tinker sites getting your business online

8/6/2019 Tinker Sites Getting Your Business Online

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/tinker-sites-getting-your-business-online 1/40

www.tinkersites.com Create complete websites in just seconds! ________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________ Visit www.tinkersites.com and discover how you can create websites in just

seconds with little or no experience! 1




Getting Your Business Online

TRADEMARKS: Every attempt is made throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trademarks. Noattempt has been made to infringe upon any trademark, or service mark.

Every attempt has been made to supply accurate information at the time of this writing. However, theinformation in this book is distributed on an as is basis, without warranty, either expressed or implied. Byusing this book or the information contained herein, you agree the authors, Wiremark, its associates,employees, officers, or any affiliates direct, or indirect, assume no responsibility for it’s use, nor anyinfringement of the intellectual property rights of third parties, which may result from its use, and to holdharmless from any damages stemming from the information and use of this book.

Copyright U.S.A. All Rights Reserved.

This book may be distributed freely as long as it is distributed in its completeness, not altered in any way,and no attempt is made to offer credit to parties other than the authors.

Published in the United States of America






CONTENTS

About this Book






Contents

CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION - 8

Lets Define eCommerceA Glance At TrendsLooking At Strategies

CHAPTER II – PLANNING AND REQUIREMENTS - 10

What About Your AudienceSuccessfully Define ALL Of Your RequirementsAccurately Analyzing Your Financial InfrastructurePopular Payment MethodsLets Figure Out Your Development MethodLets See What Your Costs Are

The Impact Of Your CommitmentImportant Factors For Determining Your EnvironmentSecurity Should Be Taken Seriously

CHAPTER III - DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION - 20

Create Your Project TeamThe Art and Science of Your DesignYour Implementation Must Be Taken Seriously

CHAPTER IV – MARKETING - 24

Valuable Information Regarding Search Engines

Lets Talk About Premium SponsorshipsWhat About Advertising Networks

CHAPTER V – SUPPORT AND MAINTENANCE – 26

Managing Your Online VentureDedicated Support At Your ServiceDisaster Recovery And Why

CHAPTER VI – MCOMMERCE - 28

APPENDIX A - 29

Sample Project Plan For A Typical eCommerce Project

APPENDIX B - 31

Sample Project Task Outline

APPENDIX C - 35

Tasks for Implementing Your eCommerce Solution






APPENDIX D - 35

Sample Test Plan

APPENDIX E - 36

Glossary of Terms

ABOUT THE AUTHORS - 40






Chapter I – Introduction

Lets Define eCommerce

eCommerce is the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet (online). The adoption of

eCommerce has been a gradual process, but as improvements are being made relating to security, privacy,and reliability, more and more businesses, organizations, and individuals are embracing it. In someindustries it is rapidly becoming a major and standard sales channel.

A Glance At Trends

In 2002, Internet sales totaled $78 billion. This was a 52% increase from 2001. For Q1 of 2003 sales rose to$24 billion, this was a 20% increase from a year earlier Q1 2002 sales of $20 billion. (Source: Gartner)

Growth may eventually slow but there are no signs of this occurring soon. According to eMarketer.com,there is a new Internet user every 1.67 seconds. As of this writing 3 out of 4 of them are purchasing goodsand paying for services online. So why did the Dotcom industry bust at the turn of the century? That had todo with several factors including poor business decisions and flawed financial management. A great deal of the Dotcoms were startup companies with managers that had no real experience and thought the spendingcraze of that booming economy was a justified normal phenomenon. Had those Dotcom executives had better long-term insight, more experience, and possibly a sound business plan to fall back on, maybe theywould not have gotten into as much trouble as they did. Those still around today such as Yahoo, Amazonand eBay more than likely had a working business model and sound practices to rely on.

Though eventually eCommerce growth may slow, there is currently only a small portion of Americanhouseholds who have a computer with a connection to the Internet. This illustrates there is still plenty of room for potential growth, challenging the notion that it’s too late to jump on the eCommerce bandwagon. Now is an excellent time to get your business wired and online if you have not already done so.eCommerce has matured and you can learn from the experiences of the early pioneers of the medium. Infact, we will discuss how to safely plan for your venture and touch on some very important issues to keepin mind while you implement your eCommerce solution.






Looking At Strategies

A good strategy for putting your goods or services for sale online is often the “safe approach”, that is, letdemand side economics determine how you will stock your inventories and plan your initial serviceofferings. If you offer hundreds of items for sale in your traditional brick-and-mortar business, you maywant to consider scaling back to a fraction of your products or product line. The goal of any profitable business is to constantly generating revenue with acceptable margins. It can be costly to account for bloated inventory and product that sits on a shelf for months on end without generating any revenue or profit margin. It may be a good idea to start with your best seller’s right out of the gate. Then as you growyou can begin to offer items that may not sell as frequently as others, but you are providing them as aservice to your customers and further promoting your brand or corporate identity. This strategy reallyemphasizes a conservative approach and is a solid initial plan to get up and running quickly whileminimizing your risk.

When you establish your online presence and begin selling products to your customers, you will see what products are successful and which ones are not. Maybe you are of the mindset that every product has potential and there are no real losers. If this is the case, you may want to experiment with how you aremarketing the product, or how an individual product can be positioned within your product line. Proper marketing can help drive sales either online or offline, from highway billboards to the banners on the

information super highway.






Successfully Define ALL Of Your Requirements

Failure to define your requirements upfront can lead to costly mistakes, such as signing up for unnecessaryservices, paying too much for services, not ordering required services on time, incorporating incorrectfunctionality, or not incorporating required functionality. Defining and documenting your requirements alsohelps set expectations of everyone involved in the project and everyone who has a stake in the project.

