In today's competitive Internet market, it is not enough for a small business to be seen on the Internet. A website should at least be able to generate the business prospects or actual revenue. There are many tools and applications available for any size of business that will allow them to:
- Close a contract of sale and set up for the delivery of the product;
- Inform the client of physical store location if there are any and how to get there;
- Keep the customers updated on the store's latest offers and promotions via virtual newsletters and the like.
It is a good thing that the technology has been able to keep up with this growing demands of smaller enterprises, and that there are a lot of service providers that see the potential of this market. The result is that the price of setting up a virtual shop or website no longer costs as much as it used to, but there is no compromise in the quality of services being offered.
Small Business Solutions
There is a myriad of ecommerce web hosting bundles that are now available online with the small businesses in mind in their design. In order to choose which one will be the best for a business, the entrepreneur must consider the following features:
- Purchase interface - seeing what they can buy, but not how to buy (or a very long explanation of HOW to buy it) it will generally turn customers away. A good website host will be able to provide the platform for payment (such as partnering up with PayPal or MoneyBookers), and even provide for a software to generate address labels for deliveries.
- Security certificates - a business owner must be sure that their customers would not be getting something "extra" like computer viruses or malware from their site. If the website is not secure, it would not matter if they have the best deals, clients will not go there or make purchases.
- Traffic management - a good ecommerce web hosting provider must have a strong enough connection and hardware to handle a large amount of traffic. It is better to have more than is needed than need more than what comes with the package. A business owner should also note the "uptime" of the web hosting service provider.
- Inventory software - this is a software tool that will allow a business owner to keep track of their stocks in real time. It is an automated system that will put up an "out-of-stock" sign when the orders have matched the number of goods in stock. It will save a lot of time and hassle of either trying to explain to a customer why they goods can not be delivered yet, or going through the trouble of processing "charge backs."
- Database - it is all about information. A business owner needs to be able to keep pertinent information about their business and clientele, and have easy access to it. There are two types of database, MSSQL for the Microsoft based servers and the MySQL for the UNIX or LINUX based servers. The type of database that a business will get will depend on the type of server that they will upload their site.
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