Planning your ecommerce website

More and more small businesses are looking to ecommerce as a way to expand their business. If you are one of them you need to do a little homework before you start investing your money. You don’t want to be in the unenviable position of having all of your money invested in a loosing proposition. Following these basic guidelines will help you avoid that pitfall.

Know the market: The chance of you being successful on the web is far greater if you can successfully compete with the other sites you find on the web. If your inventory is smaller, your prices higher, your site less professional, your marketing budget smaller… your chances of success are far less.
Full featured shopping cart: The shopping cart is second in importance only to your site navigation. A full featured shopping cart will allow the shopper to add, update and delete products and will maintain that list of products if they should leave the site for any reason and return later. At a minimum the cart should allow for multiple billing and shipping addresses that are maintained even after the customer leaves the site. The cart should also show exactly what the person is buying, what the shipping costs will be, any sales tax and the exact amount that will be charged to their credit card. The cart should also include a detailed receipt with complete order information that can easily be printed without loosing any information.

Source: http://www.letmeshop.com/