Although thousands of new business websites are going up everyday, not everyone is succeeding with E-commerce. Many people who lose out on sales and end up failing do so for two of the same reasons: abandoned sales and charge backs.

Lost Sales

Today’s shopping cart applications offer numerous features. However, all of them are designed to collect sensitive information from your customers. This includes their contact information and credit card numbers among other details. While this is a standard procedure of online shopping, one needs to consider the perspective of the new buyer.

After navigating your site, the visitor has come across a product they want to purchase. They click on the checkout icon and proceed to enter the required information. From there the customer is directed to your preferred payment gateway where they are forced input the same information again. This results in lost or aborted sales as consumers are generally lazy and cautious about handing over their sensitive details. Ideally, it would be great if your shopping cart could bypass all these requirements and take the customer straight to your gateway. Unfortunately, there are a number of gateways, all of which require different variables.

So, how do you salvage the sale from here? Log into the administrative section of your shopping cart, find out if you can track the abandoned sale and contact the potential customer via email. Let the customer know that you have observed their attempt to place an order and ask if they had any trouble making a purchase. Explain that you are willing to assistance with any problems they may have experienced. By reaching out to the consumer on a personal level, there might be a chance of recovering the sale. In a worse case scenario, you can at least find out if something in your ordering system isn’t functioning properly. Everyone wants to feel like they are more than just another number. Taking out the time to make contact and find out the problem might give them the confidence that you are worth doing business with.

The Dreaded Chargeback

Charge backs have been a nightmare for many E-commerce businesses. You receive an order for one of your products, ship it out, and a week or so later there is a charge back. This results in you shipping your goods for free, being forced to refund the customer and then pay a charge back fee. One way to avoid this is to make sure your gateway offers some of type of protection against fraud and dishonest customers who purposely cause charge backs after receiving products. While every charge back isn’t of a fraudulent nature, all can have a major impact on your pockets.

Conclusion

As the owner of an E-commerce business, you need to think like a prominent enterprise and focus on your bottom line. If something is negatively affecting your profit, you need to make the proper adjustments to improve the service for customers and ultimately the longevity of your business.

If you plan to start an E-commerce business, one of the first things you need to decide on is a niche market. A niche market is simply a group of consumers you are targeting that have specific needs or interests. Because these consumers generally partake in similar activities, they are more likely to demand similar products or services. By focusing on a niche market, you can find a way to discover and meet those particular needs. In this article we will provide you with a few easy ways to select a niche market and begin your venture with E-commerce.

Place an Emphasis on the Product Before the Marketing Plan

When deciding on a niche, it is better to first settle on a market that has specific needs and then develop products or services to fulfill them. So many people have failed at online business because they focused solely on marketing a product before finding someone who is actually looking for it. This failure is typically the result of an insufficient demand or the fact that one or more competitors already have a stronghold over the market.

While the internet is prevalent, it isn’t the only medium where niche markets are important. Several companies have gained success by establishing a market and then catering to that specific niche. Microsoft develops operating systems and other software products based on the needs of PC users. Adidas manufacturers footwear targeted for the athletic population. These examples demonstrate how important it is to choose a niche market and then focus your marketing efforts around it.

Selecting a niche market doesn’t have to be a difficult task. You can begin by focusing on a market that ties into your area of expertise or interest. Although the internet allows you to branch out and try many things, it is much easier to succeed with something you are passionate about. This reduces the learning curve and the frustration that comes along with starting a business. Instead of viewing it as tedious work, you are more likely to find your E-commerce as fun and hopefully prosperous. You should also perform deep research in the market you are looking to break into. This involves checking out competitors to get some ideas on the demand for certain products and services. Additionally, you need to learn how consumers go about finding these items online such as what keywords they enter into search engines and so forth.

Where to Find Your Audience

Depending on who you are target, your niche market just be waiting in a forum, chat room or newsgroup based on something you specialize in. By monitoring the activity in these sites, you can determine the needs of your niche market and discover what is in high demand. This form of social networking can be quiet valuable to your business.

Settling on a niche market is the first critical step towards establishing an E-commerce business. This is what sets the model for how your business will operate and develop into the future. By taking a little time to figure out exactly what consumers are after, you can market your products or services accordingly and increase the probability of succeeding.

You may have been proficient at getting customers to buy products from your store in town, but online business is an entirely different game. Similar to the traditional business, you must literally build your store yet take a different approach towards drawing in customers and accepting payments. The essentials of e-commerce should go a long way in helping you succeed with your online business endeavors.

