E-Commerce

Electronic commerce is the expression of the moment. This is the next big thing and your business absolutely has to be involved. What does it mean for a typical small business?

First of all you do have to get your feet wet with doing business over the Internet or risk having to dive in with your clothes on when you see your more experienced competitors in the swim with your clients.

Let's see: you'll need a web site. Part of it will have to be on a secure server so that the order forms are secure. Many companies don't go beyond this, conveniently ignoring the fact that when the secure server e-mails the form data back to you, it is no longer secure. But then, this problem doesn't seem to have resulted in a lot of fraud. You can encrypt or go for a complete secure e-commerce package. Finally, once you get the order data, you'll have to process, ship and bill.

This sounds like there is a high headache potential here but that's exactly why you have to familiarize yourself with the problems now. In the near future, you'll be able to hire a company to run your e-commerce for comparatively little cost. Your customers will visit your site and view your catalogues. They'll order giving credit card numbers to secure order forms. The secure forms will be processed securely and the amounts minus commissions will be posted to your account. Your company will be e-mailed a statement showing the purchases, the credit card transactions and the amounts posted to your account. Your shipping department will be e-mailed shipping instructions. Every now and then you'll get statistics showing what's going on with your e-business. All you have to do is supply current information for the catalogues, ship reliably and handle customer problems.

Already there are many companies offering similar services. I don't think any are quite ready to handle small businesses at a reasonable cost but that is coming. When it does, you'll have to be comfortable enough with the technology to make informed decisions and choices. The E-Commerce Times is full of links and information about this. I have to warn you that the site loads extremely slowly but then, that's the kind of thing you have to find out about and avoid for your e-commerce.

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