How to get on the E-Commerce Bandwagon

Electronic retailing, the business-to-consumer segment of e-commerce, is set to create the wave of the future. According to Jupiter Communications Inc., online consumer transactions are expected to grow more than 13 times over from $5.8 billion this year to $37.5 billion three years later.

If you have been thinking of starting your e-commerce site but hesitated to do so for one reason or another, now is the time to get into action. From my observation, it takes an average of 6 months for a start-up e-commerce site to start generating word-of-mouth traffic and two years to begin generating premium traffic.

Set up an electronic store

So, how can I get on this e-commerce bandwagon? Well, in order to sell products on the Web, you must have an electronic store. At the heart of your online store is your shopping cart. It is an electronic platform, which allow users to browse through products; place selected products into an electronic shopping cart; and make payments online through a secured server.

Shopping cart software varies in price, quality and functionality. A top-notch shopping cart may cost you a few thousand dollars. However, you can now get a premier CartSnap software free if you host your e-commerce site with Virtualis Systems - a specialist in providing business web hosting services. Check the CartSnap Demo here. This powerful, yet easy-to-use software is designed specifically for the layman with no programming knowledge.

Open an online merchant account

You must have the facility to accept credit cards and other electronic payments online if you want to be a serious player in e-commerce. To do that, you must first open a credit card merchant account with a bank. Dont worry about the card processor (Visa, MasterCard or Amex), as it usually comes together with your merchant account package.

You can open a merchant account with any bank. Be prepared to go through a complicated and lengthy process, which may involves credit checks, financial information and policy review as well as deposit requirement. National Card Systems understands your problems, and will help you through the whole process of obtaining a merchant account. It works closely with American National Bank to provide low cost, state of the art, electronic payment systems for online businesses.

Establish an automated payment gateway

Your shopping cart must be linked to your merchant account through an electronic payment gateway in order to facilitate real-time credit card processing. The gateway is an automated mechanism that transfers online payment information collected at your website to your processor. The latter will check the credit card for the amount of purchase, before returning an "approved" or declined" message to you.

There are over 300 gateway companies on the market today. Cybercash and PaymentNet are two of the major players. These gateway companies often charge users a set-up fee, a monthly fee, and perhaps, a transaction fee based on volume percentage.

Link various systems together with GateSnap

Now that you have everything in place, it is time to get down to some programming to link various systems together. Very often, you may experience system incompatibility somewhere along your shopping cart, bank, processor and gateway.

With so many gateways on the market, it is difficult for any system to keep up with the myriad of changing protocols. Virtualis Systems understands this difficulty and comes up with a seamless plug-in software called GateSnap that will make CartSnap compatible with more than 90% of the 300 gateways on the market.

It will pre-install two GateSnap cassettes for Cybercash and PaymentNet gateways into your server once you take up its web hosting package. The charge is just a one-time fee of US $49. Good value for money? A definite YES! All its web hosting packages come equipped with CartSnap, yet prices start from as low as US $36 per month.

Ready to cash-in on the e-retailing boom?

I hope the above information has given you an idea of what it takes to set up an e-commerce site. Do not be despair if you are not technically proficient or well funded to engage a team of systems engineers, programmers, designers and webmasters to do the job for you. There are specialist companies out there who will take care of every nitty-gritty details on your behalf for just a small fee every month.

You may approach Virtualis Systems - http://www.aloha-city.com/bizlink/host.html - and National Card Systems - ttp://www.aloha-city.com/bizlink/ncs.html - for everything that you may need to set up an e-commerce web presence, especially if you are operating on a shoe-string budget . . .

About the author:

Patrick Tan, an entrepreneur and former journalist, offers a complete range of e-commerce solutions and services (editing, writing, translation, content development, web design, etc) to help you build a successful career online. Visit his site at aloha-city.com for more information. He publishes a free newsletter to share his experience and business know-how. Subscribe Now! basics@aloha-city.com

:To contact see details below.


patrick@aloha-city.com
http://www.aloha-city.com