Building the Site

Obviously, creating your website is the first essential step. There are several tools available to help with this process from simple web building programs to dynamic programming languages. While a piece of cake for the experienced webmaster, this could present a huge challenge for someone who lacks web design skills. In this case, you should strongly consider hiring a qualified designer to build your site. A costly investment? Perhaps, but look at it from this perspective – it will cost far less than paying the architecture and construction company to build the facility for a traditional storefront.

Collecting Payments

Whether you’re dealing in goods or services, you need a way for customers to select items and take them to checkout. To accomplish this your e-commerce site will need a shopping cart. A quality program will allow you to add different products and categories, add taxes and shipping options, accept payment in various methods and more. When it comes to shopping carts you generally have to options: you can purchase a commercial product or go with an open-source solution.

Open-source shopping carts like osCommerce are widely available and may be offered at no additional cost with your web hosting package. Such a program will provide all the features you need to set up an online storefront. The disadvantage of open-source shopping cart is that some are not easy to customize and don’t cater to inexperienced users. Additionally, stores created with open-source software tend to look very similar to one another.

Commercial solutions are generally easier to customize and offer more features. This type of shopping cart will provide the uniqueness that allows you to standout from all the other store owners on the web. The downside here is that a program like Miva Merchant carries a high-end price tag that ranges from hundreds to thousands of dollars. You also need to make sure that your web host supports the software so it can be easily incorporated into your e-commerce platform.

Selecting a Payment Gateway

In addition to the shopping cart, you will require a payment gateway that enables credit card payments to be transferred to your banking account. To accomplish this task you can either sign up for a merchant account or use a third-party payment processor. Merchant accounts have setup fees, transaction fees and strict qualifications. However, the transaction fees are lower than using a service such as PayPal. In either instance, the overall cost are typically less when your monthly sales are over $1,000. Keep in mind that you will also need to secure the payment environment and protect your online transactions. The best way to ensure this security is with an encryption protocol known as SSL. You may have to purchase a certificate with a merchant account while PayPal takes care of securing your transactions.

Bringing in Customers

After creating the site and setting up the store, it’s time to generate some traffic and sell your items. There are many ways to go about this including advertising, getting your visitors to sign up for a newsletter, pay-per-click campaigns and specially crafted landing pages. Succeeding with e-commere is no easy task, but when laying a solid foundation, you can give yourself a much better chance of making continuous sales.

When it comes to e-commerce, businesses large and small require a method that allows them to collect and process credit card payments. If this sounds like your business, then you need a payment gateway which is generally provided by a merchant account. Finding a merchant account provider can be somewhat of a challenge yet anything can be overcome when doing a little research.

How Much Will it Cost?

For the most part, merchant account providers will charge you a fixed rate per month along with a certain percentage for each sale. Keep in mind that there may be other fees as well. When dealing with a reputable provider, these fees will be for maintaining your shopping cart, verifying customers, processing monthly statement, etc. Having a merchant account is vital in the realm of e-commerce as most consumers today prefer to shop online with their credit cards. If you can’t accept this form of payment, you may as well not even open up a storefront.

How Can I Get One?

When searching for a merchant account, you will find that most providers are pretty reasonably priced. The catch is that you must qualify. Some of the qualifications for a merchant account include background checks, credit checks and proof that you are actually running a legitimate business. Additionally, some will require that you commit to their service for a certain amount of time and charge cancellation fees for breaching the contract. Others do not have stipulations and will allow you to part ways at any given time without taxing on fees. This is why it is very important to look into a particular merchant account provider before deciding on a service. As with most web-related processes, it is best to find a company that is in good standings and has been in the industry for a while. This gives you better assurance that the provider will be around and won’t cause you to miss out on crucial sales.

What Should I Look For?

When comparing merchant account providers, don’t hesitate to grill them with hard questions. One thing you definitely want to known is the estimated time frame for depositing funds into your account following a sale. Retail sales generally do not take long to process, therefore, there is no need to wait an ungodly amount of time for your money. You should look over the merchant account contract with a fine-tooth comb because the sooner you get paid, the better. Always keep your eyes peeled for all the standard charges such as monthly fees, setup fees and cancellation fees if they apply. You also want to look for any hidden fees that might deduct from your bottom line. After all the fees have been tallied, you should then calculate the overall cost of service to find out if this solution actually works for your business.

A merchant account is a vital tool in the world of e-commerce and when signing up with the right service, you will find that it can save you noteworthy fees in comparison to a service like PayPal. The key is finding a reliable provider that is going to be around and won’t try to nickel and dime you to death.

