Getting to Know Good Ecommerce Software For Small Businesses

It takes a lot of dedication to have a good business and sell online. Selecting a good ecommerce software package is just but one of the many steps needed to make the process of getting an online company on its feet. Other steps involved in every ecommerce site which wants to be a success story when it comes to sell online include:

• Selecting and registering a web domain.

• Selecting a reliable web hosting company.

• Designing the actual website you will use to market and sell online products.

• Deciding on the appropriate shopping cart ecommerce software - there are several out there, you just have to get a cart provider that meets your needs.

• Establish a payment gateway.

• Organizing a portal for credit card processing.

• Setting up a merchant account.

• Marketing - This has a lot of impact on how much success you will make online. Getting to make your products known in the market. This can be done by starting an affiliate program.

Prior to making a single sale online, all the above steps need to be taken into consideration in order to make the ecommerce software you selected to start generating cash for you without having any glitches. There are reported cases where people are unable to sell online until they try software products from a couple of vendors.

Fortunately, this doesn't have to happen to you too. There are ecommerce services that take up the responsibility of doing all the above steps for you; especially the tricky bit of getting you a shopping cart ecommerce software that will be compatible with your website. Over and above that, they can improve your chances of selling online by availing powerful marketing avenues such as search engine optimization, advertising your website on social networking sites which will guarantee your product to sell online. All the above combined are referred to as the power of ecommerce software.

With a myriad of ecommerce solutions online, you can use online reviews to assess which one in particular is suitable for you. However, below are some pointers that you can use to determine the suitability of ecommerce software.

How to Know That a Particular Ecommerce Service Will Help You Sell Online

These are known criteria used by top reviewers on the internet.

Ease of Setup

To establish your online business, the ecommerce service should be in a position to illustrate what you need to do and also how to get it done. If the company you are dealing with does not give you all the tools you need in coming up with your ecommerce site, you should ask them to give you a list of compatible tools that will work with your site instead of having to use the trial and error option.

Feature Set

This has to do with the ecommerce software or tools that come with the package from the ecommerce service in order to get your online business up and running. Typically, we look at features the service avails to clients, for instance: site creation, report generation, payment options and shopping carts et cetera.

Ease of Use

Since a website is a perpetual work in progress, it should be easy to update as well as generate reports from, which are easily customizable to give you particular information that you wish to get in the shortest time possible. Essentially, a suitable ecommerce service should be creative while still maintaining ease of use.

Fraud Protection

Your hosting website should be in a position to offer you a secure server over which your clients can safely reveal their credit card information while making an online purchase. The most sensitive part when it comes to showing credit card information is the CVV2 code which is usually a 3-digit figure printed on the back of most credit and debit cards. As a merchant you should always look for ecommerce software that enables you to offer the best fraud protection available in the market.

Help/Documentation

Ideal companies should give you ongoing help and support especially when dealing with such a dynamic field - the internet. Better and newer internet solutions are generated frequently and therefore you must be able to keep up with the trends. Support and help can be in the form of periodic downloads, live chats, telephone operators, wikis, forums or even blogs.

The above pointers regarding how to select ecommerce software should get you to sell online in the shortest time possible.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Read more »

You Can Collaborate Too - SharePoint Alternatives for Small Businesses

The Need for a SharePoint Alternative

According to Gartner Group, Forrester, companies will spend $200 billion a year by the end of the decade on intranet and collaboration hardware, software.

MS SharePoint - A Big "No No" for Growing Businesses?

In the hyper-competitive 21st century, executives are pressed from all quarters. On the one hand, they need to be flexible, always on the move, and on the other hand, there is also a greater need for teamwork and information exchange. This underlines the importance of collaboration technology - document management, intranet, extranet portals - for running an efficient business. This is just as true for growing businesses, faced with tough competition and limited budgets.

The SharePoint Burden

- High Upfront Investment

- Pricey Hardware

- Specialized IT Staff

- Ongoing Maintenance

- No Email

- Inappropriate Features

Unfortunately, growing organizations have had to contend with an ill fitting solution. The most prominent solution, MS SharePoint, was crafted for an entirely different segment - big businesses with very different needs and huge IT budgets. SharePoint requires pricey hardware, huge implementation, technical expertise, & has features often wholly inappropriate for the small to mid sized business context.? Even worse, it offers only a partial deal, lacking email capability, which forces companies to purchase communications and collaborations tools piecemeal.

