Ecommerce: How It Works - Part Two

Your online store is composed of the Hosting, the Site and External Links. If you want to display your goods and integrate it with a way to collect funds from customers, you need a merchant solution (Shopping cart, payment process and catalogue). This is the most important purchase you can make for your online store. What you start with must grow with you over time. It should be easy enough to get started with minimal experience but have features that will be used as you gain confidence and experience. This is why we offer the osCommerce Solution. It can suit a few products or thousands and can email orders to you or process any credit card on earth! The choice is yours, it's our job to provide the alternative solutions and support.

So now the store is finished and open, now what? Market ! Market ! Market! You need traffic coming into your store. Traffic= sales. The rules are the same for online as offline businesses. If nobody came into your store for a week, you'd be worried right? You should be just as worried with your online business. You will need to get into all the search engines (the online version of a phone book) and be positioned so that potential customers see your listing and visit you. We offer search engine placement services for your site that will assist you to get known and get traffic. You should also use word of mouth, or more correctly, the electronic version of it: "Affiliate Program". In certain merchant packages, an affiliate program is built into the merchant solution and allows someone to register their website and link to yours. If they send you a customer you can reward them with a flat fee for the visitor (Click thru $0.05 ea) or with a % of the successful sale. This way you get customers and they get extra revenue ! < Back To Part One