What goes on behind the many ecommerce websites you see and use on the Internet? Have you thought about selling your company s products or services through your website, but you weren t sure how hard it would be?
This article is non technical, but will give a better idea about what goes on behind the ecommerce websites you see and use on the Internet, and what is involved in creating your own catalog website.
What is a shopping cart?
A Shopping Cart in its most simple form is a reliable script or application for making credit card or PayPal transactions within a website.
If you have ever made a donation through a website or if you have been on a website selling a few items that uses PayPal to make the transaction, you have seen a shopping cart script in action.
PayPal is a great way to add the ability to sell a few items on a website, and a great way for getting started in ecommerce. PayPal is a highly recognized brand and PayPal makes it easy to implement ecommerce.
Basically, you are putting code within your website, but your customers are really using and external shopping cart system that is run and maintained by PayPal.
What is a Shopping Cart System?
Shopping carts systems allow you to manage multiple categories of products, sub categories and will provide you an administration system for processing orders, adding new products, charging appropriate tax rates and handling shipping.
More sophisticated shopping cart systems can give you control over your website design for you to control every aspect of your website content, creating featured products, order processing. Think of it as a content management system, catalog and shopping cart system combined into one application, which can be customized with your Branding.
How do you get started?
Assuming you are looking to sell many items with several categories within your website, a good place to start is with first creating a list of all your product categories.
Next, estimate the number of products you will have for each category or if you are already using an inventory system you can export a list of your products in order to get a rough idea of how many products your website store will offer.
What about product photographs?
You will need high quality product images on your website. Ideally, the manufacturer will provide you images that are about 3 to 4 inches tall, which can be used within your website. Typically, ecommerce websites will have a thumbnail image, which can be enlarged when clicked on, giving the customer a better view of the product.
High quality images are important so that the customer can see exactly what the item is, but also so that they feel comfortable with your website.
If you are creating your own product images, be sure to photograph your products using a seamless background so there is a good contrast between your background and the product and be sure to use a professional lighting setup so the items are well let, with soft shadows.
How do you create product pages?
The better shopping cart systems will allow you use an administration system to create individual product pages and add them to your website. Using a web interface, it only takes a minute or two to create a page, add it to the proper category, import a product image, add in a description, pricing and shipping information.
Most shopping cart systems will allow you to link products to related products, so that when a customer is checking out, they will learn about other products they may want to add to their shopping cart.
Importing many products into the system
If your online store will have hundreds or thousands of products, using a spreadsheet to create a product file is another way to add product information, pricing, descriptions, SKU numbers and more to initially populate the database.
If your website will offer thousands of products, it may take some time to prepare all the content for importing. One approach is to initially offer a few items in each category then to come back later and add more products after the website has been launched.
If you are using an internal inventory system, it may be possible to export a spreadsheet with most of the information for your products into a spreadsheet. Descriptions may need to be embellished or you may want to make your descriptions more user friendly.
Once your spreadsheet has been completed, the product spreadsheet is imported into the ecommerce system. Product images can also be imported as a group with most ecommerce systems.
Configuring your ecommerce system
Ecommerce systems will need a number of configurations in order to know what email addresses to send notifications to, what your sales tax rate is, what shipping options you will offer, and more.
While most ecommerce systems use generic notification emails, in some case you may want to modify your email messages from the system with special instructions.
Once all configuration has been completed, your settings should remain in effect for some time.
Testing your eCommerce system
It is always to make a number of test purchases through the system to get a know exactly what email notifications are sent out to the customer, but to also learn how to process orders and to get familiar with the administration area of your website.
It is always a good idea to test your website before launching the website, and most ecommerce systems will allow you temporarily turn off your payment gateway so the system will accept orders, but not charge any credit card orders.
Before launching your website, it is a good idea to make at least one or two purchases to make sure that your payment gateway is in fact working as it should.
Keeping customers happy
While your ecommerce website may be new and your staff may be limited, keep in in mind that many internet users have been buying online for years and that very large ecommerce websites like Amazon.com and others often set customer expectations.
Most customers will expect the checkout process to be smooth and to receive notifications about the order processing and shipment in a timely manner, especially if this is their first experience buying from your website.
Keep customers coming back
Many websites will sign up customers with an opt in newsletter or agreement to receive offers and promotions. This is a great feature to use and when combined with discount coupons and other offers, you can get customers to return to your website again and again.
Most internet products fall into two categories: 1) products needed for running a business such as ink jet cartridges, computer related and office equipment, etc., and 2) gifts, books and personal items that are nice to have, but not seen as necessary.
Often, a customer will be looking for a replacement item or product you offer and will find your website from searching with Google or Yahoo, or perhaps by advertising. If you offer a product or service that many other companies offer, your customer may be shopping for the lowest price or may have chosen you from many other vendors randomly.
The challenge is to get your new customer return again and again, and by offering coupons, specials or promotions, your one time customer can become a customer for life.
Author Resource:
Vann Baker, President of Design-First, has been creating websites since 1995, from small business websites to large ecommerce, social network and informational websites using content management systems. For more information on ecommerce websites and more, go to: http://www.design-first.com/ecommerce
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")