Archive for September, 2009

27
Sep

What Is E-Commerce

Posted by
Szenovera asked:


What is e-commerce? e-Commerce, also known as eCommerce, is short for “electronic commerce.” Great. So what’s “electronic commerce,” then? Simple. It’s buying and selling stuff over the Internet. “Stuff” can include goods, services, or both. e-Commerce covers a broad range of businesses, from stores selling specific products, to auctions, to (legal, paid-for) downloading of music and movies. It has become one of the most important results of the spread of the Internet.

Think about it. You can go online, buy a book, and have it delivered to your door the next day, without ever setting foot in a bookstore. It seems so natural now, but people couldn’t always do that. When it comes to buying and selling stuff, barriers of time and distance mean very little anymore. e-Commerce has grown incredibly fast over the last few years. Expect this to continue, or even accelerate. Also, you can expect the line between ‘regular’ and ‘e’ commerce to blur more and more. Almost every kind of business will be done will be at least partly over Internet.

What is e-commerce? It’s a new way of doing business, relying on innovations in moving money and information around electronically, marketing goods and services over the Internet, processing the actual transaction online and Internet security. The explosive growth of e-commerce creates amazing opportunities. The chance of getting rich inspires people to invent new and better ways of doing all this. Modern e-commerce usually relies mostly on the World Wide Web, at least in part, although it can involve quite a range of technology from the old-fashioned phone call to email to dedicated electronic connections between the business and the customer.

Businesses also sell stuff to other businesses, rather than to consumers, over the Internet. Business to business e-commerce is usually referred to as “B2B”. Manufacturers buy parts, retail stores buy from wholesalers, everybody hires programmers, and more and more of this is getting done over the Internet. e-Commerce has a lot of advantages over old-fashioned approaches for B2B. Done right, e-commerce is faster, cheaper, more convenient and can reach more potential customers.

It’s worth mentioning that when we describe e-commerce as buying and selling stuff over the internet, it doesn’t quite tell the whole story. It isn’t just selling, e-Commerce also includes passing data back and forth in order for financing and payment to happen. After all, what is the point of selling stuff if you don’t get paid for it?

Oh. One more thing. You know that tiny little lower case “e” at the beginning of the word e-commerce? Ever wonder why it’s not a large, beefy upper case E? The answer is simple: the e stands for electronic, and electronic, literally, means having to do with electrons. Electrons are the sub-atomic particles whose moving around gives us energy in the form of electricity. The scientific symbol for electron is a small e.

What is e-commerce? Business done electronically. Buying and selling stuff over the Internet. What is e-commerce? Soon, it may be all commerce.


27
Sep

Decode the Basics of Ecommerce Solution

Posted by
Smita Mathur asked:


Let us begin by understanding the meaning of ecommerce solution. Ecommerce stands for electronic commerce. Ecommerce can broadly be defined as the use of electronic networks to exchange information, products, services and payments for different commercial and communication purposes between individuals and business organizations..

Internet is elementary and indispensable tool for ecommerce business nowadays. In consumer market, ecommerce business is pertaining to buying and selling products. But in corporate sector, ecommerce business has played a crucial role for communicating and collaborating with business partners.

To be at par and stand competitive in this evolving business industry, a business must be able to adapt itself with the evolving demands in technology. Most of the business transactions are being done online. To address this important issue, we have a solution in store — call it ecommerce. Coming to its reach and extent, ecommerce solutions allow customers and business owners to buy or sell out their products worldwide. Ecommerce business can be conducted from any nook and corner of the world. Ecommerce business can be conducted 24/7. But there is much more to ecommerce solutions than simply being a tool for purchasing goods and services electronically.

Ecommerce has leveled the platform for all business entities around the globe — be it, small- or mid-sized business houses to large corporate ones. Here we can easily say that ecommerce is a convergence of various technologies and these technologies are a basic driving factor for the exponential growth of ecommerce solutions.

Ecommerce solutions involve affecting factors like:

* Target market identification

* Concentration of online activity for particular business.

* Getting qualified traffic from consumers.

* Converting visit to your website into business

* Great ROI (return on investment)

Talking of its domain, ecommerce web solutions also entail a list of services enumerated as below:

* Ecommerce web design

* Ecommerce software solution

* Ecommerce content management

* Ecommerce shopping cart software

* Ecommerce website development

* Ecommerce package

* Ecommerce solution

In today’s technology-driven times, ecommerce solutions serve businesses worldwide. Various diverse organizations globally are being served by exclusive ecommerce website design and custom software development. This includes the design and development of an entire ecommerce website along with a database of products, product information and product search, order processing and payment systems, etc.

