Planning for e-commerce

The key tool for delivering e-commerce services is your business website. This

must be specified, designed, hosted and maintained.

 

Specification

The website specification should clearly identify what the site is trying to achieve

and how its various components will contribute to this. An understanding of the

intended user audience is required for both technical and marketing purposes.

At this point is is a good ideas to see exactly what your successful competitors are

doing online

 

Domain name

Domain names are an enormous help in the branding of a business. Your domain

name should be easy to remember and spell, and should show what your

business is all about. If not, then potential customers will surf elsewhere and

possibly find your competition.

Check if the domain name you are planning to use has already been taken at the

Nominet website.

There is an increasing trend for people type your domain name into a search engine

such as Goggle to get to your site rather than typing the domain directly into

their web browser.  

 

Website hosting

If you purchase a domain name you can either host your own website or have an

internet service provider (ISP) host it on your behalf. If you choose to host the

website yourself, you will require a fast internet connection, a suitable server

and the provision of technical support. However (not recommended), ISP hosting

 is relatively cheap and straightforward and is the most preferred option for most

businesses. Or advise is to use a hosting company that specialise in e-commerce

hosting. The hosting is your online bricks and mortar and if potential customer cannot

access your site they will go to your competitors.  

The type of internet connectivity and the available bandwidth will be an

important consideration, irrespective of which hosting solution is selected. Most

businesses choose some form of broadband connection. Without broadband it would be very difficult to run an e-commerce business and not recommended.

 

Software options

An important early decision to consider is whether to use a 'shop' package or

build the software from scratch.

Shop packages allow you to configure product information and the look and feel

of the shop. However, be carful consideration needs to be made re there ability

to fit in with your back office processes.

The key here is to use a tried and tested product take you can see lots of other

e-commerce businesses using.