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Business Ecommerce Websites
Small Business Ecommerce Web Sites
(see also small business online business cards, & multimedia websites)
- Introduction
- Get Yourself an Ecommerce Web Site
Overview of Small Business Ecommerce Websites
Ecommerce web sites sell products - goods or services - online. They both display the products for sale AND provide an easy way to complete a sales transaction. This usually involves credit card verification and automatic merchant account processing.
There are two levels of ecommerce sophistication:
- Static
Seperate web pages exist for each product usually with a picture, a description, and a price. Each time you want to change product information you change the product's web page and upload it to the website. "Shopping Cart" functionality is a nice user-friendly feature and is included as standard equipment in every ecommerce hosting plan.
These web sites can be FREE. By FREE we mean that there are no monthly hosting fees (which can otherwise range from $15 to $50 per month) and there are no development costs; easy to use point-and-click templates are provided by the host. However, some costs are involved, such as per transaction fees and merchant account setup fees. Go to the free ecommerce websites section to see if you qualify for FREE ecommerce hosting and analyze whether or not the disadvantages outweigh the low cost.
- Dynamic
Product information is stored in a database and displayed dynamically per users requests. These are never free - you must pay a monthly hosting fee and develop these sites professionally.
How to Accept Payments Online
Getting Paid on the Web
by Michael Calore, 11 April 2002
"... Of course, there are several different ways to receive funds online. Of course you can travel down the time-consuming-yet-intellectually-rewarding path of building your own shopping cart... But if you don't have programming muscles to flex, let alone the time to build something yourself, why not set up shop with a Web storefront service? When moving currency from one party to another is involved, options are never hard to come by, and the time, money, and craftiness you need to implement them varies."
A popular provider of online ecommerce processing is QuickCommerce
"... Designed for any level of e-commerce vendor, this five-star rated payment solution is particularly well-suited for the smaller, entry-level vendors that may not have a lot of experience with e-commerce."
Another popular method of accepting online payments is paypal. It allows the buyer to pay with credit cards or checks. The service is convenient for the website owner as well because he/she no longer has to set up a merchant account or worry about credit card verification - paypal does it all.
Another provider of traditional merchant account ecommerce setup is ...
Do you qualify for FREE hosting?
These articles discuss the advantages, disadvantages and limitations of free ecommerce hosting.
Almost Free E-commerce
"... setting up E-commerce has gotten even faster and cheaper, at least in terms of up-front costs... Analysts say free or cheap online E-commerce services will grab a major chunk of the small-business market..."
Pros and Cons
http://www.computerworld.com/news/2000/story/0,11280,44848,00.html
Beginner’s Guide to Ecommerce
http://www.nightcats.com/sales/free.html#comp
Running Free, “Online hosts offer gratis workgroup collaboration tools, e-commerce storefronts, even phone service. We inspect the offerings and find some gift horses worth riding.” From the April 2000 issue of PC World magazine
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,15275,00.asp
These sites purport to know who the best free ecommerce hosting services are.
100 Best Free Web Space Services
Top 10 for business.
http://www.clickherefree.com/
http://host99.com/freewebspace.htm
Expert Advice on Who to Host With
Read some of these articles to understand your options better. These are not listed in any order of importance.
E-Storefront Options for Small Businesses
"... Just use one of the many Web storefront services, which can transform your site into an e-mart without your ever sullying your hands with an HTML tag..."
E-Business Essentials
"... The tools and services reviewed in this guide can help you bring the business benefits of new technology to your customers -- and the customers to you ..."
Choose an ISP for Your Business
"... You need to know what's suitable for your expanding business in the short term and what's feasible in the long run. To help you find the best ISP for your business, we ..."
Ecommerce Knowledge Centers & Design Tips
Sell It! On the Web
"... aims to be the #1 resource for Web designers and small to medium business owners who want to set up or enhance a Web storefront ..."
ZDNet: Ecommerce
Full featured e-commerce resource portal.
Ecommerce-Guide.com
Full featured e-commerce resource portal.
Webify Me!
"... This report was written by Cahners In-Stat Group to provide small businesses with some basic guidelines to begin creating successful online business strategies ..."
Web Strategy Self-Evaluation
How does your ecommerce strategy stack up?
What Do Web Design Firms Charge?
Go to our Web Consultants page.
Promotion Concerns Specific to Ecommerce Websites
Once the site is up you will want to:
- Index the website into the major search engines and directories (see Step 6) remembering to include geographical references in your list of keyword phrases. For example, if you are a bed and breakfast in Flagstaff, AZ, you will want to use Flagstaff and Arizona as keywords. Then, when someone who searches on "bed and breakfast" "Flagstaff" this site will appear in the search results.
- List website in special directories. E.g. Jeanette's Bed & Breakfast in Flagstaff, AZ will want to be listed in these specialized directories:
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