Not everyone is prepared for a large e-commerce website development project.  Done right, a shopping cart driven website can be rewarding for a business, but it is also an involved project and it requires some comfort with the idea of managing orders online.

In other cases, a company may produce too many special order kinds of products to be able to offer a predetermined, fixed price item on a website.  Or maybe there are a vast number of special questions they need to ask the customer to get their order just right.

Along comes the order request form.

What I mean by this is basically a simple online email form, but it is tailored with the shopper in mind.  It asks specific questions or pieces of criteria that will help the merchant streamline that order-building process.  What size do you prefer?  What day do you want to make an appointment to look at samples?  How many batches would you like?

A simple order request form does not accept any payment.  It is a preliminary step to gather enough information to allow someone at the business to put together an appropriate order and contact the customer to pay offline once the final balance has been determined (or through a separate system).

It is also possible to create more sophisticated forms that do accept payment.

Some website owners will insert a two-step process that is not directly attached to the form.  For example, after you fill out the initial form, you get a “thank you for your request” page with a PayPal button.  The disadvantage with this set up is that the PayPal button is not directly linked with that form, so the payment is not as easily tracked, and it does not affect the success of the order fulfillment since they are submitted completely independent of each other.

A step further from this is a truly integrated payment gateway, working together with the form code.  This requires a little more sophisticated programming assistance, but popular gateway services like Authorize.net make it fairly easy for a web developer to achieve these days.  With Authorize.net’s “hosted order form” option, using the SIM (simple integration method), you can create a very basic request form on your own site, followed by the payment form on the credit card service provider’s site.

Setting up a payment form in this way is usually helpful for service-based businesses, because it allows their customer to enter a custom order amount (for varied invoices), and the cost of the credit card gateway service and programming needed to integrate it is reasonably low.

When you have an e-commerce site, you have ample opportunities to re-market to your customer base.  Maybe you didn’t know it, but there are several of these opportunities right at your finger tips.

1. Product reminders.

Some shopping carts come equipped with this feature, such as Zen Cart.  After the checkout process is complete, the confirmation page can display a “would you like to receive update about this product?”  If the user selects yes, they are subscribed to a basic newsletter or email reminder system that sends them an alert when you update the price or information on that product.

This is especially great for products that fit that high volume benefit – or that come in different sizes and colors.  Maybe I bought the red scarf and if I get a product reminder that the scarf just reduced in price, I will come back and buy the blue one, too.

2. Thank you deals.

Ever have one of those moments when you come back from a shopping trip with your new shirt and as you are unpacking it you think, Man, I should have bought those earrings, too….?  Give your customers a little incentive right after their purchase, and help satisfy that left over craving for your product.

Staple a coupon to their receipt, drop a coupon in their email box, or display a simple discount offer on the thank you page of your website’s checkout confirmation page.  (Thanks for your order!  Use this coupon code next time you shop with us….)  WEBii has been practicing this for many years on it’s web hosting order pages; the final “thank you” page ends with a 10% coupon toward their next account.  Sometimes customers hang onto this and think about that other website they have been planning to start up; they prompt themselves to order web hosting just a little sooner than they might have.

3. Referral programs.

The best compliment your customer can give you is the referral of another customer.  And they probably already do that, right?  But wouldn’t it be nice if everyone else – even someone who hasn’t purchased from you directly in a while – was referring people to your website and your business?

I am a believer of tapping your current customer base.  A great way to do this (and simple) is to drop a referral incentive in their shipment (if you are shipping physical product to them).  If you aren’t shipping anything, try this in your receipt emails.  A simple straight-forward program like “Refer a friend and get a $10 gift card”.  Who wouldn’t like ten bucks?  Set some basic rules, like the gift card is awarded after their friend makes an actual purchase.  Maybe you have other rules, but try to keep it simple (easy is key).

You could run the same kind of program with “outsiders” also – people who are not in your active customer database.  Just invite them to fill out an email form (again, very simple with few fields) to sign up for the free program.

