Ecommerce

Reaching Global Buyers via Ecommerce

Matt Kirtok — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:35:00 GMT

I have read the article below at Startup Journal by By KELLY K. SPORS, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal. It has some good points, but it doesn't mention any negative sides of selling international on eBay or on any auction / ecommerce sites such as increasing fraud credit card purchases, charge backs after receiving the shipments, and lost packages.

Even though selling international has some risks, it may be worth while for some ecommerce businesses. So, here's the article:

Companies often take advantage of the weak dollar by selling items outside the U.S. for more money than they could at home.

You can too. Internet auction sites such as eBay make it easy for sellers in the U.S. to reach global buyers, who may pay a higher price because the currency-exchange rate works in their favor. The euro, for instance, has gained about 25% against the dollar in recent years, making U.S. purchases much cheaper for Europeans.

While eBay operates separate auction sites in other countries, U.S. sellers are often better off just listing on the domestic site -- eBay.com -- since that eliminates the need to translate the listing. The key: Make sure to offer world-wide shipping so that you don't turn away international customers.

EBay says that more than half of all its 147 million registered users are now outside the U.S., and that its U.S. site is drawing more and more buyers from around the world.

Some items, especially those hard to find in other countries, can fetch a high price abroad, says Jim Cockrum, who makes a living by offering advice on online auctions. Mr. Cockrum, who lives in Indianapolis, says he once sold a pair of used Nike Air Jordan sneakers to a collector in China for about $700.

International shipping, however, can be tricky. Each country carries its own shipping rules, including weight and size restrictions, and some ban the import of items like perfume. So check with your shipper to see whether your product is allowed to be sent internationally.

Also, it's usually bettter to specify in your listing that the buyer pays for shipping and then figure out the shipping charge with the winning bidder. A calculator on eBay can help buyers estimate this amount.

What is E-Business

Matt Kirtok — Mon, 02 May 2005 19:18:00 GMT

What is E-Business ?

Many confuse the difference between e-commerce and e-business. Electronic commerce, B2C, or E-commerce refers to online sales. On the other hand, Electronic Business or E-Business refers to more than just selling online.

E-Business is about utilizing internet technologies, such as simple email, online banking solutions, websites and more sophisticated applications such as web based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Solutions, web based inventory management.

Major goal of E-Business is to increase sales, business eficiency, productivity, streamline business processes and decrease costs.

Here's a definiton of E-Business at darwinmag.com :

What does e-business really mean?

The most basic definition of e-business is simply this: using the internet to connect with customers, partners, and suppliers. But the term also implies the transformation of existing business processes to make them more efficient. To engage in e-business, companies need to be able to unlock data in their back-end computer systems, so they can share information and conduct electronic transactions with customers, partners, and suppliers via the internet. And for some companies, engaging in e-business means adopting new web-enabled business models—auctioning off surplus goods, selling products directly to consumers, or joining in online purchasing cooperatives with their competitors. Without a doubt, embarking on an e-business effort requires as much thinking about business strategy as it does about technology.

The Benefits of E-Business

The Internet and related technologies can change the way you develop and conduct your business processes, making them more time and cost efficient. They can diversify your marketing channels and, ultimately, help you increase your business revenue.

The Internet levels the playing field for small businesses. That is, it allows small business operators to compete on equal footing with larger businesses in the same industry.

Through the Internet, your small business can distribute information online to a global audience, immediately, with little out of pocket expense. This means you’ll reach more clients or customers in a shorter period of time. It gives you the ability to interact with your clients and customers in new ways, putting power in the hands of the buyer, giving your clients or customers more choice than they’ve ever had before.

And finally, the Internet gives you, the seller, the ability to readily assess your online business practices and modify them on the fly to ensure they meet the needs of your clients/customers.

In short, you can use the Internet to:

• Collect vital business information related to your customers and competitors. The Internet is a valuable research tool and, as a readily accessible information medium, its ability to allow you to remain competitive in your industry should not be underestimated.

• Increase awareness about your company. Even if you are not considering selling online, having a website that promotes your business, provides contact information, and outlines your unique value proposition – that is, the unique collection of benefits attributed to your product or service that creates value for your customers or clients – will simply increase your reach and value in the marketplace, and make it easier for your potential clients/customers to find you.

• Streamline communications and improve customer service. Email communications, website FAQs and auto-responders are examples of simple and cost effective electronic techniques that can help improve communications between you and your clients/customers.

• Improve productivity and reduce costs. Simply by streamlining communications using Internet technologies, you can improve your business productivity. And, out-of-pocket costs can be reduced further by implementing a readily updatable website, instead of printed materials that have a short shelf-life, to relay pertinent information to your customer base.

• Sell your products online. For those considering making the leap to ecommerce, selling online can lower your upfront set-up costs and operational costs, increase your reach to a global marketplace, and allow you to be “open” 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Further, it can allow you to automate your order processing and order tracking capabilities, develop cheaper online catalogues, and update your product lists on the fly.

Free Shopping Cart Mal's Ecommerce

Matt Kirtok — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 17:44:00 GMT

Free Shopping Cart Mal's Ecommerce Review

I have been reviewing some shopping carts to help internet business owners. Mal's Ecommerce is a free shopping cart which you can implement to your ecommerce site easily. I'd highly recommend Mal's Ecommerce free shopping cart service for small ecommerce sites, usually with less than 100 products.

