way to Go? When it comes to building a store, the fork splits three ways: On the high end, you can pay a Web designer thousands of dollars to create a knockout site. Or you can pay a few hundred dollars for software, learn HTML, and build and maintain the site yourself. Third, you can sign up for a hosting service.

With a service, the CSP leases you the use of its store builder or shopping cart software and keeps your data on its servers. Store-building software creates a virtual store, including a catalog of goods and shopping cart and transaction-processing components; shopping cart software assumes that you want to add the ability to sell things to an existing Web site. Note that CSPs don't provide Internet connections; you'll still need an Internet service provider (ISP) for that.