What's more the average European shopper is expected to spend 1,500* euros per year on online purchases. That results in a staggering 261 billion
euros exchanging hands!
E-commerce basically describes the act of selling something online. To the general public an e-commerce web site looks pretty much the same as a normal web site but with
a shopping cart and checkout.
In reality e-commerce has lots of programming behind the scenes to help the store owner maintain their site.
A good e-commerce application will make the task of adding, editing and removing products from a site easy.
There will also be ways of describing shipping methods and handling payments.
Before building your site it is important that you contact your bank and ensure that you are able to become a "merchant trader"
which allows you to accept credit cards (a certain amount of trading history or credit checks may be required depending on
your status). The bank will also be able to recommend a "payment solution provider" or "payment gateway" who will handle
the credit card transaction online with maximum security.
Don't worry if you are unable to get merchant services at your current bank, there is always other banks, or in some cases it may be advisable to use a
third party payment gateway such as PayPal.
Once your site is designed and programmed it will be hosted on highly resilient servers and we will hand over administrator's logon details to you so that you may look
after your store yourself without having to contact us to add new products etc.
If you wanted to we could manage the administration of your site however the tasks are fairly simple and we recommend that you do it yourself to keep the running costs
low helping boost your bottom line!
Because of the various levels of complexity involved in building an e-commerce site it is impossible to give a rough estimate of cost here. We advise you to contact us to discuss your requirements.
* According to data published in Forrester's Europe's eCommerce Forecast: 2006 To 2011 dated June 29 2006. |
