We recommend that you read the following article on the Arnima Learning Center before you hire a web design & development company for your web project: http://www.arnimalearningcenter.com/before-hiring-a-web-design-company.html.

E-Commerce websites can appear to be complex and intimidating, but, in actuality, they really are not. Rather than being complex, we prefer to say that they are structured. There are several critical components that make up an e-commerce website. Our interactive E-Commerce Primer will guide you through the basics of E-Commerce that can be used with both regular (shared) and SMB web hosting. You can view this primer http://arni.ma/ecomsite.

Let us know what you think!

Think of an e-commerce website as a storefront for products and/or services that you want to sell online. Your job is to convert your website visitor into actual buyers. You need to have plenty of appealing content and products on your site to attract search engines as well as to inform prospective clients.

Here are the main parts of an e-commerce site:

The online product catalog is the main place to store and manage the information about products or collections of products.

The shopping cart is a familiar interface buyers use to select products they want to buy. The shopping cart just holds information about the products that your customer is about to purchase and assists them with the checkout process.

The checkout system collects necessary payment information from the buyer, including shipping & billing addresses and credit card information or details of other payment mechanisms. It may also be configured to present shipping rates, taxes, coupons, or calculate other changes to arrive at the final price.

The payment gateway is a secure service that transfers payment and credit card information from your website to a merchant account provided by a bank or financial institution that handles online transactions. The gateway mechanism also handles any feedback from the bank, such as when a buyer has insufficient funds or is using an invalid credit card. The payment gateway is also tasked with validating that the credit card actually belongs to the user.

The merchant account is a special bank account that allows your website to accept online payments by debit or credit cards. Merchant account banks charge variable fees per transaction and transaction types, partially based on the bank’s assumption of risk to collect money on your behalf.

Finally, fulfillment is when the order is processed through the e-commerce website and results in a completed order that is shipped out.

Someone asked me this question on Linkedin. Here is my reply which I would like to share:

A very interesting question indeed. In your case, I would suggest that you treat your e-commerce team as a profit center. The team should have all the ingredients of how a profit center in a company. Roles can be overlapping. The team should be able to handle all the tasks of a profit center such as Sales, Marketing, Fulfillment, Finance/Accounts, Strategy, Business Development etc. The Internet deserves investment and respect like any large geographical territory you start business in but strategies have to be very different. The team should be comprised of people who have necessary skill set combination to manage a profit center and stay on top of it, the interest to understand and implement Internet based strategies. For interaction and communication, I would strongly recommend a collaboration solution instead of email. A collaboration solution like BaseCamp, combined with a good communication setup should suffice for the team to function efficiently.