Another route is joining an established affiliate program service, such as Commission Junction.  These types of programs are web-based and manage a network of various company affiliate programs that pay small commissions for referred business.  Companies can go through a review process to offer a program and individuals can sign up to become an affiliate and market those businesses.  The affiliate’s benefit is basically generating cash by sending traffic to your website that result in sales.  There are thousands of these types of programs, so you are in a sort of competition to gain affiliates, but depending on the gain your business receives from a few new purchases, it could be well worth the effort.

4. Sister company offers.

Do you have a related supplemental service or business that compliments your customer?

Instead of offering a coupon toward a purchase on your primary website, try offering a reward for trying out the new service. Or how about sending them a flyer or follow up email asking if they would like to subscribe to newsletter updates about your other new service?  For example, companies like Red Envelope often market their existing online customers with specials from their sister company Sherri’s Berries.

So now your e-commerce website is done and launched.  Congratulations!

Oh, but wait a minute – you need orders?

Yes, that’s right, the Internet is a beautiful thing, but it isn’t a leprechaun.  You have to market your website to bring traffic to it, and you need to pay attention to certain things to convert those visitors to buying customers.  Here are a few things to consider for your e-commerce marketing plan.

1. Tap your current customers.

Announce your new e-commerce website to your established customers!  Make it bold, make it loud, make it plentiful!  Wouldn’t it be terrible if you learned that one of your loyal customers purchased something online from a competitor just because they had no idea you sold it online too?  Use all the standard forms of media that you usually announce news and specials to your customers – in-store signage, window posters, e-mail newsletters, a blog, the stickers at your registers.

If your customers are not used to receiving things from you (especially e-mail), be a little careful and don’t bombard them with information.  You just want to inform them, not offend them.

2. Offer an incentive.

Give people a reason to revisit your business.  For example:

• Offer a small coupon discount toward their first purchase in your online store.
• Offer free shipping for a limited time.
• Offer free shipping for orders of a certain size.
• Offer a free add-on product with every order.

Come on – get creative – you can do it.

3. Tag-team your physical and online stores.

Launching an online site should be an expansion of your business, so it doesn’t have to make your retail store suffer.  Try offering special coupons during checkout of your retail shop for the customer’s next online purchase, and vice-versa, offer a special coupon on your website for in-store purchases.  Feature exclusive items in-store and different exclusive items on the website only.

4. Go to the presses.

Launching (or relaunching) a new website is news!  Write a press release about your new website and how exceptional it is.  Explain the amazing reasons behind why you chose to branch into online sales and what kind of wonderful experience customers can expect when shopping online with you.  Distribute your press release with a marketing consultant and resources like PR Web, or consult your SEO provider to work that content into your SEO marketing plan.

5. Build your SEO campaign.

Search engine optimization is important and you just cannot ignore it. Hire a reliable, proven SEO professional to build a strategy that will drive traffic from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines to your website.  Learn more about WEBii SEO Services.

6. Maintain your website catalog.

When the visitor reaches your website, what will they see that engages them and urges them to buy?  Update your website (especially the homepage) periodically with new products or specials.  Make sure your catalog is updated regularly with accurate in-stock merchandise and the latest pricing.  Include a striking image (when possible) with each product so the customer understands immediately what you are selling and how great it looks.

6.b. Product images mean something.

I realize that images are not always shot by a professional photographer.  If you can afford to hire a photographer, do. You won’t regret it – because those photos can really help sell your product.  Granted, several website I have worked on have been successful with pretty decent photos taken by a graphic designer or a store owner.  If you are selling a virtual product, such as a class or a seminar, try to find a quality photo that compliments that.  Online shoppers are very visual and very impatient.  Having a photo of your instructor, your classroom, a happy customer – something, is better than a blank background.   One of our clients sells fitness bootcamps online, and in the early days we had photos of fitness gear posted with those product pages; later as their business grew and they gathered more actual photos of the bootcamps, we started using some of those photos of the instructors and customers in action.

I believe in e-commerce.

Meaning, I believe that people can succeed selling a product or service online.  In fact, I have seen in work – even for products that were invented in garages.

