Ecommerce Solutions

Ecommerce or electronic commerce has taken on the world in a very big way today. Lots of people shop their wares online, and perhaps it is because of the great convenience or the wide choice of commodities they get when they shop online. Whatever is the case, online shopping has come out very strongly.

Ecommerce means conducting commercial activities online. Of course, there is a totally different kind of infrastructure needed to make such kind of online shopping, and that is where websites selling commodities through the Internet need to have some kind of ecommerce solutions in place. Ecommerce solutions have become a huge business of their own, as online stores are consistently requiring their services for handling different parts of their activities. That certainly induces ecommerce solutions present today to develop and enter into new areas of online commerce, which, in turn, are making them more and more advanced.

What Services do Ecommerce Solutions Provide?

Ecommerce solutions do provide a large number of services for online businesses, and it is safe enough to say that there would be no trading through the Internet at all if these solutions did not exist. The following is a list of the most common features that are incorporated in all ecommerce solutions.

If your website is a subscription website, then there will be several kinds of fees that you will have to collect. You will require ecommerce solutions for setting up all these kinds of fees. These fees could include the setup fees, application fees, onetime membership fees, annual membership fees, subscription fees for particular services, etc.

Ecommerce solutions provide shopping cart options for online trading websites. Your customers will be able to view products from a catalog, read their descriptions, and if they want to purchase the commodity, they will be given the option to add the commodity to their shopping cart. Shopping cart is the way most online shopping is done nowadays, and managing accounts with them is something that requires the expertise of ecommerce solutions. Further, if there are any discounts or offers on products, then those can be managed by ecommerce solutions too.

Most ecommerce solution have inbuilt calculator features that can determine the exact price of the commodity, including the prices involved in packaging, handling, shipping and custom charges. If your ecommerce website provides your subscribers with some kind of account operation, then you will need a solution for managing these accounts and making them accessible to your subscribers. These could include online statements of accounts and even monthly statements that could be sent through email.

Ecommerce solutions generally have features to charge the customers' credit cards directly so that the entire buying process can be operated quite smoothly. If not, they might allow the customer to make payments through electronic transfer through their accounts on another website.

Security is a very important aspect of ecommerce. When people are managing their accounts through your website, or even if they are just buying or selling commodities through their credit cards, you will need to ensure their privacy. Ecommerce solutions will handle that aspect, by incorporating encryption services into the ecommerce setup.

Selecting from Different Ecommerce Solutions

Since there are many ecommerce solutions out there, making the right choice can often be a big problem. At the same time, if your go wrong with a solution, then you might not actually get what you want, or you might end up overspending on setting up the system, which might offset your profits a bit. Hence, you need to take time out and select the right ecommerce solution for your business.

The following points must be considered when you are making the choice.
» Check out if the ecommerce solution has the right option for your business. For this, you must consider the nature of your own business. Is your business a subscription site or an online store? If it is a subscription site, you will need an ecommerce solution to handle aspects such as membership fees and other charges. But if it is an online store, you will need an ecommerce solution to handle sales.

» Even if you have an online store, there are several kinds of ecommerce solutions that you can select from. Most of them will have the shopping cart feature, and that is what you must go for. Here, it is important that users can make their own accounts on your website so that they can have a shopping cart. The shopping cart must also allow them to store their products from one visit to another.

» At the same time, it has been observed that most online shoppers will not even browse the catalogs when they are making their purchases. Most of them have particular brands in mind. For such shoppers, it is good if you could opt for an ecommerce solution that provides a search bar. The search feature could take them directly to the product page. There is another advantage of this. If you power your search bar through a popular search engine like Google or Yahoo, they could provide you with some supplementary income each time someone makes a search through them. You must let your ecommerce solution know about this if you are interested in making some additional money through your website in this manner.

» There are two basic ways in which ecommerce solutions will allow your customers to pay. In the first mode, they can convert your website to have an Internet marketing account, so that you can collect the payment directly. Or, if you do not want that, ecommerce solutions could help you collect payments from a third party website from where it could be directed to you. If you make your own website your payment gallery, you will be saving on fees for the third party, but you will be making your website look more commercial. You will need to make your decision on this, and select your ecommerce solution carefully.

Some Popular Ecommerce Solutions

Let us now get acquainted with some popular ecommerce solutions in the market.
OsCommerce – This open source ecommerce solution is best known for its very comprehensive shopping cart feature. The script is free to download from http://www.oscommerce.com/ and its basic script can be configured to set up within the business website. But the hosting and customization charges are applicable.

Fortune3 – This is the most popular downloaded ecommerce solution at Download.com and Tucows. It is free for a thirty-day trial, when you can use all its features to set up an online store. The shopping cart feature is very good, and the speed is also commendable. It completes one transaction in every seven seconds.

LevelTen – LevelTen is good for processing payments through credit cards. There is good safety in transactions and allows for real time transactions. It is based on OsCommerce.

ProStores – ProStores is good as a complete package for ecommerce solution. It allows setting up for online stores as well as subscription sites. Also, it is ideal for reaching out to niche vendors and buyers. Users laud it for its chain networking options.

Volusion – Volusion is another ecommerce solution that is good as a package. It is cheap too, and allows setting up of the whole website as a business website.

The ecommerce solutions available out there are extremely diverse in their features, and it very difficult to compare them. But if you are sure what exactly you want, you will be able to make a good choice for your online business. After all, the success of your online venture will largely depend on the kind of ecommerce solution you select.