1. Introduction. Interested
in setting up a Web store? Don't know where to begin? Then start
here!
Prospective Web store merchants can be overwhelmed by the sheer
size of the subject and the amount of data available. This resource
details and clarifies the key steps needed to successfully implement
a Web store.
All aspects of Web store creation are covered including software
selection, effective store design, accepting credit card payments
and store promotion.
So whether you are considering setting up a Web store for the
first time or are looking for ways to improve an existing store,
this resource will be an invaluable guide.
2. Selecting
a location. Just as with a bricks-and-mortar store,
the location of your Web store is critical to its success.
Perhaps the easiest of all e-commerce sites to implement is to
simply offer goods or services for sale on a secured part of
a Web site. Most commercial Web sites can be adapted for basic
e-commerce fairly easily by adding simple HTML forms to accept
orders and linking to a secure server to accept credit card payments.
Once you move beyond the most rudimentary of Web stores, software
products to support e-commerce applications require a great deal
of customisation, and few sellers have the skills required for
such work. A commerce server must link a buyer, seller and transaction
authorisation agency, and pulling all these players together
effectively can be a difficult task.
For these reasons, many sellers chose to outsource all or part
of their Web store. How much of your store you chose to outsource
will depend on the nature of your business and the availability
of relevant skills within your organisation, but here are the
options:
* Outsourcing of payment authorisation and processing
The major part of your Web store is located on your own or
your ISPs server. Once a customer has placed an order you link
to an external service to authorise and process credit card payments.
* Outsourcing of the complete Web store
Your complete Web store is created and maintained on a commerce
server which manages the whole process from displaying goods
through processing orders and payments. All you have to do is
ship the goods.
3. Laying
the foundations. The heart of any Web store is the
software that it runs on. Up until relatively recently software
solutions for Web stores were largely do-it-yourself efforts,
consisting of a number of tools lashed together to fulfil the
major tasks of a Web store.
Now a new class of products, known as Web storefront creation
packages or commerce servers, is emerging. These products, working
with existing Web servers and legacy applications, provide tools
for calculating taxes and shipping costs, work with a variety
of payment schemes, and process transactions securely. Most provide
site analysis and reporting tools for monitoring your site's
progress. Finally, many provide wizards or libraries of sample
storefronts, as well as authoring tools, to help developers build
the site quickly.
From a customer's perspective, they allow visitors to register,
log on, browse products, place products in virtual shopping carts,
and purchase the goods or services securely.
If you are running your own Web server, you will have a large
and growing list of packages to choose from.
However, if you intend having an ISP host your Web store then
your choice will be more limited. Most ISPs offering access to
a commerce server have usually selected one software company
to partner with and only offer their solution. In this case it
would be best to identify what packages you are interested in
and establish which ISPs will support you.
Alternatively, many ISPs allow the use of CGI scripts on their
servers and there are a number of ready made CGI scripts available
that fulfil many of the required functions of a commerce server.
Although use of these scripts is often free of charge there are
some limitations to their usefulness. Firstly, most of them are
written in a programming language called PERL which, although
relatively easy to learn does have some speed limitations and
therefore is only really suited for use in Web stores with light
to medium traffic. Secondly, some scripts rely heavily on the
use of cookies which some Web users regard as a threat to their
privacy and are therefore probably best avoided.
Finally, if you want to quickly establish a Web store and have
limited or no HTML skills, there are a number of inexpensive
storefront creation programs available, usually hosted by the
vendor or a partner ISP. These entry-level products typically
provide wizards that walk you through the process of setting
up a Web store and then generate the site automatically.
4. Designing
the store. To a large extent the design of Web stores
is still a new science (or art?) and much experimentation is
still needed before it is possible to establish exactly what
does and doesn't work. And what will work for you may be totally
different from everyone else depending on the unique nature of
your business.
However, it is possible to lay down some guidelines that will
help you design an effective Web store.
Fast loading
Keep the HTML simple, the graphics small and forget about
plug-ins and Java applets. Think carefully before deciding to
use frames; if you do decide to use them then include a frameless
version as well.
Keep it simple
Don't let too many choices distract the visitor; research
into interface design shows that users start to feel overwhelmed
when faced with 7 or more choices on a menu so try and stay within
this limit.
Use a shopping cart
Virtual shopping carts enhance the shopping experience by
allowing customers to select items for purchase and continue
browsing the store before placing an order.
Good navigation
Try and design your store so that customers can be at the
ordering point within three clicks of entering your site. And
remember that potential customers may enter your site from many
directions (i.e. not just your home page) so make sure each page
includes full navigation or a clear link to your home page as
a minimum. Build into your site search capabilities that will
let users sort by subject, item, or some other category.
