Elements of an E-commerce site.
Ecommerce application.
At the heart of an ecommerce website is the shopping cart application. The ecommerce application is typically written in a server sided language with the data, such as product details, customer orders and details being held within a database.
The ecommerce application typically has two parts.
- The shop front. The website visitors to the store see. For many ecommerce applications this incorporates a catalog of products, a shopping cart to select goods for purchase and a checkout section where shipping costs are calculated and customers can pay for their order. This may also include a customer login section where customers can view their order history, opt in or out of newsletters, etc.
- The administration backend. The section of the website that the staff of the shop use to administrate orders and update content such as product details, prices and quantities.
Hosting solution.
The ecommerce application needs to be hosted on a web server. (A computer set up on the internet setup to supply documents to users). For most small businesses a hosting company is used to provide this service and a shared server is used to host their website. Usually the cost of using a dedicated server from a hosting company or setting up your own dedicated server on the internet can be costly and reserved for large scale websites.
In selecting a hosting solution for an ecommerce package the following needs to be considered:
- Server sided language and databases need to match the requirements of the ecommerce application.
- Payment services that you use may dictate specific requirements of the hosting solution used such as a dedicated ip address.
- Security. This takes up a number of parts.
- SSL. Security certificates used in the secure socket layer that encrypts information passed from the user and server.
- If handling more sensitive data such as storing customer credit card details then additional security measures need consideration, such as storing such data as encrypted.
- Security of the server. The physical and administration practices of the hosting provider.
- Data backups. Website data should routinely be backed up and these backups need to be treated with appropriate measures of security.
- Reliability and availability. Users must be able to visit the website. If the server hosting the website fails the site is unavailable and those users go elsewhere. If the website has low reliability and is slow to load then users will go elsewhere.
Payment Services.
The e-commerce application usually requires an interface or gateway with a payment solution to complete an on-line order. Payment services such as PayPal, Google Checkout, Worldpay, Sagepay etc are web services that allow the e-commerce application to pass a payment to and from the service. To use a payment service the e-commerce application must have an option to use the payment service of your choice, else you will need to change your payment service choice or pay a developer to write an interface for you.
The more seamless the use of the payment service is in the e-commerce website the greater the user experience, but usually this also requires greater resources such as costs and time in selecting solutions. For many e-commerce websites there is no need to store a users credit card details. Storing user financial details such as credit cards increases the security needs of a website and increases the potential threat from hackers and attacks.
Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statements.
You need to clearly display both the terms and conditions and your privacy policy. Both of these need to be in-line with current legislative laws.
Accessibility.
All websites need to show consideration regarding accessibility. Although rarely tested most accessibility legislation include websites as a service and subject to comply with such legislation.
Advertising and Marketing.
Before a user can place an order on an ecommerce site they have to find the site. Usually this is done from results returned by a search engine, either as a sponsored link or as the organic results returned.
Spending budgets for advertising need to be set and adhered to, usually on a weekly or monthly basis. Budgets need to be realistic, if one of your adverts is clicked on 10 times a day that costs you a GBP0.50 a click, and that you get 1 sale a day from, then this total cost needs to be considered. There are many companies claiming to get you on page one, and in all fairness they can for very obscure words or phrases or for excessive pay per click fees, but these are rarely long term financially sustainable solutions that yield real results in profitable sales. You may come across terms as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), wesite optimization, link generating, backlinking, sponsored links, etc all that are techniques and concepts to increase traffic to your website.
However the bases of getting your ecommerce site ranked in the search engines begins with the ecommerce application. The pages generated by the ecommerce application need to be search engine friendly. The content that you create into your application must be relevant and focused on your business keywords and phrases. And the pages generated by the application must load quickly to avoid the search engine spiders moving on without indexing.
Links you may be interested in.
Wadiam. So you need an ecommerce site!
Wadiam Tips for starting a website