But I also know that having a successful e-commerce venture requires a lot of preparation on the part of the merchant.

You can have a spectacular product – so mind blowing that people are knocking down your door to buy it – but if your website isn’t working and your business isn’t streamlined, you will struggle.  You know that phrase “Don’t put the cart before the horse?” It resonates when you are planning an online store.

So let’s put our business hats on and go through a checklist of some things you need to think about before launching your new e-commerce website.

1. Your e-commerce website will be a new leg of your business.

If you are running a retail store front, you are used to certain processes, certain payment systems, certain vendor situations, certain employee tasks.  All of this is reinvented when you start talking about the Web.  For example, you probably can’t use that POS system (point of sale) you are using, or the old cash register in the store to run credit card transactions from the web.  Sometimes these decisions are easy, and sometimes they require more planning.  Make a list of all the vendors you use that relate to your normal store operations and order fulfillment; mention those to your web development provider and be ready to have discussions with some of those vendors also.

2. Who is responsible and who will fulfilling orders.

If your employees are busy stocking shelves or waiting on customers, who is going to check and fulfill the online orders? Sometimes you can reposition an employee to handle online orders along with their normal every day tasks, but if you expect a high volume of online sales you might need a dedicated customer service person to handle that.  The accounting department needs to understand the new invoice and order payment structure so their books stay clean, while your shipping and receiving department needs to receive a copy of the order that they can understand and fulfill.

3. Shipping providers and rates.

If you use a dedicated shipping provider such as UPS or FedEx, or even US Postal Service (USPS), you are probably setup with an account and able to manage shipping rates through a desktop software or local representative.

When it comes to reporting shipping rates with a website, there are some different requirements.  Providers like UPS require that you sign up with their “online tools” program – a basic extension of your UPS account that authorizes you to pull rates from their online servers.  Your local UPS account rep can help you get the online account started. Once they do, connect them with your web developer or forward your web developer the UPS account information you were provided.  That information needs to be integrated with your shopping cart software (the software used to build and operate your e-commerce website).  When working properly, that will allow the website to “talk” to your shipping provider (in this case UPS) to query shipping rates based on weight and zip code (or area).

3.b. By the way – did you weigh your products?

There are many different ways to charge shipping.  But if you plan to use a real time accurate shipping rate from a provider like USPS or UPS, you will need to enter weight values for each product in your website.  These providers base their quotes on weight (as well as shipping region).  If you are selling virtual products or services that do not need shipping, those can be handled in a different way.  Discuss these options with your web developer.

4. Online credit card payments.

If your business has never taken credit cards before, you will need to seek a Merchant Service Provider -  basically a company that specializes in offering credit card transaction services, both offline and online.  I recommend that you interview at least a couple to compare rates and services and ask people you trust for referrals – don’t just ask your bank because they are your bank. There are many quality providers, both large and small.  Be sure to inform them that you will need to accept online payments for the new website.

If you are an established merchant who has been accepting credit cards, try consulting your current merchant service provider first and see what it takes to extend your account with an online gateway.  The “payment gateway” is basically a communication tool that delivers transaction info from your website to the processor and tells the website if the charge is successful or declined.  Consult with your website developer about preferred gateways that are easy to work with or compatible with your shopping cart solution.  Authorize.net is a popular choice because it is the leading provider and supported by most institutions; it is also commonly compatible with most e-commerce software.

5. Give yourself time to compile your product information.

At some point during the set up of your online store, your products will need to be entered or imported into the website.  Each product includes many fields (maybe more than you realized) and you might need time to gather all that info.

I usually recommend preparing a spreadsheet and entering all of your products there, so they can eventually be imported into the database.  When I develop e-commerce websites, I usually give my client a sample spreadsheet format, based on a file exported from the shopping cart’s standard database.  This helps them input the information in a format that is compatible with the shopping cart database.

The minimum fields you can expect are: product name, short description (teaser), long description, the main product image, sometimes an additional thumbnail image, the sell price, and SKU (product code).  There are several more fields but most of the time they have been defaulted to a common setting or they are optional.

