5 Important Features in an Online ECommerce System

Online eCommerce systems are easily available on the internet for example Prestashop, Magento, osCommerce, Zen Cart and etc. With so many different systems, we really need to know which system to use and which one will matches our types of business best. This article aims to provide you five important features of the eCommerce systems so that you can decide for yourself which system suits your online business best.

Catalog Management

Catalog management is an important aspect of an eCommerce solution. It manages all your products under one roof, ideally it should come with batch import and export functions, and this is an important feature when you have many products to be uploaded onto the website. This feature can help you reduce valuable time by doing a mass upload/download of products onto your server. Imagine how much time can be wasted if you need to upload 3000 products onto your server manually. The catalog should also allow you to manage the prices of your products easily. It should also come with a scheduler to allow you to schedule the prices of your products automatically. When browsing your catalog, the system should also come with a filter and built-in search facility that can help you locate your products easily.

Marketing and Promotions Tools

Marketing and promotion is very important for you eCommerce website. A successful eCommerce store needs occasional online promotions and marketing campaigns to keep your visitors coming back and make that important purchase. Make sure your eCommerce system allows you to create and manage discount coupons, create and manage pricing rules for members and non-members. Powerful tools to allow you to upsell and cross sell your products. These tools are essential for your site to retain customers.

Shipping and Delivery Features

Depending on the type of products you sell on your online store, a well-designed shipping and delivery module is important for your eCommerce site. The delivery/shipping module is the most important feature for the end customers. The system needs to allow your visitors to select the types of delivery options for his/her order, the system also need to auto calculate for the visitor the shipping charges. On top of these, it is also important for you to know what are the international carriers supported and how easy if it for you to integrate the carriers into your system. For example DHL and FedEx provides real-time shipping rates, you need to know how you are able to integrate to them into your eCommerce system.

Payment Modules

Similar to shipping and delivery, the payment module is the one of the most important feature in an eCommerce system. Getting paid is the ultimate aim of most eCommerce site selling products and subscriptions. Your eCommerce system needs to support the major payment gateways and systems available. E.g. PayPal, Worldpay and 2Checkout. Your eCommerce site visitors should also be given the freedom to choose from a list of different payment options as different payment systems are popular in different regions in the internet.

Search Engine Optimization

The last important feature of my list is the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feature in the eCommerce system. SEO is very important in all eCommerce sites, your products and services need to be crawled and indexed by search engines. Without SEO, nobody can find the products they want on the internet, and your site cannot find her customers. Unless you are able to market your eCommerce site’s products to the world by other means, otherwise no one will be able to find your products. To be search engine optimized, your eCommerce system needs to generate for you search engine friendly (SEF) urls, they should also help you generate sitemaps automatically to allow you to submit your site to the search engines. They should also provide you the feature to input the meta-information of you products easily on the admin panel of the eCommerce system.

By knowing your online business well, you should be able to decide for yourself which eCommerce system is best for your business. These important features in the eCommerce system will help you manage and operate your eCommerce site efficiently, without these important features, you can find yourself wasting a lot of unnecessary time and effort managing your eCommerce store. If you still cannot decide which system is best for your business needs, you should always consult an expert in developing and customizing eCommerce systems, these guys can provide you the best solution for you and make sure that you time will not be wasted on managing your site but to be used on make more sales on the eCommerce industry.

eCommerce design for all your eCommer

How To Generate Repeat Business Online

After the business has built up a customer base that use your services or buy your products then you can start to build an online business relationship. By building a relationship with your current customers, the business will be able to encourage the customers to use the service again and also recommend the business to other potential customers thus driving them to the ecommerce solution or to make contact.

Online businesses have many ways of generating a relationship with their customers, all of them include being creative in the relevant industry and through various online channels. Here are a few of the main techniques used to generate repeat business and build a relationship:

Social Networking: All businesses must have an online social presence, with the rise of Facebook (600m users worldwide) and Twitter (175m users worldwide) the need to engage with this market is essential to create a relationship with your customers. Create a business page on Facebook to advertise and connect, create a Twitter account to converse directly with customers and keep them up to date. Other business social networking sites include, LinkedIn, Google Buzz and PartnerUp.

Competitions and Discount Codes: By creating a competition to win a relevant industry prize engages your customers and they will more than likely pass the details onto their network generating the ecommerce solution more traffic and more customer information.

Business Forums: A great way to interact with like-minded business individuals and potential customers. By joining a community such as a forum gives the business an opportunity to share its expertise and participate in issues and topics that is relevant to the business.

