E-commerce and Online Business Reference

E- Commerce is coming of age with millions of new customers from internet sales for a wide variety of products. Advances in web site design, payment mechanisms and delivery systems have met the increased demand for online ordering.

With the advent of on-line ordering firms like Amazon and E-Bay, what started out as a small business has morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry. The key to success in the field of E Commerce is the offering of high quality products coupled with state of the art technology to ensure ease of ordering and secure payment mechanisms.

The bottled water industry is an ideal beneficiary of e-commerce technology because of the large number of customers served and the frequency of transactions and purchases.

E-commerce Defined

E-commerce is similar to other forms of commerce except that it involves the buying and selling of goods over the Internet. E-commerce sites range from a simple web page highlighting a single item to dynamic fully developed on-line catalogs featuring thousands of products. The common theme and benefit in e-commerce sites is instant purchase, instant payment (if desired) and instant gratification for the customer.

Over the years, the e-commerce web has blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry yearly, with significant growth projected over the next 5 years.

A defining characteristic is that all ecommerce web sites accept a type of online payment, whether through a third party or directly with a merchant account.

E-commerce: The Wave of the Future

The internet is changing world view of shoppers. Instant gratification is a reality Utilizing e-commerce allows customers the ability to quickly take delivery of the goods they require and desire. In addition, the Internet is perhaps the best sales tool ever invented as it allows customers to browse endlessly in privacy. They can return and order again and again without ever leaving their home.

Most experts agree that it is only a matter of time before all sales-oriented companies will have some sort of e-commerce presence in order to remain competitive and the development of software and tools to improve the productivity of e-commerce sites remains strong. As more and better technology is developed, e-commerce will greatly expand.

Secure Payment and SSL(Secure Socket Layer): The Heart of the System

SSL(Secure Socket Layer) has been the de facto standard and heart of the system for e-commerce transaction security, and it’s likely to remain so well into the future.

SSL is based on encryption. SSL encrypts data, like credit cards numbers (as well other personally identifiable information), which prevents unauthorized use. An SSL protected page is identified when the address begins with “https” and there is a padlock icon at the bottom of the page.

SSL Certificates

The SSL certificate resides on a secure server and is used to encrypt the data and to identify the Web site. The SSL certificate also helps to prove the site belongs to who it says it belongs to and contains information about the certificate holder, the domain that the certificate was issued to, the name of the Certificate Authority who issued the certificate, the root and the country it was issued in.

In general, e-commerce users are urged to avoid sites that fail to use and display proof of SSL Certificates.

The Bottled Water Industry and E-commerce

The bottled water business is actually two lines of business: Local delivery water and private labeled water and each is an important subset of the total business.

Local delivery water is defined geographically and usually comprises rental or sales of coolers and delivery of 5-gallon and small package (12, 16.5 and 20 oz.) bottles to customers located within a limited distance from the water source. This business includes a customer base of consumers and businesses in the defined geographic area who take periodic delivery of water.

The key to success in this line of business is the production and efficient delivery of the highest quality pure water.

Private labeled water involves the development and production of high quality custom labels with a clear branding message. This line of business is national in scope and includes a strong element of branding and advertising. The key to success in this line of business is the design and production of a label of the highest quality with a clear branding message.

Each line of business has different requirements for e-commerce.

For the local delivery business, establishing and meeting delivery schedules is critical with the most advanced sites offering delivery programs that offer the customer choice of delivery schedules and the ability to modify deliveries as conditions warrant.

For the private labeled line of business design flexibility in the form of interactive tools for the development, proofing and production of labels is critical. Another critical aspect of the private labeled line of business is fast and cost effective delivery through national carriers.

A Culture of Customer Service

The best e-commerce site will not produce results without support of an effective customer service organization. E-commerce tools and capabilities must be complemented by a customer service culture that includes rapid customer feed back, human (as opposed to voice mail and e-mail) interaction and clear communication. It is presently impossible to totally remove the human element from e-commerce and the human element is a critical part of the customer satisfaction process.

Best and Powerful Features

There are many varieties of e-commerce sites ranging from the simplest static site that offers very limited features to full featured dynamic sites based upon the latest database technology and access. No matter what the level of technology however, the site should combine ease of use with the most powerful features available. An effective bottled water e-commerce site should include the following minimum features.

General Features

• Multiple-Recipient Ordering (allows multiple user shipments in a single transaction)

• No Shopping Cart “Shoving” (gives the user maximum flexibility before check-out)

• Login Systems for Wholesale and Retail Customers (with remembered billing and recipient party data)

• Code Maturity (provides for reliability and stability of the site)

• Future Arrival Date Provisions (mandatory for scheduling deliveries and shipments)

• Order History and Fast Loading of Orders

• Automatic Shipping for Retail and Wholesale Accounts

Private Label Features

• Interactive and Customer Friendly Label Configurator (allows user development of labels and artwork)

• Proofing Capability (allows the user to repeatedly review label design before purchase)

• Multi Layered Design ( allows for choice of color, shading and label features)

E-commerce lends itself to rapid fulfillment of orders and increased customer satisfaction when the site utilizes powerful state of the art tools and features coupled with a culture of customer satisfaction. On a user friendly powerful site, water orders for both local delivery and private labeled business are safe, convenient and fast.

E-commerce vendors that maintain a culture of customer service will guarantee customer satisfaction.