Ecommerce solutions are designed with the sole objective of benefiting your business by:

* Increasing sales revenue

* Improving client service

* Strengthening brand image

* Reducing operational expenses

So by now you must have got a clear picture of ecommerce solutions. And you must have also realized that ecommerce solutions are always available at your service for minimizing the time for marketing, grabbing customers and achieving unparalleled and optimized growth.

Be ready to get hold of success with ecommerce solutions!


25
Sep

Scotiabank joins forces with international payment gateway, First Atlantic Commerce, to offer 3D Secure solutions across the English Caribbean Region

Posted by

First Atlantic Commerce asked:


First Atlantic Commerce (FAC), a leading, international, multicurrency payment and risk management solutions provider, and Scotiabank, an international bank based in Canada and the leading bank in the Caribbean, have joined together to offer 3D Secure services to online merchants in 7 countries across the English Caribbean.

Through this partnership, Internet merchants in the Caribbean will now be able to support 3D Secure for Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode on their web sites for the first time. The service will be available to merchants in Jamaica, Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Anguilla, Turks & Caicos and Guyana with rollout to an additional 11 countries in the English Caribbean planned in the near future.

“This is an extremely important service for online merchants,” said Andrea Wilson, CEO of First Atlantic Commerce. “The objective of 3D Secure is to reduce fraud through the verification of the cardholder at the time of payment in a ‘CardNotPresent’ environment, such as the Internet. When implemented, 3D Secure protects online merchants from the financial losses associated with “I didn’t do it” chargebacks. We are very excited about making this more available in the Region.”

Both Visa and MasterCard offer chargeback liability shift for fraud related chargebacks when the transaction is authenticated through Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode. This also includes liability shift for attempted Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode requests, which means that even if the cardholder is not enrolled, the merchant is not liable for certain Reason Code chargebacks. So the benefits to both Scotiabank International and its merchants are significant.

“The launch of this service to our existing and prospective Internet merchants is yet another way that Scotiabank is helping our clients in minimizing online fraud, while maximizing sales,” said Rob Macdonald Scotiabank’s Director, Merchant Acquiring Services. “We have worked with FAC for many years processing millions of dollars of credit card transactions for a range of businesses and Government bodies, and implementing 3D Secure is a natural next step in the evolution of our solutions to these important customers.”

The benefits associated with 3D Secure:

- Provides internet merchants with the ability to verify a consumer’s true identity through a secure, electronic, non “face to face” authentication process.

- Enables all parties in an eCommerce payment transaction to transmit confidential and valid payment data

- Provides verification to the merchant that the buyer is the authorized owner of a card account

- Offers immediate protection from fraudrelated chargebacks (“I didn’t do it” chargebacks.)



Caffeinated Content

24
Sep

Electronic Commerce Affiliate

Posted by
christian abad asked:

Electronic Commerce Affiliate is a great way to get income for your website, and a great introduction to e-commerce.

It is a popular method of promoting web businesses.Affiliate marketing is the same thing, only in this particular case you are doing the referring and “selling” on the Internet.

Basic training can easily build and start your own Affiliate program and allow affiliates to advertise your business to increase sales at your web site.

Affiliate programs are the best way for you selling other people’s products or service and get paid for your efforts.

Selling through an e-commerce affiliate is a great way to sell your product on the internet.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods.

You market the product or service online (that includes websites, emails, forums, blogs as well as paid advertising).

It can use a referral network to generate more sales for the company and commissions for themselves.

You have your own website giving information to people to find about Hottest Music,ofcourse, you could place links to products related to that music, CD’s,videos, download sites, etc. on your website.

When the customer click on your links they will go to the website you are advertising.

If they buy, you will be paid a commission. Brilliant!

You can easily find affiliate programs on the internet and a better way to find programs you would like to be one of them is by searching your chosen topic on websites.

See what your competition is doing for a place to start.

The affiliate networks such as ClickBank and Commission Junction are great places to look as well.

Look everywhere you shop online. Check the web sites for the words affiliate or partners.

You’ll soon see there are almost no merchants online today who don’t have some sort of affiliate program.

