The Five Steps of E-Commerce

You set up a retail business, you advertise in your local newspaper, you get customers coming into your store, and you receive payment at the cash register. Create an online store, and...how do you get customers? How do you receive payment? The concept is the same, but the steps are different.

Step 1: Create your website

If you don’t have web design skills, you can hire a qualified web designer to create a website for you, or you can use an online site builder. Think of it as hiring an architect and an interior decorator compared to setting up shop in an existing store.

Using a web designer

With the services of a web designer, you can have a unique website template and website customized to your specific needs. A web development team can also add features such as Flash headers or any programming needed for your site. If your company image is critical, a custom-designed site that conveys the right professional image is a must.

Using an online site builder

An online site builder is the budget way to go. With site builder programs such as Site Studio, your website can be online within minutes. A step-by-step menu allows you to choose a layout and colors, and then add a site description, a logo, and content. Your template may not be unique, but your content will.

Step 2: Set up an e-commerce store

Your customers will browse at your website, select some items, and then pay for them. When you set up an e-commerce shopping cart, you’re providing a way for your customers to bring their purchases to the cash register. The program you choose will allow you to enter your products in the database and allow shoppers to choose products when they click on “Add to cart” or something similar.

Two well-known shopping carts, osCommerce and Miva Merchant, both allow you to do these tasks:

Add, edit, and delete product categories and other information

Set tax rates and charge tax

Receive payment via numerous online and offline payment processing methods

Bill customers

And much more



osCommerce

osCommerce is an open source program. Store owners can set up their online stores using osCommerce with no costs involved. For small stores, it has all the features you need for an online store. Drawbacks of osCommerce are that customization is not easy, and online stores using osCommerce tend to look similar.

Miva Merchant

While Miva Merchant carries a price tag of $995, some web hosts offer Miva Merchant licenses with their hosting plans. If you choose Miva as your shopping cart, be sure to host your site with a host that provides Miva support. Its learning curve is steep, and it requires the support of people who know how to work with it.

With the price and the steep learning curve, you get more features, and you can customize the program more. Add-in modules can be bought that perform a number of tasks. In addition, a strong support community is available in the Miva user group forums.


Step 3: Get a merchant account and payment gateway

When customers arrive at the checkout counter, you need a way for their payments to be transferred from their credit card accounts to your bank account. The method you choose may depend on your sales volume.

For high-volume sales, an e-commerce merchant account plus a payment gateway will meet your needs. A merchant account provider authorizes the transfer of payments to your account, and a payment gateway transfers the information from your customers’ financial institutions to yours.

Most merchant accounts have setup fees, transaction fees, monthly fees, and statement fees. The transaction fees are less than what you’d pay using a third party credit card processor such as PayPal. With all the fees, however, the overall cost is typically lower only if your monthly sales volume is over about a thousand dollars.

For medium and low volume sales, PayQuake and PayPal are viable options.



PayQuake

PayQuake offers three merchant account types to choose from. Although they all require payment gateways, the two smaller plans have no monthly minimums. You can upgrade to a higher or lower plan if your needs change.



PayPal

PayPal has become a household name. Customers can send payment through PayPal via credit card or via money that they transfer into their PayPal account. While the fees per transaction are higher than with merchant accounts, there are no setup or monthly fees, and you don’t need a payment gateway. You pay only when you have financial transactions.

Fore more details about these options, see WebSite Source Hosting Solutions: E-Commerce.


Step 4: Create a secure payment environment

A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate enables you to receive credit card information securely from your customers. When a payment page is using SSL data to encrypt data, a small image of a lock appears at the bottom right of the screen.

Some web hosts offer SSL certificates as part of their hosting packages. If your web host package doesn’t include SSL certificates, you can purchase one separately.

With PayPal, no SSL certificate is required.

Step 5: Generate traffic


Your products are on display in your newly designed store, your shopping cart is set up and ready to use, and you have everything in place to be able to receive payments securely. Now all you need are customers.

This is where marketing comes in.

Submit your site to search engines.

Advertise your site.

Keep your company name in front of your customers with a regular email newsletter.

Add more content to your website to keep it fresh.

