The document provides an overview of key components needed for a successful e-commerce website. It discusses: 1) The need for e-commerce software, a merchant account, hosting, traffic generation, analytics, security measures, fulfillment systems, and payment options. 2) Components of the website itself including product listings, images, descriptions, navigation, feedback systems, and privacy policies. 3) Additional features that improve sales such as personalization, reviews/ratings, related product recommendations, and order tracking. 4) The importance of planning the website thoroughly before development to avoid costly mistakes.

1. Khalid Khan
Department Of Computer Science
University Of Peshawar

2.  E-commerce software /Shopping cart
 A Merchant Account
 Hosting
 Web Traffic
 Web Analytics Software
 Warrantee/Money Back Guarantee policies
 Security And Backup
 Multiple payment options
 Personalization

3.  Contents
 SEO pages
 Advance Image viewing
 Cross-selling and up selling
 Feedback and customer service
 Fulfillment Systems
 Navigational options
 Privacy Policy and Security
 Product commenting and ratings

4.  Many companies make the mistake of entering
into a new e-commerce venture without
sufficient planning and forethought.
 This will ultimately lead to disappointment and
increased development costs as mistakes are
made and corrected.
 Understanding the fundamental components of
an e-commerce site will help you evaluate basic
requirements before committing resources
toward an e-commerce solution.

5.  In simple terms, this software will present your
products to your customers and it will process their
orders.
 There are many commercially available packages,
and prices have come down a lot in the past few
years.
 If you are new to e-commerce, it can be useful to find
a software that will do all of the business functions.
 As well as taking orders, it will do inventory
management, order tracking, and provide you with
reports to help you manage your business.

6.  Customer frustration with online shopping carts often
results in lost sales.
 Customers appreciate easy access to shopping carts at
any time during the shopping trip.
 The ability to edit quantities or remove items from the
cart at any time makes for pleasant shopping.
 Additionally, the ability to save the items in the cart,
allowing visitor to complete the transaction at a later
time adds to customer service.

9.  This is an account with a financial institution, such as a
bank, that will allow you take credit card orders.
 This can be costly and difficult to set up, particularly if
you are a new business.
 There are set-up costs, monthly costs and you also pay
a percentage of your sales to the account provider.
 You should research the market well to keep costs as
low as possible.

10.  There are specific rules about how to process orders
when the cardholder is not present, and you should pay
attention to the procedure that you are asked to follow.
 This will limit any losses that you might receive from
fraud.
 Some websites begin trading with Paypal, which offers a
simple way to accept credit card payments from your
customers.

12.  An e-commerce site is a profit making website, so
it makes sense to ensure that it is available and
operating 24 hours a day for 365 days of the year.
Choose a high quality web host with an
exceptional uptime guarantee.
 Providing space on the internet servers for the
storage of World Wide Web sites (business
contents) which can be accessed by others.
 A company that provide Web Hosting Services is
called Web Host, and their storage, connectivity
and services are called plans.
 Dedicated Hosting, Shared Hosting & Free Hosting

15.  E-commerce sites cost more to build and run, so they
need good volumes of visitors quickly.
 There are a number of ways to grow your visitor
numbers, including:
 Good search engine positioning
 A specialist can help you to optimize your site.
 Most buyers will use a search engine to find
suppliers, so this is a good source of visitors.
 Email
 You can buy a list of potential customers and email
them some special offers.
 If you don't target buyers well, you risk alienating
them with spam.

16.  Pay Per Click advertising
 You can pay to advertise your site on search
engines on those pages that are relevant to the
products that you sell.
 You only pay when someone clicks on a link and
visits your site.
 Listing on shopping comparison sites
 There are many sites that take data from many e-
commerce sites and they display the prices for
shoppers to compare.
 Some are part of a search engine like Froogle,
others are independent web business like
Pricegrabber.

17.  You need a reliable and effective analytics solution that
can tell you how your site is being used.
 It’s very critical to know how many users are coming to
your site, where they’re coming from, what products
they’re most interested in, etc.
 With this valuable data, you’ll know just what your site
needs to decrease abandonment rates and turn
prospects in to buyers.

19.  To further increase your credibility, you must
completely remove your potential customers' risk.
 Provide them with a solid, no risk, money back
guarantee.
 This will put their mind at ease by building their
confidence in you and your product.
 For building customer’s confidence good
guarantee /warrantee policies should be deployed.