Your SKU is typically quite important, because today’s e-commerce software usually relies on this number (or alphanumeric code) to identify each product in the database as a unique item.  So even if you do not use a SKU system in your retail shop, you still need to come up with some kind of unique code to represent each item on your web shop.  This actually comes in handy later – because it helps you easily search for products in the website, on orders, and replace a product during an import update.

6. Plan to test, and test….and test.

During the development process you will be involved in at least one or 2 test orders.  This may go excellently the first time because all of the pieces are still in “test” mode.  But as soon as you enable the payment gateway in production (live) mode, or you are gearing up to be ready for a launch in 2 days, you need to run some real-world tests, too.

Be prepared to work closely with your e-commerce web developer to perform at least 1 test using a real credit card on the production-ready system.  I typically setup a special test product for a small amount like $1.00 for this purpose.  The client can run 1 or 2 successful test to confirm things are working and save themselves a headache with an actual customer later.

If you can, invite some friends or customers to test the site as well.  As long as you are not hitting the website excessively or ringing up charges with a payment system (be sure you are in test mode), it’s great to have more eyes.

If there is an error, your web develop will help you to investigate and fix that.  Sometimes it is easy to determine the problem by checking error logs generated by a payment gateway, but sometimes the error actually resides somewhere else.  (I have experienced 2 cases on former projects where the actual merchant service account was set up incorrectly with the wrong “account type” and therefore it caused all transactions to decline; it can happen, but there is a process of elimination you can go through with your development team.)

Once the website is fully tested and things are looking just peachy – the website is ready to be scheduled for launch.

Do the questions stop there?  No, of course not.  You may discover some quirky issue that only one blue moon customer finds, or you might just forget how to change the price of a product.   Keep a good relationship with your web development team so you have that resource to turn to.  I typically invite my clients to contact me for about the next month after a launch, because I know they will likely have a challenge or question in those first few weeks.

We like to talk about “going green”.  People as well as companies are hunting for ways to save the environment, save money, and be more “green”.

I have always thought that it seems wasteful to print out so many paper receipts at retail stores.

Especially the longer than necessary receipts I get from the pharmacy or grocery store which is filled with 10,000 leagues of coupons and reward incentives.   (Why not save that paper by moving the rewards and coupons to an electronic card or online program?)

It looks like the Gap corporation has recognized this opportunity.

During my recent checkout in one of their stores, the cashier asked me if I would prefer an email receipt.  My eyes perked up and I replied, “Yes!”.  She confirmed my email address on the payment pad and we were set.

I love this new method for customer receipts not only because it saves paper, but it also gives me the opportunity to easily access that information on my computer, and potentially archive it for my accounting records.   An excellent example of using Internet technology to make a better world.

One of the things I like best about Magento shopping cart software, is its forward-thinking about different types of products and how e-commerce can be used for a variety of businesses, not just a standard one-off shippable product.

Magento comes with an easy way to create several product “types” including “simple” products, which are the mainstream items you might guess – like a t-shirt.  You will set up the t-shirt with a certain price and sell it as a product that is packed up and shipped to the customer.

But what if I want to sell 10 products in one quick swoop – on one page?

Welcome to bundles and groups.  Bundled products or Grouped products can be created with standard titles and descriptions, but they are associated with other products (simple or downloadable) to make a sort of one-stop list.

With the typical Bundled product setup, you can set the price field to “dynamic” and as the customer selects different items in the list, Magento will automatically calculate the subtotal price on the page.

Grouped products do not incorporate a price field by default, they just display a simple message about “starting at” with the minimal price (amount of the lowest priced item) to give you a range.  But with this option you can also select multiple items on the page and proceed to your cart quickly.  I have also successfully customized Grouped product templates to add more fields such as the product image and link (for each item) and display special messaging to further promote a certain “series” of items.

Other shopping carts like Zen Cart offer customization options for the category page (product list) to include quantity fields and an ‘add all selections to the cart’ type of button. This can really come in handy.  However, it is important to note that if one of the items has optional attributes (eg: colors, sizes) it cannot work in this manner, since the customer must first visit that item’s detail page and make their choices.  Zen Cart by default will display a “more” link instead of the add to cart function, for any product in the list that does have attributes.

