Let’s assume that you are an enthusiastic webmaster who wants to take their business online. It’s a practical and probably smart ambition.

The business world is changing at an ever increasing pace. More and more sites are bringing good products into the homes of millions of internet users world-wide, and this is just the beginning of the revolution. When you are ready to enter the world of online business commerce hosting must be one of your top priorities.

Before you jump into selecting a commerce host for your website, start at the beginning. What exactly is e-commerce? By most definitions, it is the action of marketing, selling and distributing products over the world wide web. The center of ecommerce is naturally an online store.

Without a website or page containing your ecommerce store, you have no ecommerce business. It is certainly possible to make money online through many other means than operating on online store. But ecommerce is one of the fastest, simplest ways one can start earning an income online.

In an online business, having quality commerce hosting is vital. It may even make the difference between your business succeeding and failing. You and more importantly your customers will depend on safe, reliable hosting. Without a capable, professional commerce host, sales aren’t likely to be made.

Shared vs. Dedicated Commerce Hosting

You basically have two options for your commerce hosting: a shared server or a dedicated server. The differences between the two are great both in term of quality and in price.

If you choose shared hosting, this means that you will have to share the server your web site is on with many other different websites. You will have less bandwidth at your disposal and your web pages may operate more slowly. As the business owner, you may have less options available to you for customizing your pages and your site. Again, the needs of your business and your clients must be weighed against these limitations.

If you choose a dedicated server, it will be yours and yours alone. You will be the only one on it and you will share bandwidth with nobody. You will be able to personalize everything and install software at your own discretion. More personalization, more speed, and faster service for your customers are the hallmarks of a dedicated commerce host.

Of course, you will pay for the dedicated server bonuses. A dedicated server can easily cost you a few hundred of dollars a month. By contrast, shared hosting costs just a few dollars each month. Cost may well be the deciding factor when you first launch your ecommerce site. But be sure to re-evaluate your decision regularly as your ecommerce business changes and grows.

Evaluate Your Server Regularly

What might cause you to change your mind about a commerce host option? If your business really takes off and you are experiencing rapid success and growth while using a shared host, consider moving up to a dedicated server. With dedicated hosting, you will be better able to serve a growing number of customers and to customize your online business to better suit your business needs.

Alternatively, if you find your once-booming online business is experiencing a sluggish start or rapid decline, consider switching to shared hosting. You can save considerable expense while still serving your customers’ needs while you re-evaluate your business model.

Lastly, you may find that you are simply dissatisfied with your current server. If you are planning to switch servers anyway, it might be an excellent time to make a switch to a more suitable type of server, as well.

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Online commerce is the way of the future, expand your market place, increase sales, work less, increase your revenue, etc. Really?, but at what cost and what do you need to know to get started?

Many businesses are weighing the costs of moving into the online space now that barriers to entry are lower than ever, but to determine the specific solution that meets your business needs is not as easy as comparing prices.

In order to differentiate the common strategies that you may apply to sell your “widget” online, let’s take a look at three main ecommerce solutions on the market, and then ask some key questions that will better facilitate your decision.

1.) Amazon.com/E-Bay/MSN Shopping as an eCommerce Solution

With this means of e-commerce there is really no true e-commerce or shopping cart development that goes on. To bring your widget online you would simply create an account on one of the various web sites that are out there and begin selling products.

Pros

• Easy to implement
• May have products on the web within an hour
• Very low cost, great for out-of-home business

Cons

• Minimal flexibility
• Usually transaction based, or require a percentage of sales
• No automated integration into any back end systems
• No options for product configuration

2.) Templated eCommerce Solutions

Templated ecommerce platforms are generally “packaged” sites that are very quickly setup and launched. To summarize the process:

1. A business will purchase, or lease via a monthly contract the e-commerce solution.
2. Customize their web site by selecting from several templates modifying it with a color scheme
3. Add content to their new web site by way of a technology called content management.

Content Management allows non-coders, the ability to update and modify the content of a web site. These solutions meet the typical needs of a business, but tend to fall short when customization is necessary.

Pros

• Easy to implement with little required development.
• Getting a site up and running is not as fast as a pre-built solution, but much more rapid than a custom developed solution
• Is comparatively inexpensive.
• Provides branding not available in pre-built solution
• Great for small businesses entering the online space for the 1st time.

Cons

• Minimal flexibility
• Cost may, or may not include graphic development of the site
• Integration with business processes is lacking
• No options for product configuration
• Sometimes transaction based, or require a percentage of sales
• Difficult to optimize for search engines

3.) Custom Developed Solutions

Custom developed solutions are exactly what their name implies. The user interface of the web site, product catalog and check out process are all custom-developed to meet specific needs. The look and feel of the web site is typically original, utilizing graphics that are targeted to a specific market or customer.

The key reasons for looking at a custom developed e-commerce solution are to support a business process that your company may have which cannot be completed with a templated design. (i.e. integrating back office systems such as accounting, ERP, or fulfillment applications), or to support some level of service during the check out process like a custom product configuration.

Pros

• The site is developed to your specific business requirements
• Custom features or applications may be added to the site at any point in the future, providing growth
• Integration capabilities are limited only by the ability of your developer
• Site may be optimized for Search Engines, (SEO)
• All forms of shipping, handling and fulfillment are options to integrate
• Virtually unlimited number of products and categories may be supported
• Your site will have a unique look and feel tailored to your business
• Great for established ecommerce providers, and large businesses looking to go online

Cons

• Typically more expensive
• Longer development times
• Require more active involvement from you.

