Usable Shopping Carts Increase Sales

E-commerce has been around since 1993 under many different names, but one thing remains constant; shoppers want usable web sites. Without a usable shopping cart the sites typically fail from poor performance. To succeed in the world of e-commerce and on the Internet web sites must be developed to be usable by patrons as well as search engines.

The most successful sites have been turning to web analytic software to tell them how people use their site. When they notice a break in their site they go in to determine the problem. Marketers tend to think the words on the site are the breaking points; while this may, in part be true, it is more often how the site operates and makes shopping easier for the customer.

Elements of a Usable Shopping Cart

Before a usable shopping cart can be developed several elements must be realized and controlled. Not all things can be overcome, but all things can be controlled. Understanding human nature and how people use new tools can help in controlling the most challenging situations.

Site Navigation

Site navigation must be as easy as possible. Without making the navigation as easy as possible customers will become confused and frustrated which encourages them to leave without purchasing.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are the links found in web sites that show the hierarchical path of the page. Not everyone enters a site through the front page and breadcrumbs make it much easier to reach related products without having to dig around the site.

Adding Items to the Cart

Shoppers want to see some visual confirmation that the action they take works. Sites that fail to provide visual cues lose customers due to confusion and the thought that the site doesn’t work.

JavaScript

JavaScript requires the browser to support JavaScript. Without the ability to support JavaScript or with JavaScript turned off, functions that require JavaScript can’t work. Vital shopping cart functions should not be developed in such a way that JavaScript is required.

Flash

Flash requires the shopper to support the version of Flash being used. People that support Flash 4 can’t support Flash MX without upgrading. Customers will leave for another store if they are required to upgrade their plug-ins. At the very least, it will require that they have to download the plug-in and start the shopping experience from the very beginning.

Checkout Process

The checkout process should be as short as possible. The faster a person can checkout the faster the customer can be on their way to other things.

Checkout Progress

Each step of the checkout progress should indicate the current step and the total number of steps. This helps the customer know where they are in the process and the number of steps remaining.

Ask for Information in the Proper Order

Credit card information should never be asked for until after all the charges have been calculated and presented to the customer. Asking for this information prior to disclosing the full charges will cause the shopper to abandon the cart.

Advantages of Usable Shopping Carts

Usable shopping carts open the market to the consumer. By making a shopping cart usable to the consumer the process of shopping online is less threatening and actually becomes more inviting. NetIQ, the developers of WebTrends, has developed a successful system that helps web site owners, marketing specialists and web development teams make more usable and helpful web sites.

Understanding how shoppers use one’s site and shopping cart can help turn more visitors into purchasing customers. The national average for shopping cart conversion is two percent; however that conversion rate can be increased through having more usable web sites and shopping carts. Multiple paths to the products and easier checkout processes can help greatly.

About The Author

Lee Roberts is the President/CEO of Rose Rock Design, Inc. and owner of the Apple Pie Shopping Cart.

Deciding when to get your own merchant account for internet sales can be a confusing and expensive venture. If you have a small to medium sized business and only sell a small amount of products then having your own merchant account may not be the answer for you. Some of the costs involved include.

Monthly fees. Anywhere between $25-$50 for statements and minimum fees.

Per transaction and charges fees. Usually between 2%-3.5 % in fees and .30-.50 per transaction.

Gateway fees. $10-$30 per month

SSL certificate. Can be as much as $250

Shopping cart fee or software purchase. Monthly can range $20-$70 and software purchase can be as much as $1400.

In addition to the cost is the technical aspect of setting up your site to use a shopping cart and real-time processing. Not all gateways, merchant accounts and shopping carts play well together. You must make sure that each can work with each other. Plus be prepared to properly set up your web server to use all this nice technical information the accounts give you.

Now, if you are a larger business or do a lot of sales each month perhaps your own merchant account is the answer for you. It can save you money in the long run. But if you are just starting out with an online business, then a third party merchant may be the answer for you. Third party merchants handle all the background details, pay the monthly fees, assume the risks of fraud and charge backs, and handle all the secure shopping your customers will expect when shopping online. While the monthly fees may be a bit higher, there usually isn’t a set up charge, gateway fees, SSL charges and shopping cart set up. Depending on the service you choose, they can give you simple HTML code to add to your site or allow you to use “buy buttons” or both. Fees range anywhere from 5% to 13.5%. Some companies charge a set up fee and a per transaction fee.

