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Getting Started with E-Commerce, Part 1 of 2

posted by SHAYGALLAGHER // July 23, 2009 // Build Your Website

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Starting an e-commerce website from scratch can be a daunting task. Below is some of the basic information about e-commerce to help you get started.

What is a Web Store?

A web store is a special-purpose website designed to display and sell products. Just like traditional brick-and-mortar stores, web stores can sell just a few products or thousands of items, they can advertise their products, have sales, and accept various forms of payment. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, however, web stores can reach customers all over the world, instead of being limited to one city or neighborhood.

The Storefront

From a customer's point of view, a web store is special-purpose website that offers products for sale. A web store has one or more pages that display and describe products, and a shopping cart where customers can buy those products by giving their name and address and, typically, providing credit card information. Beyond that, the look and feel of a web store can vary quite a bit, depending on the number and types of products being sold, and the taste and skill of the person who designs the store!

The Back Office

Your view of the store as a merchant is quite different. Although your store is made up of pages, and there are products for sale on those pages, you don't have to edit the store pages directly, and you don't even have to know how to make a website or page. You access the store's back office with your favorite browser, and add products and pages to your store by clicking on buttons and filling in fields. Your web store will notify you when you have new orders, and it provides easy, secure access to order information.

What is E-commerce Web Hosting?

E-commerce web hosting adds an e-commerce application to a web hosting package, which is what allows you to have a store on the Internet.

What is a Web Host?

To have a website or store on the Internet you first need to have a web server. Unfortunately, owning a web server can be very costly and requires technical expertise that most businesses don't have. This is where web hosts come in. web hosting companies provide the equipment and other technical resources that you need without the headaches that come when you have to do it yourself.

Think of a web host as the landlord of building. A landlord rents out storefronts to various businesses. Each business decorates and runs their store differently, and doesn't worry about the maintenance of the building. In a similar way a web host rents out space on a web server - or entire web servers - to various businesses. Each business builds its own web store and never has to worry about the maintenance of the web server.

In other words, the web host provides the place on the Internet where your web store lives. It's a lot cheaper than buying your own server, and you don't have to hire the technical staff to take care of it.

What is an E-commerce Application?

An e-commerce application is software that makes it easy for you to build and operate a web store. Online retail giants such as Amazon.com spend lots of money and hire large numbers of programmers to build and maintain their site, but there are e-commerce applications that let you do it from the comfort of your own home or office without any programming!

The e-commerce application is server software, which means that it is installed and runs on the server - you don't have to install anything on your PC. You access it with your web browser, and you simply click buttons and fill out forms to build your store. You can check orders and make changes to your store from any computer that has a connection to the Internet. It's easy to learn and easy to use, so you can focus on running your store instead of learning a program.