HOW TO BUILD AN ECOMMERCE WEBSITE

With the continued squeeze on the High Street and the online ecommerce spend continuing to grow, you cannot afford to be without a good ecommerce web site if you are in retail.
The question is where do you start with the bewildering range of ecommerce shopping carts and ecommerce solutions available? Whether you are looking for corporate website design and ecommerce, business to business ecommerce build and development, or more modest affordable e-commerce web site solutions, you still need to apply the ecommerce golden rules. A good web development company will be able to help with these questions and more. But first what do you need to know in order to set up a good ecommerce site?
The rules of successful ecommerce solutions
Ensure visitors can find you
Convert your visitors - give them what they want
Retain your customers - make them into repeat visitors
Integrate your ecommerce into your business
Finally, find a good ecommerce consultant to put it all into practice
Ensure visitors can find you
It all revolves around marketing both online and offline. Market yourself ruthlessly. Put your URL on all your stationery and promote it at every opportunity when you have client contact. In addition, you need to make sure your website is fully optimised for search engines and you undertake a search engine promotion strategy. Search engine optimisation involves researching the key phrases that your customers use to find your services and including them appropriately throughout your site. It also means ensuring you do not use technology that impedes search engines when they are indexing your site. Once your site has been listed, you will do well for some phrases and poorly for more competitive ones. In order to improve your search listings you need to get links to your pages under the key phrases you wish to be found under. Again, you need to get a good consultant to organise the creation of link building strategy.
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Convert your visitors
Once you have attracted visitors to your site, the next challenge is to get them to transact with you. The two principle rules here are; attract the visitors most likely to want your offerings, so less targeted traffic is better than a lot of generic traffic; and make it easy for them to engage with you, this means a site that has good usability and accessibility. Make sure the entire experience is a positive one even before they arrive at your site or before they know it exists. This starts with good site optimisation, so that when a visitor clicks on a link from a search engine the page they land on specifically meets their needs. It is compliant with all accessibility guidelines and is user friendly, meaning it is easy to use, downloads quickly, has punchy well written copy and guides visitors easily through the ecommerce process.
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Retain your customers
It may be a cliché but it's true, it's a lot easier to make money from existing customers than to get new ones. So you need to do all you can to not only retain your customers, but to get them to recruit new ones for you. A good ecommerce solution is an ideal way of increasing customer retention as you have a lot of information about them that you can use to your advantage. You have their purchase history, their level of spend, the types of items they like. You need to use this information to arrange your site in such a way as to encourage repeat visits and increase the level of spend on any given visit. You also need to use the information in database marketing campaigns, so you can automatically segment your customers and target them with offerings appropriate to their purchase history. A good ecommerce consultant and consultancy can help with this.
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Integrate your website into your business
It doesn't matter whether you just sell online or whether the ecommerce aspect is just a part of your overall business, good processes lie at the heart of any business including ecommerce. An ecommerce site gives you the opportunity of integrating a lot of your systems to make you more efficient and spend less time on the administrative aspects of running the business. For example, payments should be automated and then passed directly into your accounts system. Your stock control system should be tied into any warehousing system and ideally into your tills (if you have them) via an integrated EPOS system. You also need to be able to analyse your business effectively. You need good reporting applications top be able to query your website, to determine how people find you, and how they use your site. You also need to be able to determine what sells, what makes money, what causes problems, your most profitable customers etc. A good ecommerce consultancy will not just create you a site and wave goodbye. They will first spend time looking at your business model and advising how the ecommerce aspect can support and grow your existing business.
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Find a good ecommerce consultant
By coming to NVisage, you have already overcome the first hurdle of finding a good e-commerce solution provider. We have successfully developed our own e-commerce software, and are able to offer you the benefits of a major e-commerce site at a realistic price. Our experienced e-commerce web designers and developers have created online retail solutions for a wide variety of online retailers, including:
fashion retailers
book sales
clothing
jewellery
food
engineering products
home and bathroom products
gifts
flowers
tickets
In fact there is very little we cannot help you sell with our e-commerce solutions.
Get in touch to find out more about our complete packages of web site design, development, build and hosting solutions.
article source: www.nvisage.co.uk

