Tips to Choose an e-Commerce Solution

Ecommerce is expanding beyond simple B2C and B2B shopping portals and to  spruce up and increase an online business, ecommerce solutions have become a necessity. These solutions are a gateway to sales for your company. They hold an important value as they help in making a business operate smoothly. Choosing the right solution is important in making your business a success.

What to look for when choosing an ecommerce solution

  • PCI compliance is most important as it is necessary for you to provide security to the personal information of your customers.
  • It is imperative to opt for ecommerce solutions that provide a complete package deal with options like shopping cart, shared SSL certificates, and marketing tools.
  • A good ecommerce solution must provide good documentation and support. It must also have the ability to import product data from a database file.
  • Generally the best solutions come with pre-set tax tables that ensure the correct levels of tax are collected on each order. There are certain solutions that interface directly with information from carriers and can automatically calculate the shipping cost for each order.
  • While most orders in an online store are paid with a credit card, there are still a lot of shoppers who wish to shop and pay using alternative methods. To maximize sales a Web store should therefore be capable of accepting orders with credit and debit cards, paper and electronic checks and digital cash.
  • It is also essential to decide on a solution that automates a good part of the order management and provide a unique number for order tracking. With online order tracking, customers can instantly check the status of their orders. (This can ease the demand on your customer service team.)
  • Look for a solution that provides additional marketing tools like the maintenance of customer buying history and preferences, targeted e-mailing capability, and affiliate application lifecycle management management.
  • Examine the reports that are provided with the solution. With no salesperson in your virtual store to monitor customer behavior and buying patterns, it is the reports that are the only source of information.

The key factor to gaining a competitive edge in the growing ecommerce market is to ensure a great customer experience at all times. This includes a sharp user interface, secure data management, a solid POS, rapid performance and the ability to handle large amounts of traffic. Therefore ensure the solution you choose provides a complete suite of all these features along with good advisory services.

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