Shopfitter BlogWebshop and e-commerce articles, hints and tips from Shopfitter.com

I thought that for the first topic it would be good to write a brief definition of what we at Shopfitter mean with the term e-commerce software.

Lots of different systems, applications and services provide website owners with the capability to create an online catalogue (or catalog for US purposes) and shopping cart.

But these are just part of the requirements of selling online. We feel that e-commerce software should give its users the facilities to build an entire website and not just the product, cart and checkout pages.

A proper e-commerce software system should also provide 'back-end' functionality. What that means is a secure order processing system that stores order details: customer contact and delivery details, payment method (and there should be a choice - more later). It should also store all details both for the shop owners records and to comply with any statutory regulations.

Then there's the need for a confirmation and notification facility. In general, this is fine by e-mail; a summary of the order details, price and a unique order number should be included but no payment details, especially credit card numbers - e-mails are not secure.

The security of an e-commerce software system will be of paramount importance to customers of goods and services online shops, therefore the system should have Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - that is, connects to the personal and payment details pages via an HTTPS web address.

This will then adhere to Data Protection legislation in most (if not all) international regions.

To provide more reassurance to both the online shopper and webshop owner the online order server should hold a security certificate from a recognised body; in the case of https://orders3.shopfitter.com this is from Thawte, one of the best known in the business.

That more or less covers what we mean by 'e-commerce software' - a full end to end website building program that includes e-commerce and non selling pages, a secure order processing and customer details storage system and a confirmation/notification system, usually by e-mail.

Hi all, and welcome to the new Shopfitter blog.

We've been advising people for a couple of years that running a blog is a great form of marketing for your website. And as many people have found the marketing of your site is a lot more involved and time consuming than submitting to Google, Yahoo, MSN et al.

In the coming weeks and months we'll be posting content here that will be topical both for the Shopfitter system and service as well as trialling tools and providing knowledge we've got that will help YOUR online shop become successful.

E-commerce success doesn't happen by accident, this blog should help everyone learn what to do and how to do it.

Good luck

Simon

Labels: online shop success