Ubercart 2 can also be themed to list products from a category (or taxonomy or class) on a page complete with quantity and add to cart fields.  You can even include the attributes on that same page and configure the cart preferences to keep the user on that same page after adding an item to their cart.  So this is a sort of work around to the multi-add selling – the visitor in this case still adds one product at a time, but since they do not have to leave the page to “view the cart” they can keep adding more items quickly.

(If you do setup Ubercart this way, remember to keep your Cart and Checkout links/buttons very accessible so the shopper can easily proceed there when they are ready.)

In a default Magento setup with a basic theme, Magento includes an option to “Checkout with Multiple Addresses”.  This is styled as a plain-Jane blue link (no offense, Jane).  Especially if you turn off One-page checkout (and only want to use multi-checkout), this link remains bland and unnoticeable.  No more bright orange Checkout button.

Styling this link is quite easy with a little CSS.

Add the following style class to your stylesheet (in your theme):

.cart .totals .checkout-types li {/*my awesome styles go in here*/ }

In one Magento Setup, I created a graphic button background similar to that “big orange checkout button” and included it in this style class.  (Of course you would only want to do this if you are not using one-page checkout, because then you just have 2 duplicate looking buttons on top of each other.) If preferred, you can include the text label on your button graphic and disguise the default text label (which is quite long) with your CSS.

A simple dress-up without modifying any core Magento files.

Magento is one of the many feature-rich shopping cart softwares that WEBii works with to develop customized e-commerce websites for small and medium-sized businesses.  Learn more about our e-commerce services.

Authorize.net.

In our years of e-commerce development we have worked with a variety of payment gateways to integrate a business’s credit card processing service with a web site.  Authorize.net is currently one of the most popular gateway services available, making it very easy to install for almost any shopping cart.  Most software already has a module available to integrate with this service, which saves both your development team and you time and money.

…Zen Cart

This shopping cart software can be a web designer’s dream.  The software was well thought-out by it’s developers and is managed mostly with stylesheets, making custom layouts within close reach; opposed to a less flexible shopping cart that requires heavy programming to modify the look and feel.  Furthermore, developers will be pleased to see the impressively organized code for this program, complete with a smart override system.

So where in the world do you get started with accepting payments online?  What about PayPal, and what about other credit card services? What’s the difference?

There are many ways to equip your web site with “e-commerce”.  From sophisticated shopping carts to one-step order forms, thousands of businesses successfully make that step into the e-commerce world.

To put it very briefly and simply, here are a couple of things you should understand about the difference between basic PayPal accounts and true credit card merchant services:

• The cost of integrating a basic “standard” PayPal account is very low, because it is free to set up the PayPal.com account and the web developer usually only has to paste in and masssage a little bit of PayPal code into your web site.
• PayPal charges significantly high transaction fees/percentages for each transaction.
• When you use a basic PayPal set up, there is a period in the transaction process when the visitor leaves your own web site and goes to PayPal.com; the potential danger in this is that some buyers are scared off by the url/site change, and some businesses actually block their employees from visiting PayPal and similar sites.
• The cost to set up a merchant service account with an online payment gateway (like Authorize.net for example) may be higher (set up fees vary by industry, type of business, merchant service company).
• The cost from your web developer will likely be higher because they will need to either custom program an order form for your site, or they will need to install and customize a shopping cart software for your web site to accept the orders and communicate with the payment gateway.
• The rates/transaction fees will likely be much lower and more competitive with a merchant service company that is offering credit card processing for your business. This makes sense for businesses that expect to do a high volume of online credit card sales – overtime they will see significant savings.

To get a complete picture, I recommend talking to one or more merchant service providers to evaluate your options and get rates.  This may include having a conversation with your current trusted banking provider and also some recommended outside merchant service companies. Weight that information with your assessment of how many online sales you plan to have, and be sure to discuss your vision with your web site developer.