Even though recession gripped the entire economy in its clutches, one sector that still showed an increasing trend was e-commerce. In US alone, the E-Commerce sales in Q4 2009, went up by3% as reported by comScore . It is thus evident that online retail spending continues to gain share of consumers’ wallets.

So, if you are one of those who are planning to set-up an e-commerce store, here are certain points that you must keep in mind.

Setting up an E-commerce store

These are some of the steps involved in getting your store up and running.

• Domain name is the first thing you’ll need for your online store. You may choose a domain name that reflects the essence of your business and best reflects your product or service.

• Once, you finalize a domain name, you may ensure that your e-commerce store has the support of a reliable e-commerce web hosting service, which will make your e-commerce website accessible to your target audiences round the clock. It will also help your business by listing its products and services, handling shopping carts, and tracking customer orders.

• Selecting shopping cart software is extremely important while setting up your e-commerce business. You may consider the number of credit card processors and shipping services, the shopping cart supports. You may also ensure that it is easy to add products to your shopping cart so that users have a great shopping experience.

• Setting up payments is yet another essential requirement of an online store. For this you need a merchant account that would help you accept online payments. Now there has to be some link that hooks your merchant account with that of your customer’s credit card. This link is an online processor called payment gateway. It also helps in ratification of information, authorization of credit cards etc.

• Yet another integral component of an e-commerce site is Secure Socket layer (SSL). If your website has SSL certificate then the message reflected to the customers is that the site they have used for online shopping & input their credit card information is reliable, and that the transactions they’ve made are quite secure.

Management of your E-commerce store

You can easily manage your e-commerce store with the help of online store management software. Online store management software would help you in managing & tracking the orders placed by your customers via payment authorization.

You can also keep a constant vigil on the progress of your web store by integrating in-built reporting tools & Google Analytics into your website. This will help your website get a clear picture of the website traffic &  store sales. Using these tools, you can view best selling products by category in your store; most used keywords, top-rated customers, geography-specific website traffic etc.

Now, since you are aware of the steps for setting-up and managing your e-commerce store, you know that selecting the right web hosting service provider who is able to provide you with all the above mentioned services would be the key to your success.

We, at LimeDomains, provide web hosting, domain name registration and domain transfer services. We also help you build your own online store with our open source ecommerce applications, osCommerce and Zencart. You can install these applications and get started with selling your products/services directly from you site, processing of payments, building & managing shopping carts, customizing your store with help from a robust pool of support resources etc.

Get started now!

Ecommerce web hosting…..for your virtual store front

With gazillions of web hosting providers already on the Web each saying ‘Me Too’, you need to be careful with your decision since you cannot resort to age old ‘trial & error’ approach as it can pull down your online store in minutes. Don’t rush into any decision of choosing Ecommerce web hosting solution!

Ecommerce business involves purchase and sale of products on electronic systems or computer networks. Hence, the selection of Ecommerce web hosting provider must be done only after you have cross checked the below listed key elements.

Reliability & Speed

The reliability of server holds great significance since your potential customers can get horrified at the mere thought of making online payments & your website going down. As a result, they can skip your online store & shop somewhere else. At LimeDomains, we make sure that if any contingency situation arises & one server goes down, there is another one to take over and suffice for your website needs effectively.

Compatibility with existing hardware & software

Setting up an ecommerce store is not a child’s game. So, you must try to keep it as simple as possible for your potential customers. Every component, be it a payment gateway or a shopping cart, that you integrate through the ecommerce solution provided by your web host must have adequate compatibility with your current hardware and software components.

Multiple Payment Systems

In our day-to-day busy lives, consumers prefer to shop and make payments online through different payment modes such as credit cards, PayPal etc. If you plan to set up an ecommerce store, make sure that the ecommerce solution offered by your provider supports varied payment options so that your store can address the demands of a wide range of customers across the world. This will optimize your profits to a greater extent. LimeDomains supports multiple payment modes so you can accept payments made by your customers via any means.

APIs

Management of finances and inventories of your online store is a bit tedious task, which can be dealt conveniently provided your web host gives you an appropriate & flexible ecommerce solution. Developers write codes using these APIs, and it facilitates linking of ecommerce server and legacy system.

Support to Current Data

Look for an ecommerce solution that enables you to transfer data from one environment to another. This becomes significant especially in case of managing big online shops, where manual transferring of huge amounts of data from one system to another, is quite a complex and costly affair.

Shopping Cart

It’s an integral part of any ecommerce solution as it facilitates your potential customers to have a delightful browsing experience through your ecommerce store, and make purchase decisions.

Now that you have almost all the required information on what key tenets to look for while choosing an Ecommerce Hosting Solution, you can decide when to say ‘Yes’ to any hosting solution for your ecommerce store.

We, at LimeDomains, are there to help you out setting your ecommerce store on the Web using applications such as osCommerce and Zencart. We look forward to your ‘Yes’ for our Ecommerce solution.

Start monetizing your website by selling products and services online today!
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