eCommerce 101: Your Checklist for Selling Online

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ECOMMERCE 101
YOUR CHECKLIST FOR SELLING ONLINE
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Electronic commerce, EC, e-comm eCommerce has
many names, but what exactly is it? Dont be
overwhelmed, with this handy eCommerce 101
checklist, you have everything you need to set up
your online store. eCommerce simply means any
business or financial transaction that occurs
online. More and more business is occurring
online. The Census Bureau of the Department of
Commerce announced that the estimate of U.S.
retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of
2018 was over 127.3 billion. E-commerce sales in
the second quarter of 2018 also accounted for
9.6 percent of total sales. Whats more,
according to CB Insights reported by Boomtown,
online sales growth is outpacing total retail
sales 17 percent verses 6 percent year over
year. Clearly, eCommerce is one of the most
important and fastest-growing aspects of todays
retail landscape.
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Choosing the right eCommerce platform
Each business is a unique situation with specific
needs for an e- commerce site. Are you a big
business or a small boutique? Are you a quick
serve restaurant or retail? Will you sell online
only, or do you need to sync with a brick and
mortar location too? How will you process
payments? Dont worry! Once you answer a couple
of these questions, youll be selling online in
no time, at all. All you need is the following
eCommerce checklist.
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The Checklist
? Domain First things first in order to have
an eCommerce store, you need somewhere to host
your site. You also need a domain name so
customers can find you. This is the URL, or web
address people can use to navigate to your
site. If your site is a house, then the domain
name is its mailing address. Depending on the
size of your business and the type of domain name
you choose, it could run from as little as 10 a
year, to upwards of hundreds or thousands!
However, most small businesses should expect to
pay about 10-15 a year for brand new domains,
depending on the registrar and TLD. The
registrar is a service that allows you to
officially register your desired website domain
name so that it is unique to you, and no one
else can use it. Back in the day, there was just
one company that could register your domain name
for you, but currently there are hundreds,
including companies like GoDaddy or Web.Com or
Hover.
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? Hosting Web hosting refers to the place where
all of your sites files live. A good way to
think of it, if the domain is the mailing address
of your home, then the web hosting is the actual
house it points to. Web hosting costs can start
rather inexpensive for shared hosting, but those
costs can often compound quickly. On a standard
shared hosting plan, you can expect to pay
around 90 to 150 per year. ? Security If you
want to do business online, you need to ensure
potential customers that your site is secure and
their sensitive credit card information is not
at risk. This means you have to create a SSL
connection. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a
standard security protocol for establishing
connections between a web server and a browser
in an online transaction. The usage of SSL
technology ensures that all data transmitted
between the web server and browser remains
encrypted, keeping your customer data safe. A
SSL certificate is necessary to create SSL
connection. This SSL certificate typically costs
around 250 a year.
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Establishing this security cannot be overlooked.
Today, customers expect to see that your site is
secure and a notification otherwise will prevent
you from making sales online. eHopper handles all
of this for you with the managed eCommerce
package. When you create an online store to sync
with your current POS, you are automatically
provided with a SSL certificate and an encrypted,
secure website to do business on. ? CDN CDN is
short for Content Delivery Network. A content
delivery network (CDN) is a system of
distributed servers (network) that deliver pages
and other Web content to a user, based on the
geographic locations of the user, the origin of
the webpage and the content delivery server.
This service is effective in speeding the
delivery of content of websites with high traffic
and websites that have global reach. The fees
associated with CDN can average around 200 per
month, which can often stretch the budgets of
small businesses. ? Content Management
System How will you manage your content? Your
ecommerce site will need to include images and
descriptions of your products and services. This
content needs to be uploaded and consistently
updated. Content management systems (CMS) can be
complicated and require hours and hours of
expensive backend development. The cost of a CMS
will depend on many factors such as what you
need the CMS to do and how large your website is.
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With eHopper, you web content is automatically
synced from Back Office, meaning you dont need
to upload, tag or provide additional
descriptions for anything. Your POS and ecommerce
store will use the same content, meaning you
only need to update it once, in one place. This
dramatically reduces the overhead needed to set
up an online store. ? Payment Processing To
sell online, you have to have a way to process
credit cards. But, which one to use? If you
dont have any prior experience, this can be a
headache to manage on your own. With eHoppers
managed eCommerce package, this process is
already handled for you leaving you more
bandwidth to focus on details of your business.
