E-Commerce

A great e-commerce website should do more than just sell products and handle payment transactions.

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Understanding the Basics of E-Commerce

E-Commerce solutions allow your business to sell products and/or services online and instantly process payments online. Today, the Internet is big business. Businesses are generating huge revenues from selling their products and/or services to online consumers. In fact, some businesses use the internet as their only 'store front' - selling products and/or services exclusively online which drastically reduces typical operation costs and, in turn, generates higher profit margins.

Well, the 'higher profit margins' part of e-commerce is the simple part. In fact, similar to designing a company or organization website, building the actual website, isn’t the first thing you do. Not only do you need to understand your market's online characteristics, but you need to use that knowledge to formulate a strategy. The strategy is important since it will allow you to understand what you need to get out of your e-commerce solution.

Whether websites are selling books, sporting goods, ebooks, subscriptions, information, or any other product or service online, there are many things the backend e-commerce engine powering these website would have in common. For example, common elements across e-commerce engines are things like: the ability to add one or more images for a product; the ability to optional include any shipping costs (based on integration with leading shipping company's shipping cost calculation tools); the ability to hook into a number of popular online payment processors using a merchant account or other type of account; the ability to manage products, create printable invoices and receipts; the ability to track usage and ordering statistics; and the list goes on. Many great e-commerce solutions are actually built to be an 'all-in-one' or 'one size fits all' solutions that have all the above common features and more.

The common elements of an e-commerce engine noted above are the more administrative features. Additionally, a great e-commerce engine should provide you with marketing tools to help increase your conversions. A few examples of some features and tools are: a newsletter system to e-mail promotions and general information to segmented lists of both your buyers and supporters; a feature to sell Gift Certificates; a tool to email-to-a-friend; a tool that allows you to create and manage coupons and special offer codes; and features that allow you to manage specific placement of sale products or other promotional items.

E-Commerce Services

Over the years, we have gained exceptional experience from successfully designing and developing a number of custom e-commerce websites for our Clients. Now, due to our evolving passion to share in-depth knowledge that educates Clients, plus the strong Client feedback that this service is invaluable to them, we are focusing our e-commerce services on the initial part of our former two-part approach. Our current two-part approach to e-commerce now involves:

• Educating our Clients about e-commerce:
  We consult our Clients and educate them about e-commerce. Through this education, we work together to determine their e-commerce requirements based on business type, size, and resources.
• Connecting our Clients to leading-edge e-commerce technologies:
  After we've determine our Clients' e-commerce requirements, we connect them to our qualified e-commerce partner, who facilitates the design and development aspects of the e-commerce solution then brings it to market.

Our qualified Partner for e-commerce has multiple proprietary e-commerce technologies available to Clients. Their solutions are tried and tested. Businesses both large and small use their e-commerce technologies. If you're seriously considering e-commerce, then for starters, read the standard features their Advanced E-Commerce Solution comes with. For those looking to sell under 1000 products or a don't require as much control over their e-commerce website, take a look at the Basic E-Commerce Solution standard features.

When you’re finished, simply contact us using our free estimate form at the bottom of this page. Or, take a couple minutes and view some samples.

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Advanced E-Commerce Solution – Standard Features

Typically for businesses that sell 1000 or more products or businesses looking for more all around control and flexibility from their e-commerce website. The standard feature set available with our Partner's Advanced E-Commerce Solution include:

