What you should ask yourself before you set up an ecommerce website

Ecommerce is an area where everyone wants to enter. And each one has a plan for himself. But what should you know before you make the big jump? What are the prerequisites to success here? These are some of the questions that we hope will be answered by the end of this article.

1. What is the advantage you’re starting with?

In other words, what is your USP? Every start up needs to have one, because otherwise how do you hope to distinguish yourself from the rest? You need to have some really good reason to convince people as to why they should consider buying from your store instead of trying someone else. It could be that your site is quicker or that it has better offers etc, but it needs to differentiate your site from the rest.

2. What are the products that you’re going to offer?

Choose the product category that you are going to offer carefully. Do your products have sufficient demand? This is important as it is through the sale of these products that you are going to break even. Products that are new to the market or products that belong to the ‘niche’ category can be risky as you may not see a sufficient return on investment.

3. How do you plan to promote yourself?

For a start up, promotion is crucial to increasing traffic. Get people to talk about it. Internet, TV, print, FM, use all media to popularize your site. Firstly, your site’s name needs to become commonly mentioned. For this, you need to generate a buzz about your site and it needs to be pushed from behind by a strong sales team that can convert those visitors into customers.

4. Are you going to hold stock or depend on Suppliers?

Most suppliers charge a hefty fee for a direct despatch to customers. And being a start up, you can’t afford to spend too much on suppliers who discontinue the product once they find the stock is low. In such a scenario, it is best to do the despatch yourself and thereby build a rapport with the customer.

5. Payment gateways

This is the final gap to be plugged but in many ways the most important one. The merchant that you choose will determine to what extent your customer trusts you. Never compromise here as customers are extremely wary of security lapses in payment softwares. Don't settle for anything other than the best when it comes to payment gateway solutions.

These are just some of the questions that we thought were pertinent to a budding online store. There are more, but these are the fundamental ones.

Brick and Mortar VS Online Stores

Everyone wants to know more about eCommerce. And this article too is about the same: Ecommerce. But we’re going to go still more deeper into it and analyse the differences between online stores and brick and mortar business.

If we divided business today into two broad categories, they would be:

1. Brick and Mortar Businesses, and

2. Online Businesses

Brick and Mortar :

This is the traditional way of doing business that requires the three factors of production namely, land, labour and entrepreneurship. Well, that obviously means that it is shorn of the usage of technology and the advantages that it provides making it a good game for the big money players and an expensive one for the new guys. But there are certain advantages to Brick and mortar stores. What are they?

The Pros:

- It allows the customer to touch and feel the product they’re out to buy. They can inspect the product physically, look for defects if any, and be sure of the product they’re buying.

-The internet is rife with defective products, scamsters and fake brands that dupe the gullible customer. In contrast to this, brick and mortar stores offer you a sense of trust and comfort.

- Location is crucial in a brick and mortar store. Find a location where people congregate, and you get the eyeballs. 1 in 10 eyeballs will definitely fall for your store.

The Cons:

- As we already saw, land, labour and entrepreneurship. Among the three, land is probably most difficult to obtain and is therefore a huge cost to the average businessman.

- You are constantly engaged in a lopsided battle with the established players and it takes a lot of time to get even.

Online Businesses :

Firstly, an online stores is way easier to setup. It requires some research and marketing but overall, the costs involved are much lesser when compared to a brick and mortar business.

The Pros:

- Your ecommerce will be available 24 * 7, 365 days a year for customers to access.

- If you've generated good reviews and built a good reputation among your clientele you can be sure you’re site will be talked about and searched. All you need is some hardselling.

- Yes you do have some limitations but they are not one of space and sales reps. An online store lets you serve thousands of customers simultaneously.

The Cons:

- Limited interaction with clientele.

- Easy for the customer to get distracted as you’re constrained by space.

Finally, each of them have their own advantages. But, if you want to get a positive business graph even in next decade, its better to go with online stores.  

What you need to know about payment gateways

If you’re running your own business, it is imperative that you accept as many different forms of payments as possible. If you turn down a customer because you do not accept their form of payment you’re just going to end up completely losing the sale and the individual is likely to take their business elsewhere. There is no reason you should lose this kind of sale and the best way to avoid this is to have different payment gateways. With the different payment gateways it is always going to drastically improve your ability to land a new client and to increase your chances of improving the way you do business, regardless what you sell or what kinds of services you offer.

In Store Payments

Of course, it is very important for you to accept in store payments. When you are able to do this it is going to improve your ability to make as many sales as possible the payment gateways are going to run through your point of sales system, as this is very important for everything to run through the same account. When everything runs through the same account it is going to improve your ability to monitor everything properly and to see whenever you make a sale or receive a payment. Having multiple accounts is going to make it very difficult to do this and you might not know when certain sales are made.

Mobile Payments

The payment gateways also work while on the go. Mobile payments are an excellent way for you to make money while on the go through sales. The mobile equipment connects directly through a Smartphone or a tablet computer and allows you to swipe credit cards anywhere. With this feature you'll be able to travel for work and even take vacations without having to worry about leaving your business at home.When running your own business it is important to have as many different payment gateways available in order to take payments from individuals inside your store, on the road or over the Internet.

Internet Payments

With more and more individuals making sales and purchases over the Internet it is incredibly important for you to have an Internet store and offer products and services online. This way, someone who isn't even in the same city as you can purchase your material while over on the Internet. The Internet feature is going to help you out with this and it also expands your services to a completely new region of the country, no matter where you are or what you sell.

Flexible Payment Solutions: Where do you belong?

The chequebook is an anachronism today. As a business owner, you need to make sure your payment systems are integrated with the rest of the processes in your website, and that speedy procedures have as much importance as robust security measures..

Your online payment portal’s ability to deliver flexible and accurate reports in HTML and XML formats is key to ensuring your records are kept up to date and your accountant has everything he needs to do his job properly. The size of your payment system or its ability to perform (at different levels of payment processing and accounting) is dictated by the size and span of your operation. If you run a small business and have not the desire to get too involved in your online payment portal, then a cloud based solution is probably right for you.

Cloud based payment solutions also give you the opportunity to back up your business' payroll and payment information, by ensuring that you continue to trade even in the event of a major hardware failure at your office or place of business. The cloud based solution enables access to a virtual copy of your business' payment landscape whenever you desire and therefore backs up your information on the host server.

Slightly larger businesses might benefit from using tailored BACS (bankers automated clearing services) payment systems. A tailored system of this nature will allow all payments, and is automatically set up to ensure best practice in sending, receiving and recording all transactions. Encrypted to give extra safety and full of administrative features designed to make your life easier, tailored BACS payment solutions minimise the time spent with payments while maximising their efficiency.

Bigger and more complex organisations need an enterprise class set of payment systems. Payment solutions of this nature allow both UK and global transactions, and are completely secure. With a flexible central gateway you can process pretty much all existing types of payment, minimise fraud and even set up your own customised business workflow and rules for completely customised payment handling and reporting.

Ideal for the larger business, enterprise class payment solutions are there to provide fast, effective responses to modern payment needs.