eCommerce, Ecommerce, Electrionic Commerce, Web Commerce, whatever you want to call it, for us it's selling things over the Internet. You want to take orders on your Web site, your customers will pay for things with credit cards. It might be retail and it might be business-to-business.
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Electronic Commerce
We've assembled some articles and opinion pieces that should help you find your way though the electonic commerce maze to get the piece of cheese we hear is at the end.
Fresh on the Shelves
- Which Web Sites Are Making Money?
A year or so ago nobody worried too much about Web sites making money. But the atmosphere has changed. Stock markets have lost their unquestioning faith in the future profitability of dot coms. Which begs the question, which Web sites actually do make money?
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Reducing Online Credit Card Fraud
Credit card company figures show that 90 per cent of consumers are reimbursed when their cards are used fraudulently, while 75 per cent of online retailers have to eat the cost when they're the victims of credit card fraud. There is currently no way to avoid this ludicrously high risk, though it can be reduced.
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Gambling Online And Offshore
Online betting and gaming revenues are predicted to reach $10 billion by 2002. Interactive betting services are looking to attract a new audience - the middle classes and women. But if you're thinking of entering this market, be warned, there's not a huge range of back-end solutions available.
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Adding A Dealer Locator To Your Site
Many large corporate Web sites have a "dealer locator" feature that lets a user enter a zip code and get a list of the closest locations to them. If you're interested in adding a similar feature to your site, you're in luck, because it turns out to be both cheap and easy to do.
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Of course the Internet will be taxed.
Governments may find themselves losing tax income because of e-commerce. They won't like it. Tangible goods sold over the Internet are generally taxed. Intangible goods like software downloads are more difficult to tax, but ultimately most governments will find a way of getting revenue from these too.
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You Paid How Much For That Domain Name?
Selling domain names - it's a licence to print money. The domain name Business.com was recently sold for a staggering $8 million. If you've got a domain name to sell, or you'd like to buy one, where on the Internet should you start looking, and how much will it be worth?
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Hosting a Big Time Web Site
If you're building a Web site that is going to be BIG, big in size, big in features, and HUGE in traffic, where do you host the thing? How do you select a company that can handle a complicated Web server farm? I've built a couple like this including one that pulled over $1 million every day in direct, over-the-Web orders. Here's a few things I learned to look for.
Spotlight on UK e-commerce
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E-commerce in the UK
Multimillion pound savings are emerging from use of the Web in the UK. Investment bank Schroders are looking to cut over one million pounds from their annual buying costs, by streamlining the buying process. Sutton and East Surrey Water have introduced an online payment system which is forecast to save them a million pounds a year. However, it's not all a smooth ride, as Freeserve will confirm.
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Do the banks hold back E-commerce in the UK?
In the UK, doing business on the Internet is in some ways still a frontier-town activity. The worst of the outlaws in this game of Cowboys and Indians are the UK banks and credit card companies. Compare the situation of the average UK small business that wants to add e-commerce with his cousin in the USA.
- Independence Day 2 - US well ahead of UK in ecommerce
(WebDeveloper.com) Read why Peter Cooper thinks Britain is falling way behind America in the ecommerce game.
Building Electronic Commerce Sites
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Tune Your Ecommerce Site for the Christmas Rush
Or Easter Rush or Summer Rush or a bit of brisk business next Friday. It doesn't matter when, the principles are the same. Your servers and bandwidth have to be big enough. Your systems have to be solid. Get ready for the flood of orders soon to be pouring in.
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Is SSL dead?
Most security experts have been aware of
problems with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), but generally speaking we haven't said much because there
wasn't much of a replacement available for it, and the problem hasn't been exploited
extensively. Chances are it will be, though.
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Building a Simple Ecommerce Web Site
You don't need to spend $millions to build an ecommerce Web site. There are viable do-it-yourself alternatives at hand. These are cost effective and require little technical expertise.
