Ecommerce Web Site Solutions
If you have just decided to turn your website into
an online store you should think carefully about
what you want to achieve. Successful online stores
will focus on user experience and trust. Emphasizing
this to the user will assist in increasing your customer
base and help facilitate business growth.
Studies show that online consumers are unlikely
to shop around and show enormous loyalty. Once a
customer has a satisfactory online shopping experience,
they are unlikely to go elsewhere. This is often
referred to as ‘customer lock – in’,
a term to describe customers repeat visits to the
site. The inertia of online customers means that
it is vital that your business makes a good first
impression. One bad online experience is likely to
mean that the customer will not visit again.
Customers opt for online stores because they can
be more convenient than brick and mortar stores.
However, one of the biggest challenges of conducting
an online business is making sure that the customers
trust your website. To be a successful online store,
you need to instill trust in your customers. Your
online business needs to provide a strong framework
for trust and be able to engender trust amongst its
users. Trust and loyalty is promoted through the
use of a secure payment system. However, in order
to create a secure payment system, you first have
to convert your business into a site where e-commerce
can take place and where your customers can purchase
your products and/or services with ease.
Initial Set-Up
There are three major elements to setting up your
e-commerce website; a payment gateway, a merchant
account and a shopping cart. When building your website
you need to ask the following questions.
- Will you use an existing software package to
handle your shopping cart/storefront or will you
develop your own shopping cart application?
- Do you need real time credit card processing?
- Do you have a merchant account set up?
- Do you need to have secure web pages in order
to accept credit card information from your customers;
and will this be via a host website or will you
create it on your own website?
The Front End
In your ecommerce set up, you need to choose whether
you are going to use a vendor built shopping cart
system or a custom developed application. The benefits
of a vendor built shopping cart system are:
- Quick web development
time’
- A customized shopping
cart to fit your website’
- Easy upgrades without the need for further development
work; and
- A structure which supports many different processing
companies.
The benefits of a custom-developed shopping cart
system are:
- Fully customizable and built to requirements;
- The store can be developed towards the different
Payment Gateways;
- Built using the scripting environment of your
choice; and
- Complete knowledge of your store in case of problems.
Merchant Account
After you set up your payment gateway and shopping
cart, you need to set up your own merchant account.
This account will enable you to accept payments for
the products you sell. Under a merchant account,
you can use a bank or other financial institution
to accept and deposit credit card payments into your
account. Usually, your bank will have an online facility
for your transactions and fees associated with this
service.
There are a plethora of other companies who specialise
in merchant accounts and the fees vary from company
to company. You can be charged for the setup, license
of the merchant account as well as the ongoing service
of processing the transactions.
Merchant accounts may have two other types of fees:
a reserve fund, which may be required to cover charge
backs, and charge back fees, which are similar to
NSF-fees a bank charges for returned checks.
Security & Trust
There are four basic steps to providing trust. The
first two are easy enough, telling the customer who
you are and stating your privacy policy. It is the
last two, providing secure transactions and making
it easy for customers to pay which are the failings
of many ecommerce sites. Trust and security are two
intertwining issues.
The security infrastructure is vital to the ongoing
relationship with partners and customers. You may
need to use privacy certificates, escrows and digital
security to promote trust amongst your users. In
order to accept credit card information from your
customers, your website's will need to be secure
to prevent hackers from using your customer’s
information fraudulently. More importantly, customers
will be concerned about confidentiality.
Technologies like “SSL encryption” are
used to encrypt data as it is being sent, so that
the information cannot be intercepted and read in
transit. SSL encryption requires the use of a “Certificate”,
which can be thought as a “key” that “locks” the
incoming data, and unlocks it when the information
needs to be used. Another alternative is that you
can purchase your own ‘certificate’ from
a company which specializes in encryption. Once installed,
you can secure any of your web pages. By ensuring
confidentiality and trust, and having a user-centered
focus, your e-business will succeed where others
have failed.
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