Start :  Ecommerce 101

Selling your products or services online can increase your potential for success. You don’t have to be a Web guru in order to sell online. In fact, most successful online storeowners have no experience in Web design or Web development. To get the most out of selling online, you should purchase an ecommerce Web site package. With the right ecommerce...

How often have we heard this story? A large business opens several locations, stealing customers from local mom-and-pop shops and causing a domino effect of store closures. Despite such occurrences, small businesses still manage to make up the majority of the U.S. business population - in fact, approximately 99% of all U.S. businesses. Many small...

Build it and they will come! Well, maybe not; at least, not in the Internet world. Once you’ve built your e-commerce site, you need to be sure that you can get found online, and this starts with the major search engines like Google®. As a small business owner, taking the leap from a brick-and-mortar store to a fully functioning online e-commerce...

For the vast majority of online shoppers, facilitating the buying process for customers is key to success. This means finding a way to accept credit card payments. While it sounds like a simple e-commerce solution, online credit card processing can be a complex, confusing venture for small businesses. Online stores often use third-party providers like...

The basics of calculating Return on Investment There are some fairly obvious ways you can try to calculate the value of your e-commerce Web site. The direct sales made on your the Web site, and the lifetime value of repeat customers are good indicators of the income your e-commerce shopping cart has generated. However, there may be significant other...

If you can avoid 5 common design mistakes, your e-commerce store should experience more sales. 1. Not planning out your web site. Planning is probably the most time consuming function of solid Web design. Planning is also the most overlooked step in the design process. Before you design a graphic or lay out a single html page consider...

Merchant Account Setup Q: How do I setup my shopping cart with a merchant account for credit card processing?A: Most shopping cart systems are "pre-programmed" to allow easy credit card processing. Most shopping cart companies integrate with something called "virtual terminals" or "gateways." In order to use these gateways...

Merchant Account - An account setup by a bank that allows you to accept credit cards. Your merchant account will deposit collected funds into your business's checking account on a daily basis. Discount Rate - A percentage that is paid to the credit card company on each transaction. If a customer makes a credit card purchase worth $20.00 and your discount...

When it comes to choosing an e-commerce hosting solution, you'll want to take many things into consideration: What language will you use to code your site? If you are coding in ASP (Active Server Pages), you are best suited for a Windows powered server with IIS. If you are coding PHP, Perl or JSP, either Windows or Linux/Unix will work, but...

You've probably been inspired by a success story about selling online. You may love the internet, or you may have a brick-and-mortar that you're considering taking online. People are using the internet more and more to find what they want to purchase. Here's a list of some of the main benefits that you'll find when you turn to the world...