E-Commerce - Perception versus Reality

Electronic commerce over the Internet is predicted to grow at an ever-increasing rate over the next few years, with on-line sales already heading for several billion. Yet, instant gratification is still the current perception of e-commerce on the Internet to the world at large. A profusion of web-sites announce, "Three steps to build your website" - "Use our Shopping Cart Wizard and be selling on the Internet in a few minutes" - "Free templates" - "Free Hosting" - "Complete web-sites 'Only $199' - "Four million e-mail addresses only $24.95" - "Search engine submissions to 2,000 search engines only $19.95". So, the myth is perpetuated.One would think the numerous Dot.com's that consumed millions of investment dollars to no avail on the flawed premise that "build it and they will come" would have blunted this perception but no. It persists. Supported by large commercial entities selling their version of Dot.com heaven in volume. The very latest in digital direct marketing. Display 'x' messages and 'y' viewers will buy. Good old-fashioned marketing math for deep pockets and an infrastructure plus investors that still support such an approach. And like digital lemmings other web-sites with smaller pockets blindly follow.Particularly in the building of e-commerce web sites, automation reigns. Each competing player offering fewer and fewer steps to build and establish an e-commerce presence using readily available templates. Be on-line and selling within "Minutes or Hours" is the cry.These automated efforts designed by programmers and technical gurus cheerfully suspend business reality. Corporate identities become blurred, merchandising fragmented, marketing messages distorted and expectations enhanced. In effect the perfect recipe for corporate disaster.The reality of e-commerce on the Internet is that it mimics business in the real world. The Internet is a different sales medium with direct sales and retail characteristics, yet it still requires strategic business planning, budgeting, clearly defined expectations and a realistic return on investment.A reality-based question must be asked. Would you expect to open a retail store overnight with little or no planning? Especially when the store came in only eight colours, five window display types, potentially insufficient shelf space and was located in a new sub-division, unknown, unfinished and unmapped. Mmm!.. No!So! Why suspend reality when choosing to conduct business on the Internet? Perhaps many business managers not fully understanding the technicalities of the Internet allow technical consultants with little business background to guide them.Why should an e-commerce website not be carefully integrated into any existing or future business with the same attention to detail that any other business operation would require?It is absolutely necessary that reality be enforced if companies wish to be successful utilizing this new business medium. As more businesses understand that the Internet is an extension of their marketing strategy and an effective business solution to increase revenues, reduce certain costs and increase bottom line profitability, current perceptions will more closely match reality.Remember! The technical considerations of conducting business on the Internet must support your business decisions not the reverse. Plan your business and then build your Internet operation to support that plan, budget and objective. Determine your consultant's business experience. Their perception could distort your reality.

article source : www.imscart.com

10 Easy Steps to a Horrible Ecommerce Site

As a frequent visitor to forums in which people ask for critiques of their new ecommerce sites, I have seen the best and the worst of small business Web development. For the first 1000 posts or so, I was helpful, kind, and supportive when gently pointing out each developer's site issues and how he or she could make the site "the best it could be".
Funny thing though: I found out that this approach doesn't really work. Maybe the developers think their sites are somehow different, or that the basic rules of good online commerce don't apply to them for some reason. Site after posted site, I see the same errors in judgment and design. The following 10 tips now represent my standard advice to every budding Website entrepreneur.
1. Use your Ecommerce Software's Default Layout
Whatever shopping cart you use, the "stock" or default look is fine. After all, if it wasn't the best layout of all time, why would they distribute it as "stock" in the first place? Never mind that your site will look like every other lazy shop owner who decided that product presentation was overrated. Never mind that it has no flow, coherence, or style. And you might as well just ignore the fact that it makes you look like some high school kid in a basement trying to take their money and run.
You lack design talent? We understand. After all, if you could make nice Websites, you wouldn't be trying to sell whatever it is you make online: you'd sell nice Websites instead. Sure, you could get a ready made, beautiful drop-in template from one of hundreds of sites that specialize in that sort of thing -- some of them even custom-made for your cart platform -- for less than $200.00. But hey, you picked a FREE cart, and darn it, this site is going to be free if it kills you (or your chances of success). Those people that say you have to spend money to make money are all full of garbage, right?
2. Don't use Thumbnails

