What is e-Commerce?

Electronic Commerce (e-Commerce) is the use of electronic communication to do business or the ability to sell products directly online . It may be used to carry out business-to-business or business-to-consumer transactions and is one of the most exciting features that you can add to your website.

e-Commerce can help you to achieve a quantifiable reduction in costs, for example lowering your telephone and fax usage and telemarketing costs, at the same time increasing your capacity to enter new markets and improve the workflow in your business.

The big advantage to selling on the net is that it gives you access to millions - perhaps even billions - of potential customers. If you attract a very small percentage of those buyers through the promotion and marketing of your website, you can still find yourself with tens of thousands of sales. If your goods and services are popular, word of mouth can also help spread information about your business.

E-commerce can also help you to achieve a quantifiable reduction in costs, for example lowering your telephone and fax usage and telemarketing costs, at the same time increasing your capacity to enter new markets and improve the workflow in your business.

How it works

A web site acts as your shopfront, and customers can place orders from it. In its simplest form, these orders are sent to your office via email and then dealt with in the usual way, just as if the order had been placed by phone or fax. A more sophisticated system will arrange for money to be transferred automatically to your bank account using varying payment methods such as by credit card or direct debit. In effect an e-commerce enabled site will take care of the collection of payments automatically and deposit it into your bank.

Using technology, typically time consuming business processes are automated, not only saving time and money, but also reducing the scope for error, at every stage of the process.  Electronic Commerce can provide the following benefits over non-electronic communication:

• Reduced Costs - Reduced labour, reduced paper, reduced errors in keying in data, etc.
• Reduced Time - Shorter lead times, faster delivery of product.
• Flexibility with Efficiency - The ability to handle complex situations, product ranges and customer profiles without the situation becoming unmanageable.
• Enhanced Long Term Trading Partner Relationships - Improved communication between trading partners leads to enhanced long-term relationships.
• Better Customer Loyalty - The closer you are to your customer and the more you work with them to change from normal business practices to best practice Electronic Commerce, the harder it is for a competitor to upset your customer relationship.
• New Markets - The Internet has the potential to expand your business into wider geographical locations. However, it is necessary to develop the appropriate production capacity and distribution channels to support market demands generated by promoting your business to a larger marketplace.

  Some examples of applications are:

• Orders that can be connected directly to a company's accounting software. - Special offers that are emailed to customers much more cheaply than by regular post.
  
• Businesses can help each other by carrying reciprocal advertising.
• Other advertising can be sold on the site if it becomes very popular, creating another source of income.
• A flexible online shopping system that enables you to add or remove products, group items into product lines, implement special offers and handle freight charges. It is also important to securely handle financial transactions over the internet.

Why should I automate the acceptance of credit cards at my Web site?

This kind of automation fulfils part of the promise of the Web, putting small merchants and large merchants on a more level playing field from a resource perspective. Any function that can be effectively automated on your commercial Web site should be, simply because it simplifies management of your business, minimizes time consumed in manual operations and allows you to focus more energy on the crucial task of marketing and attracting customers to your site.

Should I automate this procedure for my business?

There are many Web-based businesses that have merchant ambitions but haven't begun to realize their potential because they are either not accepting credit cards, or they are accepting payment in non-automated ways, such as manual processing via phone, fax or email. By accepting automated credit card payments you are eliminating the need to manually authorise the transaction and having to follow it through with manual banking procedures, giving you more time and ultimately reducing operations costs and scope for error.