Then there is always Paypal. A useful service for new comers to the online payment arena but it has its drawbacks. With Paypal:

Your customer must set up an account with them

They can FREEZE your account

They can set limits on monthly transactions

I suggest you explore all your options and decide what is best for you financially and technically. A little research online can save you money and time in the long run.

About The Author

Jim Hoffman is the co-founder of Inet Goodies. An internet resource group, focusing on SEO, Hosting, Billing solutions and Traffic.

http://seogoodies.com

Are you a website owner or a web designer/developer? If either applies, I would venture to say that eventually you’ll need an online shopping cart for one of your websites. In fact, almost all new websites today need some sort of ecommerce built-in, for the purpose of selling goods and services in the online marketplace.

The greatest challenge is to find the perfect ecommerce shopping cart solution for yourself and/or your client. This task can be very overwhelming, considering, if you type ‘shopping cart’ into Google.com, this search alone returns over 14.4 million hits! Most of us don’t have the time to sift through more than a few pages of a search engine to find what we’re looking for.

For the last 3 months, much of my time has been devoted to researching as much shopping cart technology as I could get my hands on. In general, shopping cart software ranges in price from free to over $2000 for a single license and web hosted carts range from $5 to hundreds of dollars per month. The studied carts cover the spectrum of all web programming languages (ASP, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, Flash, Java, JavaScript & Perl shopping carts) and provide limitless features as a whole. The problem is that locating YOUR perfect cart with YOUR specific features can be a big task.

But no fear, just follow this guaranteed step-by-step guide to locate it:

The Top 10 Steps to Finding the Best Online Shopping Cart

Cost

How much money do you have to spend on an internet shopping cart? The nice advantage is that there are shopping carts with hundreds of features and they don’t cost you a dime. They are generally open source products. The only problem is that these same “free shopping carts” can take hours of installation time and be fairly difficult to configure. For a monthly fee, web hosting shopping carts are made for users with little programming experience and allows them to have an online storefront presence in no time.

Hosting vs. Software

There are two options in selecting your overall shopping cart solution. Either you get shopping cart software, download it, install it on your web server, then configure the shopping cart OR you get an online storefront (aka a hosted shopping cart) where the configuration is very basic and the required setup time is minimal. If you have some programming skills, I recommend buying a script and installing it on your own. The nice thing is that you pay a one-time fee for shopping cart software and the license is good for a lifetime. It’s approximately the same price to have a hosted solution for a year compared to most one time shopping cart license fees.

Supported Gateways

What do I mean by gateways? Gateways give shopping carts the ability to connect and securely process credit card orders in real-time. Not all shopping carts are created equal. Make sure that your client’s merchant account is supported by the cart you select. I have found that almost all carts support the larger online payment processing companies, such as Authorize.net, PayPal and Verisign.

Shipping Options

Will you be shipping physical products? If so, there are shopping carts that have built-in real-time shipping options through DHL, UPS And USPS. Often times, the cart gives the user the ability to view tracking orders and order status all from within your secure shopping cart web interface. Also, there are shopping carts with options to ship digital goods as well (files, programs, pictures, music and others).

Technical Support

What kind of technical support does your shopping cart offer? If you choose to purchase a script, be sure to also subscribe to the shopping cart creator’s newsletter, so that you can stay on top of future updates to the software. Be aware that technical support is generally available on a pay-per-incident basis, as a yearly fee or in the rare case, free. Be sure to know what kind of customer support guarantee the shopping cart comes with.

Security

Please, only buy a shopping cart if it supports SSL (secure socket layer), with 128-bit encryption. As an online storefront, remember that you are responsible for the safe transfer of sensitive information (credit card and bank account information) that is processed through your store. If any of the sensitive information is accessible (stolen) from your website, you could be liable. Be sure that you’re purchasing a secure shopping cart solution. Ask the creator’s of the shopping cart what they do specifically to protect the secure transfer of sensitive information.

Style Compatibility

Can you customize your shopping cart to look like your website? There needs to be a seamless transition between your website and your shopping storefront or your customers might get hesitant in purchasing your products. There should be similar colors and style layout to look professional and believable.

Extra Features

I just wanted to mention some of the other features that I have discovered, which might be a critical point in determining the shopping cart you want.

Affiliate Program – Offer your own customized affiliate program through your shopping cart software. Quickbooks Integration – Many carts allow direct integration with Quickbooks.

Newsletter & Mailing Letter Managers – The ability to stay in touch with your current customers and keep them returning to your online store.

Custom Taxing Options – Create taxable or tax-free products and have the ability to add various global tax options at checkout.