Why would you want to speed up load times for slow connections, or make your product shots look better? Good looking images are the sign of professionalism and class, and you surely don't want your site to have either of those. Sure, successful shop owners say better images sell more products, but you don't have to listen to those people. After all, what does a successful shop owner know that you don't?
Forget the fact that every cart on the planet either has the ability to use thumbnail images built in, or a free and easy-to-install contribution that handles them beautifully. Keep posting 800k images to your site, and laugh at those people who talk about "site optimization" and "load times".
3. Don't optimize your Images in Photoshop
Optimizing your images in Photoshop or some other image editing program takes time -- your valuable time. Leaving pictures at their original, huge dimensions and making the customer download 3MB of images for each page in your site takes time too -- the pesky customers' time. Everybody knows customers love to wait to buy your products. Play a game! See how big you can make your images, watch how your load time suffers, and then see how your conversion rates fare!
Challenge yourself to approach dialup speeds over your cable modem using your stellar layered, uncompressed image design. I'm sure your customers will love it!
4. Don't smooth the Checkout Process
People love filling out 8 pages of forms before they can buy stuff. Better yet, add in a couple more pages to surprise the customer just when they think they're finally through! You really do need the customer's age, gender, and the name of his first-born son before you can sell him your hand-painted dishrags.
Whatever you do, make it as hard as you can for the customer to complete a sale and pay you money -- that's how you can tell if a customer is truly dedicated (or if they love pain).
5. Ignore the Market you're "Targeting"
Sure, there are 50,000 computer stores online, but yours is going to be the best! Market research is for people who don't know what they want to sell, right? You never researched for a term paper in high school and you passed. Why should an online business be any different? Don't invest time or money in unique products or services, and don't even think of developing some sort of unique selling proposition. Just bang out a site with the exact same products as your competition, only make yours more expensive, lesser known, and harder to deal with!
6. Don't add an SSL Certificate
All that junk about customers "Caring about their privacy" and being "Worried about identity theft" is unfounded. Just ask my friend "John" from Indonesia. Hey, by the way, he has $30,000,000.00 he wants to send you. He just needs your credit card number along with your name and billing address.
Never mind that SSL certificates enable the 128bit encrypted tunnel between customers' computers and your payment processor. All that stuff can just be sent plain text across the Internet. SSL certificates cost money, and you're on a budget. Sure, the customer can sue you after your Website is found responsible for their identity theft, but that's not very likely to happen. You treat your customers like they're dumb and their personally identifiable information is worthless, so they probably don't have the smarts to hire a lawyer to sue you all the way to the poor house. After all, $50 is a lot of money for security and peace of mind!
7. Don't add Terms of Use, Privacy, or Conditions of Sale Statements
Some might say that customers like to know who they are dealing with, but those people are full of it. Customers don't care about your return policies, what to do if they receive a broken product, or what to do if the size they ordered is wrong.
Likewise, they don't care what you're going to do with the personally identifiable information you collect. I know for a fact there are people who love SPAM mail: I received an email about it just the other day. Oddly enough, it had a link for cheap "V I AG RR A" in it too, whatever that is. Forget that mumbo jumbo about how providing privacy and terms of sale information is a legal requirement in most jurisdictions -- like I said, your customers are hardly going to get a lawyer! Everybody knows that people don't like to sue lazy, complacent companies for easy money, right?
8. Completely leave out Product Descriptions
All your customers need is a browser-resized, jagged picture of your product. They don't need to know its features, limitations, or comparisons to other products. Hey, if they knew all that, they'd probably go buy your competitor's widget right?
Don't describe your product at all. Be sure to use your own arbitrary part number scheme too, so customers can't search by the manufacturer's part number to find the products they already know they want to buy. Oh, and use some random picture for the product with a note at the bottom that says, "Picture is a demo, actual product may vary" so the customer never really knows what they're going to get.
9. Add Flash. Lots of it. Throw in some Java, too.
Flash intros rock. Add two of them, and make sure you don't put one of those annoying "skip intro" links at the bottom. Heck, if you did that, nobody would get the chance to experience your Uncle Joe's mediocre Flash skills. When you finally do let the three customers who are willing to sit through your tedious intros into your store, make sure you have a Flash product menu, a Flash header, and random Flash buttons all over the page. Page animations and moving text equate directly to quality and usability, and don't you ever forget it!
Now, if all that Flash doesn't slow your site down to a crawl, don't worry: you can always add Java. Sure, most professional developers and customers refer to Java as "That Damn Dirty Java", but your customers are different. Put random Java image switchers and scrollers on every page. Put that neat-o Java water ripple effect thingy on your homepage, because that wasn't old and tired enough in 1993. And make sure you require users to have Java installed, along with Flash, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, Comet Cursor, and goodness knows what else, in order to use your site properly. Maybe throw in an ActiveX dialler installer for good measure -- customers love to wait endlessly for compulsory ad-ware-laden downloads while trying to spend their money on your products!
10. Never post your Address or Phone Number
Customers never want to get a hold of you: that's why they buy online! Plus, if they have a complaint, they have no way of getting in touch with you other than email, and we all know how easy to ignore that is. Just think -- without them knowing who you are, where you are, or how to contact you, your customers can never send product returns, make complaints, or cause waves. It's brilliant! You can claim customer satisfaction is 100%, because nobody will ever be able to contact you to tell you otherwise.
Sure, this might put off about 90% of your potential customers, but don't let that stop you. That still leaves you 10% of the Internet, and trust me, the Internet sure is big. Make sure you ship your items from the shipping store or the post office so there is never a return address on the box. When the credit card company calls you about a chargeback, make sure you tell them the customer never called and complained, and you never received a return.