Get global
Remember that the first two "Ws" in "WWW"
stand for world-wide and that your store will be accessible to
people around the world. As a minimum you should include details
of what the shipping costs and transit times to international
destinations will be. Depending on the type of customer you are
expecting and the product or service you are offering, you may
want to consider having your Web pages translated into other
languages.
Maximise ways to order and ways to pay
Quite simply the more ways you can accept orders and payment
the more orders you will receive. It is particularly important
to offer secure processing of as many credit card types as possible.
Establish credibility
Although internet scams and rip-offs are greatly exaggerated
by the media, they do exist and unless you trade under a major
brand name you will need to convince customers that your not
going to take their money and run. There are several ways of
doing this, some simple and free others more complex and relatively
expensive:
* Include details of your bricks-and-mortar address, telephone
number and fax numbers.
* Include verifiable testimonials from previous customers
* Offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee
* Register your site with Verisign
* Register your site with TRUSTe
Offer a personalised service
If you believe all the hype, Web stores offer a marketing
nirvana where what customers see in a store is fine tuned to
match their demographics and previous purchasing behaviour. The
reality is that this level of personalisation is still not readily
available particularly to lower budget ventures. However, it
is still possible to provide a degree of personalisation by collecting
some basic data from your visitors and selecting and presenting
information accordingly e.g. by producing newsletters with content
tailored to subscribers preferences.
Pre sales support
Provide every possible piece of information about your product
that a customer might need to reach a buying decision. Make yourself
easily accessible should the customer require more information
and respond promptly to e-mails (preferably within 24hrs but
definitely within 48hrs).
Post sales support
Maintain a high level of service after you receive the order.
Try and provide the following:
* Acknowledgement of each order with a unique reference number
for tracking
* On-line tracking of orders or a dedicated e-mail address for
order progressing
* Confirmation of despatch of goods
* An area within your site for ongoing product support
Realistic pricing
Visitors to your store know that it is cheaper for you to
do business over the Web than in a bricks-and-mortar store and
expect to see this reflected in the price you are charging them.
This will not be a major concern to you if you are selling in
to a niche market, but if you are selling a commodity item you
are going to have to price your products competitively.
Remember to sell
Finally, remember that many of the selling techniques that
have been proven to work in the real world will work equally
well in your Web store. Contests, promotional discounts, coupons
and aisle-end specials have all been used successfully within
Web stores. However, don't neglect the basics - surfing through
the Web it is amazing how many Web stores miss out on this, by
not selling the benefits of their product or service or by failing
to ask for the order.
5. Receiving
orders. Although most Web stores are probably set
up with the expectation that the majority of orders will be received
through the Web, the reality is that many customers prefer to
use the Web to aid in the selection of a product and then to
order by more traditional methods. You therefore need to ensure
you are able to accept orders in as many different ways as possible.
Secure order form
The most basic way to accept orders on the Web is to set
up an HTML form where users enter the items they wish to buy,
their shipping address, and credit-card information. Using a
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) compatible server and browser will
ensure that the credit card information cannot be discovered
by third parties.
The use of an unsecured order form is not recommended. Even if
you try to cover yourself with a disclaimer, the potential for
litigation and bad publicity is too high should a customer claim
(whether true or not) to have had his credit card details stolen
when ordering from your site.
E-mail
Provide a dedicated e-mail address for customer orders but
ask them not to include credit card details unless using secure
e-mail. It is safer to have the customer include a telephone
number so you can call back and get credit card details later
- but remember you will need to respond very quickly to these
e-mails or risk losing the order.
Fax
Design your Web store so that after your customer has completed
their selection they have an option to print out a completed
order form for faxing. Try and have a dedicated number for fax
orders to minimise the chance of getting a busy signal when your
customer tries to fax through his order. Better still, consider
using a service that converts faxes to e-mail, for example JFAX
(www.jfax.com), UniTerra (www.uniterra.com), and Integrated Global
Concepts (www.igconcepts.com)
Telephone
Accepting orders over the 'phone is relatively straightforward,
however the global nature of the Internet does mean that you
can expect to receive orders 24 hours per day. If you can not
justify manning a telephone permanently, you may have to rely
on a simple answering machine or voice mail service. Alternatively,
there are now a growing number of companies that will accept
telephone orders on your behalf (for a fee, of course) and then
forward them on to you for fulfilment.
A growing trend is the integration of Web and telephony services.
