Web Store

At the most basic level, you need some way for customers to input an order on a website that can be sent to you. Solutions in this category are also called shopping cart or ecommerce applications. Web store features vary widely so you will need to identify the features you need. The following lists of considerations and features should help you get started. If you have not reviewed web store functionality in a while you may be surprised to see so much functionality is available.

Considerations

• Reality

  Just because you add a web store, it does not mean that sales will skyrocket. The Internet is vast and so are the products and services available. You will need to advertise and ensure that your website can be seen by the leading search engines.

• Payment Processing

  Will you accept credit cards and debit cards or will you invoice customers? Most solutions require a separate merchant account for credit card processing.

• Occasional Selling

  If you only have a few items or you plan to sell occasionally, you may be able to use a simpler selling and payment processing approach. Some payment processors like PayPal will give you the HTML code for a button that will send your product's id, price and description so that you can identify an item id with sales.

• Integration with Accounting Software

  Integration can be complex and time consuming. Consider whether the web store or your accounting system will be the master data source for orders, items and inventory. You may want to reflect orders, customers and inventory data in your accounting system. Many accounting applications now have add-on web store offerings so consider that along with other the products and services available.

• Niche Product and Service Web Stores

  Niche options exist for many different types of products and services like electronic downloads and class registration.

If your needs don't justify the investment for a web store, you can investigate selling through a marketplace like eBay or Amazon.

Features

Web store solutions will usually include some of the following.

• Shopping Cart

  Keep track of customer items until they are ready to checkout.

• Order Entry

  Accept orders from a web page.

• Pricing

  Set prices by groups and customers, accept coupon codes and calculate tax.

• Payment

  Integrate with payment processors for credit cards and configure other payment options as needed. Recurring payments may also be handled. The best practice is to never store any credit card data locally. It is usually best to let credit card processors handle credit card input. All pages that transmit credit card numbers or sensitive information must be done securely using encryption called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Use of the web address "HTTPS" indicates that SSL is being used.

• Integration

  Web stores can be integrated into accounting applications to transmit order information and marketplaces like eBay.

• Item Catalog and Inventory

  Item catalogs may be needed for pricing and inventory.

• Packing and Shipping

  Calculate shipping costs. Print packing lists and labels to help fulfill the order. Integrate with shippers.

• Reporting

  Reporting may be included in the web store software.

• Security

  Assign different levels of security to users.

• Returns

  Process returns.

Implementation Options