How Horrible is your Ecommerce Site?
While these "tips" were written in good humor, the above pointers cover serious advice that is not so much related to the technical nature of an ecommerce site as it is to product and company presentation.
Sometimes, the negative aspects of not taking certain actions have more impact than extolling the virtues of doing it right. This article is not designed to be a punch in the face to those diligent, passionate store owners who really care about the service they provide, but as more of a wake up call to future and existing shop owners and developers.
article source : www.sitepoint.com By Jason Chance

E-Commerce Is Changing the Face of IT

Companies that heavily invested in Internet technologies are having second thoughts. They are realizing that the IT structure must mesh with business goals and be flexible enough to launch applications in months, sometimes weeks. Traditional IT models that emphasize back-office functions, yearlong development cycles and a separation of tasks are outmoded.
Michael Earl and Bushra Khan of the London School of Business surveyed 24 companies engaged in e-commerce in the United States and United Kingdom and found that IT perceptions and practices are evolving rapidly. They also discovered marked differences in the way established brick-and-mortar companies, dot-com startups, and e-commerce boutique companies and spinoffs see the IT function.
Today, companies recognize that IT can make or break the business. The separation between IT and "the business" is disappearing. Past IT models that focused on engineering, best practices and disciplined processes have given way to an enhanced spirit of freedom.
Another shift relates to cost. Companies that once installed detailed IT cost metrics now perceive time, not cost, as the currency. The speed of decision making, applications development, design changes, implementation and technology adoption drives today's IT function.
Those changing perceptions manifest themselves in new practices. Short-term, rolling plans are replacing long-term strategies. Uniform technology platforms are ceding place to three-tier architecture: two tiers connected by middleware (for translating data messages between the two layers, for storing processing logic and data-handling subroutines, and for establishing a gateway between ephemeral systems and more-permanent ones).
A new-venture outlook is widespread — and an aggressive use of short time spans. Some companies reported that they would not undertake any project likely to last more than three months. Also, companies are simplifying project management — even eliminating the use of project managers.
Of those practices, rolling plans, new-venture development, three-tier architecture and multidisciplinary teams are key: the first two addressing faster development; the second two, the tensions between technological excellence and business value.
Michael Earl is a professor of information management and director of the Centre for the Network Economy at the London Business School. Bushra Khan is an IT-strategy consultant at Computer Sciences Corp., headquartered in El Segundo, California. Contact the authors at mearl@london.edu and bkhan@csc.com.