Ehopper integrates with Authorize.net, PayPal or
Stripe. Between these three, almost all merchant
processing is supported. You can seamlessly
process payments between your online store and
your point of sale, simultaneously.
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? SEO So now youre online. Success! But, people
have to find you. Your business needs to show up
in Google results. Search engine optimization
(SEO) is the most efficient, cost-effective way
to start. Theres an endless supply of online
resources available focusing on business SEO.
While some patterns begin to emerge as you start
diving in, often business owners dont have the
time or bandwidth to manage their digital
marketing efforts too. Many small business
owners often connect with a professional to
analyze their content, target keywords and plan
strategy. Obviously, the cost of contracting
these professionals can start to escalate
quickly. If you need to optimize you web content,
but dont have hundreds of dollars to give to a
3rd party consultant, then your business could
perhaps benefit from a managed ecommerce
solution. When you set up an online store with
eHopper, our team of digital marketers optimize
your site to make sure you are showing up in
search results and establishing best practices
for your online presence.
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• ? Terms of Use
• If you operate an e-commerce site, its important
  that you have a well- drafted set of Terms and
  Conditions agreement linked and easily available
  throughout your store.
• These Terms and Conditions agreements can often
  protect you legally, as well as to set out the
  rules that you and your customers will follow
  when a purchase is made, while limiting your
  liability in the event that your product fails,
  hopefully covering what to do if any conflict
  arises.
• ? Privacy Policy
• Establishing and building trust with visitors is
  very important for any site, but for an
  e-commerce store, it is imperative. Aside from
  building trust, it also makes sure you stay
  within your legal obligations.
• Having this agreement is crucial for a number of
  reasons
• It protects you from liability and clarify the
  purchasing process.
• It can potentially be used to cancel accounts
  that are not within your terms.
• It protects your intellectual property and
  clearly outlines as to how it might be used.
• It outlines the way in which any disputes will be
  handled.
• They also allow you to use payment gateways with
  credit card operators (who require you to have
  this agreement and a Privacy Policy before they
  will let you use their services)

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? Return Policy A solid ecommerce return policy
can make or break a sale or turn a visitor into
a customer for life. In a survey by comScore and
UPS, 63 of American consumers check the return
policy before making a purchase and 48 would
shop more with retailers that offer hassle- free
returns. This is incredible valuable data to
anyone doing business online. One of the
biggest contributors to a sale is how you deal
with a potential buyers common questions,
especially regarding what youll do if they
dont like what they purchased. This is where you
must pay attention to your displayed return
policy and how accessible it is to potential
customers. ? Shopping Cart Your site needs a
dynamic, functioning shopping cart. Back in the
Wild West of the internet,the first online stores
just consisted of pages with PayPal Buy Now
buttons, linking out the visitor to complete the
transaction off-site. Then, shop owners would
get a notification from PayPal once the order was
placed, then the business owner would fulfill
the order. This created headaches with trying
manage a web of payment processing, shipping
labels, and email platforms that tended to not
always work well with each other. Enter the
Shopping cart. Rather than taking customers to an
obvious 3rd party site, modern shopping carts
means your customers stay on- site (or at least,
appear to) for a much more unified and seamless
customer experience. Payment processing,
transaction e-mails, shipping labels, security,
and other elements are all handled through the
platform, enabling business owners to focus on
their business.
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? Sync Inventory with POS Dont oversell. Dont
miss a sell. Chances are if youre an ecommerce
retailer, you dont sell goods exclusively
online. Often, theres a dedicated brick and
mortar store space, as well. Perhaps you just
sell face-to-face on occasions like trade shows
and expos. In any case, you need a way to keep
inventory up to date regardless of how the sale
was recorded. Thats why its so important to
synchronize inventory to POS software and to
your online channels. Shopping cart plugins can
also isolate inventory from other stores or
marketplaces you sell on, ensuring your inventory
reports are accurate and available in real-time.
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eHopper eCommerce
With eCommerce from eHopper, this entire
checklist is already handled for you. We take
all the work and worry out of setting up an
online store, saving you both time and money in
very direct ways. If you handle this checklist
yourself a la carte, launching eCommerce could
cost as much as three to four thousand dollars.
eHopper offers an complete integrated platform
for just 99 per month. This includes the whole
checklist cloud based hosting, SSL, CDN, domain
management, system monitoring, search engine
optimization, backups and full customer support.
And it syncs with your physical point of sale!
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Contact eHopper now and check-off eCommerce
solution from your list of business needs, today!
ehopper.com/ecommerce/