• Manage Products:
  For each product, you control the title, SKU, photo (and X additional photos), short description, long description, price, tax class, product options, and quantities in stock.
• Manage Categories:
  You control how your products are categorized, ordered, and which products get featured on the homepage.
• Manage Orders:
  You get the ability to print orders (bulk printing), add new or edit existing orders from the secure Administration section, process orders and let the Client know order and shipping statuses through their tracking number.
• Manage Clients:
  You can easily find, add, edit and manage Clients.
• Manage Tax Classes:
  You can add, edit and manage your tax classes like GST and PST. Plus, you can add your own custom tax classes for other countries.
• Manage Payment Options:
  You control how people pay. You can choose payment options like credit card, checks, money orders, or cash on delivery. Compatible with most of all payment gateways, such as PSiGate, Moneris and Beanstream or for free PayPal, Google checkout, 2Checkout and more.
• Manage Shipping Options:
  Clients receive real time shipping calculation. Give Client's real time shipping calculation with Canada post, USPS, Fedex, airborne, or fixed shipping price per article or order. You can even manage shipping options for specific countries.
• Google Product Search (Formerly, Froogle) exportation:
  The system automatically updates the Google Product Search with all the products in your catalogue.
• Best Sellers:
  The site automatically displays the top selling products based on orders.
• Statistics:
  Statistics are key to an efficient e-commerce solution. You can view reports on sales, most viewed products, number of visitors, where they come from, what pages they have seen and more.
• Import / Export Product catalogue (using Microsoft Excel):
  Easily Import or export products to and from your product catalogue using data you manage in Microsoft Excel.
• Export Sales to QuickBooks (Accounting Software):
  For businesses and organizations using QuickBooks, you can easily export all your sales data to easily incorporate within your QuickBooks company accounting software.
• Manage Page Content:
  Manage basic content on-demand for pages like about us, contact us, news/events. You can add and manage other basic pages that can be easily edited through a WYSIWYG editor such as Microsoft Word.
• Manage and Create Forms on the Fly:
  Create forms like a Contact form, surveys, job applications and more.
• Database Backup / Restore:
  You have functionality that gives you the opportunity to create your own backups of the website and at anytime you can restore your website if you made a mistake with your product catalogue.
• Manage Multiple Currencies:
  You can define which currency your CLients or Customers can view your prices in. Currencies include USD, CAD, Eur, GPB, and Yen. You can easily define any exchange rate in the Adminstration section.
• Manufacturers:
  You can display the products by manufacturer and brand them with their own description/logo. Every product that belongs to the manufacturer will appear in the manufacturer's page.
• Customer Member's Area:
  Customers can make payments quickly when signed-in, retrieve order information, edit their personal information, manage their shipping address and retrieve their wish list.
• Bulk Change to Product catalogue:
  You can remove or transfer products, categories from one place to another, change one of their attributes in one click, and hide some products temporarily.
• Search Engine Friendliness:
  All the pages you create will be automatically optimized for easy indexing by search engines.

In addition to the standard features available with our qualified e-commerce Partner's advanced e-commerce solution, they have many popular add-ons available to help maximize your e-commerce business model.