World Languages & Currencies – Shopping cart language translation and support for world currency might be a necessary feature for your cart.

Error Free

You mean shopping carts can have errors? Of course. A private UK-based web testing firm found the following, after studying a large group of UK online shopping carts for a period of one month (24/7):”The majority of UK web sites are guilty of leaving e-consumers stranded at the checkout empty handed, once they have already spent valuable time browsing and selecting goods to purchase. This is due to erratic functionality within shopping carts, at a critical step in the online purchasing process.”

“E-consumers are prevented from making purchases on UK web sites for 9 hours and 30 minutes a month on average, (115 hours a year).” “80 per cent of web sites perform inconsistently with widely varying response times, timeouts and errors – leaving consumers at best wondering what to do next and at worst unable to complete their purchase successfully. This is potentially costing e-retailers millions in lost sales from consumer frustrations.” (http://www.scivisum.co.uk/report/ecommerce/)

Be sure to see what other users are saying about a shopping cart that you might be interested in purchasing. Any shopping cart errors could cost you thousands of dollars in sales. Get a stable and secure cart.

Shopping Cart Directory

The following is a link containing a directory of shopping carts that are categorized according to each of the above-stated steps. Make shopping for shopping carts a breeze!

About The Author

Evan Stevens is a professional web developer. This article reviews ecommerce online shopping carts.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience – he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a results-driven marketing services company providing proprietary services to clients encompassing startups to public companies. Lee@intelective.com

ช่วงเดือนที่ผ่านมามี Email Phishing เยอะมาก

คราวนี้เป็น Bank of America

Link ใน mail : http://1securityonlinealert.free.fr//bankofamerica.repution/Online_BofA_Banking.UpdatingScreen.dostate=CAupdating.cfmpage=corp_bofacom.BankofAmricaScreen.dostate=CA/

Google is a very strong brand, but in the Chinese market, branding the company under the letter ‘G’ may be a bit easier, especially for the mobile or newbie user. Google now owns one of the shortest possible domain names for the users in the Chinese market, www.G.cn.

Google says that this short domain name would help the web users in the country as they would be able to type it in fast. G.cn now redirects to Google.cn.

G.com however, leads to nothing and is owned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

—————-

Google is trying to make inroads into the China search engine market.

To make the users reach its site quickly, it has obtained the shortest possible domain name in China,
http://www.g.cn, and previously users were able to reach it as google.cn.

Google announced today that it purchased the domain name g.cn in China to make it the shortest possible domain name.

It said this domain will make the users easy to find.
Whether this domain name will be able to surpass the Baidu Search engine, we have to wait and see.

source : http://www.digitaljournal.com/articl…main_name_ever

Airports of Thailand’s Chiang Mai office is investigating a complaint from German businessman Rainer Gassenschmidt about broken and dislodged roof tiles on his house he said were caused by Thai Airways International flight TG 110 flying too low on Dec 12.

Irate residents affected by aircraft noise around Suvarnabhumi airport say they plan to petition the United Nations next Thursday.

They say there has been no progress in implementing the plan agreed by the government and the tripartite committee to compensate and assist them.

Wanchat Manathamsombat, the residents’ leader, said they want the world community to know about their ordeal and how they have been neglected by the government.

Mr Wanchat said the residents decided they would petition the UN after the New Year when the cabinet failed to consider assistance earlier this week.

This showed the Transport Ministry and the other agencies were not sincere in their promises.

Transport Ministry officials had told the residents to wait for the next cabinet meeting on Jan 3, Mr Wanchat said.

Deputy Transport Minister Sansern Wongcha-um said the ministry would put its plan to assist aircraft-noise affected residents to the economic ministers’ screening committee chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Kosit Panpiemras.

If the committee approved the plan, it would be presented to the cabinet for approval.

Details needing cabinet approval include zones affected by aircraft noise, entitlements of residents who moved in after airport construction began in 2001, and compensation criteria.

Transport permanent secretary Chaisa-wat Kittipornpaibul said after a meeting with residents’ representatives that problems with documents and procedures had prevented officials from buying houses and paying compensation.

For this reason, residents were being asked to wait for a while, as negotiations on compensation were time consuming.

A source in the Transport Ministry said it expected the residents to eventually file complaints with the Administrative Court, which is one of the options that would help to quickly end the compensation dispute.

Residents of Chiang Mai’s Mae Hia district, home to the city’s airport, already plan to petition the Administrative Court to order compensation for the damage caused to their roofs by aircraft noise.

