Category Archives: E-Commerce

What does a successful e-commerce website really need

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There are many different options available when it comes to setting up an E-commerce website, but no matter how you go about it, you will need a full array of options when establishing your website in the beginning.

It goes without saying that before you can even begin to think of the setup and design of the ecommerce website, you need to have a business plan drawn up to cater for your product, your marketing plans, and your outline for future growth. Once you have a suitable product and plan to generate traffic and direct it to your website, you can then outline what you want for a fully functioning ecommerce website.

Of the features available, you will need the following, at the very least:

Hosting

Layout and Design

Logo creation (if you don’t already have a company logo)

CMS (content management system) for your products and listing and pricing

Shopping cart integrated into a payment gateway

Order tracking system / database

System reporting

For any ecommerce website that is selling physical (or non-physical) goods, these are the items which you will need to consider when setting up your site.

For hosting, you can either approach a hosting company directly, or approach a decent web designer. The web designer will be able to handle the logo creating for your company logo, and will integrate this into your layout and design for your website as well. They will, usually, also know where the cheaper options are for hosting, and will be able to direct you to a suitable company for this, often being able to set it up for you. Alternatively, often hosting companies provide the same services (by having an in-house developer and designer) as a package, and you will be able to use one of their website templates for your site.

The shopping cart system can either be done by yourself, or by hiring a developer, or by getting a ready-made shopping cart system integrated into your site (your web designer/developer will be able to do this for you). The cart will generally integrate into a payments processing provider, so you’ll need to discuss with a provider about having credit card payments made on your site, and about having the provider take payments and settle with you directly.

Any decent ecommerce website will keep track of its own stock and orders, and will integrate its own stock and sales reports with those that are returned by the payments processing provider. You will then need to do reconciliations with the provider to make sure that all the orders that are processed were paid for, and that the provider settled all payments to you by the required date. The providers are usually quite strict about you maintaining your own records, so keeping track of your own orders is a good idea.

Overall, it is quite simple to do the entire ecommerce website yourself (or with the help of contracted IT professionals), but there are also alternatives out there, where you can purchase an entire, ready-made package. It’s just a matter of looking, and gauging what works best for your situation.

About Webmama

Webmama.co.uk is a leading provider of ecommerce website and shopping cart website solution in the UK. We have packages that suits every budget, with industry leading client centric service and competitive, honest prices, it’s no wonder 1500+ worldwide customers look to Webmama.co.uk for all their ecommerce solution needs.

Were excited to offer you a completely free 14 day trial to evaluate our software with zero risk (no credit card required). Were sure that once you see what our E-commerce website can do, youll know its the right choice for your business and your online success.

Contact: 44 (0) 845 634 4586

Source: webmama.co.uk

RELATED LINKS: www.webmama.co.uk

Choosing OS Commerce vs. Zen Cart Shopping Solution for Web Development

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Today, diverse shopping carts are being used by e-retail outlets to enhance their e-commerce and Web Development activities and offer a unique experience to its customers. There is an exhaustive list of Shopping Carts that include Magento, PrestaShop, CubeCart, OpenCart and StoreSprite. Two of the major open-source Shopping Carts that have attained high popularity in the recent years are OS Commerce and Zen Cart. Many Web Development service providers offer these two Shopping Cart Solutions at a very large scale. However, it is proven that Web Developers do not embrace a single Shopping Cart solution completely, because of the fear of obsolescence or lock-in.

The comparison among OS Commerce and Zen Cart Shopping Cart has taken place by Webmasters at many levels, and this article, by no means, intends to be an extension of the same. This article instead discusses the benefits of both OS Commerce and Zen Cart in a little detail and helps you choose a sound Shopping Cart for your Web Development projects.

Zen Cart Shopping Cart for Efficient Web Development

For efficient Web Development, developers bank on Zen Cart Shopping Cart. Zen is free, extremely user-friendly, an easy-to-install and open-source shopping cart. More than the developers, Zen Cart is a Shopping Cart solution for shoppers. Zen Cart also offers various exclusive features like multiple payment support, varied shipping options, quantity discounts and coupons.

Zen Cart also features multiple customer modes and sales and discounts, unlimited category depth and display modes. It also efficiently supports XHTML template system and offers the liberty to use unlimited extra pages and several ad banners. Many Web Development Companies in India, believe that no Shopping Cart solutions comes as close as Zen when it comes to features and benefits.

OS Commerce for a Strong and Dedicated Shopping Cart

OS Commerce is an open source online shopping cart that offers a wide range of features to online e-commerce stores. Like Zen Cart, OS Commerce also supports multiple currencies and allows the customers to print invoices directly from the order screen. Many Web Development companies vouch for its easy database backup system, and effective Web Development processes.

OS Commerce Shopping Cart features a rich set of functionality that allows e-commerce owners to setup and maintain online stores with minimum efforts and absolutely no costs. Many Web Development, India, firms have Java proficient web developers and are solely dedicated to designing projects in Java language.

Hope this article has been able to provide some help to all those who are yet to decide between Zen and OS Commerce Shopping for their Web Development projects.

