Making Money Online With E-Commerce Websites

Running an E-Commerce business is probably the best way to make the most money online, but it takes time and experience or a lot of money to get things right. The basic idea is that you create a website with E-Commerce software that allows you to sell products on the internet. These products can be yours or they could be another company′s products that you drop ship. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating an E-Commerce business.

Choose the Right Market

Before you get a lot of time, energy and money invested into a E-Commerce website, make sure that you are in the right market. Maybe a market works well offline, but it does not work well on the internet. Also you want to know how competitive the market is. If your market is really competitive, you may want to rethink your business. One of the best ways to find out if the market is a good market or not without getting into the E-Commerce side of things, is to try affiliate marketing in the market first. That way you know if it is profitable. Then if you know you can make money as an affiliate, there is probably a good chance that you can do it with your own E-Commerce site. This is not always the case, but is usually works very well.

Choose the Right E-Commerce Software

I have wasted thousands of dollars just by selecting the wrong shopping cart software. This cart was not a bad shopping cart, just not the right one for my needs. Make sure to consider these things when selecting your software:

1. Free Vs Paid - Free sounds good, but sometimes free shopping carts aren′t so free. Paying someone to skin a shopping cart can cost $2,000 dollars. If you want your cart upgraded that could cost you money. Also, if you want customizations, unless you do it yourself, you might pay a company dearly to do customizations for you. Paid carts can be pretty expensive but normally you get good service and usually the company can keep your customers data safe and secure so you can rest well at night. If you have many customizations to make to the normal shopping cart process than paid carts will either charge a lot of money or may not even be able to accommodate. The main thing you need to do is consider all your needs and do research before you get married to a shopping cart that may be a potential problem either now or in the future.
2. Complicated Vs Simple -I know many people are like me and want to keep things simple, but sometimes it is also nice to have the ability to get detailed reports for your specific needs at a particular time. If you have to do custom queries on a database because your shopping cart won′t give you the report, than that is not much fun. If you would like the ability to email your customers a weekly or monthly newsletter, or have automatic email messages sent to them that will also complicate the system. Also, if you would like an affiliate program for your ecommerce software, you might want to have a shopping cart with the program integrated right into your software. This would be another feature that would further complicate things. So here again, make sure you plan things out so you know exactly what you need now, and have an idea of what you will need in the future.
3. Search Engine Optimization Capability - Sometimes websites don′t need Search Engine Optimization, but that is not usually the case. If you want your products to be found by the search engines, then you definitely want your shopping cart to be SEO friendly. If you found E-Commerce shopping cart software that you like, but it does not come SEO friendly out of the box, than you might want to research if there are add-ons for the software. Many free (opensource) shopping carts are not SEO friendly out of the box, but if you know a little about programming or don′t mind spending a few bucks, you can get your cart SEO friendly in no time.
4. E-Commerce Security - It is vital to your business to keep your customer′s credit card and personal information safe on your website. Every day you will hear about websites being hacked and credit card fraud, so don′t think it will not happen to you. Also, the FTC strongly encourages you to meet certain requirements when processing credit card transactions over the internet. This involves you process transactions on a secure server, and also keeping your customer data on a separate server behind a firewall. Many third party paid shopping carts will take care of all of this for you, so that is one benefit of going with a paid cart. Another thing that you can do to get your business started is to process your transactions through Paypal. That way the transaction is processed on Paypal and your customer′s information is secure.
5. Popular Free (open source) Ecommerce Software:
1. Oscommerce - This software is old and ugly, but it will work well and with a little bit of work, it can look really good. The main reason why I say this is number one is that it has been around for a long time. So there are many people that know how to work on it, there are many add-ons, and themes for the software.
2. Magentocommerce - This cart is fairly new, but most of the bugs are worked out of it. The software looks amazing on both the customer and admin side, and it offers a built in CMS, (content management system), and great SEO functionality. The main problem with this cart is that it is pretty complicated to customize and not that many programmers are familiar with its framework. If you have to make major modifications to the framework of the shopping cart, it also becomes very difficult to update in the future.
3. Prestashop - I have never tested this particular shopping cart personally, but I have heard a lot of good things about it. It looks great and seems to function really well.
4. OpenCart - This cart has been around a while and has a good reputation. It is easy to use and SEO friendly. There is also an active community there to help you out with problems or questions that you might have.
5. ZenCart - This cart is similar to Oscommerce in that it is older and reliable. Not quite as friendly for developers as Oscommerce, but still offers great flexibility and multiple payment and shipping options.
6. CubeCart - A nice looking cart with many options and an active community. The 3rd version is free, but the 4th version is paid.
6. Popular Paid Shopping Carts
1. X-cart - This software is paid, but it is just a one-time fee of $115 for the standard version. The benefit of going with X-cart is that the cost is minimal, and they provide support and custom development for their products.
2. 1ShoppingCart - Great all-around shopping cart with many features. I like the fact that 1shoppingcart protects your customer′s data and processes the secure transactions on their server. Also, they have great support, provide email and autoresponders, all at an affordable price.
3. Volusion - I have heard a lot of really good feedback about Volusion, but I have personally not tested the software. It is an all-in-one solution and the company behind the software is said to really stand behind their product.

Remember that choosing the right E-Commerce software is essential for your online business if you are going to sell retail products online. Do your due diligence and figure out exactly what you need, then research the best cart for you. If you need more help you can always ask for help in the forums.