20.  As in any other part of business, there are people on
the internet always looking for illegal opportunities to
make money.
 You need to protect your site with a good security
package, There are many commercially available.
 You will also need to backup your site data.
 Make sure to backup both your web pages and the
database behind them.
 A good place to start on both issues is to talk to your
hosting service.
 You should make yourself familiar with how they
operate and you should schedule regular backups.

22.  If your checkout process doesn’t give users more than
one payment option, this can make a good sale turn
sour.
 If a customer’s preferred payment method is not
available, not only can’t customers pay you but it really
affects the credibility of your e-commerce business.
 There are tons of payment methods available like
Google Checkout, Bill Me Later and Paypal.

24.  E-commerce sites should provide visitors with a
personalized experience, serving up only content
that’s relevant and useful.
 If a customer is interested in a product on your site,
displaying related items while they are browsing is
helpful.
 This is an excellent way to establish reliability and
trust with buyers and increase your chances at
making a sale.

26.  The main facet of an e-commerce system is obviously
going to be the product catalog.
 When building a catalog it is vitally important that
product descriptions are accurate and compelling, and
that high quality images are provided to assist in
product selection.
 Your content must be self explanatory, which attract
customers to your site.

27.  Making complete product information available for site
visitors results in increased sales.
 Well-written product descriptions including all
pertinent information about the product and leaving
customers with no unanswered questions make a
purchase more likely.
 Additionally, photographs increase customer interest
in the items in the store.

29.  You should make sure your pages are search-engine
friendly.
 It doesn’t mean just submitting your site to online
search directories.
 It means conducting a real, SEO strategy.
 The URL’s, the content, meta data, keyword frequency
and density, should all be taken care of if you want to
increase the visibility of your e-commerce site in major
search engines.

30.  Things like zoom able product images and 3D views can
make a big difference to your visitors.
 A lot of times it can become difficult for users to make a
purchase because they just aren’t satisfied with the way
your products are presented.
 Users become much more confident in purchasing when
you make multiple or enlarged views of your products so
they can see exactly what they’re getting.

32.  When a user clicks a product they’re interested in, this is
one of the best times to show them similar items that may
compliment their purchase.
 The checkout process is another opportunity to show
relevant items to your customers while they are
completing their purchases.
 This way of up-selling is a good way to increase your
sales among the impulsive shoppers.

34.  Many times, potential customers will have questions
about your products and services.
 Use a feedback form and if possible give them live
support, also give email address on your site.
 Create a page on your web site called feedback and place
a form on this page to enable your visitors to contact you.
 Your personal response to your potential customers is
very much important.

36.  When you have put all these elements of your
ecommerce site together, you will need some method
of physically picking, packing and delivering your
orders.
 When order volumes are low, this is not much of a
problem, but at higher volumes, fulfillment requires
great discipline and automation.
 If business does take off, you will damage your
business if you cannot fulfill orders rapidly.
 You need to plan how you will fulfill higher volumes of
orders.

37.  You can invest in systems and processes yourself, or
you can outsource fulfillment to a specialist company.
 They will usually charge a setup fee and then a cost
per order processed and item stocked.

38.  Your website visitors should have the option to filter
your products, compare them, and sort them by price,
popularity, or alphabetically.
 This allows your customers to quickly find products
they are most interested in without having to search
through a large amount of unnecessary items just to
find what they’re looking for.

40.  Because of the risk of identity theft, most online
shoppers check for assurance of security before
sharing their financial or personal information on any e-
commerce site.
 Including safety provisions, such as digital signatures
and encryption technology, protects site visitors from
hackers.
 These security measures must get updated regularly to
keep up with the latest threats on the Internet.

41.  Internet users are becoming more and more concerned
with their privacy.
 However, there is something you can do to ease their
minds.
 Create a page on your web site called "Privacy" and let
your visitors know exactly how you will be using the
information you collect.
 This page should include an explanation of all of the
following:
 How do you plan on using their information?
 Is their information sold or shared with a third party?
 Why do you collect their email address and how will it
be used?

42.  Why do you track their IP address?
Why do you use order forms and what do you do with
the information acquired?
Do you have a discussion forum or message board?
Let your visitors know that any information that is
disclosed in these areas becomes public information
and that they should exercise caution.
Do you have security measures in place to protect the
loss, misuse and alteration of the information under
your control? If so, let your visitors know.
 Provide your visitors with your contact information
should they have any questions about your privacy
statement.

43.  Research shows that online shoppers value the
opinions and comments of other buyers- in fact, it
can be one of the most influential factors in whether
a customer will buy.
 If possible, your site should allow your users to
comment on your items individually which will
establish credibility among your users.

44. THANKS!!
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