E-commerce websites are supposed to be specialized websites that provide online business solutions to their customers. With the providence of online financial transactions facility, these websites can either be static, or can proffer physical retail operations. However, one has to keep in mind that e-commerce websites do not just sell products; they are also constructed to vend services like subscriptions, stock trading and memberships as well.E-commerce Web Development Company in India has taken major turns to climb up the ladder of success and advancement to a great extent. Karmick Solutions offer you turnkey e-commerce solutions so as to enable you to cater the best e-commerce services to your customers.

The basic features catered by e-commerce web development are as follows:

Online Shopping Cart or Product/ Service Catalog – E-commerce web development ideally provides the facility of online shopping cart. After absorbing a clear view as to what product or service your company sells, it facilitates the entire management of the transaction by managing products, users, orders and various order tracking options. Here you can display your entire set of products and services available to be purchased. The user can browse through the various categories/sub categories/products and also view the detail pages.

Online Payment System – Online payment system is a major feature of e-commerce. You will be able to make your payments through the Internet using credit card without having to face the least of hassles and saving a lot of time in the process. Once you have entered the billing and shipping details you can check out safe and secure.

Dedicated to the up-to-the-minute technologies and a wide range of capabilities, e-commerce solution at Karmick Solutions can be availed of to build an interactive e-commerce website and a communicating storehouse for each and every business, small or big.

E-commerce solutions offered by Karmick Solutions ensure you the following:

Easy flow of communication with your regular customers as well as new visitors

Excellent publicity of your services/products

Management of efficient and secure business transactions

Less operational costs

Your company’s brand is enhanced

Karmick Solutions makes sure that its client is more than happy having to avail of it’s e-commerce solutions. However, it also provides the following services:

Andrew Karasev asked:


Ecommerce integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP is possible on various levels.  If you are starting ecommerce project from the ground, you may look at packaged ecommerce products, available as custom add-ons to Dynamics GP.  However, and this is what we assume in this small publication, a lot of ecommerce businesses have their websites and the integration should be on the level of custom connectors: pushing new customers, new catalogs, new orders and probably payments to Great Plains.  Please, consider these tools and solutions:

1. eConnect.  It is set of stored procedures with interfaces for Microsoft Visual Studio ecommerce developer.  If you have programmers in staff, you should review eConnect with them and decide on the integration specifications.  One thing often comes to the question – eConnect doesn’t have functionality to post Great Plains batches, in order to post Dynamics GP batches directly from ecommerce portal, you should consider deployment of Alba Spectrum Posting Server

2. Order Connector.  This product is supported by Alba Spectrum.  It allows you to deploy simple ecommerce integration logic to Great Plains Sales Order Processing module.  If this is your case, Order Connector allows you to call its stored procedures directly, which might give certain performance gain over eConnect and you do not have to learn eConnect.  For small Great Plains Dynamics customers, who are on older GP versions: 8.0, 7.5 – you could also use Order Connector, and eConnect for those versions was in introduction phase

3. Integration Manager.  IM allows you to setup integration on the GP user level with some custom tweaks: VBA scripts.  It should solve your ecommerce integration needs, if real time integration is not required – you can either have GP user to call integration on demand or schedule IM via Windows macro routines (out of scope for this article)

4. Direct SQL Custom Stored Procedures.  This approach may look natural for SQL programmer, however in this scenario you will need to replicate GP business logic in your scripts.  Just consider the fact, that eConnect already did exactly this – it replicated Great Plains Dexterity code in encrypted SQL Stored Procedures, so maybe you should consider more efficient programming time spending simply by deploying eConnect instead.  However, this is possible approach and theoretically you can replicate data feeding to Dynamics GP tables as if it is done via user interface

5. If you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to call us: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com



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Ecommerce means doing online business using the web. Ecommerce solution enables the website to provide online shopping services. Online shopping services can be applied to products sale or service sale. Ecommerce sites should possess shopping cart facilities and secure payment gateways to collect payments.

Ecommerce can be defined as a process to experiment with the retail world without the traditional upfront investment required in establishing a brick and mortar store. It avoids the time and cost in training sales people by opting for an ecommerce solution with planned inventory. Ecommerce templates are readily available for standard online shopping transactions. Ecommerce solutions handling complete online shopping requirement like eBay needs no online expertise to implement the solution.

Advantages of having an ecommerce website

It provides direct access to customers without middlemen. Higher profit on each transaction and direct interaction with the customers are direct benefits of ecommerce sites. Direct interaction with customers provides an opportunity to tune the products to customer needs

It provides exposure to more sales prospects. Though existing channels of distribution prevents stepping vigorously on the sales prospects, approaching different market segment is a possibility as the net provides an opportunity for international business. Ecommerce stems opportunities for innovation. Exposure provides an opportunity to explore the ideas of a better product and showcasing it for better sales.

It introduces new customers with multiple needs from global market. Presence in global market provides opportunities to move goods based on needs across continents. Ecommerce streamlines the internal process by reduction of the processes involved in a sale and hence effective cost saving on a permanent basis.

Ecommerce solution success lies in being part of the consideration list by ensuring visibility to buyers looking for products. Ensuring total automation helps in reserving expensive human resources for better utilization in strategizing business.

Ecommerce solutions for small business focus on the software to enable ecommerce on the site. Web hosting, security, shopping cart, credit card processing are important features to form a successful ecommerce solution for small business.

Ecommerce solutions for large companies concentrate on scalable models of software with design to supplement customizable e-commerce engine. Focus on ecommerce solutions for large companies’ lies in reducing cost and marketing time. Solutions for building and hosting internally are incorporated into ecommerce solution.

Solutions with ease of administration and fully functional shopping carts are the primary need for any ecommerce solution with flexible payments schedules.