AT&T's "click to call" technology, for example,
allows visitors to a Web site to simply type in their phone number
and click on an icon to send the number to the Web site's call
centre agent. The phone number is immediately relayed to an agent,
who then 'phones back to answer any queries or accept an order.
Snail Mail
Many businesses still require to place orders through formal,
paper purchase orders so make sure you include a physical address
for this.
6. Getting
paid. Although the majority of payments in Web stores
are made through traditional credit card transactions, you need
to be in a position to accept payment in as many ways as possible
in order to maximise your sales.
Credit cards
There is little doubt as to the value of being able to take
credit cards as payment for your product or service. The problem
is that it can be difficult to obtain a merchant account if you
do not have a bricks-and-mortar store or if the majority of your
business is via mail order. Many banks and card processors are
particularly shy of any Internet based businesses. However, with
the growth of mail order only and home based businesses, many
intermediaries have appeared offering to provide merchant accounts.
Be careful, as fee structures vary widely and your merchant account
could cost you a lot more than necessary.
Once your merchant account is in place you need to be able to
verify each payment. The simplest method is to manually verify
each credit card payment through a terminal or software , then
pack and ship the goods.
If customers are unwilling to wait for manual verification, or
your sales volume is high, you need real-time card verification
software. One such tool, ICVerify, is available for DOS, Windows,
and Unix, and is integrated with many Web storefront packages.
ICVerify collects credit-card information from a Web form and
processes the authorisation in real time, depositing the purchase
price amount in your merchant account. ICVerify currently requires
a dedicated connection to a bank or credit-card processing company,
although an Internet-based solution called NetVerify is being
developed.
An alternative credit-card processing scheme, supported by card-issuing
banks, is the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol developed
by Visa and MasterCard and now backed by American Express. Designed
for cardholders, merchants, banks and other card processors,
SET uses digital certificates to ensure the identities of all
parties involved in a purchase. SET also encrypts credit and
purchase information before transmission on the Internet. However,
despite the hype from the banks and the card issuers it is likely
to be at least 1999 or 2000 before SET becomes widely established.
Adetailed explanation of how SET works can be found in the Technology
Watch section.
In the meantime there are already rival systems to SET available
from several companies including CyberCash, Verifone and First
Virtual.
CyberCash and Verifone both use a helper application called a
"wallet". In the process of setting up the wallet,
the user provides their credit-card information and receives
an encrypted code that refers to their credit card in return
- credit card numbers are only stored in the Wallet, not at the
merchant's server and not by CyberCash or Verifone. When making
a purchase at a participating Web store, the wallet passes the
code to the merchant. The merchant then hands that code, along
with the purchase price, to the wallet issuer who verifies the
transaction with the credit-card company and transfers the funds
to the merchant along with an authorisation to ship the product.
First Virtual issues a VirtualPIN to the customer, after they
have provided their credit-card number over a voice telephone
call - no credit card information is ever transferred over the
Internet. Customers can then use their VirtualPIN in lieu of
a credit card number. For each purchase, First Virtual sends
the user an e-mail message asking them to confirm the transaction.
Once First Virtual receives the confirmation back, the credit
card transaction is processed off the Internet and an e-mail
sent to the merchant authorising them to ship the goods.
Digital cash
Digital cash or e-cash is nothing more than a string of digits
or tokens issued by a bank. To use e-cash, both users and merchants
must have an account with a bank that issues e-cash. The bank
gives them "purse" software for managing and transferring
their e-cash. Users convert funds from their regular accounts
into e-cash and then transfer it to the purse software, where
it is stored on the user's hard drive in encoded form until it
is spent.
When making a purchase with e-cash, the user transmits the relevant
amount of tokens to the merchant who relays them to the bank
for verification and redemption. Since e-cash is not a physical
object, a complex series of serial numbers are used to assure
that each e-cash "coin" can only be spent once. Users
seeking privacy in their transactions can not use credit cards
as they are highly traceable. E-cash however, can be made to
behave like regular cash through the use of blind signatures
which allows banks to check the tokens are valid but prevents
them from matching the tokens to the person they issued them
to.
Other advantages of e-cash are the relatively low transaction
costs and the fact that it can be divided into smaller denominations
than are used in the real world. This makes it suitable for use
in low value transactions such as paying for a stock quote or
news article. These small denomination tokens are known as microcash
and transactions with them are called microtransactions or micropayments.
The major disadvantages to e-cash is that there are currently
very few banks that issue it or Web stores that accept it.