This backbreaking burden often proves to be a major distraction, channeling energies and resources away from important areas. Thus the quest for a viable SharePoint alternative.

The SAAS Model - Win-Win for Growing Business

"Most of the start-up application vendors are selecting SaaS as their primary model, and increasingly as their sole model for delivering applications."

Dave Mitchell

Director, SAAS Strategy IBM

Although it would have been true 8-10 years ago that growing businesses did not have many alternatives to SharePoint, the landscape is much changed now. Modern day technologies and approaches have spurned a new breed of solutions which open incredible collaboration possibilities even while offering a much better cost-benefit deal. Moreover, many such solutions are targeted specifically towards the hitherto neglected small to mid sized business segment.

In recent times there has been a discernible movement towards the hosted, software-as-a-service(SAAS) model. This holds true not just for the SharePoint hosting market, but for just about any software technology, with web based office suites, video editors, telephony solutions, operating systems and what have you. There's talk of "death of the desktop" and behemoths like Microsoft lagging in the race.

The SAAS Advantage - Bettering SharePoint Vices

The SAAS Advantage

- All SharePoint Features

- No Hardware

- No Upfront Investment

- Business Email?

- Added Features

- Outlook Integration

- Universal Access

- Low Monthly Fee

The SAAS model offers certain basic benefits which make it the best alternative to MS SharePoint, and especially suitable for growing companies. Firstly, the solution is hosted at the solution provider's, saving the customer the effort of setting up, configuring and maintaining servers, and hiring specialized support staff. These solutions are ready to be used from day one, requiring little more than the user getting on a browser and signing up.

The hosted model also scores from a security point of view. These solution providers often have security expertise and technologies not available to smallish firms.

Secondly, almost no upfront monetary investment is needed. The cost structure is usually a low monthly user based subscription fee. This ensures that companies pay only for what they use, and there is no obligation of carrying on with a bad solution to recover initial investment. Companies have the flexibility of opting out whenever they please.

Get All That is Good About SharePoint ?

Almost all of the good alternatives to SharePoint duplicate its entire feature set. Like the ability to store and organize documents online, and share them across the board, along with rich document management features - versioning, access permissions, change notifications, comments etc.

Or the ability to publish dedicated intranets/extranets for employees and groups within the company or clients and partners outside it. These solutions also allow for a great deal of customization where intranet/extranet look and layout can be intricately managed; and select collaboration tools be added, like shared documents, calendars, contacts or project management. In some cases there are added layers of customization where information access to people at different levels within the same intranet or extranet can be managed. Some solutions even allow users to build entire websites.

Beyond MS SharePoint

Some of these solutions even go beyond SharePoint, and offer a whole tool box of features for almost the entire range of small business needs. For example, one sharepoint alternative has an email system inbuilt in its toolkit and also allows customers to set up custom business email for their companies. Exchange like features such as the ability to share contacts, calendars and tasks are also included. Extra features like polling and forums are thrown into the mix. This saves companies the need to purchase solutions piecemeal for different needs.

Flexibility

Flexibility is another hallmark of SAAS software. Since all you need to access them is a web browser, you can use the entire feature set from any internet enabled device - mac, windows, desktop, laptop or handheld. This allows team members to stay connected even when they're traveling, and saves time and costs setting up dedicated VPNs for external parties. Anyone who has internet is on the "network".

Moreover, plugins allow these solutions to communicate seamlessly with other software. These solutions can be used in tandem with popular softwares which are a part of every company, for example Outlook.

The hosted model also renders unnecessary the need to download and install updates regularly. The provider simply keeps adding upgrades, patches and new features at his own end and these are instantly available to the users of the software.

Conclusion - Decision Criteria

Even within vendors who provide SAAS software, a decision is to be made. A comparison of various SAAS SharePoint Alternatives is provided in the next page. Some important criteria that need to be considered while making the selection are:-

o Do they provide the basic SharePoint feature set?

o What kind of initial investment is involved in terms of effort and costs?

o What are the costs?

o Is the solution scalable as the organization grows?

o What kind of security do they provide?

o Are there additional features? (relevant to needs)

o How well are features integrated within the solution

o Can their system communicate and integrate with commonly used software like Outlook?

o Do they provide support and training?

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Read more »