The residents claim Thai Airways International flight TG 110 flew too low over their houses on Dec 12 and the vibrations from the plane damaged their rooftops.

German businessman Rainer Gassenschmidt and his wife Supaporn have filed a complaint with the Chiang Mai office of Airports of Thailand office on behalf of residents of Nimmannoradee housing estate, which is under the airport flight path.

Mrs Supaporn said the complaint was lodged a fortnight ago, but they have still to receive any response from AoT.

Source : Bangkokpost

The chief criteria for judging an ecommerce shopping cart are the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports, and the number of people that support *it*.

Why? Because credit card processors and shipping services mutate all the time. Your cart will require updating. Which service works today may go out of business tomorrow, and leave you with the orders piling up.

Other important criteria are how easy it is to set up, and add products, and how easy it is for the customer to use.

When you set up your shop test it using a wide variety of the oldest and buggiest browsers you can find. If your web store works under them you’re home and dry.

Here are the cheapest, simplest, and most effective carts I’ve found:

1. Oscommerce (free) – http://www.oscommerce.com

A very good, full-featured, cart. Uses Php and MySQL. Not easy to set up for a ‘newbie’. Cookies are used to track the order. If you have PhpMyAdmin installed in your web account, it’s easier. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Technical support is limited to the Oscommerce forums, which are not helpful to newbies.

Also, it may be a while before an update is available to a payment module. These are done by unpaid enthusiasts.

Good point: Oscommerce is supported by thousands of unpaid enthusiasts; this means updates do eventually arrive, and it’s less likely to go out of business, unlike a commercial cart.

2. X-Cart (commercial) – http://www.x-cart.com

Similar to Oscommerce. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Lots of features and add-ons. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.
Has an affiliate program add-on, and lets others sell products though your cart.

3. Dansie Cart (commercial) – http://www.dansie.net

A well specified cart. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Apparently the Perl code is obscured, to make it harder to copy, which is annoying if you want to customise it.

3. Interchange (free) – http://www.icdevgroup.org

A version of the old Akopia / Minivend carts. Complex product with lots of files and a lot of setting up to do. A complete solution, and includes the option of third party credit-card real-time order processing. Encrypts orders.

4. Agora (free) – http://www.agoracart.com

A Web-Store/Commerce.cgi hybrid.

5. The Commission Cart (commercial) – http://www.siteinteractive.com

A CGI-based shopping cart which also functions as an affiliate program. Other webmasters earn commissions by signing up and linking to your site.

6. ShopFactory (commercial) – http://www.shopfactory.Com

Has a nice little wizard-based set-up. If you have a lot of items in your shop, this is an option worth checking out.

This is a very valuable feature. A person who’s set up CGI scripts before will get the most out of this. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services.

Bad points: It’s ugly, awkward, and uses JavaScript too much.

7. WebGenie Shopping Cart Pro (commercial) – http://www.webgenie.com

A simple, wizard-based option. Uses Javascript a bit, but the main work is done by CGI scripts. It saves the credit card information on your server.

It’s for someone who hasn’t set up a CGI script before. Expensive for what you get, but it works. Option to buy it on hire-purchase.

8. Actinic Catalog (commercial) – http://www.actinic.co.uk

Most suitable if you have lots of items in your store. It’s a ‘wizard’-based PC program; you type in your information, and the program sets up the store.

You should set up the default store as-is, then customise it later. Supports a wide range of credit-card processors and shipping services. A little complicated for an internet newbie; there’s quite a lot in it.

9. Order Maven (commercial) – http://www.briggsoft.com

A clever little program. It’s a standalone Windows executable, which the customer downloads. The customer starts it up, chooses the product, enters their details, and sends off their order like an email, with the credit card details encrypted. It costs $29.00 at the time of writing. No secure server or order page needed; it’s all done on the customer’s PC at their leisure.

You need to customise it. Make sure you write your mail server URL into the code. For the customer, the order module is a 160kb download.

NOTE: Try to avoid carts that use cookies and javascript only, or that tie you into only one secure server and credit-card processor.
Also avoid web-based services that you lease only. They can go out of business, leaving you flat.

Having read the above you should have eliminated quite a few programs from your shopping list. They either won’t work properly with all browsers, or they won’t encrypt your order, or they want to tie you into their manufacturers’ secure order system at $40+ per month.

Another option is to get a bespoke system set up for you by a specialist company. These cost thousands of dollars. Aren’t you glad you read this far?

