E-commerce can be an effective way for you to attract new customers and cut your cost of sale. If you are a retailer, you can sell through an e-commerce store without the costs of premises and sales staff. A single e-commerce website can serve your entire target market, and even if your customers sometimes need face-to-face meetings, it enables them to make repeat purchases online.

Planning your e-commerce website

It is possible that your e-commerce needs can be met with one of the platforms that are readily available such as Amazon, Ebay or other auction websites. This can have cost benefits in that they are typically free to set up, but charge considerable fees on each transaction and “advert”.

Selling through others can be straightforward and inexpensive, but it won't give you the same flexibility as selling through your own website. Using e-commerce software - such as shopping cart software - to build an online store within your website can transform the way you sell. Alternatively you can look at building your own e-commerce store that can be customised to work how your business works and allows you greater flexibility moving forwards.

Before you build your online store, however, you will need to know

• How distance-selling laws will affect your operation (you may have to adapt your terms of trade, for example).
• What kind of payments you are going to accept and make arrangements for. To take credit cards online it is important that you think right from the beginning about which provider you will use for this, Paypal is the most popular choice in this area but your bank will also offer you this facility for a charge.
• That your e-commerce site has effective security protecting the site itself, payments and customer details.
• How your online shop will link with your product database and accounting systems, if at all. It is not essential that they link up as it allows you to control your products on your website more closely if you have to manage that as a separate system, however integration with many accounting systems is possible, and in some cases the website itself can serve many of those functions.
• How you will fulfil orders, for example will you ship by courier/Royal Mail or are your products electronically distributed?
• How you will keep product information up to date and quickly respond to customers who are trying to buy. Live website chat here can be a great addition.

Find out more about how cost effective an E-Commerce Website can be - call us today on 01538 750 538!

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