Why would you want an e-commerce website? Good question. You probably need one if you can answer 'yes' to any of the following questions.

• Do you already have a business selling products
• Are you looking to start a business selling products or services
• Do you feel your overheads are too high
• Are you able sell mail order

In these times of recession many businesses feel the need to reduce overheads. Now there is no replacement for a shop you can walk into for passing business but to get a premisis in a prime location for passing trade can be very costly indeed. An on-line shop or e-commerce website is the next best thing. Once you have your on-line shop up and running you have virtually no overheads.

The Pros

An ecommerce shopping cart gives you the opportunity to make sales without being present in person. If your web site can generate a solid ROI without consuming any of your time resources, you get “free capital” in essence to build your web site and business empire.

Moreover, with advanced authentication technologies and security software available now at bargain basement prices, you can piece together an online emporium without having to hire an expensive consultancy. Survey after survey suggests that ecommerce is booming, increasing at a rate of 20 to 40 percent per year, depending on who is doing the survey and what industry is being surveyed.

With advanced Pay Per Click and SEO optimization methods, you can funnel targeted traffic to your site at relatively low cost. Plus, you can measure when visitors buy, what they buy, and what inspires them to come to your web site to begin with. With all of this information at hand, you can develop a sound strategy to buff up your shopping cart, improve sales with niche markets, and revamp your online catalog based on the data trends that emerge. This information can in turn inform your strategies for offline selling.

The Cons

Creating an online shop does involve some set up time. Although cookie-cutter shopping cart schemas for web sites are eminently affordable, these generic carts can yield technical glitches which can foul up orders and lead to customer service issues.

In addition, you’ll likely need to invest several dozen hours getting your site up and running and driving traffic to it. If you’ve got your hands full dealing with in-store opportunities and crises, the last thing in the world you want to do is to spend your “non-work” hours attending to the nuances of HTML, Java, and shopping cart software applications.

Additionally, thanks to the advent of online auction sites, it’s more difficult than ever to break into the online sales business. Unless you have a predefined niche market or special access to pre-screened streams of customers, building an online shop that yields consistent ROI (return on investment) may be difficult (but not impossible) for the small investor.

In short, the decision to create a shopping cart for your wares online should hinge on numerous intimate facts about your business, your industry, and your local market’s economy.

What you get out of your online shop is exactly what you put into it

What you'd need to do

Make Navigation Easy and Interesting

Physical stores are designed to be easy to browse. Online stores should be no different. With online stores, you want to encourage browsing, so customers can see a lot of items quickly, but also have the ability to get more in-depth information.

Online storefronts should be appealing to the eye. Site design should be colorful, fun and interesting. Pages should download quickly, unencumbered by superfluous graphics.

Site navigation should be very easy, fast and obvious. If visitors can find the items they want quickly, they'll buy. If not, they'll leave. Customers should have easy access to more detailed information on products, but not on the initial screen.

Include Related Items in Displays

Structure product displays in online storefronts so that related items are grouped together, allowing customers to easily purchase several related items. "You should be able to buy everything you need right there on the site," says Howie Green, principal of Boston-based Howie Green Design.

This is more a question of the visual layout of your store than a function of the software you choose. Some software packages will enable site owners to enter information that can help suggest related products, but the easiest way remains to simply present the items together in a related display. The more related products and information you can give customers, the more likely they are to make a purchase - or perhaps purchase several items.

Include All Important Information

On the Web, space in not an issue, therefore, it is easier to put more information about a product online than is possible in a printed catalog or brochure. The more information available, the better chance there is that a customer will make a purchase.

According to Marnie Ann Joyce, Web site producer with Manhattan-based Makeko, many sites omit important information about their business or products. A site visitor should be able to easily find not only the products offered, but also all prices, shipping charges and related information.

Another important piece of information to include for online stores: a telephone number. "Having a human being to talk to is important," says Joyce. Many consumers would like to know where the company is located, and what laws, taxes and regulations they are subject to. "I'm not going to buy from someone if I can't talk to them. Anybody can have a Web site."

Make Purchasing Easy

Making online purchases as easy as possible is one of the most important elements of a good commercial site, but unfortunately, "It's where an awful lot of sites fall apart."

Much e-business software requires consumers to go through several pages of selection and confirmation before they can actually purchase an item. A good online storefront will streamline the buying process to facilitate sales and encourage repeat buyers. It shouldn't take more than two or three screens to buy something online.

The purchasing process is almost entirely a function of the software. Keep this in mind when choosing the software for your online store. Security shouldn't be an issue with streamlining the buying process. Well-thought-out and well-designed software will have security issues built in, while also making purchasing fast and easy.