Best Practices: E-Business and Online Marketing

E-commerce Considerations

So you want to sell online? Here are some of the steps you'll need to take to conduct business transactions on the Internet:

• Picking a business model that works. Among the most common are selling physical, shippable products; professional services; business or consumer information; and/or attracting advertising revenues by delivering free information.
• Choosing a domain name. Keep it simple and easy to remember and register it with a reputable domain registrar.
• Setting up a merchant account and choosing a credit card clearing service so you can handle credit card transactions.
• Take care in designing the web pages that handle check-out and order confirmation. Templates that include these processes have been developed by many software companies and services providers and can be dropped in, saving you the time and effort of designing these features yourself.
• Deciding how much of your e-commerce to outsource. Doing it all yourself lets you develop lots of customized features and capabilities, but you'll pay plenty for the expertise. Many registration site service firms and telecommunications firms have developed e-commerce ordering pages which are available for the sites they host.
• Earning the trust of your customers. Internet scams, email phishing, and identity theft are big problems that undermine confidence in all online activities, so you'll need to make sure your site is secure and be able to prove it to your customers. Develop and publish a customerfriendly privacy policy and use certified encryption for all online transactions.