DEMO: Web Development Theme

What is electronic commerce?

"Electronic commerce is about doing business electronically. It is based on the electronic processing and transmission of data, including text, sound and video. It encompasses many diverse activities including electronic trading of goods and services, online delivery of digital content, electronic fund transfers, electronic share trading, electronic bills of lading, commercial auctions, collaborative design and engineering, on-line sourcing, public procurement, direct consumer marketing, and after-sales service. It involves both products (e.g. consumer goods, specialized medical equipment) and services (e.g. information services, financial and legal services); traditional activities (e.g. healthcare, education) and new activities (e.g. virtual malls)." (European Commission, 1997).

Web commerce transactions are often unprofitable because companies fail to change their back-end fulfillment process. Below are some fallacies, in order of importance:

· Our logistics operation can handle web commerce fulfillment

· We can now sell effectively around the globe

· Our existing supplier relationship will support e-commerce applications

· We are selling over the web so we must be making money over the web

· We can always integrate e-commerce solutions with our existing activities

Critical success factors:

-Target the right customers

-Own the customer’s total experience

Every day thousands of domains ‘expire’ and are put back into the pool of available domains that anyone can register. They can be very valuable if you are looking for a quality domain for your online business, or if you want to re-sell them for profit. But wait! There is another huge advantage to a domain that was previously owned — Instant Traffic!

As I said above, expired domains have all been owned by someone in the past. Many of these previous owners built Websites for these domains, advertised them, registered them with search engines, and even exchanged links with other sites. All translating into traffic to that domain name.

Now, why would someone who took the time to do all that work let the domain expire? It could be one of several reasons:

* the author simply lost interest * an online venture ran out of funding * poor management of the domain * they couldn’t afford the fees

Whatever the reason, it happens. And you can reclaim some of the wasted traffic and use it to your advantage. You can either point it to your existing site or use it to jumpstart and add value to a new site.

Create Your Own Web Site for Information Purposes or Ecommerce
 by: Jay Peterson

Creating your own web site can be extremely quick, easy, and affordable. Today you can find plenty of tools that can help you create the perfect web site whether it is for pleasure or for commerce. If you are interested in creating your own web site, then here are some great tips that will have you up and running in no time.

Many people that have never created a web site online are usually overwhelmed by the know how and tools that it takes to create a great online presence. Most computer newbie’s take the easy way out and choose to sell on Ebay or have a small personal page on AOL. These people are actually missing out on the importance and huge rewards of developing their own web site.

If you are just starting out and consider yourself a computer novice or have been online for years and want an easier way to create your own web site, then you will be happy to know that complete web building solutions exist. With today’s technology, you can easily create a quality, customizable, and profit producing web site in minutes.

These days, it seems that everyone has a website. Unfortunately, many of these websites are either bland, or sloppily designed by people who don’t understand how to use HTML effectively or are intimidated by it. And, they don’t have the money to spend on a good page editor, so they limp along using the page templates that their website might provide, or they attempt to use programs like MS Word, which offers conversion to HTML. Yet, there are many free tools available that people can use to give their sites some extra polish that will put them a cut above most sites on the WWW. Here is a listing of three of my favorite online tools that will help you create and manage your site:

ColorMaker http://www.bagism.com/colormaker/

This is an essential site to use when designing web pages. It allows you to select the text, link, and background colors from a table. Then, you can preview your choices, and make changes to them to compare different color schemes and change them instantly. It even allows you to upload multiple backgrounds and combine them with your color choices. Once you have found the combination you’re going to use, click the link that says, “copy the Body Tag,” then copy the text that is shown, and paste it into your document.

PHP, Internet Business Marketing, & Good Web Content Go Hand In Hand
 by: Tom Worsley

Everyone has heard that content is king when it comes to search engine optimization and just good old plain web site marketing smarts. But how you present that content on your site can also make a world of difference.

PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language that lets you create dynamic web pages. PHP-enabled web pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages.

Now here is were it gets interesting. Search engines like Google Yahoo and MSN love fresh new content that is changing on a daily basis. But if you are using a java script snippet the search engines will not be able to read the content. If however you are using a PHP type script the content will automatically be transformed into HTML and the search engines will be able to pick it up and read it.

Have you ever gone car shopping with a former car salesperson? Their industry and sales knowledge is powerful information vital to the average buyer. Gaining their street smarts and savvy gives the buyer an edge. This “edge” can be the difference between getting good value and being taken advantage of.