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Ecommerce Tutorial
A detailed, three-part tutorial about how to set up a simple ecommerce Web site.
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Ecommerce on a Budget
A simple, dependable, and inexpensive ecommerce solution for small businesses is proposed.
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Getting a Credit Card Merchant Account
Guides to getting set up to accept credit cards on your Web site.
e-commerce Software
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Shopping Cart Programs Compared
Need a shopping cart? Here's an overview of your options, from homegrown JavaScript to easy-to-implement turnkey solutions for merchants.
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NetObjects Authoring Server Suite 3.0
NetObjects is shooting to alleviate the bottleneck created when Webmasters are forced to do all the work of developing and deploying Web content to Internet and Intranet sites.
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Hey wait! You didn't pay for that!
There's a dirty little secret about shopping carts no one likes to talk about: <whisper> most shopping carts are abandoned full of merchandise before they ever get to the checkout counter!</whisper> Read on to find out how to reduce your abandonment rate.
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EDI as the Backbone of Electronic Commerce
Large and medium-sized companies have been doing business with each other electronically for years via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). It seems as though the Internet world has no idea what EDI is and what it can mean for Electronic Commerce.
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Toolkits for a Distributed, Agent-Based Web Commerce System
This is an 8-part series. As information on the Internet becomes more dynamic and heterogeneous, 'software agents' have been touted as the new building blocks for a new Internet structure.
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Internet Marketing
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Andy Grove is wrong. Interactive TV is not a dead end.
Perhaps he hasn’t recognised the next killer app: tracking and profiling Web site and television visitors and marketing to them in very precise ways.
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Increasing Page Views - Busting the Million Mark
Most people start their surfing sessions with a search. Find out what they're searching for and give them plenty of it.
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The Internet Marketing Plan
A written plan is a must before creating an Internet presence. This book covers much more than just writing a proposal for a Web site. It's a pretty darn good primer on Internet marketing.
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Highly Targeted Marketing on the Web
It used to be an amusing truism that "on the Internet nobody knows if you’re a dog." Nowadays, however, not only can a webmaster figure out if you’re a dog, he can find out what you’re favorite brand of dog food is and find out if you’ve ever been to obedience school.
Advertising & Traffic Analysis
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Electronic Commerce
By Frank Griffel, Tuan Tu, Winfreid Lamersdorf (editors)
This new book contains 16 papers covering strategy, execution and support issues important for anyone involved in building merchant systems for the Internet. This is relevant information about the enabling technologies behind electronic commerce.
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Web Commerce Cookbook
by Gordon McComb
This is the closest thing we've seen to a comprehensive guide to building commerce-enabled sites. Explains how to set up sites to sell either tangible goods, or content. Includes a wealth of useful CGI scripts and HTML templates.
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Internet Commerce
by Andrew Dahl and Leslie Lesnick
This is also a pretty comprehensive guide to building commerce-enabled sites. Includes a chapter on building commerce sites using Lotus Notes.
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The Microsoft Merchant Server Book
by Barry S. Wadman, Brad Miser and Marta Partington
This is a very thorough explanation of MS Merchant Server, a suite of applications that offers a unified approach to building a commerce-enabled site.
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Frontiers of Electronic Commerce
by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B. Whinston
This textbook covers credit card systems, EDI, electronic cash systems, security, and much more. Its 850 pages cover a vast scope, mentioning an array of Internet-related subjects, but not going into technical detail about any. Perhaps more suitable for managers than for Web developers.
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Electronic Commerce - A Manager's Guide
by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B. Whinston
This book covers many aspects of electronic commerce and communications. It is by the same authors as Frontiers of Electronic Commerce, and expands on that book's subject matter.
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Build A World Wide Web Commerce Center
by net.Genesis Corporation
This book tells you how to set up an in-house NT Web server, with a view to hosting commercial sites. Web commerce issues like credit cards, electronic payment systems, and security are briefly touched on, but the main focus of the book is on NT Web server setup.
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