Ecommerce and Web Site Hosting
Articles are written all the time about this subject, but do you really know what is involved with ecommerce and web site hosting? It’s about preparation and organization and putting it all together to make all the parts work. The problem these days is getting everything and then finding a place to do this all together. It seems that ecommerce is a daily catch phrase used in regular conversations over lunch, a meeting or in passing. Does this mean that you need to jump on the bandwagon? If you have a product or a service that you want to launch or give more PR about and you think it’s gonna fly, then yes, you should.
Beginning an ecommerce site is relatively inexpensive compared to the alternative of actually having overhead and quite a deal more risk. The first steps are to find out what is needed before ecommerce web site hosting starts. Do you have a product and or service and if so, do you keep inventory or maybe have an agreement with a drop shipper? If you have a service, than it is relatively straight forward.
Steps to Follow for Ecommerce Web Site Hosting
- Determine what products and services you will be selling
- Have all logistics organized if there needs to be any for service fulfillment
- Compile a list of the software needed to get your website functional
- Obtain a merchant account that works for you
- Find a web host for your web site hosting
Lets go through the list and try to help some novices pick up a few things of what is involved before they start and also some experienced people might learn something new or maybe something they are missing.
What are you going to sell?
Ebay is a great place to start, but do you need a website for ebay. Technically you don’t, but if you want to increase your sales and look more professional, a website is the way to go, even if you aren’t “selling” anything on it, but it is not necessary to have special ecommerce hosting for that. Places like ebay are a great way to start your whole ecommerce venture, but if you are going it alone from your site, you will need to know what you are selling and know how to put everything together. How will you get your products to the buyer? This is called “logistics”. Will you ship or is this something you can deliver through email or have a download section from your website. The former is the most difficult to wok out because there are local, national and international rates that apply to the calculations when dealing with size, weight and package content. You might want to check out your country’s post regulations like USPS etc and they will have some software that you can use in order for this to be all automated.
Ok, so you have the logistics information (if you needed it) and you know what you are selling. Services don’t need anything special as they are things that you are personally responsible for completing and no delivery is required. How many products will you have. It’s good to look for a shopping cart, which is an online catalog type system similar to a menu of the products you have and organizes everything to the customers needs so they can purchase things easier. There are many of these shopping carts available and a good number of them are free. If you don’t like technical things, you might want to check out www.mercantec.com, but you have more flexibility with www.oscommerce.com, however you will have to know at least some technical things to get it going and or get someone to do it for you.
How are you going to process the orders with your web site hosting solution?
The first few questions that will be asked of you when applying for merchant account status (being able to charge credit cards) are:
- What items will you be selling
- What is the average price of each sale (purely estimated)
- What is your fulfillment procedure. (how will you get it to the customer)
- How many sales you think you will do on a monthly basis
- What is your product/service policy
- What is your refund policy
- Also they may want to take a look at your Terms of Service and possibly your privacy policy
The whole idea of this is to prepare you so you don’t run into a brick wall and hit something you didn’t expect. If you are in the US, you have many options, but the most popular quick-starts as of now are www.paypal.com and www.googlecheckout.com which are both very popular and easy to you. You also might be interested in the fact that both these processors have their own integrated shopping cart / catalog system, however lacking in custom functionality, you might want to reconsider still using your own solution.
When you have dealt with all the above, then review the best hosting companies and make a decision for web site hosting based on their specialty. Usually it might not be a good idea to host your ecommerce web site with a company that won’t talk to you or one that you can’t grow with. That might sound weird to say, but there are the one package hosting companies out there that are “ok” and some are good, but if you grow, they have nothing to grow into. A big part in your decision making for web site hosting is whether the company you choose has a future for you.