As a former top web hosting salesman, I have decided to come forward and shed some light on the industry. The rapidly growing world of web hosting, domain names, and basic web design is still a mystery to many interested people. My intent is to help you understand basic “do’s and don’ts” in order to help you make a better more-informed decision.

When I got into this business several years ago a close friend if mine had paid $35 for a domain name and had monthly expenses of $20 for simple hosting. By quickly checking the domain name I discovered it was in the hosting company’s name and not the actual owner of the website! I also quickly realized that this $275 annual expense was available at less than $100.

Build Your Own Comparison Shopping Site
 by: Chris Arthur

As shoppers reject the malls for merchandise found on their brightly lit computer screens, comparison-shopping Web sites have become white hot. With the ability to automatially compare the prices of items from thousands of online retailers web users are flocking to these new homes of the bargain for some easy savings.

For the aspiring comparison shopping site owner there are few software options availble including http://www.kaonsoftwares.com/price-comparison-script.html and http://pricetapestry.com which offer PHP MySql solutions.

Kaon softwares script is the most expensive costing almost $500 dollars at the time of righting whereas PriceTapestry cost £45 GB/sterling.

The price differnece is a directly reflection fo the polish put into both scripts - with Kaon providing a very night out the box solution whereas Price Tapestry takes a more “heres the framework” buidl it the way you like it - and as such is quite ugly yet functional out of the box.

Both scripts take Affiliate marketting Datafeeds allowing the sites to be propogated with thousands of items from a wide variety of retailers automatically.

Once the databases are propagated it becomes a matter of common php /database manipulations to manage the sites as you desire.

1. Assemble a web site development plan that is integrated with your overall marketing processes; the content should be consistent with offline materials, the graphics/images don’t have to be identical with traditional media, but should be consistent with your overall branding, style guide, usage of colors etc.

2. Hire a web site design firm that understands your market position and one that won’t get “geek crazy” - meaning they are so in love with their own design capabilities, your site gets bogged down with graphics, plug ins, GIF garbage, etc. But, conversely, check your ego at the door when you work with your design firm - I’ve see so many good web site designs get ruined by clients who can’t or won’t listen to what we tell them!

3. Pay attention to “load times,” how long it takes a web site to load on a 56 KBPS modem (this is an industry average), if its more than 12-18 seconds you may experience the “click of death” - the site doesn’t load quickly and the surfer is gone. Of course, if your targeting broadband customers who are reaching your site via ISDN or DSL then you can build a site that incorporates multimedia-ready content that may include streaming audio or video, or Shockwave or Flash capabilities - go ahead and let those digital geeks get carried away with cutting edge content!

Can you encounter the number of times where a Credit Card Sale was generated, only to receive a “Refund Notification” from your contracted e-commerce processor on behalf the “customer”?

Welcome to the electronic world of “cyber-shoplifting”.

Unscrupulous surfers, disguised as potential “customers”, systematically opt to ordering goods (using credit cards) in electronic form of delivery, only to request a refund minutes or days later after receiving the product.

The “cyber thieves” consent the well-known “loophole” of specific e-commerce processors who deploy a “no questions asked” refund policy.

Some… might concur to the predicament that a “liberal refund policy” boosts sales, but it is statistically verified that these claims are unthinkingly based gross sales figures, where refunds are *not* accumulated to extract the “net profit” (minus refunds).

In numerous cases, the cyber thieves (or else called freebie hunters) automate their thievery, by using pre-made templates to ask for a refund, in order to save time and reap as many digital products as possible, for gratis.

A portion of cyber thieves, download a digital product, whether ebook or software, only to illegally sell it online at eBay or sell it in “warez sites”.

Keyword Research Guide — How and Why!
 by: Manish Mathukiya

Keyword marketing-the importance..

In the Field of SEO-Search engine optimization choosing keywords is one of the most important tasks. You should choose keyword wisely. Choosing keyword is not a guessing Game but it is an art.

Why to choose keywords?

As you probably aware of search engine traffic. Search engine traffic is very very important for success of any website. It is estimated that approximately 65 to 85% of traffic (average) coming from search engine (however is depends on how you promote your website).search engine is only way to create highly targeted traffic. You can improve visitor to sales ratio of your website if you successfully receive traffic from search engine. Or improve your revenue by attracting more visitors.

If you are selling Music CDs online. If your website is on top for key Phrase like “Music CD” on all Major search engines then just think how many people will search for Music CD in a day?? I think lots of. Now. This is the way you are getting visitor searching for Music CDs. However there will be lots of search in a day for term CD like