• Discount / Coupons:
  With this add-on you can easily carry out a wide range of promotional techniques that include: Special offers, Bonus points, Discount coupons that are redeemed on the checkout pages. You can also create special offers such as buy 2, get the 3rd free or buy a specific product and get 10% off with free shipping. Also, you can even provide free shipping for orders over a pre-determined amount.
• Wish List:
  This feature adds ability for Users to add a product to their wish list. They can retrieve it anytime they log in.
• Gift Certificates:
  You can allow Customers to purchase Gift Certificates online that can be e-mailed to the recipient. The recipient can then redeemed them upon check-out.
• Add Extra Options to Products:
  You can show last viewed products by the customer, or bestseller products, new products or even associate the product with other products to build a custom product (Example: The Customer picked a costume and on the same page you can display a choice of pants, belts, hats etc.)
• Newsletter:
  A powerful emailing tool that can be integrated with your e-commerce website. You can create distribution lists with double opt-in, and send newsletters from the system to the distribution lists using created templates. You get full editing flexibility when writing newsletter by using a built-in WYSIWG editor. Additionally, you can import/export e-mailing lists. Reporting features are included, that allow you to track bounces, click throughs, reads and more. With this system, the Client is provided with a sperate login and Administrative interface to effectively manage their newsletter campaigns.
• Shopping / Product Advisor:
  This great sales tool can inform customers about related products to previous purchases and what products other users bought.
• Magnifier / Zoomifier:
  This tool allows customers to view products in greater details, as if using a magnifier or sooming in. Suitable for different kinds of shops, the feature is especially recommended for online shops selling decorations, ornamentals, antiques, fine art, souvenirs, delft ware, glass, toys and every product that may be detail oriented.
• Sales / Clearance Pricing:
  This feature allows you to 'cross out' the original price on the site for a product and show a new price beside or below it.
• E-mail-to-a-Friend:
  A great tool to let your Customers and visitors do the selling for you. With this feature, others can easily e-mail specific product information to their friends or interested parties.
• Inventory Tracking:
  This feature provides you with an inventory management and stock tracking tool. You Customers will be able to see the current stock level for a specific product. From the Administration section, you can track and manage your inventory.
• HTML Catalogue:
  You can have your entire product catalogue as a static HTML product catalogue which provides search engine optimization enhancments.
• Affiliate System:
  With this feature you instantly have a full-featured affiliate system allowing affiliates to create their accounts, download affiliate banners to place on their site or in other deliverables, plus you can track each affiliate's traffic sent to your site, converted sales, and payments. You can easily manage their affiliate network from the Administyration section of the site.
• eGoods:
  This allows oyu to sell electronic good from your e-commerce site. Examples of electronic goods could be eBooks, Articles, MP3s, Videos, PDFs, etc.
• Live Operator:
  A web application that allows you serves as customer service representative. You can take questions from customers and provide responses. All the conversations are saved in the Adminstration section for future reference and Quality Assurance.
• Comments / Reviews:
  Allow your customers to send their comments to a page, a product or any page of your website. They can either give a notation or post their own comment. You control whether or not a review or comment gets published.
• Gift Registries:
  Gives the opportunity to your customer to create their own gift registry which they can make either public or private. They can invite guests to sign their guestbook and purchase the products which they put in their registry.

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View E-Commerce Samples

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Basic E-Commerce Solution – Standard Features

Typically for businesses that sell under 1000 products, the standard feature set available with our Partner's Simple E-Commerce Solution include:

• E-commerce Catalogue with Shopping Cart:
  This provides the basic e-commerce engine that allows your visitors and Customers to browse your categorized products, as well as, provide the functionality to allow them to add items to their shopping cart/basket.
• Secure Check-Out:
  This provides the means to ensure secure connections are made during the check-out process using an SSL Certificate.
• Automatic Payment Processing with Approved Vendor:
  This allows your e-commerce solution to be connected to an online payment processor from a list of pre-approved payment processing vendors.
• Basic Shipping Solution:
  This provides ths basic functionality for you to manage shipping costs associated with the products in your catalogue.
• Client Manages Categories and Products:
  This provides the back-end, or Adminstrative, tools that allow you to add and manage all the products in your catalogue. Each product can have a product name/title, short description, long description, sample PDFs, price and optional other parameters. Additionaly, you can define the categories your products are in.
• Email Notification:
  When a new order occurs, you recieve and e-mail with the order information and your Customer receives a confirmation e-mail.

In addition to the standard features available with our qualified e-commerce Partner's simple e-commerce solution, they also offer the same popular add-ons from their advanced e-commerce solution.

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E-Commerce Samples

Below, you'll find a few samples of web design projects produced by our qualified e-commerce partner.

Sabon

Packrat Moving Supplies

Hemocode

Lothantique

Artefac

Frameware Inc

Good For Her

Fantasy Realm

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View E-Commerce Samples

Read About Our E-Commerce Services

Free Estimate

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Request a Free Estimate for E-Commerce Services

Fill out the form below to receive an estimate for e-commerce services. Be sure to provide as much detail as possible. This will ensure we provide you with an accurate estimate.