| There are a variety of forms of e-Commerce.
Products can be sold through the use of on-line forms, shopping carts, and
auctions. If your product is of an intellectual property nature, such as a
subscription to a website or the sale of software or e-books, which will be delivered
through the Internet, much of the following information will not apply to your situation.
A subscriber based service, where authenticated access is required will require a
database for such authentication although the method of ordering can be any of those
options. This page is primarily dedicated to the sale of hard goods. PRODUCT SELECTION OPTIONS:
ORDER FORMS - The simplest e-Commerce
solution is to place an order form on your website. The form can be printed by your
visitor and completed manually based on the information about your products, shipping and
terms of sale provided on your website. Once completed, the form can be faxed or
mailed to you.
As an alternative, the order form can be an interactive,
on-line form, requiring the visitor to make the entries on that page and the completed
form could be either faxed, mailed or submitted on-line for delivery to you as an e-mail
to you.
HTML SHOPPING CART - Customers are given
the option to select products from your catalog pages and add them to their shopping cart
with the click of a button. In this option, the catalog pages are standard HTML web
pages with "BUY" buttons to add products to the shopping cart. Changes to
the information related to your products must be made by editing these web pages,
requiring the capability to edit HTML. This is practical for companies with a
limited number of products or if the product selection and pricing does not change
frequently. It is also well suited for subscription and membership sales.
DATABASE DRIVEN SHOPPING CART - Unlike the
HTML option, the catalog pages are interfaced with an on-line database containing the
pictures and descriptions of your products. When a visitor goes to a catalog page,
the page is created "dynamically" using the information in the database.
In this manner, you can quickly and easily make changes to your products through an
on-line interface which enables you to manage the on-line database. As such, no HTML
editing experience is necessary. This is ideally suited for companies with larger
inventories and frequently changing product mixes.
CHECKOUT OPTIONS:
In either of the shopping cart solutions, when the customer
is ready to checkout, the system computes the total of the order, adds the appropriate
shipping and sales tax charges and collects the necessary delivery and payment information
from the customer.
SHIPPING CHOICES - There are basically two
options for computing the shipping charges. An amount can be derived from a
predefined table of shipping charges based on total weight, total value of the sale or
number of items. Many shopping carts on the market are limited to a single table of
values, limiting your ability to offer your customer choices on the manner of deliver
(overnight vs. ground), etc. The alternative is to have the system interface with
one or more of the major common carriers websites and get a shipping cost from there.
In this scenario, your customer may be given the option of which common carrier to
use and what delivery method they wish to pay for.
TAX ASSESSMENT - Only a sophisticated
shopping cart system will provide in-depth sales tax computations. For companies
with multiple outlets in different markets this can be an important consideration.
ORDER DELIVERY AND PAYMENT OPTIONS:
Once an order has gathered all of the necessary information
and computed the total, it must be delivered to you and paid for.
E-MAIL - In this option, the information
is delivered to you via e-mail. The e-mail message can be sent as a normal
(unsecured) message, which will concern some customers. In reality, the likelihood
of someone being able to intercept that e-mail containing the customer's credit card
information, is so small that it is considerably less risky than handing your credit card
to a waiter at a restaurant. There will be some customers who refuse to make a
purchase over a non-secure connection, but, there will be a considerable number who will
accept this method of purchasing. The benefit of this method for you is that this
entire shopping cart mechanism can be incorporated into your existing website and you will
not incur any additional monthly expense to begin generating sales.
The alternative is to have the e-mail sent to you in an
encrypted format such that it can only be read by you or whoever possesses the
"key" for decrypting the message. To implement this feature, and provide
customers with a sense of security, your web pages associated with the checkout process
need to reside on a "Secure Server" with a valid "Certificate".
What that means essentially is that you will incur a slightly higher cost associated with
your monthly hosting service for the use of the secure server. By being on the
secure server, an icon (padlock) will appear in the customer's browser confirming that
they are communicating in a secure environment.
Either way, you will process the credit card transaction
manually, using whatever method has been made available to you by your merchant account
provider. If you don't have a merchant account you would need to get one, either
from your bank, or, from a merchant account provider. MegaIQ can assist you with the
establishment of a merchant account. For more information, contact
us.
ON-LINE TRANSACTION PROCESSING - This is,
by far, the preferred option for operating an on-line store. When the order is
submitted, the credit card is processed automatically through an on-line "payment
gateway". The customer's credit card is verified and debited, the money is
credited to your merchant account and placed directly into your bank account. The
fulfillment information regarding what the customer ordered will be either sent to you via
e-mail, stored on the server where you can access it at your convenience or both. We
recommend doing both to avoid any lost orders resulting from an e-mail not being
deliverable due to connection problems on the Internet.
The obvious benefit to this option is that you don't have
to manually process the credit card transaction so you won't waste any time on a sale that
will not go through.
COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH ON-LINE
TRANSACTION PROCESSING:
There are several costs associated with on-line transaction
processing that you need to be aware of:
You may incur a monthly fee associated with the use of a
secure server to host your checkout pages.
There may be an initial set-up fee for the merchant account
that you will use for your on-line sales, or to add on-line selling to your existing
merchant account.
Merchant account providers charge a higher transaction fee
for on-line sales than they do for in-store sales. This is due to the increased risk
of credit card fraud when the merchant doesn't get to physically see the credit card and
check the customer's identification. Therefore, you will have an added transaction
cost for each sale.
Finally, there may be a monthly charge for the use of the
payment gateway's service which will be charged to your merchant account each month.
You may incur this fee regardless if you have any on-line sales that month.
MegaIQ's e-Commerce solutions have merchant
account services included within every shopping cart thereby eliminating any additional
set-up fees or monthly charges for the use of a payment gateway.
ADDITIONAL OPTIONS AND FEATURES:
There are a variety of features that can be added to an
on-line store to improve the customer's buying experience, provide you with in-depth
reporting on your sales, management control over your store, and, improve your marketing
capabilities.
For example, customers can be required to establish an
on-line account which then gives you valuable profile information about your customers and
provides the basis for increasing the convenience of their shopping experience. For
example, once the customer has entered all of their contact and shipping information it
will automatically be used as the default every time they place an order. With
customer accounts you can offer on-line order tracking, send promotional e-mail messages
to your customer base, or, display unique information for individual customers based on
their previous purchases. The capabilities are endless.
|