When first introduced to eCommerce, many business professionals are overwhelmed by all of the thingsthey must consider. There are a lot of very intelligent features you can build with the technology behind aneCommerce website or a Client/Server application. If you have a predefined storefront or are joining anexisting marketplace, most of your work will probably be done using the HyperText Markup Language(HTML). If you build a custom system you will become immersed in many aspects of web development,and may utilize different development languages and tools. The fact that so many languages, tools, andoptions are available makes it tempting to use them. Try to use only what is really necessary to completeyour project and leave it so that future enhancements can be added when your business requires such. It isoften not necessary to add every feature possible right now, or use as many tools that will fit within your budget. Many fail to realize this generally stemming from one of two reasons:

The project was improperly managed The requirements to define a successful project were not properly identified

If you spend enough time to properly identify and document the requirements to support what you reallywant to accomplish your project should be a success. Things can go wrong if the project is not managed properly, or if all persons with a business interest in the project do not have input on its requirements.Overlooking a key person could cause huge problems down the road, when a piece of functionality or datathey need to perform their business task is missing or incorrect.

For example, a developer on your project team might think it may be effortless to add an additional reportto your project because the data is already there to support such a feature or they may even have the programming code handy from a previous project.

With good intentions the developer starts building the add-on, again thinking it will not take much effort atall, then discovers the effort is greater than anticipated, or the task he put on hold is greater thananticipated. During the confusion created by this, he may forget about implementing that piece of functionality or data he changed to implement one of those tasks. He is now behind as a result of theunexpected extra time spent on a task that was not defined in the project requirements to begin with, and arequired task may be developed incorrectly or not developed at all due to time constraints. To makematters even worse, the report the developer was working on was not required because that piece of the business model would change by the time the online project was completed. The project team was notaware of this because the person responsible for that area was not involved in the requirements gathering phase of the project.

There you have it, a good example of a project suffering as a result of improper management, poor requirements gathering, and allowing a team member to stray from the agreed upon terms. To reiterate this

important point, your project should have a strong project manager and involve all persons with a stake inthe project or business areas touched by the project. By following your predefined requirements it will helpmake everyone clear of the expectations and help to avoid surprises that could jeopardize your deadline,functionality, or budget. Any changes in functionality after the agreed upon requirements are signed off on,should be approved by the project manager before becoming part of your project plan. The projectmanager would be responsible for making sure the requirements are valid and approved by all of thenecessary persons.






Accurately Analyzing Your Financial Infrastructure

Defining Where the Selling Will Occur

Where do you need or want to accept payments online? The driver of this decision is typically based on thetype of application you will be building. Do you want sales to occur on your own site or are you going toopen an eBay storefront or mall-type store to handle all of your transactions? Tradition says many willchoose to sell through their dedicated company website. If you decide to consider something like eBay,carefully read “Popular Payment Methods” later in this chapter. Selling through your company’s site,whether it exists now or not, gives you the most control and flexibility over content, look and feel, and howyou want to handle the transaction within your commerce.

Selecting a Financial Institution

If you play a part managing the finances of your business, you may be involved in getting your customers payments correctly routed to your bank accounts. The volume of your sales will have a heavy impact ondecisions involving which financial institutions you select to process and handle your payments. If youdesire to keep your online investment as minimal as possible you may want to consider implementing aPayPal solution, which can be used to route the funds to a personal or business checking or savings

account. If you have an existing web presence this is probably the fastest way to begin accepting paymentsonline. Documentation can be found on the PayPal website (www.PayPal.com) which can aid you in theintegration process.

Though it is fast to set up, one disadvantage of PayPal could be that you may be required to manuallytransfer your PayPal balances to your company’s bank account. You may decide that this task is somewhattedious for you. If your system is more involved and you use a payment gateway, such as VeriSign’sPayFlow Pro, you will probably have more costs and effort to initially get online, but you will probably nothave anything else to do after the transaction takes place.

In the latter case, you will need to obtain an Internet Merchant Account, which is not a standard merchantaccount, but a merchant account required and dedicated for Internet eCommerce transactions. As with astandard merchant account there will most likely be a discount rate and/or a fee per transaction you may

have to pay your merchant account provider. Most businesses can contact their bank for an Internetmerchant account, especially since they have an already established and working relationship with the bank. Some business professionals will shop around as well and search for merchant service providersonline to compare rates.

Once you have selected your Internet merchant service provider, many information technology consultingfirms and other institutions are available to assist you with the integration of the account with the actual payment gateway you are using. A payment gateway is a third party that is responsible for the verificationof the credit card, debiting or crediting the card, and depositing the funds into the Internet merchantaccount. Once this has been accomplished you should be ready to start testing and accepting credit cardtransactions online.






Popular Payment Methods

Credit Card

One of the most traditional and popular methods of accepting online payments today is from credit cards.Credit card processing is accomplished with an Internet merchant account, payment gateway, transaction processor, and a bank account to receive the funds into. It is a great idea to be able to accept credit cardssince most online orders are currently placed using credit cards.

PayPal

PayPal is fast becoming a preferred method for online payments for many small businesses. Startuprequirements are minimal, which makes this a very attractive solution. You can get started with an emailaddress, which later will be used to validate you against one of your bank accounts or major credit card.With simple programming code a person with a PayPal account can send or receive funds to other PayPalusers. PayPal also makes it possible to integrate its service within an HTML form. The person paying youis required to have a valid PayPal account to use the service. There are many other payment processorssimilar to PayPal coming online every year. These can be found using the various Internet search engines.