Introduction to Leading Open Source eCommerce Web Application Magento

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Magento is an open-source ecommerce web application created by Varien which was later re-christened as Magento Inc. It was launched on March 31st 2008 and it is built on the components of Zend Framework. Magento is available under the Open Software License version 3.0. The Magento Enterprise Edition (paid edition) which is aimed at larger companies was launched on 15th April 2009; this version provides a service agreement with Varien.

Those involved in eCommerce need an affordable, flexible design option when putting up their online stores. Magento was designed to meet this need. This open-source eCommerce solution is offered for free download and allows users to design, set up, and run their own eCommerce stores with great flexibility. Magento supports installation of modules through a web-based interface accessible through the administration area of a Magento installation. Modules are hosted on the Magento eCommerce website as a PEAR server. Magento formerly worked with osCommerce. They originally planned to fork osCommerce but later decided to rewrite it as Magento. Magento officially started development in early 2007. Seven months later on August 31, 2007, the first public beta version was released. On May 30, 2010 Magento mobile was released, it allows store owners to create native mobile storefront apps.

Magento uses PHP as a web server scripting language and the MySQL Database. The data model is based on the Entity-attribute-value model that stores data objects in tree structures, thus allowing a change to a data structure without changing the definition of the database. Any community member can upload a module through the website and is made available once confirmed by a member of the Magento team. Modules are installed by entering a module key, available on the module page, into the web based interface.

There are three categories of modules hosted on Magento Connect:
1. Core Modules
2. Community Modules
3. Commercial Modules

Core and Community modules can be installed from the administration area. Commercial module pages provide price information and a link to an external website. There are no limits to creativity with Magento. Magento is easy to install and at the same time easy to use. Magento is used in many websites and online stores and has been a one of the most used ecommerce web application since its release.

Helpful Tips for Making a Good E-Commerce Website

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E-Commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services over the electronic medium like Internet. This is not just all but it has involved so many other major tasks like supply chain management, electronic fund transfer, Internet marketing etc. Having an e commerce web site is not enough these days, but a good, comfortable and amazingly functional website is required. It should appeal to the potential customers only then they would come to the website and make purchases. If even once you fail to provide them good user experience, you will lose the business. As there are hundred of websites available on Internet. There are plenty of choices available to the customers to select the best suitable for themselves. Following are few tips so that you can make your e commerce website a success:

Let the users to explore and do not ask for registration first: Asking the readers to register first and then providing them with the facility of adding items in their cart is probably the major step where you can lose your customers. Allow the readers to explore all the information which he wants to have. Like by adding items, he might be checking the total amount or the transportation fee etc.

Informing the readers where they are: There should be proper headings, sub headings so that if the readers is exploring in the store in more than one sub level of navigation, he can easily come back to his previous position through some kinds of indication like (Home> one category> another category> product etc. )

Do not show unnecessary details unless asked: Simple things are always easy to perceive in the human mind where as we confuse ourselves and even others by giving out unnecessary long details about the product So, the tip is to keep the short basic information about the product as the standard feature of the product and there should always be an option for “looking into more details” if users want to go into.

Give the best visual experience of the product to the readers: The Audio visual aids work many times more than the simple text about the product. Since the readers are not able to touch the product or experience its functionality. So, keeping this in mind provide them with the best of images or any video (if required) so that the readers can have a prior idea about the product before he actually makes a purchase. The images shown should be of high quality and the videos should be clear and audible.

Search options and refinement benefits: When the search has been performed, keep the search bar in front having query in it with the search results so that users can modify their query. Also give your readers the advanced options like to select prices, colors, models etc. facilitating them to make a purchase on the spot.

Customer support: The customers buying online need instant support. The provision of live chat support on every page is a great help that you can provide them with.

Use a prior tested software: You have to check the functionality at every level like browsing, payment options, cart functions etc. so as to give your customers an enjoyable and comfortable experience.

All the very successful e commerce websites like eBay, Amazon.com, are not by chance, but they have provided their users with all the options that makes the shopping experience just superb.!!!

Getting to Know a Good eCommerce Software for Small Businesses

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Ease of Use

Since a website is a perpetual work in progress, it should be easy to update as well as generate reports from, which are easily customizable to give you particular information that you wish to get in the shortest time possible. Essentially, a suitable ecommerce service should be creative while still maintaining ease of use.

Fraud Protection

Your hosting website should be in a position to offer you a secure server over which your clients can safely reveal their credit card information while making an online purchase. The most sensitive part when it comes to showing credit card information is the CVV2 code which is usually a 3-digit figure printed on the back of most credit and debit cards. As a merchant you should always look for ecommerce software that enables you to offer the best fraud protection available in the market.

Help/Documentation

Ideal companies should give you ongoing help and support especially when dealing with such a dynamic field the internet. Better and newer internet solutions are generated frequently and therefore you must be able to keep up with the trends. Support and help can be in the form of periodic downloads, live chats, telephone operators, wikis, forums or even blogs.

The above pointers regarding how to select ecommerce software should get you to sell online in the shortest time possible.