If you’re going to have a website or blog, you should definitely have affiliate links.

When you register for your chosen affiliate program you will receive your own personal ID number.

When you place your link to the website you’re promoting on your website, you will use a link address which includes your unique ID.

Anyone who makes a purchase via your personal link racks up commissions for you.

These commissions are paid based on the pay schedule of that particular program.

There are a number of products which show you the ins and outs of starting your affiliate business.

Check the resource box of this article to get the two best and most economical products on the market today.

Each of these products is guaranteed by the product owner and each has its strong points.

The most important one being, you get the information you need without spending a fortune.

Easy as pie? Right? The truth is, you will probably need one of the resource products to get things set up; but I wouldn’t spend a lot of money on them.

Check out the recommended products to get you started. Above all, get started.

You won’t earn until you learn. Good luck!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
21
Sep

Ecommerce Companies

Posted by
David Everett asked:

The list of ecommerce companies is a lengthy one, as is the list of the contenders for best ecommerce software. This makes the task of choosing the best ecommerce software a tough and confusing one. The best way for you to select the best ecommerce software is to invest some time in making a list of all the desired features that are really required and relevant.

Once your list is fully prepared, you must go through it thoroughly to ensure that no imperative features have been missed out. This is doubtlessly a time consuming process, but necessary. Finally, you must try as many ecommerce storefronts as possible before you make your final decision. To be the best, ecommerce software should be a package of all the useful features that the modern day business needs to become a well established wholesaler or retailer.

The e-business could be a team of marketing managers, dropshippers, computer hardware vendors, medicine dealers, or they may be cloth or jewellery merchants. Good ecommerce software should contain all the necessary features that will make it highly equipped to tackle the management of any type of business.

A Brief Outline

From a list of hundreds of renowned and widely admired software packages used for the purpose of ecommerce, selecting the right one for your needs can be complicated because there are many software options that present equally positive features and are equally as efficient.

One of the top ranking software packages is Volusion ecommerce software. This is a type of ecommerce software which, according to many business people, is the most effective solution for the modern business and is sometimes considered the best ecommerce software. Volusion is powered by a series of features well worth mentioning. It has the most effective marketing tools and ROI tracking system, with unlimited product catalogue and unlimited categories and sub-categories, live shipping rate integration system, quantity discounting facility, POS interface with barcode scanning system, integrated 5-tier affiliate system, phone order system, automated drop shipping facility, advanced inventory management system, advanced news letter tracking mechanism, digital download facility – and much more.

There are many other well accepted ecommerce software packages similar to the one discussed above, such as osCommerce, PDG, Monstercommerce (which is a bit costly), Xcart, and Actinc Catalogue 7. All of these software packages are good, but different businesses have different needs. While some think that the Volusion ecommerce software is the best ecommerce software, others say that Actinc Catalogue proves to be a lot better than Volusion. Hence a businessperson is the best one to decide which ecommerce software suits him or her the best, because he or she knows exactly what they need to get from the system.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
20
Sep

Microsoft Dexterity and its Possible Role in GP eCommerce

Posted by
Andrew Karasev asked:

Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly also known as Great Plains Dynamics, eEnterprise, is flexible and powerful platform for eCommerce B2B and B2C Shopping Cart integration. If you are ecommerce programmer, please read this introduction level publication on integrating ecommerce shopping cart into SOP Invoice or Sales Order in Dynamics GP. Being bound by article genre rules, we will try to be reasonably laconic and balance technical (for developers and programming) and functional (for IT managers) information. We will pay some attention to Microsoft Dexterity and its possible role in GP eCommerce integrations:

1. Sales Order Processing Invoice or Sales Order as ecommerce shopping cart destination. In our opinion this object is the most natural for being considered as shopping cart destination in GP. SOP Transaction has document header, where you specify customer, doc number, dates, addresses, shipping info, tax and other document level info. Plus, it has Items lines, where you add your shopping cart items and link them with the information on availability in stock, allocation (when applicable), back ordering, or you can even have your line items as services, or non inventory items, where you are not bound by Inventory tracking. If you think SOP Transaction is the right object for ecommerce shopping cart integration, you need to choose the integration tool or technology