article source : www.sloanreview.mit.edu

Convert Visitors Into Shoppers With 3D Product View Pictures

What makes a visitor buy from an online store? There are several factors and the most important are the price tag, the accurate description, the professional look, the trust and the customer support. However, online store owners know that they need to invest in design, to build trust through various means, to offer responsive customer support and to lower their prices in order to gain a customer. What most of them don't know yet is how to offer the best description for what they sell and grab visitor's attention right from the first moment.
Of course, you too have all the technical data, the manufacturer PDF files, the standard still pictures but it's not enough. These things are all over the Internet. You need a "hook" to keep your visitors on the site and to get them in the "buying mood". It is a proven fact that more time spent on a site means more page views. More page views mean more sales and once you made a customer happy it will come back again and again to your shop. Fortunately there is a way which can increase your sales and at the same time this feature is the most underused in online shops giving you the upper hand: 3D product view pictures. According to several retail experts it has numerous advantages over standard product photography and its price is competing with good still photos.
The main advantage is that a well built 3d product picture will present all the details of a product much better than any regular photo. Many people and probably you too thought at some point "I'm not convinced by this picture. I'd better go to a regular brick-an-mortar store to see it for real". In the online world 3d rotating images are the closest match to reality and they have the power to stop visitors going to regular shops. Another great advantage is that due to the fact that presents a product so well you'll see less returning orders. And let's not forget the brand awareness it can provide for your products and store.
Why isn't everyone using it? The main reason is that until 2-3 years ago the connection speed was low and a flash object could take some time for loading but now this shouldn't be a problem anymore. Is it expensive? It depends mostly on how many 3d pictures you need and what kind of products you are selling. If you are selling paper clips it is expensive and you'll need to sell a lot of them to recover your investment but if you are selling jewellery, gifts, consumer electronics, computer hardware, toys, housewares, sports equipment, health and beauty products, etc. you should definitely use 3d product pictures because you only need few sales to get the investment back. Is it hard to implement in a site? Not, not at all, it's just like inserting an image or a flash animation and the 3d product viewer can be easily customized to include your logo and brand colors.
Find out more about 3D product view pictures at 3DRev.com. Increase your online sales using 3D product rotation photography
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adrian_Radulescu

Ecommerce Tips - Basics of Ecommerce Web Design and Hosting

Ecommerce is the way to go. E commerce web design and web hosting steps are quite similar to what obtains in designing a website for other purposes. However, for ecommerce web design and web hosting, you will need design features such as word processors for editing your website. Shopping card stores as well as retail pricing can be designed with word processors, so also are other features such as credit card acceptance and invoice creation. You will also need to design photo galleries, guest books and online calendars, calculators and shipping information for all products and services purchased on your website. Technical aspects of ecommerce website hosting and design can be given to a professional at no extra cost. If you compare the financial gains you tend to make with the money you spend on running your website, you will discover that it is worth the trouble and hardworking.
Search engine Optimization and marketing
After designing and hosting your ecommerce website, you need to engage yourself in search engine optimization and aggressive marketing of your website. You must ensure that you use a search engine placement system that will allow a global access to your website. Every page and product of your website must be displayed in search engines' map system. You need to seek information and advises on getting a Google AdWords pay-per-click advertising mechanism for instance and other forms of placing classified adverts on some other affiliate websites. If you can do all these, then your ecommerce website design is complete.
Fabian Tan is a well-known Internet Marketing expert and the author of the popular 45-page Report:
"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"
Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your FREE copy now!
Also, quickly download his FREE "Explosive Traffic System" report that shows you how to generate 10,000+ visitors per month at no cost! => http://www.ExplosiveTrafficSystem.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Fabian_Tan

