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Selling Online Using E-commerce Solution For Entrepreneurs

See full size imageEvery business big or small has jumped onto this bandwagon and the trend has no signs of slowing down. It means if you’re not into it – you’ll be left out at speed.

If you run a small business especially a one-man operation, e-commerce may sound totally intimidating. It’s true especially if your company doesn’t even have  website yet.

An e-commerce site demands a lot more involvement that of an ordinary website. It can be good if you start from having an usual website built for your company first and then move on to e-commerce one. This way you can learn the basics as you go along and then when you embark on e-commerce project, the whole thing will get more manageable. Well, it doesn’t have to follow this route if you like.

Important Elements In A Ecommerce System

  • Product catalog
  • Shopping cart
  • Payment processor
  • Shipping module
  • Customer relation
  • Reporting
  • Utilities such as data importer/exporter
  • SEO friendly
  • Back office (admin) system
  • Money-back guarantee
  • Point of Sales solution
  • Accounting/ERP System integration

Free or Paid Solutions?

Depends on:

  1. Your system requirements above
  2. Availability of excellent support (must have)

First of all paid system doesn’t mean it’s better than free or open source one and vice versa. Look at each system purely based on your needs and read a lot of reviews about each system you’re inclined to use. Read the comparison analysis between the systems too.

Support for the system is seriously a big factor. It may come free with the platform of your choice, payment-based or user community-based which is normally free.

If you require customization, look for availability of reliable and competent programmers.

Which Platform To Choose?

There are many types on offer in the order of complexity:

  • Hosted (Wazala, Shopify, BoxCart, Etsy, CoreCommerce)
  • Extensions to popular CMS (WP e-commerce, Shopp for WordPress, UberCart for Drupal)
  • Standalone system (PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento, osCommerce, ZenCart)
  • Custom built (hire your own developer)

The features, complexity and cost vary from one option to another. Doing your extensive homework will very likely help you having a system that functions as per your expectation or very close to it at least.

If you’re building an ecommerce site on your own, choose a system that you’re most comfortable with.

Summary

As you get involve with e-commerce project, you’ll notice that the subject is quite a large one and getting a single system to cover all your needs may prove difficult if not impossible. You may have to compromise by letting go some of less important features from your list.

This article serves as an introduction to the subject. More will follow in the coming articles which delve into specific topics in details.

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