Electronic Checks

Most banks offer a Automated Check Handling (ACH) for processing online checks. These are known aseChecks or electronic checks and behave similar to traditional paper checks. You use your checkingaccount by providing a check number, bank routing number, the amount of the transaction, and other personal details to verify your identity. The funds from the checks are usually available within a few days.

USPS Mail

Providing a way for your customers to send you mail using the United States Postal System is still a goodidea. Many persons are still shy to using the Internet to process payment transactions, and you probablystill want their business, regardless of how they choose to pay.






Lets Figure Out Your Development Method

Some eCommerce packages available give you a complete set of tools for designing, building, deploying,managing and marketing your eCommerce initiative.

Many have online web controls that make it easy for a less technically savvy person to manage the businesslogic of the store/website once it is operational. Sales, reports, fulfillment, order tracking, promotional mail,and inventory control are just some of the perks found in some of these software packages.

Below is an outline of the advantages and disadvantages of buying a solution, or building one yourself.This is commonly referred to as “buy-versus-build”.

Advantages of buying

It will not be necessary to re-invent the wheel. Your storefront and product catalog are ready togo.

Most business managers can maintain the site/cart/catalog themselves through intuitive onlinewizards. A wizard is a step-by-step guide that holds your hand through the process.

The solution comes with several features that your business can grow with.

Disadvantages of buying

A technical person is still required to implement the package and there is a learning curve toconsider.

Buying a solution may be overkill depending on your business needs. Functionality may not be as flexible as your business needs, and all included functionality may not

be required to support your business. Some packages can be difficult to customize, giving your online presence a generic look and feel. Software maintenance and licensing fees are usually incurred.

Advantages of Building

Build only what you need and therefore only pay for what you will use. Complete control over how far you are going to integrate with existing business processes. Easier to integrate with all of your systems if you choose to do so. Buying packaged software or

eCommerce packages may only integrate with a select list of predefined software configurations,data, or will limit your payment gateway options.

Disadvantages of Building

Could be more costly if requirements are large, outside help is needed, or the project is not properly managed.

The developer who built the application may be required to be available for support. This could be a problem if that person becomes unavailable.






Lets See What Your Costs Are

There are several things to consider when referring to the cost of the implementation of your eCommercesolution. It can be difficult to recognize the costs involved with all of the possible approaches you canconsider when selling your brand, products, and services online. The costs of software, development tools, personnel costs, and consulting fees are usually a significant part of any implementation. When addressingthis topic it is common to break the process up into the following areas in which most of your costs willmost likely fall into:

Design Development Implementation Support Maintenance

Hosting can be one of the largest short-term or long-term costs for your project. Hosting is the physicallocation of all of the source code, graphics, executables and other components that make up your website or application. You may choose to purchase a server and host the application or website yourself, or to rent

server space from a third-party often referred to as the host, host provider, or Internet Service Provider (ISP). A host or hosting service is nothing more than the process of serving or making available your web pages or application to several clients. In the case of the Internet those clients are mostly web browsers.

If you are hosting the website yourself, include the cost of the server hardware and software in thisestimate, also include a portion or relevant percentage of the cost for the connection to the server where thesite will reside. If it’s a dedicated connection do not forget other hardware and software expenses such asrouters, firewall software and the connection itself. It may require a more technical person such as aninformation technology consultant, or someone from your technical staff to identify some of the necessaryhardware and software required. You will quickly see that when adding the costs together that your eCommerce project may require more initial capital than outsourcing your hosting needs, however, youmay discover that it may be a good investment to host it yourself, as opposed to committing to pay hostingfees long-term.

If you outsource your hosting, regardless of the environment, you will likely have a monthly fee to pay toyour hosting provider. The fee will vary depending on whether you choose dedicated or shared service,your website space and bandwidth requirements, and which hosting provider you choose. A shared hostingenvironment means your site resides on the same server as other sites and is usually a cheaper solution. Thedownside of sharing a server with other websites is that if one of the other sites contains an application thatcauses a problem, it could cause the server to have a problem, which could affect your site and even crashthe server, thus bringing your site down and making it unavailable to your customers.

Dedicated hosting is more expensive but your site resides on its own physical server. With this option, youdo not have to worry about problems with other applications that may create performance issues, or downtime for your site. With both options, the initial cost will probably be far less than purchasing andmaintaining your own server, however, over time you will eventually have spent more than the initial cost

of supplying your own server, as a result of the accumulated monthly service fees you will have paid todate.

Another factor in determining initial or long-term costs of your eCommerce project is the type of paymentsyou want to accept online.

If you are setting up a PayPal or eBay solution, costs may be reduced but your product or services may beless accessible to the masses of potential buyers. Potential buyers not using PayPal or eBay will have lessof an opportunity to purchase your products or services.






If you choose to accept credit cards online in real time you will need an Internet merchant account, payment gateway, an SSL Certificate, or if you want to take an easier route, you can go with a provider who offers credit card processing as a service. These providers can handle your credit card processing for afee but you must process your credit card through their service, which may or may not be acceptabledepending on your requirements and their requirements for service.

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. Its purpose is twofold:

First, it is responsible for encrypting or scrambling data between your site and the payment gateway to prevent a malicious party from obtaining sensitive data, such as credit card or social security numbers.

Second, it tells your customer you are who you say you are.

Keep in mind that payment gateways such as VeriSign’s PayFlow Pro, and your Internet merchant account provider will have fees as well.

