The Basics of Electronic Commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown dramatically. According to Stats Canada, in the year 2005, the combined private and public sector online sales increased 38.4% to $39.2 billion. Online sales by private firms increased by 37.2% to $36.3 billion, while those by the public sector increased by 55.4% to $2.9 billion.
How do you start an eCommerce eBusiness? Follow these five steps to launch your eBusiness:
1. Register your business name
2. Register your domain name
3. Design your website
4. Build your website
5. Host your website
Register your business
Like a bricks and mortar business, your online business must be registered in the province or country you operate from.
Small Business BC provides excellent information on how to register your business in British Columbia and also provide links to other provinces in Canada.
Register your domain name
A domain name provides an online identity and contact point for your business. A short, easy to remember name that relates to your core business works best.
Once you have a domain name in mind, find a domain registrar to register your name. Examples of domain registrars include: webnames.ca, domainpeople.ca, and dotcanada.com. When registering your domain name you may notice that domain registrars are not limited to name registry but may offer value added services such as web hosting
Designing Your Website
When designing a website always balance the needs of the customer and the needs of the search engines. Your customers should be able to feel comfortable and find what they are looking for when navigating your website. Search Engines on the other hand are looking for a website with lots of content, lots of pages and updated frequently to be placed near the top of their list.
A good source for open source designs is www.oswd.org. Have a look and you may find the design that is right for your business.
Building Your Website
There are four methods in building your website: Do It Yourself (DIY), a friend, a student, or hire a professional: For further information on this visit www.e-bc.ca
Hosting your website
Most of the time, your hosting decisions should be made with the consultation of your developer. However, you still need to consider the following features
- Storage Space Amounts
- Transfer/Bandwidth Amounts
- Technologies(Windows or Linux/Apache Hosting)
- Average Server Downtimes
- Support Plans
Now that you have educated yourself, you now can start your eCommerce eBusiness. In the coming weeks we will discuss payment tools like PayPal and OsCommerce
Stay tuned!
Allan