About the author: T. O’ Donnell (http://www.tigertom.com/web-designer-london.shtml) is an ecommerce and web site design consultant in London, UK.

Merchant Account Basics

A Merchant Account is a commercial bank account established by a merchant to receive payment via credit cards. Three parts are required to accept credit cards. Besides a merchant account, you need a local bank checking account to deposit funds and a processing solution, such a terminal or web-based store front to take credit card payments. Online merchant account, or ecommerce merchant account, is a merchant account that can take credit orders on the Web.

Cost of Merchant Account

An online merchant account will boost your online sales, but merchant account incurs various types of cost. A merchant account usually requires a one-time setup fee between $50 – $100. Some merchant account providers waive the setup fee in promotion period or in conjunction with other services. Other costs include gateway fee, statement fee, annual fee, transaction fees and discount rate fees.

Accept Credit Card without Merchant Account

When you first start an online business and have limited resources, the alternative would be to use the services of a credit card processor. You can enjoy the benefits of processing credit card transactions online without the requirements of a merchant account and high costs involved. Paypal, WorldPay, PaySystems and Clickbank are some of popular credit processing services. Popular shopping carts or online storefronts, such as eBay Store, Yahoo! Store and Microsoft bCentral, offer built-in credit card processing capability.

International Merchant Account

International merchant accounts, or Offshore Merchant Accounts, are merchant accounts that allow the merchants to accept payments from around the world– regardless of where your business or customers are located. Comparing to an online merchant account, two major services that come with an International merchant account are Multiple-Currency Support and International Fraud Protection.

Wireless/Mobile Merchant Account

Mobile merchants used to face unique issues when accepting credit card payments. With the advancement of high-speed wireless networks and mobile technology, mobile businesses are no longer limited in their payment options to just cash or checks.

Many mobile merchant account (http://www.4th-media.net/online_payment/mobile_merchant_account.php) service providers waive application fee and setup fees to attract more businesses. However, the use of wireless service provider does incur the expense of the terminal hardware, activation fee, monthly service fee, and transaction cost.

Copyright @2005, Bruce Zhang

Bruce Zhang has over 10 years experience in developing ecommerce and e-business application such as literature fulfillment (http://www.4th-media.net/order_fulfillment/literature_fulfillment.php) and supply chain management applications.

The World As It Then Was

The dynamic economic growth of the late 19th century placed greater and greater demand on horses to deliver manufactured goods between train and local destinations. Horses pulled stagecoaches, buggies, omnibuses, cabs and even shipping barges in canals. Hitching posts, mounting blocks, and water troughs were everywhere throughout cities in Europe and America. Beautiful carriage houses catered to the wealthy. Horse doctors were highly respected and treated humans as well. Blacksmiths were prominent members of every community.

On the farms, horses pulled wagons laden with supplies, and carried saddled riders throughout the rough terrains. Stronger and larger horses were bred to pull the new plowing and reaping machines. Carriage makers, harness makers, feed merchants, hardware producers, farm equipment manufacturers and the great livestock industry all thrived on the horse.

The World Changing Invention

In 1885 Karl Benz invented the first gasoline-powered automobile, with a lot of help from his wife Bertha. Other makers followed, but the auto was very expensive and generally considered a recreational vehicle for the elite.

The Transportation Revolution

In 1903, Henry Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company in the United States proclaiming, “I will build a car for the great multitude.” By 1908, he was offering the Model T for $950 and by 1914; Ford had invented the first conveyor belt assembly line. He was able to produce a Model T every 93 minutes, which was eventually lowered to every 27 seconds! He reduced the workday to three 8-hour shifts and paid his workers five dollars a day; double what other manufacturers were paying!

Wondrous Freedom

Can you imagine the joy? People could now explore long distances from home and return easily on the same day! Suburbs were created away from work in the cities. National highways were created. Recreational travel became popular as people experienced the unbelievable freedom of affordable automobiles. It must have been amazing to live in such times watching the complete transformation of society from top to bottom.

What Happened to the Blacksmiths?

The Blacksmiths, carriage makers, horse doctors, and horse driven industries would suffer tremendous change and downsizing; a transportation revolution was underway. Mercifully the changes took place over a couple decades. There would be a messy transition period as horses and gasoline powered vehicles shared the same roads.

Another World Changing Invention

In 1969, The Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Defense Department created a system that could transmit information between military installations through a network of geographically separated computers called the ARPAnet. They invented revolutionary new technology to accomplish this success. As the technology grew, this Internet, as it soon would be called, became the domain of scientists, university researchers, government entities and intellectual elites. But if your work wasn’t included in this circle, the Internet was a government mystery.

