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ALL AT ONE STEP- CREATIVE E-COMMERCE MALL -
TURNKEY SOLUTION
Let's take a look at what you need. From your requirements, it is clear that
the main objective of you going online is to spread your customer base. We
suggest a phased development here. It is important that you get your feet wet,
know what it is to serve customers online.
Phase I would be to hit the ground running. This would
essentially be a catalog site where visitors get to see the products you have to
offer.
Phase II would get you moving to actually selling
online.
Phase III would involve getting aggressive with
building traffic on to the site.
Phase I
We suggest that you
start with a basic catalogue site and get the ball rolling. The primary
objective of this site would be to establish an online presence and increase the
exposure of your business. The site would help visitors know the merchandise you
have to offer. The visitors can sit at the comfort of their home and know what's
available and at what price..
 .
1.1 What are the necessary features that your site
would require?
Catalog
 You as the merchant need to enter information
about your merchandise. The catalog module allows you to enter this information.
You could also upload pictures for each product. The merchant can enter
information like the name of the product, product code, price, quantity, etc. We
suggest that you organize products in three-layer hierarchy. Category »
sub-category » product. This would help visitors find the product using a drill
down approach.
You might have this information already in a spreadsheet format. We would
provide the facility to download information from a spreadsheet.
The visitor needs an interface to browse the products. The Catalog module
provides this functionality as well. We can either suggest a suitable interface
for your website or if you have any sample design that you would like to
replicate, we can recreate the same for you. We can integrate all the images
that will represent your product range. These images will be edited and then
integrated to look good on the site. In phase I, we suggest that you stick to
basic hierarchy-based product listing.
This would be the most essential component for the site. This would allow you
to upload information on the site and will allow visitors to browse the
catalog.
Customer interaction features
The Customer
continues to be the key even in an online business. We suggest a couple of
initiatives to keep in touch with your customer and give the customer a
personalized interaction.
a. An email link on the site for the customer to enquire about some
product
b. Allow visitors to subscribe to a newsletter.
1.2 Before you start
What do you need before
you start?
Domain name
Registering and owning a
domain name is an essential branding strategy. The domain name should be catchy
and easy to remember.
Server and hosting
You would need a
hosting provider to provide these services. For phase I, we would suggest a
shared server which supports server-side scripting and a database.
Product information
This is going to be
a major exercise. You would need to collect all information in one place. You
would need to collect or take photographs and scan them.
1.3 After launch
1.3.1 Maintaining the catalog
It's important
that the catalog is kept up to date.
Remember that the online customer has a number of options available and her
attention span is not much either. The slightest inconsistency or error on the
site can assure you that she would be visiting your competitor's site very
soon.
1.3.2 Customer support
It is important
to respond to a visitor's query through email. Visitors who browse the net are
usually comfortable shooting an email and they expect a quick reply. Make sure
that you have one person who is completely responsible for responding to email
queries.
A Newsletter is another way to keep the customer in touch. We suggest that
you make the efforts in generating fresh, updated and relevant information and
incorporate it in a well-designed newsletter. Although, this might take time and
require setting aside a dedicated resource to work on this regularly, it is
worth the effort and time.
Phase II
2.1 Components
Catalog and inventory
management
This phase involves customers buying products
online. So it is essential to have an inventory management module attached to
the catalog module. Inventory management module would help you - the merchant,
know when to replenish your products and it will help customers know what is in
stock.
Shopping
cart
A Shopping cart is where the visitor collects and
records purchasing decisions. Research shows that a majority of shoppers leave
the site after adding products to the shopping cart. It is essential that the
shopping cart addresses some key issues that visitors might have. The most
important aspect is to have complete information available to the user. The
moment the visitor feels the slightest doubt; she will jump to the next site. It
is therefore very important to make the buying and selecting process easy enough
for the visitor so that she comes back a second time. Some key information to be
made available to the user would be shipping charges and tax. An invoice with
the order number should also be available for the visitor to save or print.
Read more about
our e-store packages here.
Payment
This component
allows you to receive money online. We propose to tie up with a payment gateway
service. The gateway service usually gives you an interface to monitor
transactions happening on your site.
We suggest that you also look at alternate payment options like Paypal.