2. Dynamics GP Dexterity proprietary technology. We do not recommend you to do Microsoft Dexterity programming and customization in order to integrate eCommerce shopping cart, because other tools could do similar job without custom programming, especially Dynamics GP Integration Manager. If you have serious reasons to try Dexterity route, we recommend you to discuss Dexterity ecommerce integration with your Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner, or with experienced Dynamics GP Dexterity programmer. Dexterity might be the way to go, when you require that Great Plains becomes your master application, from where you initiate eCommerce shopping carts pulling, and where you define your Inventory Items, Price Lists, Discounts (Trade Discounts on Sales Invoice Document level) and Sales Campaigns and push these objects to your ecommerce web application

3. GP Integration Manager. If you are representing reasonably small or mid-size ecommerce retailer (B2B or B2C ecommerce) or wholesaler (B2B ecommerce) and you are sort of OK with the option of daily ecommerce to GP integration (one time per day) and your ecommerce transaction volume is below thousand new orders per day, we recommend you to review IM in details and only consider moving to the next step is you tried IM in and out and there is something special and important to your ecommerce business processes, that Integration Manager cannot do. OK, having said that, let’s review IM. This tool is end user friendly (you may still need Dynamics GP consultant, if you feel that your organization doesn’t have IT internal support). You start with creating Data Sources – we recommend you either to export ecommerce shopping carts into text (comma or tab delimited) files or even better Create Advanced ODBC Data Source, based on SQL View, including options to create cross platform SQL View in MS SQL Server, with linking to Oracle, MySQL/PHP/Linux, Microsoft Access, Lotus Notes. Second step – you link your Sources (you will need at least two for ecommerce shopping cart, as Document Header and Lines should be integrated). In IM you can also do VBA scripting and in these scripts you can address custom tables in GP via Microsoft ADO technology, if required. Plus, as additional (but not the last tip – call us for more info) tip you can schedule IM Integration to run every, let’s say, twenty minutes to make ecommerce to GP integration behave as it is in quasi real time

4. Dynamics GP eConnect. This integration tool and SDK could be deployed in Microsoft Visual Studio C#, VB.Net or other programming language project as libraries and help with Sample Codes (it is Software Development Kit). eConnect enables real time integration, as you can include eConnect libraries into ecommerce Web Application. If you are experienced or even making progress Microsoft Visual Studio Programmer, and you are familiar with C# (Microsoft Java blend) or VB and have some exposure to SQL Stored Procedures and XML – eConnect should be open for you to experiment. Initially eConnect was dedicated to Great Plains eCommerce programmers to integrate ecommerce web applications with Dynamics GP 7.0 and 7.5 (later on eConnect was expanded and now for Microsoft Dynamics GP version 10.0 it covers most of the core modules: GL, SOP, POP, Inventory Control, Receivable Management, Payable Management, Payroll, General Ledger, Project Accounting, etc.)

5. Direct SQL scripting for Dynamics GP ecommerce integration. If you try it from scratch – it might be too long way to come through all the errors and bumps, so we recommend you to consider Alba Spectrum Order Connector, which gives you intuitive set of SQL Stored Procedures to call directly from eCommerce web application to integrate shopping cart as GP SOP Invoice or Sales Order. If you would like to try it on your own and you need some intro on Microsoft Dynamics GP tables structure and data flow training, we are happy to offer this service USA Nationwide and Internationally

6. eConnect Automatic Batch Posting Extension. Yes, we have Alba Spectrum Posting Server, which does just that. By Dynamics GP architecture fundamental reasons, Batch Posting is in the hands of Dynamics GP users: batch should be reviewed, modified and approved for being posted (as Dynamics GP is mid-market Corporate ERP Platform)

7. Dynamics GP ecommerce in international environment. Microsoft Dynamics GP version 10.0 is localized and available in English speaking countries: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, UK. If is also localized in French Quebec province of Canada. There are reasonable localizations for Spanish speaking Central and South America and Caribbean. If your local country ecommerce requirements include Unicode characters support (China, Japan, Korea), Dynamics GP Dexterity doesn’t support Unicode out of the box. We recommend you to call us for the options available for your specific Unicode based language. There is reasonable support for Microsoft Dynamics GP in Arabic alphabet – for Saudi Arabia and all the Persian Gulf States, plus Egypt, Syria, Lebanon. If you are in Afghanistan – Dari language is based on Arabic alphabet and could be deployed on Microsoft Dynamics GP ecommerce platform with Arabic language support extension

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

E-commerce