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The
hottest game on the Internet right now is e-commerce,
which by now has a lot of players and few winners.
One of the biggest challenges in developing a successful
online storefront is choosing the right software solution
for your site, which can make the difference between
making money and losing money on the Web. If there
was one magic solution, we'd sell it to you. Since
there isn't an e-commerce panacea, we put together
this guide to help provide you with an overview of
available software and how to go about making the
best selection for you and your company.
An
electronic commerce business is no less demanding
than any other type of business operation, but it
is also quite different. Instead of the traditional
brick and mortar storefront, everything happens in
the form of bits and bytes flowing over the Internet
and what makes it tick is e-commerce software. To
engage in e-commerce, a company needs to develop a
Web site and fill it with Web pages that can inform
customers, display products, conduct purchase transactions,
and provide feedback and results. The most critical
decision is determining which e-commerce software
a company should use to do all of this.
One
complex solution is to develop your own customized
software. This requires the work of many specialists
in Web and programming languages (HTML, Java, etc.)
and is very expensive. Most companies would fare better
by investing in a commercial software product. There
are now dozens of products on the market ranging in
price from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand
dollars. Companies such as IBM and Microsoft and many
smaller specialist companies such as iCat and the
Vision Factory make e-commerce software to fit the
needs of companies of all shapes and sizes. (For a
look at a sample of the products available, check
out the Electronic Storefronts overview section of
E-Commerce Guide.) In some cases you don't even have
to buy the software, but simply rent a Web site and
programming from a Web host. (For an in-depth look
at Web hosting, check out Internet World Daily's The
Well Equipped Host.)
Where
do I start?
With all these options, a common question is "where
do I start?" We suggest deciding what kind of e-commerce
business you want -- consumer, business to business,
or both. The consumer side of e-commerce is the retail
trade, where companies offer products for immediate
purchase. (This distinguishes e-commerce from sites
that merely promote products.) The business-to-business
side of e-commerce can involve both wholesale purchasing
and electronic data transfers (payments, invoices,
etc.) between business partnerships. Not all e-commerce
software can do both, or at least not without additional
programming and expert configuration.
This
raises another important question: do you want your
e-commerce software to run out "of the box," or do
you expect to enhance and extend the software? Some
products are geared towards a complete solution; others
are more like software toolkits where additional programming
is expected. You also need to consider the scale of
your online operation. Some products, such as IBM's
Net.Commerce, are designed to grow in transaction
volume. Other products (often less expensive and easier
to use) are designed to work well on sites with lower
traffic.
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