The very core of any e-commerce website is the shopping cart. These programs are aptly named after the shopping baskets commonly used in supermarkets and retail stores. Conventional shopping carts allow customers to walk through the aisles and select the items they want to purchase. We all know it is a simple process as you can add and remove products without much thought or effort. Shopping cart software offers functionality that translates the control and ease of purchasing items in the real world to the electronic world of e-commerce. In this regard, a shopping cart is merely an extension of the basic order form, allowing customers to select certain products and choose from various options.

There are numerous shopping carts available, most of which are created by different programming technologies. This article will introduce you to some of the most common and detail their advantages and disadvantages.

ASP Shopping Carts

Short for Active Server Pages, ASP is a server-side programming language developed by Microsoft. ASP is quite advantageous in the e-commerce field and shopping carts are no different. The power of the language makes an ASP shopping cart easy to develop and maintain. Most software scripted in this language gives you a comprehensive back office to easily manage all the components of your online business. Like most technologies created by Microsoft, ASP shopping carts tend to be more expensive than those scripted in other languages.

CGI Shopping Carts

CGI is one of the oldest development tools and responsible for powering many of today’s active shopping carts. The biggest advantage of CGI shopping carts is that they are compatible with all major web browsers. The downside is that they can be difficult to maintain, sluggish and consume precious system resources.

Cookie Shopping Carts

Cookie shopping carts are both easy to setup and manage. They tend to be faster than CGI shopping carts and consume fewer system resources. The major disadvantage is that they are not compatible with web browsers that do not support cookies. This makes a CGI shopping cart useless for customers who disable cookies in their browsers.

Java Shopping Carts

Many shopping carts are scripted in Java, a client-side language that offers advanced functionality beyond HTML. Java shopping carts are feature-rich and visually appealing. Because this type of software calls for you to build your online store inside of an applet, it is generally slower and more difficult to customize.

Javascript Shopping Carts

Javascript shopping carts are fast, easy to set up and manage. They are also easy to customize and light on critical system features. The major drawback is that they are not compatible with web browsers that do not support Javascript or cookies. Additionally, a Javascript shopping cart is not equipped to handle larger e-commerce stores.

These are just a few of the many types of shopping carts on the market. Regardless of the programming technologies behind the software, it is always best to choose a shopping cart that offers the features you need and supports the number of products you want to sell.

With credit card fraud and identify theft on the rise, consumers are more cautious than ever about shopping online. If you are running a store online, this means that potential customers are more reluctant to buy products and services from your site. In order to boost consumer confidence and make them feel safe, you need a reliable security mechanism that keeps their personal information secure. What you need is an SSL certificate.

What is an SSL Certificate?

Secure Sockets Layer or SSL, is a security protocol that enables encrypted communications between the customer’s web browser and the server your store is hosted on. This is accomplished by what is known as a handshake, a process where the server’s identity is confirmed and a secure connection created. SSL typically offers 128-bit encryption, formulated by an algorithm which generates a key that is virtually impossible to crack. An SSL certificate shows that your site is secure and safe for shopping.

How to Get a Certificate

SSL certificates are offered by entities known as Certificate Authorities, with the most popular being GoeTrust, Thawte and Verisign. For the most part, these authorities provide certificates that give you the same level of security. A single certificate can encrypt the data traveling between the server and each of your customers’ web browsers. The average online storefront can get adequate protection from a basic SSL certificate. You also have the option to purchase additional services to strengthen the level of security.

Installing the Certificate

Although many web hosting providers offer SSL certificates as add-on products, you typically have the freedom to incorporate one purchased from a third-party vendor as well. In most cases, you can learn how your SSL certificate is to be installed via the instructions in the control panel software or by contacting the host’s technical support department. Some of the most advanced control panels even allow you to incorporate an SSL certificate directly from the interface. Once installed, the certificate is automatically enabled. You will know it is activated when noticing “HTTPS” in front your URL rather than “HTTP”.

Designing for SSL

The design of your site is very important when implementing an SSL certificate. In order for your web pages to be viewed as secure, all scripts, graphics and media elements must be deemed secure as well. You have probably visited web sites where a warning displays stating that some of the elements of a particular page are not secure. These messages are prompted when external elements of a web page are not called using the HTTPS protocol. In many cases, the certificate is valid and secure but the page isn’t designed properly for SSL. All the external elements of your page must be called using links that include the full URL. One simple graphic that doesn’t use HTTPS will generate a “not secure” error.

Conscious online shoppers are increasingly looking for SSL certificates and if you don’t have one, you are missing out on a lot of business. You can have some of the most beneficial products online but if no one feels safe buying them, they will hesitate to proceed with the transaction.