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Online Stores and Selling |
The Online Selling Process Involves The Following Steps:
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A customer visits your web site.
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The customer finds something they like and want and click on either the “Buy” or the “Add to Cart” button.
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The product is added to their shopping cart.
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After they finish shopping, the customer clicks on the “Checkout” button.
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They are sent to a secure page where their credit card and shipping information is collected using a secure online form.
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The data on the form is sent to the payment gateway services and then transmitted to the Merchant account.
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The transaction is verified with the customer’s credit card company.
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If the transaction is approved, the customer’s credit card is charged and the funds added to a merchant account. The customer is sent to a “Thank You Page” and a program on your web site send out a confirmation email.
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If the transaction is denied, an error message is sent to the customer and the transaction is terminated.
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For all successful transactions, you must fill your customers order. For electronic goods, you must send them the information on how to download their products. For physical goods, order picking, packing and shipping must be arranged. Click here for more information on order fulfillment.
- Finally, once the collected funds have cleared through the banking system, the money can be transferred to you business or personal bank account.
What Exactly Is An Online Store?
On online store is a website that has a product catalog, a shopping cart to
hold customer purchases until checkout, a payment processing system connected
to a merchant account at a bank and a method of delivering purchased items
to the customer.
There are four main kinds of entry-level storefronts:
Independent storefronts - Independent storefronts allow the business to maintain its individuality while providing easy administration that is usually web browser based. But this solution still leaves the business owner the task of generating demand for their goods or services and traffic for their website.
Portal Storefronts - also called community storefronts.They allow you to create a store within an existing website that usually has a large amount of traffic. The advantages of a portal storefront are low cost, ease of administration, large amounts of traffic and the users already trust the hosting website. The disadvantages of a portal storefront are lack of individuality, you are just one of many stores on the site. Another disadvantage is if another store sells the same products or services, you are listed side-by-side and unless you match their price, you will definitely lose sales. Two examples of portal sites are Amazon's zShops and Yahoo! stores.
Auctions - Auctions eliminated the need to maintain a storefront but still allow a business to sell their products. Auctions are best suited to specialty or niche products that are not sold in large quantities. Two examples of auction sites are eBay and Amazon.com Auctions.
Affiliate Programs - Affiliate programs allow you to sell other people's products on your website and earn a commission on the sale. For example, a landscaper could link to a gardening supply house so his customers could purchase other items for their gardens. There are affiliate programs for almost every kind of product imaginable.
Mid-Level and High-End Storefronts
Mid-level and High-end store fronts are normally inappropriate for the small
and mid-sized business. They require that you host your website on a dedicated
server
where you have full administration privileges and a full-time network administrator.
Mid-level and High-end store fronts differ from entry-level storefront in
the following ways:
- Customization - mid-level storefront allow
a much greater amount of customization options such as customizing payment
and shipping options, whether to provide a final invoice or a confirmation
email, customizable templates and some even allow a programmer to create
custom functionality.
- Cost - mid-level solutions are typically
more expensive since the software is licensed and is usually hosted
in-house or on a dedicated server with a hosting company. But, a complete
mid-level
solution can be leased from a Commerce Service Provider (CSP).
- Independence - The merchant has a much
greater degree of control and flexibility with a mid-level solution.
- Administration, Reporting and Setup Tools -
mid-level storefronts allow user account management, importing and
exporting of product catalogs, the ability to setup up several stores
on the same
server, order tracking, site statistics reporting and inventory management.
- Greater variety of services available -
mid-level storefronts can support more additional features such as
banner ad management, integrate with different payment gateways, allow
bulk
emailing, provide shipping cost calculation and integrate with third
party shipping calculation services, as well as integrate with financial
planning and management software.
- Examples of mid-level storefront solutions are iHTML Merchant
and AbleCommerce.
- Examples of high-level storefronts are Open Market's e-Business Suite, Macromedia's Allaire Spectra and FairMarket's AuctionPlace