These are all things to consider and can add up quickly. Many are difficult if not impossible to get a refundfrom, so again make sure you thoroughly plan and define all of your requirements before selection theseservices. By prioritizing what is important to your organization it will be easier for you to scale back on

functionality if costs start to become more of a concern.






The Impact Of Your Commitment

Once you have identified how much you are willing to invest in your eCommerce, and have compared thatagainst how large of an effort your project will be, you can now weight the impact of a commitment goingforward. If you are unsure if you will be successful online, or want to minimize your investment, you maywant to consider one of the many online shopping malls and online auction sites that exist.

Online shopping malls are attractive in the same sense that traditional shopping malls are: One place to doall of your shopping.

These malls can be very cost effective solutions since other members may share most of the backendcomponents required for the site to function properly. If it’s not required for you to have your owndedicated server or your own SSL certificate this might be the best place for you to start. If you have theresources and the budget, you may want to consider establishing your own .com and promote your brandidentity, without someone else’s pop-up brand or advertising getting in your customers way, or wallet. Thisoption gives you the most control and ownership.

eBay

No eCommerce discussion would be complete without mention of eBay. Many businesses are flocking tothe auction giant to sell off bloated inventory at a discount, or whatever a buyer is willing to pay.One popular type of auction seen is the Dutch auction, or sometimes referred to as multi-quantity auctions.The Dutch auction can be useful for clearing out old or bloated inventory. If you have more than one of thesame items for sale, the Dutch Auction may be a good idea.

For example your company has 4 transistor radios on the shelf and is having difficulty clearing them. If 10 persons bid on the radios, and the top 4 bids are for $100, $90, $89 and $77, each of the top 4 bidderswould get the radio for $77.

An advantage of this type of auction is that it is a quick way to move your inventory at a discount withouthaving to create a section on your website for the special promotion, publish it, and remove it at the exactmoment you are out of stock or when the promotion expires.

A disadvantage may be the lack of brand recognition since you are embedding your offer and productwithin the eBay look and feel. This may be undesirable to some companies wanting to avoid a distractionfrom their own website, products, or brand.

After looking at some history, trends, and strategies, you can probably see that now is the time to consider putting your business online if you have not already done so. It is kind of hard to ignore history and trendswith such a significant growth pattern, already tried and proven. Now we will talk about what you can doonline, how you might do it, and how to plan for it.

Utilizing eCommerce Developers and Consultants

If you have a technical staff that has the availability and technical skills to support an eCommerce venture,

it’s a good idea to make sure they are familiar with the different technologies and means available toimplement your online store.

If you do not have a technical staff that can handle the implementation of your online project, or you do butthey are already overextended on other projects, then you may want to consider utilizing InformationTechnology Consultants. These consultants can be a good way to get an unbiased opinion on how to proceed with your goals and determine how to integrate those goals with your current environment. Whenchoosing a consultant or firm, look for one that is not biased towards any particular technology. Oftensome of these technology persons let technology drive decisions and not business, choosing a technology because that is what they are familiar with or favor, not what may be best for your business. Your business






Chapter III - Design and Implementation

Create Your Project Team

After you have identified your goals, business requirements, and determined your level of commitment to

your endeavor, it’s now time to proceed with designing and implementing your project.

The next thing you will want to do is to create a project team based on the scope (size and number of tasks)of your project. This team could consist of a graphic designer, web developer, eCommerce programmer,database administrator, network administrator, quality assurance person, and a project manager. You mayeven have multiple people fulfilling each role with a primary contact person responsible for each task or group of tasks. You may also have one person performing all duties. Your budget, staff availability, anddeadline to complete the project will impact your project staffing requirements and decisions.

Once you have your project team selected, you will begin to design and implement your project. The design process can take on two distinct and separate forms, interface design and the technical design. Additionalimplementation tasks to consider are security, design, deployment, and testing.

The Art and Science of Your Design

Interface Design

Keeping your visual interface simple, clean, and user-friendly is generally the best approach. Your customers will be the users of your site. Providing a simple, clean, uncluttered user interface will help your customers find what they need fast and result in a positive customer experience. Trying to do too muchgraphically or adding lots of bells and whistles can distract your customers from what you are offering.Many Internet users are still on dial-up modems and if your site has too many graphics, it may take thecustomer some time to load your web page, and you may lose that customer during the waiting process if they become frustrated and leave. A customer may also leave if they cannot find what they are looking for within a reasonable amount of time and effort. A good navigation system, a fast loading website, and aneasy shopping and checkout process will do more for you and your customers than giving them lots of things on your pages that can distract them, instead of attracting them or persuading them to buy.






Technical Design

A simple approach is always the best one technically. The general rule of thumb here is to build modularlywhere you can reuse as much of the development source code as possible. This makes future modificationsmuch easier and can significantly reduce time, effort, and costs.

It is a good idea to make sure your technical and user interface specialists are working together, and have aclear understanding of the business requirements. Having them work independently can lead to difficultiesin your efforts to successfully complete the project. Many projects are unsuccessful as a result of veryfancy and attractive interfaces being presented and selected at the expense of a user-friendly interface, eventhough these fancy interfaces are not required to successfully complete the project. Also, allowing thewrong persons to dictate the user interface can lead to business requirements being ignored, or user interface standards not being properly addressed.

A good project manager will attempt to minimize this potential danger by assigning individual or individuals who have experience in designing user interfaces, and will also involve someone from the user community, who will be using the actual interface being designed. Involving the wrong person or personsin the user interface design could result in an interface that will not be acceptable by your customers, whichcould result in increased budget or an unsuccessful project.

