SHRINK-WRAP E-COMMERCE SOFTWARE

Now let’s discuss software that will provide you with all the tools you need to build a full-fledge e-commerce website, e.g., a product catalog, a shopping cart, and some kind of order processing and transaction security solution. E-commerce packages of this type enable you to get your website up and running quickly. However, be aware that when a product touts “ease of use,” it is a subjective term — what one person considers an easy-to-use product, could be viewed as difficult by another. But if you know HTML and have CGI experience you may want to use a shrink-wrap product; they all provide the web design with some degree of flexibility, such as designing your own HTML pages.

Any shrink-wrap e-commerce solution should allow freedom of choice to incorporate software from a variety of offerings. Furthermore, they should provide, at a minimum:

• Good documentation and support.
• The ability to import data from a database file.
• Order processing features such as the availability of a virtual shopping cart.
• The ability to transfer data securely using SSL and not leave it in an unsecured area of a server where unauthorized parties might find it.
• The ability to send customers’ details to you using encrypted email.
• Simplified day-to-day operation of your website such as allowing changes to be made offline and then to be uploaded to the server. (For security reasons, this feature usually requires that you only use one specific computer for the updates.)
• The ability to add, to delete, and to amend product data as well as to run special promotions.
• Good, detailed reports of the analysis of server logs, such as the number of hits and referrer information which in turn can give, for example, a sales history analysis and information about the most common entry and exit points your customers use in your website.

The majority of the shrink-wrapped e-commerce packages will have in addition to the features set forth above:

• The ability to accept orders and payments in as many ways as possible — credit cards, debit cards, paper checks, electronic checks, digital cash, fax, telephone, or snail mail.
• Maintain pre-set tax tables that so the correct tax is collected on each order.
• The ability to interface directly with carriers such as UPS, along with automatically calculating shipping costs.
• The ability to send an email order acknowledgement automatically to the customer along with a unique number to facilitate order tracking.

You will also find some of the products offer services such as:

• Domain name registration.
• Automatic search engine submissions.

And more advanced features such as:

• Autoresponders (mail utilities that automatically send a reply to an email message).
• Chat rooms.
• The ability to handle online processing easily. (Although you might process your orders offline, it is good to have this flexibility for future growth.)
• Discount clubs that let you give discounts to repeat or high-volume customers.
• Online order tracking that lets your customers check the status of their orders.
• Inventory management facilities, which can remove a product, automatically, when supply dips below a certain level.
• Additional marketing tools such as the maintenance of customer-buying history and preferences, targeted emailing capability, and affiliate program management.

Be aware, however, that many shrink-wrap e-commerce solutions lack support for the fundamentals, such as back orders, and some lack the modularity needed to mix and match applications from competing platforms. Now let’s examine a sampling of just a few of the many products available.

AceFlex B2C (www.aceflex.com). Although pricey, this robust sales management software gives you everything you need to establish an e-commerce site. For example, the AceFlex B2C provides web-based sales tracking, order processing, customer relationship management, product/content merchandising, scheduling & analyzing promotion/marketing campaigns, set price levels, easy customizable storefront with advanced catalog, shopping cart, real-time shipping gateways, pre-integrated online payment processors, and more. Thus this product enables an e-commerce business visibility into its entire multi-channel sales strategy so your staff can discover and respond quickly to any customer’s needs, thereby strengthening customer relationships. Also, it is possible to organize efficient collaboration with suppliers online. This translates into greater insight into efficient business practices, increased profitability, and better customer satisfaction. To check out the variety of websites that have been built with the AceFlex B2C solution visit: www.pdfstore.com (software downloads), www.adasa.com (apparel sales), www.karaokecdgmusic.com (offers streaming audio), and www.reach4life.com (mixture of content and sales). Cost — $2000.

Adobe GoLive (www.adobe.com). This product is actually CyberStudio 3.0 with a bit more window dressing, which isn’t a bad thing. Of all of the products listed in this section, GoLive has the cleanest, most user-friendly interface. That’s because it enables the designer to layout pages on either a grid (which is structurally dependent on complex automatically nested HTML tables) or via a simpler method of user-defined tables consisting of columns and rows. GoLive makes it easy to switch between the WYSIWYG layout mode and a syntax-checking source code view. Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and the related cascading style sheets (CSS) are easy to create and GoLive offers some unique timesaving design features such as automatically generating low resolution black-and-white images that load before a high resolution color image and it enables you to create JavaScript rollovers quickly. Cost — $400.

ecBuilder Pro 6.0 (www.ecbuilder.com). This award-winning website builder and e-commerce software program is suitable for any type or size of e-business. For instance, you can use ecBuilder Pro to construct a website and online store with real-time secure credit transactions, or an online store that can integrate seamlessly into an existing website. ecBuilder Pro 6.0 also enables you to build a brochureware website. Cost — $397.

Erol3 (www.erolonline.co.uk). This is a very flexible e-commerce software and shopping cart builder with excellent documentation. For examples of some of the websites built with the Erol product visit www.officewigwam.co.uk, www.kiddicare.com, www.chaseav.co.uk/erol.html or any of the numerous other websites that Erolonline features on its website. Cost — 99 and up.

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 (www.macromedia.com). This popular product is designed for the e-commerce business that needs the latest and greatest in website development. However, it’s not for the novice — it has a steep learning curve and tech-support is expensive once the 90-day free period runs out. Nonetheless, this extremely powerful web development application offers many advanced development tools for website design and maintenance. For example, it provides support for cascading style sheets, provides a good interface for accessing HTML code directly, and offers features for the newest Active Server components. Cost — $400.

NOTE
A word about DHTML and cascading style sheets — both are handled differently by current versions of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer and aren’t supported at all by most older web browsers, whether Netscape, IE, or Opera. So when you use DHTML and cascading style sheets, you must use tags that are browser-specific and create scripts that redirect older browsers to alternative versions of your website.

The author’s main gripe about many of the current crop of shrink-wrap e-commerce solutions (especially the less costly products) is that they can’t integrate with database servers easily. Hopefully someday a budget-pleasing turnkey solution will be made available that will tap into databases easily and credibly convert existing database forms into web-ready HTML.

Since this book gives advice on what is needed to build a viable e-commerce business, but doesn’t walk the reader through the actual website build, some readers will need more help when they begin the actual design or build process. This is where website design books, of which there are many, come into play. The author suggests: Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to HTML, Graphics and Beyond, Jennifer Niederst (O’Reilly); HTML: A Beginner’s Guide, Wendy Willard (McGraw-Hill); and HTML: Your Visual Blueprint for Designing Effective Web Sites, Ruth Maran (Wiley). In addition to these books, there are numerous websites that you might find useful during the design stage. They include: Weballey.net (numerous useful links), Activejump.com (good HTML tutorial), and Accessv.com (a good HTML tutorial can be found at http://www.accessv.com/~email/webpages/).