E-commerce Resources

What is E-Commerce?

E-Commerce is the term that is used to describe the sale of products and services over the world wide web. In the most general terms, a website that promotes and advertises your products is known as e-commerce. Most e-commerce businesses offer their customers an elaborate store where customers can purchase and browse through thousands of products, place orders, select various shipping methods and pay for their purchases through the use of a credit card.

What are the different types of e-commerce?

B2B or business-to-business – organisations that do business with others, e.g. wholesalers selling to retailers or manufacturers selling to distributors, fall into this category of e-commerce. The pricing can be based on the order quantities and can be negotiable.
B2C or business-to-consumer – organisations that sell to the general public through catalogues and use shopping cart software. Businesses such as Amazon fall into this category.
C2B or consumer-to-business – consumers post their project and set a budget and a user reads the requirements and bids on the project. The consumer then reviews each of the bids and selects an individual or company to undertake the project.
C2C or consumer-to-consumer – any site that offers auctions, free classified or forums where consumers can purchase or sell products via online payment systems such as PayPal. Businesses such as Ebay fall into this category.

What is needed to build an e-commerce site from a technical point of view?

This can all depend on the complexity of a website. A simple one may contain a single page catalogue that contains the contact number of the seller, or a complex website may contain a variety of applications, from selecting a product, purchasing the product and receiving the goods via post to their doorstep. There are generally three stages to the building process of e-commerce:

Building and showing the shopping cart – a virtual store can be created online with the use of a shopping cart. It allows products and prices to be displayed. When the consumer visits the website and places an order for the item they require, they are then shown the total amount in the shopping cart which must be paid for.
Checking the security and service provider for payment gateway – Once a payment option has been selected, a payment gateway is then required. The gateway may be a company or a bank that is authorised to accept the credit card on behalf of the customer. The gateway should allow the payment to be processed on-line. The gateway then provides the payment gateway software to allow for secure transactions. The payment gateway software is cross verified by the Digital Certified Authorities to help build trust in the consumer that they can send a transaction safely.
Payment gateway integration – The website that contains the shopping cart facility and the payment options are then linked with the payment gateway software, together with the service provider that allows the transaction to be completed on-line from the consumer’s side by a debit of the bill amount from their account which is then credited into the product company’s account instantly. It is a very important step that indicates that the transaction that has been carried out has been safe and secure.

What is a merchant account?

This type of account allows a business to accept credit and debit cards for the purchase of their products and services. There are varied types of merchant accounts, e.g. retail merchant accounts are available for high street shops, internet ready merchant accounts are more specialised and exist for the sole reason to allow an on-line store to accept credit card payments. These allow the transaction to be processed over the internet in real time. These types of accounts also offer protection to their customers so as to reduce the levels of credit card fraud.

What options are available in handling customer transactions?

There are a variety of options available for this. A basic approach is to deal with all transactions off-line. A company could publish their address on-line on their website and ask their customers to send their order directly by post, together with a postal order or a cheque. Another option could be to retrieve a customer’s credit or debit card information via phone or email, then process the transaction off-line through the business’ retail merchant account. These can be useful methods to use, but they are not the best. The main reason a customer shops on-line is for the convenience they offer and the speed of purchase. To increase the chances of a customer purchasing from an on-line store, each business should offer the option of paying through a credit or debit card and processing it in real time. The on-line transactions can either be handled by a third party credit or debit card processor or solely by the business owner.

Do an organisation need prior knowledge of HTML to set up an on-line store?

It is not necessary to have any basic knowledge of web programming or HTML. An e-commerce provider will normally be able to provide the appropriate software that allows an organisation to format their own store without prior knowledge of HTML. The choice of integrating an on-line store into a website, however, will require prior knowledge of web editing or HTML.

How many products will an organisation be able to sell in their on-line store?

That depends solely on the company. An organisation may choose to sell a few or thousands of products. Once the number has been decided, the organisation will then be able to choose the appropriate hosting plans that meet their needs. They must also take into consideration the future of their website and their products. Will the organisation want to develop new products or services in the future? For example, the website may require an advanced feature that allows their customers to perform a search. The hosting plans must also be considered with e-commerce design, that can accommodate site growth and can be easily amended as and when necessary if the traffic increases to the site and their client base expands.