Selling online
Our E-commerce experts have been involved in e-commerce since 1996. We have seen e-commerce systems succeed
(and fail), and have worked with over fifty e-commerce site owners with successful online shops. You can take
advantage of our experience to get the best advice.
Thinking about selling online? Read this first!
The decision to sell your products online can be a daunting one. There are many aspects to consider which you simply don't need to think about if your site is not e-commerce enabled. Below are the questions we most frequently get asked by newcomers to e-commerce, and some brief answers. If you'd like to discuss/explore any of these issues, please don't hesitate to contact us now.
Our experience in the field of e-commerce means that we can guide you through the process of obtaining merchant facilities and setting up an online shop with minimum fuss, making the whole process as painless as possible.
What will it cost me to set up and run an online shop?
There is no easy answer to this question. It really depends on the complexity and functionality you require from your shop.
But as a very rough guide, an online shop can cost anything from £1000 upwards.
How can I accept payment online?
This one causes the greatest concern, but in reality is the easiest to answer.
The answer depends on whether or not you currently have a merchant account (if you accept credit card payments via a PDQ machine).
If you do, then all that is required is to set up an account with a payment gateway, which will allow payments transacted on your site to be processed by your merchant account clearing bank.
If you don't have a merchant account and can't get one, there are several combined merchant account/gateway facilities that you can use. Generally these incur slightly higher costs so its always preferable to get a merchant account if you can. Getting a merchant account is much easier now than it was a few years ago, and most businesses can get one, including new startups.
Is accepting payments online expensive?
No, it isn't. This is a very common misconception. If you already have a merchant account, you can carry out automated online
transactions from as little as £20/month, with no additional fee per transaction.
If you don't have a merchant account, it may be a little more costly, but generally you can expect to pay around 5% of your
transaction value.
How can I be sure my online shop will be secure?
There are two main aspects of securing an online shop.
The first is making sure that any sensitive information your customers enter (such as credit card details) is 100% safe. The most effective way of achieving this for most small-medium sized businesses is by never storing or manually handling those details. Automating your payment process so that all online credit/debit card payments are handled by a third party payment gateway is both safe and cost-effective.
The second is making sure that your customers' personal details (names, emails, addresses etc.) are kept private. This can be achieved by using a well-designed, thoroughly tested e-commerce solution, and by hosting it on high quality web hosting.
We can help with both these things. We can set up a secure, effective e-commerce solution, either a ready-made one or one built to your specifications. We can also host it in high quality, secure web servers.
How can I make sure I get customers for my e-commerce site?
Setting up an online shop is only the first step.
Once your shop is up and running, there is lot more work left to do before you start seeing a steady stream of orders.
For most online shops, the majority of traffic will come via search engines.
The process of identifying appropriate search terms and optimising your shop so that you attract people searching for
these terms is known as search engine optimisation or search engine promotion.
At Clare Associates, we have dedicated search engine specialists, whose job is to keep up to date with the latest search engine developments so that we can help you maximise relevant traffic to your site.
Already selling on line? Here are some things to think about.
If you already have an online shop, you'll have taken care of all the points listed above.
You can now get on with the business of running your shop.
But what does that involve?
First, it involves making sure that you get as much relevant traffic as possible to your shop. This is done by carrying out online market research, to find out what people are looking for, then making sure that your shop is optimised to rank well for searches for the relevant terms. Remember, the key isn't getting as much traffic as possible; it's getting as much relevant traffic as possible.
Second, it involves monitoring user behaviour. What do people do when they get to your shop? Do they look around for a while and then buy something? Do most of them only look at the first page then go away? This information is invaluable - it allows you to maximise your shop's potential by looking at how people are using it, and changing it to get better results. This information can be gathered from your web server's logs, and from any stats that your shop system saves. We can help you make sense of this information, and come up with a list of suggested improvements to get the most out of your shop.