Ecommerce - The Pros and Cons

It's not a surprise that business from all across the board in New York City, corporate to local shops, have been shifting from physical sales to digital purchasing of their products or services. More and more people are simply 'Googling' the products that they want to find online and clicking on the first online shops that the see above the fold.
This form of selling and marketing has proven to be truly effective on large and small scales for any kind of business. Ecommerce; defined as online shopping, selling, and business, has swept the world as the emerging dominant form of sales and there are many reason; especially in places like New York City where people don't have time necessarily to physically visit all of the stores they see in newspaper ads, magazines, and commercials. Yet like everything, Ecommerce can quickly become a double edged sword with both advantages and drawbacks.
With everyone shopping online in New York, businesses are shifting their products to online shopping carts; many of this digital entrepreneurs are quickly swayed by the advantages of ecommerce. These advantages include things like:
Being able to sell products 24/7 and make money while asleep.
Being able to appeal to a wider audience not limited by the physical. What this means is that people don't have to live in the same city or state to buy your products
The ability to use ecommerce as a marketing tool to a businesses name out into the world to drive more sales and game to a company or business.
Speed. Much to my personal dismay, computers seem to not only be able to think faster than humans, but they can sell products faster tool.
Effort. Much of the effort of having to ring up a customer, fill out their information, and serve the customer are stripped away and essentially put on the customer themselves. This is also known as self service.
All of these advantages however seem to cover up the most apparent disadvantages despite their over-reaching repercussions. Drawbacks such as the ones listed below could destroy a business if they ever occurred.
100% online businesses rely on platforms, servers, and technology that can crash at any point in time rendering the business useless.
Online sales completely take away the personality that you get from human interaction. These human interactions sometimes drive sales up and open new leads
Lawsuits. Ecommerce websites are vulnerable (no matter what people say) to hacking and digital theft which will leave you and your business wide open for lawsuits if any of your customers suspect this happened because of purchasing something through your website.
The disadvantages could go on for pages, but those three should get across the point that ecommerce web design can be a tricky business for some people. Yet New York consumers and retailers don't seem to pay any attention to the disadvantages and continue to shop and sell online.

www.ezinearticles.com By Fred McCoy

Review Procedures For Potentially Fraudulent ECommerce Transactions

Merchants operating in high-risk card-not-present industries, such as the eCommerce, mail order and telephone order (MO/TO), need to set up internal procedures for sorting out transactions with high potential for being fraudulent. Once merchants identify that certain transactions are suspicious, they need to have established cost-effective thresholds for determining which transactions to review. Reviewing all transactions manually is both time-consuming and costly and is generally justified only for high-risk transactions. To ensure that your transaction review costs remain lower than the potential losses from suspect transactions, you should consider implementing the following procedures:
Implement card-not-present transaction screening that lets you avoid the manual reviews of low-risk transactions. Criteria that you can use in your transaction screening procedures can include:
Low transaction amounts. If the cost of reviewing the suspicious transaction equals or is not much lower than the transaction amount itself, it does not make much sense to subject it to a review.
Repeat customers that have a good record for at least the past 90 days and merchandise has been shipped to their address before. Even if the transaction displays certain high-risk characteristics, the customer's good history serves as a proof that he or she can be trusted.
An Address Verification Service (AVS) match and a shipping address that is the same as the billing address, in addition to a purchase amount that is below the established dollar threshold.
Make sure that all transactions that display high-risk characteristics are declined or routed for fraud review. Such transactions should include:
Transactions that match information in your internal negative file.
Transactions from international IP addresses.
International billing or shipping addresses.
by Joe Cole www.ezinearticles.com

Government regulations & Forms of E-commerce

Government regulations
In the United States, some electronic commerce activities are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These activities include the use of commercial e-mails, online advertising and consumer privacy. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 establishes national standards for direct marketing over e-mail. The Federal Trade Commission Act regulates all forms of advertising, including online advertising, and states that advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive.[4] Using its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices, the FTC has brought a number of cases to enforce the promises in corporate privacy statements, including promises about the security of consumers’ personal information.[5] As result, any corporate privacy policy related to e-commerce activity may be subject to enforcement by the FTC.

