Small business e-commerce

Many small, retail business owners are thinking about expanding to an online e-commerce site. If you are one of these here are a few things you need to think about before you make the decision.

• Merchant Account: Most retailers are familiar with merchant accounts. What you may not know is that some retail merchant accounts do not allow mail order or online purchases to be processed through those accounts. Before you start looking at an online e-commerce site check with your merchant account bank or financial institution to see. If not we have a number of possibilities that can possibly save you some money.
• Payment Gateway: Payment gateways are simply interfaces between your online e-commerce site and your merchant account. While not mandatory they will reduce the amount of time it takes you to process your online orders. In many cases, we can provide you an online merchant account and a payment gateway for less than some places charge for one or the other.
• Online e-commerce Solution: Before you make your decision about which e-commerce solution to use check with a few of their customers to see what they think about the software solutions you are considering. Also check to see what kind of support you can expect. You may also want to know how much time they spend managing the site, processing orders and managing their product listings. 
• Marketing: The most important aspect of a small business e-commerce site is marketing. Small businesses seldom have huge amounts of dollars for online marketing. Make sure the companies you choose to work with can also help you market your site.

E-commerce Small Business Solutions

E-commerce is more than a shopping cart!

If you are one of the thousands of small and medium businesses considering the move to an e-commerce business solution there are a few things you need to consider before you make your decision. As many businesses can tell you from first hand experience, operating on online e-commerce site requires more than a way to take customer payments. Just about any shopping cart software can take online payments of one sort or another. But if you want to operate a successful online business you will need a lot more. 

Web surfers do make purchases online and they do use shopping carts to do it. But there are other, far more important, aspects to running a successful e-commerce site. For instance, the single biggest deterrent to online purchasing is trust. Lets assume one site with a basic shopping cart with online payments going through a secondary payment site like PayPal and another with a full set of customer service features and a security and payment gateway customized to represent the site... Which do you think presents the best, most trust worthy image? 

There is no doubt that there is a percentage of the online shopping population that cares for nothing other than price. They make their purchase from the cheapest vendor they can find regardless of the look of the site. The question is... Is that the type of customer you want? Do you want to build your business on customers that will go to another site to save a penny? If so, by all means build any kind of online e-commerce solution you want.

But, if you are like most businesses, you want customers that will be loyal to your business... returning time and time again to make additional purchases. You can only do this with a professional e-commerce business solution that gives those customers the shopping experience and customer service they have come to expect from a full service e-commerce site.

Web shoppers who are concerned only with price will go to great lengths to find the lowest price. This is not true for the shoppers who are looking for quality and service. They find a site they can trust and stick with it. This means that you are far more dependent on being positioned well in the search engines. These surfers will not go through 200 listings to find the best price. They are looking for a professional looking, full service site that meets their needs... not the best price.

When you start your e-commerce business website you will be spending hundreds of hours on setting up and maintaining your site. Would you rather spend that time and money on a great e-commerce business solution or on a simple shopping cart? Both will require similar amounts of time. Would you invest your money and energy starting a business in the worst location in a run-down building that looks like it may fall at any second? If your answer is yes then all you probably need is a basic shopping cart. If your answer is no... you need a professional e-commerce business solution.

And, in most cases the cost difference between an e-commerce solution customized to promote the professionalism of your business and loaded with customer and marketing features is generally less than a thousand dollars higher than a simple shopping cart system. Isn't it worth the investment to have a site that encourages repeat sales and makes it easier to promote your business?

We think it is!

LetMeShop e-commerce software is designed to help you easily develop an online e-commerce business solution. It includes the features you need to successfully operate an online catalog and features that your customers have come to expect in a professional online store. You get a professional designed site ready for you to start adding products. You get a simple online interface to maintain your products, orders and marketing efforts such as affiliate / advertising programs, a complete opt-in email component and built in Froogle (Google Base) feed and search engine optimization HTML page generators. You get ongoing technical support and more importantly we are here to help you promote and market your site. You get all of this for a very reasonable price.