Security and Infrastructure Design

This is an important topic you often hear about and is worth mentioning again. When you are talking abouteCommerce, from the point of view of the business, the only thing you are concerned about is keeping your customer’s transactions safe. As we stated before the transaction is secured with an SSL certificate. For most business’s this is enough, but what if your product is electronic in nature or can be ported to anelectronic medium? We then need to discuss how we want to secure your product. You may find that therisks outweigh the reward and decide not to offer sales online.

Take the music industry for example. Today it is struggling to secure their product as they lose revenue toswappers, copiers and pirates. Due to the fact that you can encode audio CD’s into small MP3 files that areeasy to transport and still have credible sound quality, many people are able to trade songs with friends

online, or even download entire albums using the Internet.

The music recording industry experienced a 5% revenue drop in 2000 and 2001. They claim to have lost10% of their revenue in 2002 due to online piracy. (Source: AP)






Your Implementation Must Be Taken Seriously

Develop

Please remember, when developing your eCommerce project, to carefully stick to your predefinedrequirements, and work towards the task deadlines. Changes to these requirements should occur only if absolutely necessary, and the project manager should approve all changes. This is the area where many projects run out of scope and out of budget. Often requirements are changed throughout the project,resulting in a situation equivalent to trying to hit a moving target. It is easier to hit the target when it isstanding still and not changing directions, than when it is moving around. If your requirements keepchanging, it will take longer to complete your project, cost you more money, and missed deadlines.

Test, Test, Test!You can never do enough testing. The rule of thumb here is, if you cut the testing short, you will suffer theconsequences. After your team has completed the development of your online site, and has established atest environment, you are ready to proceed to your testing phase.

There are many schools of thought when is comes to testing. In general, you will need the following tosuccessfully complete your testing phase:

A test environment that is as identical to the live/production environment as possible. A good, written test plan that includes all areas and functionality to be tested. The test plan serves

as a guide through the testing phase, just as the project plan serves as your guide though the project lifecycle. See an example of a test plan in Appendix D at the end of this book.

Good testers. These individuals should come from the user community. The people who willactually be using your site make the best testers. Try to avoid using developers and other personsfamiliar with the site as a result of in depth involvement with the project. After looking atsomething so long, you start to over look things. Developers and technical persons, because of their technical expertise and know-how to get around applications easier, tend to discountfunctional issues that may stop a user dead in their tracks.

Someone on the test team who has not seen the application prior to testing. These persons oftenmake great testers because they are using the site for the first time and assume nothing.

Good test data that is as close to the production data as possible.

If you made it to this point in your project, you probably have already completed some sort of testing.During the development of your site, your developers have tested every piece of programming code thusfar, if something did not work properly as they developed it they corrected the problem at that time, beforemoving onto the task of putting it all together. Now it is time to see how well everything works together asone.

Depending on the complexity of your site and its functionality, you will want to perform your functionaltesting first, so that you can stabilize the site and environment before allowing users or customers to accessit for testing. Even if you say “it is only a test environment” your users and customers will remember their first experience with your site. Since there will undoubtedly be bugs to fix, they will remember it as being

buggy or unstable. That being said, it is best to have your environment as bug free as possible beforeletting any users or customers access it.

The goal here is to basically try to break the website, or discover functional issues that may have a negativeimpact on your customer’s experience. This includes how well the site performs in different environmentsand within different web browsers and resolutions. This involves many tasks such as rapid clicking,reloading, use of the web browser’s back and forward buttons, and testing with multiple browsers onmultiple platforms.






If a problem is found that can be consistently or intermittently reproduced than a bug has been identified.The problem is logged, addressed, corrected, and the website is retested (regression testing) to insure the problem has been corrected and no other problems have been created as a result of the recent modificationsto correct the bug. Once all functional and technical testing is complete, you can now move onto usabilitytesting.

At the end of your testing phase, you will want to perform usability testing where you select a group of persons and have them try to use your online application without any or little help from you. The goal is tofind out how intuitive your application is and to validate that your customers can find the information theyneed with as few navigational clicks of the mouse as possible. Look for consistency in the test persons behaviors. If one person is having difficulty using the site it may be due to the fact that they do not have asmuch experience with the computer or Internet, as someone who uses the computer or Internet more often.It is OK to assume some familiarity with the Internet and web browser functionality. Just because one person is having difficulty does not necessarily mean you should redesign the project, look for consistent behaviors from multiple people that might indicate a usability problem, such as clicking on the email iconto find out how to contact customer support instead of clicking on the support icon

After you have completed that phase you can repeat it using a subset of your customers to get some realworld testing before going live to the world with your website.

Deployment

After all of your bugs have been resolved and you are happy with the project as a whole, you can prepare todeploy the site and start bringing in those customers. Having the right support staff in place will help inmaking the new website launch a smooth process. The biggest question now is how many people do youneed to support your site, and when must they be available.

Unless you anticipate lots of support calls or heavy volume, it is usually okay to start small – maybe haveone full time person to answer the telephone and to respond to the emails. Depending on the volume of calls and sales, and your company structure, one other person may be able to initially receive and fulfillyour customer orders. Remain flexible and prepared to add more personnel or change support hours as your online business grows. Eventually, it may make sense to tie your eCommerce systems into your inventory

systems and fulfillment tracking. This is a good reason why is it important to select the right technical platforms and languages upfront to make integration with other systems as easy as possible.

To recap, during your design phase design your user interface to be simple and user-friendly. Be sure toconsider all business concerns when selecting technical tools and designing your environment, and be sureto address all security concerns, and adhere to good practices when it comes to keeping you and your customers data safe. Stick to your requirements when developing, and test, test, test before deployinganything.