Monitor your website traffic to see where it’s coming from and how you can increase traffic for key content areas.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)/ SEM with 100% job placement.

Course Objective:

This course intends to give theoretical and practical training of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) / Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to those engineering students who possess good internet surfing skills and good analytical skills. As we all know internet is growing at a very rapid pace and Search Engine Optimization jobs in India expected to reach a figure of 2 lakh by the end of year 2009. SEO is relatively a new field in India. Not much of the people available in India to cater the current demand of SEOs. SEO term is used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine like GOOGLE, YAHOO, MSN & ALTA-VISTA once a relevant search is undertaken. SEO is not a technology like .net and java, its a concept applies on different web technologies including Java, .net, php, so student just need to have a basic understanding of HTML and basics of Internet. The core objective of the course is to educate a mixed-level group of students on search engine optimization, its avenues and how this can help them adopt this as one of the future career options. This course is also suitable for the faculty who wish to learn about the upcoming concepts of SEO and SEM. This course shall enable the students/ faculty to maintain their blogs, to earn part time through Adsense and other online marketing avenues. After the completion of this course student can pursue his career in the field of Online marketing and search engine optimization and could make his resume better than others. Course Length: 4 Months


Course pre-requisite:

1. Students are at an intermediate Computer Skills level.

2. Students should have at least 10+2 level academic qualification.

3. Students have some basic technical understanding.



Course Outline:



Introduction to SEO

Objective: What is Search Engine Optimization, and why do we need it?

Module 1: Internet & Search Engine Basics
· Websites, Search engines and directories

· How the search engine works

· Why search engines are important

· Why Google should be your top priority

· The anatomy of a Google Search Results Page

· Basics of domains and hosting

· sitemap and sitemap creation

· Google Algorithm and Page rank

· SERP and Ranking of the site

· Major search engines and directories



Objective: Keywords – what they are, why they’re important, and how to find them for your business


Module 2: Keywords Research and Analysis


· What are keywords?

· Why keywords are important

· Keyword research

· Keyword competition analysis

· Keywords and Phrases

· Finding the right keywords for your business

Month - 2 Objective: Evaluating a website from SEO point of view Module 3: SEO and your website
· The most important elements of your SEO strategy

· URLs and URL Structure

· Title tags

· Headers

· Meta tags

· Content

· ALT tags

· Working links

· Link exchanges

Objective: What is on-page optimization and role of on-page optimization in search engine ranking of a website
Module 4: Onsite Optimization

· Basics of optimization

· Optimizing Meta Tags

· Title and Heading Tags

· SEO Snippets, header and footer

· Creating an txt, xml sitemaps

· Creating seo optimized content

· Image tag optimization.

Month - 3

Objective: What is off-page optimization and role of off-page optimization in search engine ranking of a website


Module 5: Offsite Optimization

· Submission to search engines

· Directory Submission

· Posting on Forums and Blogs

· Press Releases & Link Building.

· Social Bookmarking

· Article Submissions

· Creating Back links



Objective: To give an in depth knowledge about market and competitor research and equip students with advanced SEO techniques.


Module 6 : Advanced SEO Techniques

· Competitors analysis

· Restricting the protected area of website

· White hat and Black hat SEO techniques

· Localization and Languages

· Site search functionality



Month – 4

Objective: Role of proper reporting in SEO. Google webmaster tools, Google Analytics overview and integration.


Module 7: Reports and Management

· Google Web Masters tools

· Google analytics reports

· Search engine rankings

· Keyword analysis and page ranks


Objective: What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and why do we need it?



Module 8: Search Engine Marketing Basics

· Search engine marketing

· Major search engines

· Competition and cost analysis

· Managing campaigns

· Introduction to Google adsense and Google adwords.



Objective: How to set up your own blog, promote and earn money out of it?



Module 9: BLOGS

· Introduction to blog

· Setting up your own blog

· Various blogging platforms

· Create a blog with Blogspot

· Developing strategies to promote your own blog

· Monetizing your blog


Contact : Mr. Shyam Bisht
Phone : 9213633066/9990409729
Mobile : 9213633066