Forms
Contemporary electronic commerce involves everything from ordering "digital" content for immediate online consumption, to ordering conventional goods and services, to "meta" services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce.
On the consumer level, electronic commerce is mostly conducted on the World Wide Web. An individual can go online to purchase anything from books, grocery to expensive items like real estate. Another example will be online banking like online bill payments, buying stocks, transferring funds from one account to another, and initiating wire payment to another country. All these activities can be done with a few keystrokes on the keyboard.
On the institutional level, big corporations and financial institutions use the internet to exchange financial data to facilitate domestic and international business. Data integrity and security are very hot and pressing issues for electronic commerce these days.

www.wikipedia.org

Social commerce & Social shopping

Social commerce is a subset of Electronic commerce in which the active participation of customers and their personal relationships are at the forefront. The main element is the involvement of a customer in the marketing of products being sold. e.g. recommendations and comments from customers. This happens for example when customers publish weblogs with their shopping lists. The term was first introduced by David Beisel[1] and then picked up on by Steve Rubel,[2] and originally referred primarily to sites such as Yahoo!'s shoposphere, and Shopit, where the social component is primarily recommendation and review.
However, the term has been expanded to include a variety of collaborative commerce activities, where the social participation may extend beyond recommendation to collaborative purchasing, such as BountyUp, or fundraising (ChipIn, Crowdfunder, Causes on Facebook).
Social commerce can be correlated with Search Engine Optimization as a way to build inbound links and generate user content, all of which are tools to improve a website's search results on a given search engine such as Google.Social shopping is a method of e-commerce and of traditional shopping in which consumers shop in a social networking environment similar to MySpace. Using the wisdom of crowds, users communicate and aggregate information about products, prices, and deals. Many sites allow users to create custom shopping lists and share them with friends.[1]. Others concentrate on the user interactions consisting information and recommendations that are hard to acquire from the actual sales personnel. Some services even allow users to shop together synchronously to complete the social environment Social shopping sites can generate revenue not only from advertising and click throughs, but also by sharing information about their users with retailers.
Social shopping can also exist in the real-world even beside the obvious changing of consumer stories with people one knows. For example, when you walk into a dressing room, the mirror reflects your image, but you also see images of the apparel item and celebrities wearing it on an interactive display. A webcam also projects an image of the consumer wearing the item on the website for everyone to see. This creates an interaction between the consumers inside the store and their social network outside the store. The technology behind this system uses RFID[2].
Examples of social shopping sites include Yelp and Kaboodle. Examples of social shopping applications inside of Facebook include StyleFeeder. Business aspects of social shopping are still to be proven, although several companies have managed to publish their services and gather masses of users.

Social shopping is a method of e-commerce and of traditional shopping in which consumers shop in a social networking environment similar to MySpace. Using the wisdom of crowds, users communicate and aggregate information about products, prices, and deals. Many sites allow users to create custom shopping lists and share them with friends.[1]. Others concentrate on the user interactions consisting information and recommendations that are hard to acquire from the actual sales personnel. Some services even allow users to shop together synchronously to complete the social environment Social shopping sites can generate revenue not only from advertising and click throughs, but also by sharing information about their users with retailers.
Social shopping can also exist in the real-world even beside the obvious changing of consumer stories with people one knows. For example, when you walk into a dressing room, the mirror reflects your image, but you also see images of the apparel item and celebrities wearing it on an interactive display. A webcam also projects an image of the consumer wearing the item on the website for everyone to see. This creates an interaction between the consumers inside the store and their social network outside the store. The technology behind this system uses RFID[2].
Examples of social shopping sites include Yelp and Kaboodle. Examples of social shopping applications inside of Facebook include StyleFeeder. Business aspects of social shopping are still to be proven, although several companies have managed to publish their services and gather masses of users.

www.wikipedia.org

Early development

The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.
Perhaps it is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office, or maybe not.The earliest example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the Boston Computer Exchange, a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982. The first online information marketplace, including online consulting, was likely the American Information Exchange, another pre-Internet online system introduced in 1991.
Although the Internet became popular worldwide in 1994, it took about five years to introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet. And by the end of 2000, a lot of European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word "ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.
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How do you implement an e-commerce application