The Information Revolution

Tim Berners-Lee could be considered, “The Henry Ford of the Internet” because like Ford, he brought a fantastic invention, enjoyed by the elite, to the mainstream customer.

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a new project at CERN, a research organization out of Geneva where he worked that would build upon a pet project he built for his own computer in 1980. Modeled after how he saw the human brain organize information, it enabled him to link one piece of information in one file to another file, “to keep track of all the random associations one comes across in real life” but that our brains often forget. He called the program, “Enquire” which was short for “Enquire Within Upon Everything”, a British encyclopedia he had used in childhood.

The guiding principle of Tim’s new project was unlimited expansion. He would design a system with no central control or index and would therefore be infinite in capacity. If it worked, it could dramatically change the nature of the Internet, which most people still had never heard of, much less ever used. Tim would call his new invention WorldWideWeb.

WWW: Information Without Limits

Tim designed an addressing structure so that each web site, would have a specific location called the “Universal Resource Locator” (URL) He put together an easy to learn coding system called HyperText Mark-Up Language (HTML), so that files could be linked to one another allowing people to “jump” from one page to another, across unlimited amounts of files on unlimited numbers of computers. The rules he designed to facilitate this were called the HyperText Transfer Protocol. (HTTP)

The First Browser

By 1990, he created the first browser-editor to employ the new rules and coding; he called it the “WorldWideWeb”. In 1991 the World Wide Web debuted bringing order and clarity immediately to the murky and mysterious Internet. Anyone could use Tim’s browser and connect to anyone’s computer with a URL (web address) jumping from computer to computer through Tim’s updated version of Enquire.

A new and vast information system was now coming to the masses of ordinary people. The terms “Internet” and “World Wide Web” are now used synonymously but as you can see, they were once vastly different. Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web and within five years of his invention, Internet use grew from 60,000 to 40 million.

As of March 24, 2005, there were 888,681,131 Internet users worldwide or 13.9% of total world population. In North America there were 328,387,059 Internet users or 67.4% of the population. Internet usage grew 146.2% last year alone. There was a whole new class of millionaires created by the dot-com expansion of the 1990′s and it’s now hard to find a major business without a website. This is a revolution like none other in history and it’s happening now.

Business Freedom and E-commerce

With corresponding breakthroughs in digital payment systems, including credit cards and electronic checks, Internet sales systems such as the online shopping cart allow anyone to browse and also purchase goods and services from any computer on the Web. Today there are still a few “blacksmiths” who believe the old ways are better, and maybe for those stalwarts of the brick and mortar economy, the old ways are better. But households are becoming more and more comfortable shopping from hundreds of millions of home computers worldwide. Total e-commerce sales in the United States for 2004 is $69.2 billion, as estimated by the Census Bureau, increasing from 23.5 percent over 2003. Anyone can have a website and sell products online to anyone in the world.

“I Was Born On the Internet”

There is now a whole generation who grew up using the Internet and they have no problem buying or selling products and services online. Shopping is convenient, fast and the delivered directly to home or business.

The Global Economy

The global economy now makes it easy to import and export online worldwide. Flowers are grown in South America, sold in the United States and managed from a company in Holland. Salmon is sold directly from fisherman in Alaska. Prices can be compared to similar products around the world. Merchants no longer need to maintain large stocks of products in buildings. An online store can take an order, process the payment, deposit it into the merchant’s bank account, and a different company called a “drop shipper” can fulfill the sale and send out the merchandise.

Encouragement From Uncle Sam

According to the Small Business Administration, “The Internet is proving to be a significant business leveler, allowing small and medium-size companies to compete with the giants on the same global playing field…Whether you are a consumer or a business-to-business resource, some of the most efficient marketing and selling tools are available via the Internet, and the potential of reaching a vast audience is open to you through the World Wide Web.”

Conclusion: Are You Part of the Revolution?

In 1905 one might ask, “Are you delivering your products by horse, or have you purchased a Ford motorized delivery wagon? In 2005 people are asking, “Can I buy your products online or do I have to get in my car and come out to your store? What’s your web address?” If you haven’t jumped in, it’s never too late. The Information Revolution has only just begun.

Rick David writes for a Merchant Newsletter @
Merchant America. He
also writes a humor column called,

“Don’t Laugh It Could Happen To You” for
http://sandiego.merchantamerica.com.