An Introduction To E-Commerce For Small Business

In India there are many small entrepreneurs setting up an e-commerce model for their businesses. Ecommerce can be fruitful for an organization over the web only if there is a solution to an existing customer problem. This paper aims at introducing basic e-commerce concepts to entrepreneurs who wish to set up an online model (Internet).

To setup an online business one needs to get a domain name (for ones website), which is generally ones business name or generic word which also includes a dot com, dot net, dot org extension. One needs to check for the availability of the domain name using the domain search tools. While selecting a domain name one needs to keep in mind that the domain name is relevant to the business, makes marketing sense, its not too long, easy to recall and has the right extension i.e., edu for education sites, org for organizations, .com for commercial. After this buy space on the web for hosting the website.

While designing a website one needs to go through the following checklist:

1) Simple and consistent Navigation across various pages throughout the website.

2) Use a plain, sans-serif font, like Arial, on a white background.

3) Include an opt-in offer to collect email addresses.

4) Do not use lots of graphics and flash unless it adds value to the message.

5) Customer Friendly by customizing features for a particular customer, however, this could be a costly affair for a small business, therefore, use it wisely.

Once the website is designed for various offerings we need to take care of security issues with respect to personal data of our clients and payment for any transaction on purchase of any offerings. In order to conduct any transaction over the web once a payment is made over the internet, site owner should have a mechanism to collect funds and deposit the money into a bank. In order to collect funds, you need to have a merchant account and a payment gateway.

A merchant Account is for online retailers. Two kinds of transactions can be carried out through a merchant account i.e.,

1) To allow Non -POS (Point of sale) transactions using credit cards.

2) Without a card swiper.

An important point to note is that a Merchant account is not the same as a bank account. It acts as a middleman between you payment gateway and your bank account, accepting funds from credit cards which are then deposited into your bank. The bank takes funds from the buyer's account and deposits into your account. A payment processor takes care of checking for availability of funds and debiting from the credit card account. The bank issuing the merchant account is trusting that you will fulfill your end of the transaction by providing the product or service that the buyer purchased.

A payment gateway serves as the front end to your merchant account, allowing you to mange funds, transactions and the like. The payment gateway takes the data submitted via your secure order forms and presents it to your processing bank. The processing bank then approves or declines the transaction and sends it's the response back to the payment gateway. It then turns around and