There are several ways in which to implement an e-commerce application. Consider the following.
Out of the Box / Server-Based Out-of-the-box is an ideal that eliminates, or at least reduces time consuming and complex e-commerce site building, by providing all of the various functions of an e-commerce solution from one source. Out-of-the-box is an “instant” low price solution requiring minimal IT recourses for implementation and operation. It is has a “Lego” mentality by shielding the user from heavily involved technical programming and scripting etc, simply by assembling the various software components into an established framework. This is done using a GUI interface, where the developer moves the software objects around analogous to the child with Lego bricks, snapping them into place, and building a functional entity.
Microsoft’s Commerce Server 2000 provides a comprehensive set of features to let developers quickly build scalable, user-centric, business-to-consumer and business-to-business e-commerce sites. Commerce Server 2000 offers robust and easy-to-implement functionality that makes it the ideal solution for building e-commerce applications. Its features include the following:
Development Tools - Commerce Server 2000 gives developers the power to quickly build and deploy effective e-commerce sites. Developers get a fast start with a choice of two starter applications that provide comprehensive e-commerce functionality. - Personalisation, merchandising, catalogue search, customer service, and business analytics. - Secure user authentication and group access permissions, purchase order and requisition handling. - Built-in, online auction capabilities. - Speed up and simplify development efforts with code samples and in-depth documentation.
Administrative Tools - simplify and centralise administrative tasks such as site configuration, deployment, operations and maintenance, reducing cost of ownership, and increasing application availability.
Partners – Microsoft in partnership with independent software vendors, ensure the highest availability and quality possible for solutions, including credit card validation, taxation, shipping and handling and content management.
Profile System - helps you manage information about millions of users and groups of users. In addition, it establishes secure authentication of site to ensure users have access to authorised areas of your site. You also serve users custom content, such as special pricing or products, based on the user's profile.
Targeting System - enables one-to-one marketing, determining the most appropriate content (ads, discounts, up-sells, cross-sells, catalogue data, and more) to provide to a given user in a given context, based on explicit user preferences. There are many more features in Commerce Server 2000. For more information, visit Microsoft’s web site at http://www.microsoft.com/commerceserver/default.asp The price of this solution is around £6000 with the same being paid again for each licence required. Licensing is calculated on a per per-CPU basis. In other words, if the server machine running Commerce 2000 has 4 CPUs, then expect to pay £24000 for your solution!
article source: www.ecommercetechnology.org

What do you know about E-Commerce

E-Commerce is a massive growth area, were colossal sums of money are being made and spent every day. This is largely to do with the hype of the Internet and on-line shopping. The Internet is growing exponentially, and will continue to grow for some time to come. This, coupled with good advertising, can provide a solid foundation from which to launch a stake in the Internet and e-commerce boom.
E-commerce is big business. The fact that people want it is probably the biggest lure for companies to jump onto the bandwagon, but there are other factors, making e-commerce a good sense solution.
- Lower transaction costs. If the site is implemented well, the web can significantly lower order taking costs and customer service costs after the sale by automated processes.
- Variety for shoppers: It gives people the opportunity to shop in different ways.
- The ability to build an order over several days
- The ability to configure products and see actual prices
- The ability to compare prices between multiple vendors
- The ability to search large catalogues easily
- Larger catalogues: On the web, a company can display their entire range. If they were to print a glossy catalogue to do the same job, it would be too big. E.G. Amazon sells 3 million books. Imagine trying to fit all their available books into a paper catalogue. The Web cuts out printing cost and distribution.
- Global availability: Anyone with an Internet connection, in any part of the world can access online services, without costing the company a penny, over and above the marketing costs. This ubiquitous presence is far greater reaching than a catalogue drop.
- New business model: E-commerce allows people to create completely new business models. A mail order company has high costs for staff and catalogue printing & distribution. However in e-commerce these costs fall practically to zero.
article source: www.ecommercetechnology.org