Chapter IV – Marketing

Valuable Information Regarding Search Engines

Marketing is important in order for your company to be successful online. There are several different ways

you can promote your site to drive potential customers to your store. One of the most common ways peoplewill find your website is through one of the popular search engines such as Yahoo, Excite or Google.

Each search engine works differently so you will have to take steps to accommodate all of them. Mostsearch engines use something called a spider to index your site. A spider is nothing more than a programthat crawls the Internet jumping from link to link looking for titles, descriptions, keywords and content toreport back to the search engine database. You can help the spider along its way by placing somethingcalled Meta tags within the headers of each page or at least your home page.

Meta tags can contain a comma-delimited list of keywords that help describe topics relevant to your site.Ultimately if someone is to search the Internet for notebook computers and this is something you sell, youwould want “notebook computers” to be one of your Meta tag keywords.

The other popular Meta-tag is the description. Some search engines will store this in their database anddisplay it within the results of a search as a description for the respective match. Some web spiders willtake the first portion of text it encounters within the page itself.

Once you have your Meta data in place within your programming code, you can now decide how you wantto promote your site. This can be a very exhaustive task and there are many ways to go about it.

There are firms that specialize in site promotion and will submit your site to the various search engines for a minimal fee, or for free. This is a great way to initially get your site listed in the major directories atminimal costs to you.

You can also let nature take its course and manually do the first few major indices. Eventually other spiderswill find your material and index it within their own catalogs. Most indices can be found on the searchengine home page either via a “add link” or “register URL”. Yahoo is the only major search engine that

enters all of the sites in their directory by hand.






Lets Talk About Premium Sponsorships

Often the search engine game does not stop here. It is a good place to start but you may quickly find that if you search for your “notebook computer” you probably will not be in the first page of results listed.You may see something similar to “displaying featured sites” or “sponsors” and then the “top 10 or 20results out of 1,250,000”.

In reality you are probably somewhere in the first 1000 pages of results. This is where hard earnedadvertising dollars come in to play.

Each search engine also offers some form of premium sponsorship. These sponsorships generally are moreexpensive, but can place your name above your competitors. Premium sponsorships can include prominently displayed links, banner rotations, pop-up advertisements, and other form of eye-catchingadvertisements, and are worth investigating, until your brand name is known in the market as “the place togo” for your type of service.

What About Advertising Networks

Along with premium sponsorships are some cheaper alternatives. The LinkExchange service was purchased

by Microsoft and allows you to purchase traffic. For the right price you will be charged for actual visitorsthat come to your site by clicking on your banner that is rotated and displayed on another LinkExchangemember’s site. For more information about LinkExchange visit http://www.bcentral.com/

GAIN is another advertising network, which stands for Gator Advertising Information Network and can befound at http://www.gatoradvertisinginformationnetwork.com/

GAIN may actually be installed on your computer already. A popular movement has been for softwarevendors to embed the GAIN application within their shareware applications. Once installed on your computer you will be presented with targeted advertisements based on the web pages you visit. GAINclaims to generate click through rates 20 to 100 times higher than other banner networks.

Experiment with what works best for you. You may find more success with traditional forms of advertising

such as direct mail campaigns or print advertisements. Just remember that there is no such thing as wastedadvertising dollars, just more effective advertising dollars. It is also a good idea to engage a marketing firmor individual to assist you with the marketing of your site. A marketing professional will be better equipped to address some of the different marketing tools and strategies.



http://www.bcentral.com/

http://www.gatoradvertisinginformationnetwork.com/

http://www.gatoradvertisinginformationnetwork.com/

http://www.bcentral.com/




Chapter V – Support and Maintenance

Managing Your Online Venture

One of the misleading beliefs of the Dotcom era was that you could put your goods up for sale and letthings take care of themselves. Online or offline a business is a business and it should be treated as one.You will need to think about the overall management of your online venture, just as you would any other ordinary business. Who is going to answer the emails? Who will take the calls, handle inventory, and shipthe orders? Who will be responsible for updating the website with new content, and make sure the site is upand functioning properly. As you can see, there are many day-to-day tasks that will need to be managed.The first thing to do is to determine your required personnel and then decide on whether you will hireinternally, or outsource the responsibilities.

Dedicated Support At Your Service

Determine Required Personnel

This will vary from organization to organization. Plan on at least one person to answer customer supportemails, and one person to handle inventory and order fulfillment. In some cases, these can be the same person. Make sure that if you list phone support on the website to include the hours you will offer supportand have personnel available to take the calls. This will ensure that your customers know when they canexpect to reach you by phone. They will see that as an extra layer of comfort and security.

Dedicated Email Account

It’s a good idea to set up a dedicated email account for handling support requests. The best way to do this isto set up a list based email so it can go to multiple individuals throughout your organization.

Toll-Free Numbers

Often it is a good idea to have a toll-free number listed on your website for customers to call. Having a toll-

free number for customers to call adds an extra sense of security for your customers.

Determining Support Hours

In the world of “my way, right away” it is always good to let your customers know when to expect you torespond to their request. Either by an email auto responder automatically replying to an email from your customer, or a voice mail greeting stating your hours when they call your toll free number will not onlyhelp ease the customer’s tensions, but will also promote you as a good business.






