Quick Ecommerce Tutorial When choosing
to create an ecommerce
store, there are 3 important questions to ask yourself.
1) Do I need ecommerce? This is important.
Generally speaking,
consumers are comfortable making purchases online
for under
$250. If your product or service costs more than that,
then you
may be better served creating a "Lead Generation"
web site and
an eSales team who are comfortable working with internet
based
leads.
2) How much time do I have? Setting
up an ecommerce store is
relatively easy for any experienced web designer and
can be done
and out to market in a couple days, assuming you have
a limited
number back end products in place and ready to be
shipped. But,
if you are a newbie, then you face a substantial learning
curve.
We encourage everyone to learn HTML, and to be entrepreneurial
in their endeavors, but it does take a large time
commitment to
learn enough to succeed. Also, keep in mind, that
the learning
is never done. There are always new technologies effecting
the
Internet and the way people buy and sell online and
you need to
keep up to date with them to succeed. Another thing
to keep in
mind is internet marketing. If you plan on acquiring
sales
through the search engines, then you need an seo strategy
that
works. For starters read Serr.biz
3) What is your budget? Everyday
you hear of people making
millions online by just having an ecommerce enabled
web site
that they got for free. We would like to dispel this
myth. It's
simply not true. There are technology costs associated
with
operating an ecommerce site, not to mention the cost
of
products, fulfillment, standard overhead costs, and
marketing.
The old idiom of "It cost money to make money."
is 100% true.
However, starting an ecommerce store is generally
less expensive
than a traditional brick and mortar, especially if
you have a
successful brick and mortar business already. However,
the bare
bones start up costs associated with an ecommerce
store is the
cost of your computer and ISP. This is possible, but
not very
probable. In truth, you should expect to spend somewhere
in the
range of $50-$1000 a month in technology costs alone.
That does
not account for variables listed above.
If you have thought about the questions
above and still want to
proceed, here is a quick check list of things you
recommend you
have.
1) Product or service to
sell. 2) Web site and hosting company
with email. 3) Shopping cart with
a secure check out. 4)
Merchant account so you can accept credit cards.
5) Back end
technology and order fulfillment in place.
For more details about starting an
ecommerce store visit this
link: href="http://www.121merchantaccount.com/ecommerce/index.html">1-2
-1 merchant account
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