Questions that will help you target the right ecommerce solution for your business:

1. Will my business survive if the web site is unsuccessful?
2. Do I have back office applications that need to be integrated into the web site? For instance, accounting systems, inventory management or ERP systems, Point of Sales Systems, etc.
3. Do I need custom shipping integration?
4. How important is search engine optimization?
5. How will I administer the e-commerce application? For instance, how easy is it to add, edit, or delete products and how do I view the business that the web site is doing?
6. How will I differentiate my site from my competitors?
7. Does my business currently have the expertise to manage the e-commerce solution, do I need to hire someone, or will I totally outsource the management of the web site?
8. If I chose to manage the e-commerce solution by myself, where and how will I host the application?
9. What is the ongoing maintenance going to cost?
10. How reliable is my developer/web host?
11. Does my business sell to consumers, other businesses, both?
12. Does the look and feel of my web site meet my customer’s needs? A quick example of this is if you are selling to consumers you typically need a more attractive and easy to use site, if to businesses a utilitarian interface may be more critical, as they typically want to complete their order as quickly as possible.

This is the first in a series of articles designed to help you understand what is involved in bringing your business on line. The purpose of these articles is to take the complexity of the e-commerce marketplace and break it down into easy to understand articles.

Questions or comments on this article may be sent to Mike at mpowell@objectwareinc.com.

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If you’re thinking of setting up a home business, the term ‘ecommerce’ may seem intimidating. Perhaps it conjures up images of Wall Street, company floats, and the excesses of the dot com bubble. Fortunately for prospective small business owners, the dot com bubble burst, and with it the myth that you need to be a large company with deep pockets to profit from ecommerce.

Last year, it is estimated around $170 billion was spent online (Credit Suisse). And this figure is only set to grow, as broadband becomes cheaper and more accessible worldwide. Small and home businesses still have ample opportunity to develop their own piece of that pie – provided they don’t make some crucial mistakes.

The foundation of any successful business is a good idea. In ecommerce, this idea must include a viable plan to draw an income, and a website marketing plan that takes into account current best practices.

The first idea – a plan to earn income from the venture – may sound obvious, but this was a key failure in a lot of the dot com startups of the early days. A modern variation can be relying only on an income stream like contextual advertising without having any products to sell. Unless you’re google, it’s dangerous to rely only on advertising. A good ecommerce business idea will incorporate the sale of physical or intangible goods. Intangible goods can include ebooks, online videos, downloadable software, audio, or other electronic media.

Intangible goods have an advantage in that the profit margin is higher. But some niches and industries are better suited to the sale of hard goods.

The online world is more fickle than offline, in that a prime location is not quite as fixed. In the offline world, if you had the money, you could rent a retail space in a large shopping square and be guaranteed a certain amount of passers-by. In some ways this is true online, but in other ways it is not quite so accurate.

If you were relying on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising as a means of sending traffic to your site, this holds true. Deep pockets can buy more traffic. The flip side is that even with PPC, you can still get a good amount of traffic without blowing your budget. And it can be highly targeted, profitable traffic. In this case, a certain investment of skill is required to learn the system. Fortunately, there are a lot of good ebooks that explain it fully. Perry Marshall’s is a good one.

PPC is not the only means of supplying traffic to an ecommerce site. Natural search results are the ‘holy grail’ of traffic because it is essentially free. Rank well, and you’ll get a lot of traffic which you won’t have to pay a dime for. With natural search, this scenario (big business, prime online real estate) doesn’t have to hold true. Optimizing for natural search does take some skill, but it can certainly be learnt by the prospective home business owner.

Traffic and a viable means to produce an income are the two successful ingredients of ecommerce. Master those, treat your venture like a real business, and the income earned online can be significant.

Question about ecommerce

Just purchased a new domain, debating what to do with the new domain, want it to point to my ecommerce store to get more traffic, I was thinking about making it a blogging site then point to the store, good idea? Is blogging effective?

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Ecommerce is slowly becoming one of the most important forms of economical expression. I won’t go into numbers explaining how many billions of dollars worth of transactions are made via the internet each year. I will just emphasize the fact that ecommerce can indeed be a very exciting endeavor for those who are interested enough to get to know the techniques it involves.

You see, there are many merchants out there who simply disregard basic internet marketing rules and end up in bankruptcy or in leaving money on the table for others to take.

And the first important rule is: don’t disregard your site. In order to have good sells, you need to have an appealing selling medium. Don’t look at your site as a simple site, look at it as your store. After all, what store you prefer to go in? A neat, clean one or a dirty one? Would you buy from the dirty one?

That’s how your visitors will perceive it if your site is not professional. It should be the expression of your products, and it can be very useful if it has a feeling of its own. That’s what will make customers differentiate you from the others and come over again, buy some more, and even refer you to others. This is called branding and yes, online marketing is no different from its offline counterpart.

Also, your site should be able to lead fast. Try avoiding flash animations or stuff like that which will only make your site load with difficulty. This will only make your visitors get annoyed and leave in a moment. After all, why stay at your place when they have all the other available options just a click away?

Ecommerce is also about one other important thing: niche marketing. As I was saying, competition is fierce in all but a few fields of activity on the internet. That’s why you need to differentiate from the others with niche marketing.

Niche marketing basically is what its name suggests. You need to pick a particular niche and to dominate it, and the further down you are able to break it, the greater your chances of success are. Of course, you don’t want to go ridiculously down, like selling soccer balls with green yellow and black dots only. In this example, selling all sorts of soccer balls would be a fairly good option.

And last but not least, in order to be a successful internet marketer, you need one more important thing. It is crucial, maybe the most crucial of them all: an open mind. If you don’t have that, you will probably get stumbled along the way. This is because you don’t have a store which you can touch, it’s just a website. At least this is what others would say.

The truth is that you have to treat it seriously, like any other business. If you are smart, you will sell much more than with an offline store. This is what makes ecommerce so exciting after all.

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