Shipping
The online
model would work only if you can fulfill the order. Customers expect shipping to
happen seamlessly once they finish the transaction on the site. We propose to
use third-party-service providers to supply shipping rates online depending on
the vendor, source, destination and kind of service. Companies like FedEx and
UPS give the facility to track shipments online once they are shipped.
Statistics
The
advantage with the online model is that statistics are easily available. Of
course, we need to plan and study the market and target audience before we
launch the site. It is very useful to see what people are purchasing, how often
they are purchasing it, etc. We suggest that you tie up with a
third-party-service provider in order to help analyse the traffic on your site.
The data we collect would be useful for our next phase.
2.2
Before you start
Merchant account
You need a
merchant account to receive payment online.
There are few prerequisites for obtaining a merchant account. Some of them
are listed below.
- It would be helpful to have the website ready and the fact that you are
selling things online made obvious on the site.
- Make the price of the products clearly available online
- Indicate the return policy
- Describe the shipping policy
- Address and phone number should be easy to find.
- Make available proof of your identity and proof that your business is legal
- Make known the measures taken for security like SSL.
Payment gateway
You need to sign up with a
payment gateway service to actually enable transactions. Some of the payment
gateways are Linkpoint and Verisign.
Server and
hosting
We suggest a virtual server for this phase. If
the traffic builds up, we can move it to a dedicated server at a later date. We
will need server side-scripting and database capabilities on the server.
Since we are dealing with credit card transactions, a minimum requirement is
to have a secure server. Here again we need to purchase these security features
from someone like Verisign or Thawte. Usually the hosting company would have a
tie up to provide you with a security server.
2.3 After
launch
Inventory
It is important to
keep watch on the inventory. You as the merchant will have to make sure the
online store is always well-stocked. Read on more for further information on
inventory management.
Shipping
It is
possible to handle shipping on your own. But we would suggest that you evaluate
companies who specialize in fulfilling orders. They are better equipped to
handle this job. You will need an interface to monitor and update the shipping
status.
Support
You now have a
store, which is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is important to have
quality customer support that will ensure that you retain all the customers who
visit your site. You could possibly limit the support hours to business hours in
the US, but increasingly, with customers coming onto your site from the rest of
the world, they expect real people to respond to queries in real-time.
We suggest that you offer email and chat support features on the site. If you
are interested in outsourcing your web site support and maintenance work, we
have a Customer Care team that excels in this kind of work. Click here for more
information.
Statistics
The online model has the
advantage of storing all kinds of data. We suggest integrating a third party
solution to get data like -
- How many unique visits are you getting per month? Is the number increasing
or decreasing?
- What products are people looking at most? And what are they looking at the
least?
- Which site are the visitors coming from?
- Which page is used most by visitors coming to your site?
- At which page do visitors leave your site?
- Through what pages are most of your visitors leaving your site?
- What are the search items people are entering into the search engines to
find you?
- What is the percentage of people using different web browsers and different
resolutions while visiting your site The statistical data helps us to
continually improve the site for a better user experience.
Phase III
Now that you have
the back-end firmly in place, it's time to go aggressive on getting traffic to
the site.
3.1 Components
Affiliate
marketing
 A common and effective method of getting the right kind of
traffic onto your site is through affiliate marketing. This is a proven method
of building traffic to your site and making sure that you pay only for results.
This would involve your affiliates marketing your products and bringing traffic
to your site while all transactions happen at your site.
Purchases made through affiliates are tracked. Both you and the affiliate
would have an interface to view how each of them are doing and how much
commission ought to be paid to them.
To understand how we can help you promote your site on the search engines
through the use of relevant keywords and key phrases, read on for more
information here.
Auctions
For those
special pieces, an auction is a good option. This would help build a lot of
traffic to the site.
Other business
models
The internet continues to throw up new business
models. We would encourage you to keep thinking of newer and better ways to
sell.
3.2 Before you start
It is
essential that the models you have in mind be clearly put down on paper. We
would not advise working on newer models unless sufficient thought has gone to
it.
3.3 After launch
More
monitoring. The statistics we propose to implement can be used again. For every
new model deployed we suggest that you can keep an eye on the visitors. Track
and understand visitor behavior on your web site and use this information to
make strategic decisions about your web site. | 
Creative Web Mall (India) Pvt. Ltd.