Chapter VI - mCommerce

It seems that everyday there are new technologies appearing in the marketplace. Most of these devices are becoming more and more portable and integrated with one another. With this integration and portabilitycomes widespread acceptance by the eCommerce community. Commonly referred to by many asmCommerce, or Mobile eCommerce technology, the cell phone, Personal Data Assistant (PDA) and

multimedia capabilities of the Internet all rolled into one device may result in the next powerful revolutionthat will propel eCommerce to the next level. The processes behind mCommerce are almost identical tothose of eCommerce. A device such as a cellular phone, pager or PDA instead of a desktop computer can be used to access commerce data over a network. Conducting electronic transactions on the go fromanywhere is quickly becoming a necessity in the world of commerce.

Along with advances in the hardware to support mCommerce come advances in the infrastructure and protocols to support this hardware. WiFi hotspots formerly known as 802.11b, is a high speed networkingstandard designed to serve the wireless network community. This standard allows us to access public and private networks, and permits us to share data more easily from a variety of devices while we are on the go.It could ignite a more widespread idea of mCommerce, and does seem to be a natural evolution of thetechnology and the Internet, as we know it today.

As WiFi is spreading like wildfire, big industry players are laying ground for WiMax. WiMax serves thesame purpose as WiFi, but as WiFi can only broadcast signals up to dozens of feet, WiMax can broadcast awireless network to up to dozens of units. This will only expand the use of the wireless devices and theadaptation of mCommerce.

It is easy see how advances in technology will allow us to reach more and more customers in a variety of different ways now and into the future.






SAMPLE PROJECT PLAN FOR A TYPICAL ECOMMERCE PROJECT

Task Start Date End Date Hours Owner Actual

Hours

Requirements Definition 10/02/2006 10/06/2006 40 Analyst 40

Review Requirements 10/09/2006 10/09/2006 8 Manager 6Design Application 10/10/2006 10/13/2006 40 Designer 32

Review Design 10/16/2006 10/16/2006 4 Manager 4

Develop Business Logic 10/23/2006 10/27/2006 80 Developer 80

Implement Payment Solutions 10/30/2006 11/03/2006 80 Developer 72

Perform Functional Tests 11/06/2006 11/08/2006 20 QA 20

Perform Usability Tests 11/08/2006 11/13/2006 20 QA 20

Perform Regression Tests 11/14/2006 11/15/2006 16 QA 12

Develop Documentation 11/13/2006 11/17/2006 40 Writer 40

Test Against Documentation 11/20/2006 11/23/2006 20 QA 20

Conduct User Training 11/24/2006 11/30/2006 32 Trainer 32

Conduct Pilot Test 12/04/2006 12/08/2006 40 QA 40

Final Review and Sign-Off 12/11/2006 12/11/2006 4 Owner 4

Rollout and Go-Live 12/12/2006 12/18/2006 40 Manager 40

Total Hours: 484 462






Appendix B

Sample Project Task Outline

Below is an outline of the actual tasks required to complete a typical eCommerce project. These tasks

include and expansion of the tasks in the above sample project plan.

Define Business Drivers Define the business needs driving the project How will completing the project benefit business Are there any business concerns or risks to address

Determine Project Budget How much can we afford to or are we willing to spend Can be broken down into phases of the project

Conduct User Interviews – For Usability, Functionality, and Business Requirements Validation

Does the functionality support usability Do the requirements support the business processes Do the requirements support the current systems and environments

Requirements Definition and Charter Documentation Shopping basket style checkout Products grouped into four categories (drill down type shopping) Accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express VeriSign’s Payflow Pro for Payment Gateway and SSL Certificate Will use new Internet merchant account set up through our existing bank Will keep track of all transactions within a new database Will contain products in new database

Define Resources Based on Requirements – Assemble Project Team Project Manager – 1 Graphic Designer – 1 Usability Engineer/Information Architect – 1 Data Modeler/Designer – 1 Programmer/Developer – 1 Network Administrator - 1

Design Phase Develop navigation, design and GUI Architecture Design Design and Validate Logical Data Model Infrastructure Design

Development Phase Create Physical Data Model Create Graphics and Page Layouts Create Shopping Basket Create Product Display Pages Create Search for Products






Testing Phase, Review and Revise Usability Testing Functional Testing Review usability findings, and determine what needs to be implemented Fix functional bugs

Final Testing Retest functionality Fix final issues

Conduct Training Train support and business personnel on any backend functionality

Conduct Pilot Program Conduct pilot Review pilot feedback and suggestions Make any changed deemed necessary Retest

Deploy Launch site in conjunction with marketing and support departments






Appendix C

Tasks for Implementing Your eCommerce Solution

Below is a list of items and tasks you should address while implementing your eCommerce solution to get

your business online.

1. Completely finish your content using a word processor checking spelling and grammar.2. Look at some websites to get a simple design for yours.3. Decide what your domain name will be (mydomain.com, etc). Make the domain name something

simple, easy to remember, and easy to type.4. Go to Register.com and check the availability of the domain name.5. Register the domain name ASAP once you see it is available. Register both the .com and .net.

(mydomain.com and mydomain.net). You can use register.com to register or save money byhaving your hosting provider register it for you. They usually bundle it in with an agreement tohost your site for a few dollars per month. Registering both .net and.com avoids any confusion if someone else registers one with the same name as you. For instance, mydomain.net may be a dog

food wholesaler, and my domain.com may be you. It is money well spent when you register boththe .com and .net to avoid such a problem.6. Determine who your hosting provider will be. There are many to choose from. You can use one of

the many search engines to locate these on the Internet. Search on “hosting”.7. Create email accounts. At minimum [email protected], [email protected], The more

email accounts you create, the more your hosting provider will charge you. Check with your provider about the fees they chare for email accounts.

8. Come up with a brand (theme, colors, logo) for your website. Your website brand should matchyour product, or company brand.