Affiliate Schemes: The businesses customers are potentially the sales team; this is more evident when they join up to an affiliate scheme. By offering the customers’ incentives to signup other customers it creates a business relationship which leads to an increase in sales and repeat business. An ecommerce software solution may have an affiliate scheme that includes a percentage of the signup fee or a monthly percentage based on the package bought.

Newsletters: When a customer purchases online or signups to a service, a business has instant contact details, including name, address and, importantly email. If the customer has stated not to receive any online campaigns then leave them out of the newsletter. Using ecommerce software a business can send newsletters to the email addresses frequently to promote sales, competitions and incentives. This technique is widely used in online retail to promote their items and generates enormous repeat business opportunities.
Generating repeat business and getting customers to work for the business are essential to the success of any ecommerce solution. Use the above techniques to engage with your customers and potential customers, select the relevant information to promote and listen to current customers as they should be promoting the business online as well as the marketing team.

Raise Capital For Your Online eCommerce Business

How can you possibly think about raising capital for your online eCommerce business this day and age? With the economy faltering and no sign of relief in sight, it is unlikely that anyone would want to invest, right? Wrong. There are more opportunities out there waiting for you to discover. Just because the economy is in bad shape, that doesn’t mean that you should give up on your dreams. If you are not well versed on raising capital, here are some things that you will need before you start the journey: a business plan, a smooth presentation in place, and a passion for what you are doing. Once you have all three, it’s time to start approaching the right people for raising money. But just who are the right people? Here are a few ideas:

Relatives

Don’t dismiss it. If you have a big family and the three things above in place, then what is to stop you from approaching some of the wealthier people in your family, either individually or as a group, and showing them that you have your stuff together. Often times, this avenue gets overlooked because people mistakenly think it would feel too awkward to present to their relatives like they would a venture capitalist. But that just isn’t the case. If you treat your wealthier relatives with respect by showing them a fully developed idea and business plan, you may just be surprised by their reaction. But if not, consider:

Venture capitalists

These are wealthy companies or individuals, who are specifically looking for companies like yours to invest in. They expect a rate of return on their money over the long term. In return for that, they will give you the stake of money that you need to get up and running and develop a business to the terms of their return on investment. While there are no guarantees over the long term of your success – that would be up to you anyway – you at least get a chunk of change upfront and little to no risk for doing something you love.

Government grants

There are billions and billions of dollars available in grant money. Oh sure, the cash may not all be for your industry, but there is still a significant amount. Why is it there? Because most upstarts either don’t qualify or don’t bother writing a grant. How do you take advantage? Find some aspect of your business that you can use to the benefit of your business.

There are many different people and entities out there for you to capitalize on. All you need is a well thought out idea and the means for inspiring investor confidence. Once those are in place, the sky is the limit.

Cutting Edge Online Ecommerce Store

Expert Author Ishaav Khan
Online stores have successfully taken over the conventional retail stores. This is chiefly due to the ease of shopping facilities, secure transaction process, wide platform to choose products or services as per one’s choice and budget in a convenient and hassle free manner. Owing to such factors, online shopping has become a growing trend these days so has the demand for online stores among small, medium and large-scale business enterprises who wish to attract global customers online and accelerate their business growth and success.

In recent years, ecommerce solutions have proved beneficial in enhancing sales prospects of businesses besides empowering online businesses with host of benefits that are worth considering for long term success amidst intensifying market competitions. Several companies are engaged in designing online ecommerce store but selection of the right one can bring a world of difference to one’s business. Reputed and experienced companies offering e-store development services ensure good conversion rates of prospects to leads. They are well aware of the latest tools and techniques and employ them in designing ecommerce stores with advanced features.

Expert ecommerce store developers comprehend the business model of clients and take initiative in understanding their specific business requirements. Accordingly their strategies the development of ecommerce shop online with exclusive features and avail attractive deals online. Some of the basic features like- payment modules, marketing and promotion tools, shipping and delivery, catalogue management and search engine optimization are taken into account by them while designing e-stores. Such ecommerce stores with shopping cart solutions provide direct and transparent selling and buying process that is truly commendable and convenient too for both the merchants and customers.

No one can deny the fact that the shopping carts play a significant role in accelerating sales prospects and are a basic constituent of website or portals related to ecommerce business. However, selection of any shopping cart for one’s website needs careful thought and consideration. One should select the services that provide integrated payment gateways, various modes of payments, customer support and backups, easy product management and more.

A shopping platform is the prerequisite for those who are in the business of selling product or providing services online. Shopping cart features can also be customized as per store owner’s requirements. Such customized applications prove beneficial in meeting specific demands and business needs without any hassles.

Ideal for long term or short term business profits, ecommerce solutions c

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