Creating an online shop

Creating an online shop


To get all the commercial advantages of the internet, you need to set up a fully-fledged e-commerce site. That is one where online customers can browse stock, select items to fill a shopping basket and then go to a virtual counter to pay for the goods.

The main difference between this and a brochure site that simply displays your products and company information is interactivity. Your customer is entering information and making choices on your website and this necessarily requires a more sophisticated website. There are a number of ways you can get this onto your site.

Unless you’re an internet expert or have a lot of time on your hands, you’re unlikely to design and build your own site. Many ISPs and technology providers have fixed-priced packages that enable you to build and host a website with an online shop containing a set number of products and a payment point.

Examples of such ‘turnkey’ packages are BT Storecentre and Freeserve Marketplace and prices start at around £40 per month (not including payment processing charges which we look at later). The disadvantages are that since you build your website from a template you have very little control over how your entire site looks and also where it is hosted.



If you already have a simple brochure site you can simply add a shopping feature to it using off the shelf e-commerce software costing around £350. When choosing software you should check how well it can be adapted to your existing website colour scheme; whether it has a secure socket layer (SSL), which is the e-commerce standard for protecting credit card details; and the additional features such as calculation of the shipping charge and payment in more than one currency.

There are a lot of e-commerce software manufacturers about but some of the better known are Actinic, Cybershop, Shop@ssitant and Shopcreator. If you buy from an established supplier, you should be able to upgrade the software as new versions are developed.

Although not as restrictive as the turnkey solutions, this software is still based on templates. If you’re really serious about e-commerce and think that the potential benefits would warrant a larger investment, then you may want to have your site developed by a specialist as an integral part of your website design.

“I would always recommend getting somebody in to build the e-commerce into your website. You need it to be easy for you to update it regularly and easy for the customer to use. At the moment, two thirds of online purchases [that are started] are uncompleted, because the shopping basket is complicated to use or because they are worried about security. The website has to look professional to make the customer comfortable with buying,” says business advisor Lyn Burkett.

for more postings...
pls keep visiting my blog...

yoko