9. Design your logo.10. Storyboard your website. Layout what pages are required and what pages lead to where.11. Layout your website on paper, where each page represents one corresponding web page.12. Decide what content, artwork, and graphics will be used for the website.13. Decide how payment methods will be accepted (credit card, PayPal, etc).

14. Convert the word processing document to text, removing all formatting, keeping line breaks, andusing line breaks for page breaks.

15. Determine who will design, build, and maintain the website. This is the step where most fail. Thedesigner, builder, and maintainer are not necessarily the same person. Once built, the maintainer will charge some sort of fee to make changes to content, art, etc. It is good to have the maintainer be the same person who built the site because he is familiar with everything, especially when itcomes to the credit card processing area, which is where most of the headaches stem from.

16. Build the website.17. Test your website to ensure all pages and links work popery, email accounts work, and graphics

are loading properly. Also review the content online to be sure it is correct.

18. Secure payment providers. If you will be using PayPal, then go to Paypal.com and setup a PayPalaccount. Before doing so, have an email account [email protected] (or whichever emailaccount you wish to use) already setup, tested, and ready to use as your PayPal account’s email

address. Have a credit card and checking account active and ready to go, so that you can tie thePayPal account to them, in case you want too tie the PayPal account to one of them to becomePayPal verified. Becoming PayPal verified gives you a better status with PayPal and within thePayPal community.

19. Credit card processing will probably cost you a setup fee, a monthly service fee, a gateway feeevery month, a fee for the merchant account number, a transaction fee, which is different for eachtype of card (MC, AMEX, VISA, JCP, Discover, Diner’s Club, etc), and a processing fee, whichis usually a percentage of the total sale processed. Since Master Card and Visa have the cheapestfees, these are the cards you prefer your customers use to purchase your products or services. The



mailto:[email protected]









rule of thumb here is if you offer other cards your customers may use them instead of their Visa or Master Card; which has the potential to eat into your bottom line. You may also have to purchasea SSL certificate to process secure transactions, unless your hosting provider provides one for you.






Appendix D

Sample Test Plan

Below is a sample snippet of a test plan. You can see how this example can be replicated for all levels of

testing as well as the associated tasks.

Test Shopping Selection and Checkout November 8, 2006

Step Activity Expected Actual Status

1 Login SuccessMessageBox

Success MessageBox

Complete

2 View item 100 Display itemdetails

Displayed itemDetails

Complete

3 View item 250 Display itemout of stock

Displayed itemdetails, but no

out of stock message

Bug

4 Add item 250 to shopping cart Display outof stock message

Displayed out of stock message

Complete

5 Display item 200 and add toshopping cart

Added toshoppingcart

Added toshopping cart but price is incorrect

Bug

6 Press show shopping cartcontents button

Show cartcontents

Displayed cartcontents

Complete

7 Press checkout button Show paymentscreen

Displayed payment screen

Complete

8 Enter billing information and press continue Show paymenttype screen

Displayed payment typescreen

9 Select Credit Card Ask for credit cardtype andinformation

Asked for creditcard type andinformation

Complete






Dutch Auction - Type of online auction where a seller offers multiple quantities of an item, the winning bidders pay the amount of the lowest winning bid. Number of winning bidders is also predefined before theauction begins.

eBay - An online auction site that allows people to buy and sell goods and services.

eCommerce - The buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet.

EDI – The Electronic Data Interchange is a common standard of specifications for sharing data acrossmultiple systems.

Firewall – The system that is placed between the Internet and a private network. It provides protection for the private network from unauthorized access.

Functional Test – A testing process where the actual application or system functionality and requirementsare tested against what was designed and ordered.

Gator Advertising Information Network (GAIN) – Delivers advertisements to end users using adsdeveloped by The Gator Corporation.

Hosting – The process of storing and serving web pages to a client browser. Sometimes referred to as WebHosting.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) - An interpreted language used to create web pages. HTML isrendered or interpreted through an Internet browser.

Indices – Indexes on databases of information that is collected and stored for searching.

Information Super Highway – A term the Internet is commonly referred to as.

Internet Merchant Account – Same as a merchant service provider but is specifically designed to work with transactions received over the Internet.

mCommerce /Mobile eCommerce - The use of eCommerce over wireless devices.

Merchant Service Providers – One of the many institutions that can process credit card transactions androute the funds to a merchant account.

Meta tags – Used by search engines to help catalog and classify a website.

Network Administrator – Individual responsible for the infrastructure of an electronic network,hardware/software configurations and maintenance policies of specific networks.

Payflow Pro - VeriSign service allowing for the verification and processing of credit cards and e-checks.

PayPal – An online payment service that uses a persons email address to send and receive funds into your

PayPal account. It can be integrated into custom order forms for your site.

Payment Gateway – Accepts payment transaction details and routes the appropriate information to anInternet merchant account.

Premium Sponsorship – Offered by many of the popular search engines, enrolling can put your site at thetop of the results of a relevant search.

Project Plan – Roadmap and tool for project managers to guide projects, which outlines resources, tasksand milestones.






WiFi (Wi-Fi) Hotspots - Geographic location of an access point providing short- range wireless dataservices.

WiMax - High-speed wireless data services over distances of 30 miles.

WINS – Warehouse Industry Standards is an organization established by the warehousing industry tooversee EDI standards and policies within that industryWireless LAN - A Local Area Network (LAN) that connects data devices with wireless transmissions(such as radio frequency or infrared) instead of phone lines or fiber optics.

Wizard – Step by step process often found in software packages used to automate andsimplify a complex task.



tinker sites getting your business online

Documents