Websites – E-selling
Setting up an e-commerce website to start ‘e-selling’ is not as daunting as it may sound. To get you on your way here are a few pointers.
Hosting your site: Finding a reliable host is the key. One with 24 hour support, high download limits and more disk space will prevent problems in the future. Most hosting companies are inexpensive and there are many to choose from. Remember though, if you want a 24/7 presence on the internet, then you will need a support service that covers this. Your business now depends on your website host, so don’t skimp on the service.
Promotion: You cannot expect people to find your site if you do not promote it. The marketing of an internet site and the method used is called ‘Optimisation’. This involves populating your site with key words pertaining to your business. Keywords are to be found in the back end of your website and built into the HTML (programming of your site) coding. Without keywords, major search engines like Google and Yahoo are unable to recognise your site content. If you do have a website and you are not seeing many visitors or getting many hits, perhaps your keywords need updating or they are non existent. To view your sites keywords, go to your website internet address, click on ‘view’ in your web browser menu, and then click ‘source’. Clicking on source will reveal your site’s coding. Look for the word keywords, if it isn’t there, you haven’t got any. If keywords are listed, make a note of yours and check that they match the service, product or details your company provides.
Shopping Carts: A shopping cart programme is a system which controls purchasing. While it can be customised in many ways, it basically accumulates products and then calculates the total cost. Ideally this system will also maintain customer accounts for ongoing purchasing. You can buy ready made software packages to add to your website to perform this function, or you can get your web designers to build one for you.
Accepting Payments: Larger and more established businesses can accept payments for goods by setting up an internet merchant account through a bank, whereas one with a smaller turnover may benefit from using a third part payment processing company such as PayPal.
You can also buy websites which you make yourself, with easy step by step instructions via the internet. If you don’t want to commit your goods to a website, then why not try out the market first by selling a few items on eBay? At 13p per listing, it’s an easy way to test the water.