eCommerce – A Plan
Designing an ecommerce website is like building a house – architecture and budget need to be agreed before the decoration.
AN AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION MUST BE DRAWN UP AS THE FIRST STAGE BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE IS DONE – ANY OTHER APPROACH WILL ONLY LEAD TO CONFUSION AND WORSE.
Once an AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION has been agreed then solutions want to be evaluated and costed against that specification are:
– Project management
– Hardware
– Web design and software
– Website selling
– Project management:
All aspects of the project would like to be managed. Decide who’s going to try and do it and properly set up the wants, activities, outcomes, milestones and timings.
Hardware:
Your choices here are a managed service or your own server. The safety and disaster recovery side that is achieved by hosting with a serious provider is terribly important. Solely go with your own server if you’ve got the experience and facilities.
Style and Software:
Website style
Develop site templates and test them with real people. They have to be simple to use and navigate. Don’t let “design” drive the site; let ease of use and sales drive the “style”. Assume how the client thinks.
Software
A minimum of 5 solutions would like to be considered.
– Updating
– Looking cart
– Forum
– Email
– Statistics
Updating
There are two realistic routes here. Either an online or an offline, PC primarily based content management system (CMS). The net CMS can be either an Open Supply CMS (Open Supply suggests that any application that has been created obtainable, typically free, to developers to view and modify freely. Examples of Open Source applications are MySQL and PHP) or commercial.
There are execs and cons to both routes. An online system is out there to anyone with relevant security clearance anywhere any time. A PC primarily based system is, obviously, limited to the PCs running the licenses. An example of a PC primarily based system is Macromedia Contribute which integrates with Dreamweaver. There are an entire vary of on-line Commercial and Open Source options like SuiteWise™, Drupal, Joomla, and Website Baker etc. But, even this is difficult by the actual fact that a number of the looking cart solutions conjointly contain CMS which will be sufficient for many corporations’ requirements.
Looking cart and CRM
There are 2 realistic routes for the shopping cart – Open Supply or commercial.
There are wonderful Open Source looking carts like OSCommerce and Zen, but additionally glorious business solutions like Actinic and Client Focus Fast Order Portal (which comes with an entire CMS).
There are other factors to contemplate with the looking cart:
– Will it have its own or will it easily integrate along with your exiting stock management systems?
– Will it integrate easily with accounting systems (e.g. Sage, QuickBooks)?
– Will it have or integrate simply with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that will be proposed in future?
Forum
Many CMS have good integrated forums however if they do not our recommendation would be to use a smart Open Supply package like PunBB or phpBB. They are free, strong and straightforward to integrate and customise into any site.
Most CMS, shopping carts and forums have email solutions. But, some solutions are very basic. If the chosen looking cart solution that best meets the ecommerce and alternative needs does not have a good integrated email resolution and if the same be true of the CMS and forum solutions then stand alone Open Source applications like PHPlist are one alternative resolution and the opposite is an online answer such as Constant Contact or many others.
Statistics
This can be arguably the most necessary part of the package. If you are doing not understand how visitors to your website and within the search are behaving, what turns them on and what turns them off then it is so much, so much harder to boost sales and website profitability. Industrial applications such as WebTrends and ClickTracks would like to be evaluated for best fit.
SITE MARKETING
There are four major areas to consider here.
– Offline selling – e.g. in-store. What works most price effectively to drive traffic and orders via the net from non-internet activities.
– Website optimisation – how to create sure technical structure, copy, content, back-links and a vary of other factors are initially and stay optimised thus that as many high search engine placements on relevant searches are obtained.
– Pay per click and alternative on-line marketing – how to induce traffic from advertising against key words and phrases used in search engines and from adverts on alternative sites.
– Email – the way to grow the e-mail list and use it to grow profitable sales.
In summary:
– Manage the project
– Assume how the client thinks
– Get wonderful software to make finding product and price straightforward
– Make terms clear and payment straightforward
– Ensure you are in stock and and have achievable delivery timescales
– Create sure you have got a good CRM system and clear communications – mail, phone, emai
– Market the site appropriately
– Understand what is happening – use your stats to test, track and attempt
Cost ………… well how long is a pice of string, however you could be up and running for a lot less than the value of recent premises!!!
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Tagged with: content management • e-commerce • internet business • online business • plan • shopping cart
Filed under: General
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