Mal's Ecommerce also offers a paid service for $6/month lets you integrate your site with your choice of payment processor. Remember free version does not process credit cards for you, it basically stores the credit card and order details of the customers for you. But you can easily integrate the free version with PayPal, Nochex or Paymate and start processing credit cards. So if you have a PayPal account, and if you integrate Mal's Free Shopping Cart to your site with PayPal you can accept credit cards through your PayPal account from non PayPal members. This is a great way not to lose your prospective customers by only accepting payment from paypal members.

They also offer a free and paid versions of mOrders software which help you to track your orders offline.

Here's some features of mOrders:

Download new orders with a single click
Multiple accounts/usernames are stored in a single database
Group by, sort and search yours orders to make them easy to find
Powerful report generator built in. Customize your reports, print invoices.
Export your orders to other applications; Excel, MS Access, etc.

There's a discussion about Mal's Shopping Cart at FreeAuctionScripts which you can visit here: Mals-e Cart - Comments and Suggestions

Visit the What is E-Business Article for more information about E-Business and E-Commerce.

Automated Froogle Feed Submission Service for Yahoo! Stores Launched by Somacon

Matt Kirtok — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 21:16:00 GMT

This is great news for Yahoo Store Owners who would like to automate their Froogle submissions.

Somacon has launched a Yahoo! Store product feed submission service to Froogle. The service is web-based and fully-automated, as compared to existing submission products that are stand-alone software packages or custom services. Listing products in Froogle, Google's product search engine, is one method of search engine optimization for online merchants.

(PRWEB) September 7, 2004 -- Somacon is now offering a web-based service that allows Yahoo! Store owners to submit their products to Froogle. Somacon's Data Feed Service, located at http://froogle.somacon.com/, completely automates the submission process, and store owners simply must sign up for an account and complete some online forms. The service works for any of the thousands of merchants who use the Yahoo! Store platform for their online presence.

Froogle is Google's product search engine, and any online merchant can submit their products to the engine for free. Once accepted into Froogle's merchant program, the submission process requires technical knowledge for correct submission of product data, including description, price, and image URL. Product information may be submitted to Froogle's servers on a daily basis, and must be submitted at least once per month.

Previously, Yahoo! Store owners had to learn the technical specifications, use a software package to perform the submissions, or hire a developer. Software such as mySpotter FrooHoo and Don's Yahoo! Store Tool can translate the Yahoo! Store data and submit the product data feed. These products cost in the range of US$50.00 and require manually installing and running the software. Other custom services are provided by Yahoo! Store developers. By contrast, Somacon's new service is entirely web-based, and uses a pay-per-use pricing model.

The service currently charges US$0.20 per submission of unlimited products from one Yahoo! Store. Since a Yahoo! Store might require at most daily submission, the cost is at most US$6.20 per month during a thirty-one day month. The service automatically detects when product data has changed in the Yahoo! Store, and only submits on days when the data changes, thereby avoiding unnecessary charges. The service also includes features such as duplicate detection, product filtering, and flexible scheduling. The service has completed a live testing period, and dozens Yahoo! Store owners are successfully using the service to list their products in Froogle. As one happy customer remarked, "I checked Froogle today and the feeds are being accepted and the products are on Froogle. There are no errors with the feeds."

Automated Froogle Feedback Submission by Somacon
Reference: PRWeb.com

Free Auction Scripts, Internet Business Owners Community Portal

Matt Kirtok — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:36:00 GMT

Free Auction Scripts, Internet Business Owners Community Portal

FreeAuctionScripts.com is my current project. While we were hanging out on different discussion boards with different eBay sellers, we came up with an idea of starting our own portal where internet business owners can discuss their problems, ask their questions and share their experiences. Let me tell you little bit more about Free Auction Scripts and what we have on the site:

Free Auction Scripts eBay Cross Promotion Tool

With eBay Cross Promotion Tool, eBay sellers enter up to twenty auction and/or eBay store item numbers and create thumbnails of those items and copy paste the generated html code to their auctions, then prospective eBay customers will be able to visit same seller's different eBay items. eBay Cross Promotion Tool was written with PHP by me and has a variety of display options, and a help menu. Users also can ask their questions about our cross promotion tool at our internet business owners community forum.

Free Auction Scripts eBay Stores Directory

Ecommerce Auction Sites Directory

Community Forum Site Map

eBay store owners and internet business owners can submit their online stores to the free eBay Stores Directory. There are already hundreds of eBay stores and E-Commerce sites submitted to the eBay Stores Directory. By submitting your online store to our free eBay Stores Directory, you will increase your site's back links and also will have a chance to find prospective customers.

eBay Success Stories

"Luvn Dogz " Ebay Store Success Story by Marge Holdorf

"My Silver Toe" Ebay Store Success Story by Wanda Silva

"eLegall Books" Ebay Store Success Story by Jodi Legall

"AB Restaurant Supply" Ebay Store Success Story by Allen Brigham

Please send us your “eBay Store Success Story”, and we will publish it on our “eBay Store Success Stories” Page”.

Free Auction Scripts

We have WYSIWYG HTML Editor, eBay Stores Search Tool, Avoid Spam Email Tool and several upcoming projects such as “Thumbnail Creator“, “Advanced Auction Template Creator“.

I will keep posting about the updates about Free Auction Scripts. If you have an internet business, you have to meet others at our Internet Business Owners Community Forum and share your experiences with others or ask your questions and learn from others' experiences. Everybody thinks this is the friendliest internet community, so please check it out.