Electronic Checking
In virtually all aspects an electronic check has the same
features as a paper cheque. Indeed, in its simplest form some
systems merely require the customer to fill out a form in the
Web store. This data is then transferred to the merchant where
it is converted in to a paper cheque by using blank cheque forms
in a standard office printer; the check is then submitted to
a bank for payment as normal.
A further level of security can be obtained by utilising third
parties who provide additional services such as verification.
The Redi-Check system allows customers to enter their checking
account information at a secure site - they need never repeat
this information to any Internet merchant - and then chooses
a unique user name and password. A customer wishing to make a
purchase from a participating Web store simply completes the
merchant's online order form. The order information is then submitted
to Redi-Check's secure server where it is verified.
The CyberCash PayNow system is basically an extension of their
credit card wallet. After users register for the PayNow service,
their checking account(s) information is electronically stored
in an encrypted format in their wallets. When making a purchase
at a participating Web store, the customer elects to use the
PayNow system and enters a pre-assigned user ID and password
to review their billing information. The user then clicks on
a "pay button" to pay the entire amount of the balance
due, or enters the amount he or she wishes to pay. The CyberCash
Wallet opens and prompts the user for a Wallet password. The
user enters the password, selects a payment instrument, and confirms
payment.
Other Payment methods
Commerce on the Web is still in its infancy, and many customers
will wish to use more traditional payment methods. You therefore
need to ensure you are able to accept payment in as many ways
as possible, for example credit cards via the telephone or COD.
7. Promoting
your store. Having successfully set up your Web store
you are probably ready to take a long vacation and wait for the
money to roll in! Unfortunately your real work has only just
started; your Web store is lying empty and you need to work hard
to entice customers to enter.
Here is your (lengthy) "To Do" List:
Search engine and directory submittal
Start with the major search engines and directories - Alta
Vista, Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, Hotbot, Excite and Webcrawler
- and then carefully research and submit to search services specific
to your industry. Beyond this you may wish to submit to the many
other search services currently available or pay someone to do
this for you.
Successful search engine submission and placement is a huge topic
in itself beyond the scope of this site - take a look at Search
Engine Watch for more detailed information.
Negotiate cross-links with other sites
Identify sites that are likely to attract the same kind of
customer that you are looking for and negotiate a cross-link
with them. Sites relating to products or services that are complementary
to your own are likely to prove the best source of visitors.
Buy links from other sites
Negotiating cross-links works well when both sites attract
roughly the same amount of traffic. Clearly, you are going to
have a hard time negotiating a cross-link with a site that has
a much greater traffic level than your own (although its worth
trying!) and in some instances it may be worthwhile paying for
these links.
Set up affiliate programmes
Allow other Web sites to sell your products. You still fulfil
all orders but pay your affiliate commission on each sale generated.
Researching and posting to relevant newsgroups
Twelve months ago we would have had no hesitation in including
this item at the top of the list in any Internet promotion strategy,
but the level of Spam in newsgroups has reached such a high proportion
- Deja News estimates about two thirds - that its worth is diminishing.
Never the less, this is still a worthwhile exercise; choose your
newsgroups carefully and post only when you have something of
worth to add, letting your signature file act as an advertisement
for your Web store.
Keep refreshing your content
It is difficult enough to entice someone to visit your site
once, so you need to ensure that they are encouraged to return
by regularly updated content.
Online advertising via banners
Budget permitting, you should consider placing banner adverts
in sites whose products are complimentary to your own.
E-mail marketing
If your site has been designed well you should have a list
of visitors and customers who have left their details and requested
to be kept in touch with future developments and offers. This
list of names is your most valuable resource and should be treated
accordingly. You need to judge when you have something of importance
to tell your customers; too many messages and they'll get annoyed,
too few and they'll forget you exist.
You have probably come across the following sentence a hundred
times but we make no apologies for repeating it here: never,
never resort to Spamming potential customers. There is no
surer way of ruining the prospects for your new Web store.
Create a signature file
Use an e-mail signature file (maximum 6 lines long and 65
characters wide) which includes the URL of your Web store and
gives a good reason why the person reading your message should
visit it.
Issue press releases
Although it is becoming more difficult to get journalists
interested in new Web sites, a well crafted press release should
still generate good results especially if your site has something
new to offer.
Print your URL everywhere
Make sure your URL appears prominently on every piece of
paper your business generates including adverts, letterheads,
envelopes, flyers, shipping cartons and labels, invoices, compliment
slips, brochures and catalogues. This is a great source of free
publicity.
- reference: http://www.sellitontheweb.com/ezine/buildit.shtml
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