ECommerce solutions for UK businesses 
by Mark Roper, April 2005
Introduction
This article is intended to explain how UK businesses can sell products and services on the Internet. It covers what is required to operate an ecommerce shop and gives indications of the procedures and costs involved.
What is required?
To operate an ecommerce shop, the key requirement is to have a website, with a suitable domain name and reliable hosting. With this alone it would be possible to sell items, but to automate the process and make it easier for customers a number of additional components are recommended. If you have a number of products for sale on your website and wish to increase this in the future, then the best solution is to have a custom database to store product information. This allows products and categories to be easily added or updated by the shop owner, as and when required. To make purchasing products easy, a shopping cart is a standard feature of an ecommerce website. This allows customers to add/remove items and once ready, to proceed to the payment stage. Regarding payments, most customers will prefer to pay by debit cart or credit card since they are likely to receive their products faster. However some customers still pay by cheque, so these should be accepted also. To securely accept credit or debit cards a number of solutions are available.
Accepting credit card payments
To accept debit or credit card payments a number of options are available, which are suitable for different kinds of businesses. If the number of transactions you are likely to process is quite low, then there are a number of commission only methods, which are recommended. One of the most successful and famous of these is PayPal. If you have more transactions and are looking for a lower commission (but with a monthly fee), then most other methods require that you have a merchant bank account. There are a number of options available from most of large the UK banks. Businesses do not usually have a merchant account as standard so this must be applied for from your bank. Merchant accounts are not always available to all business and often you have to have been banking for a certain period of time with a proven income. Once you have a merchant account there are two main methods of accepting payments. The first is to have the payment functionality fully integrated into your website. To do this securely you must purchase and use a SSL certificate. Alternatively if you do not wish to do this, then you can opt for a solution where the customer is transferred to the processing company's website at the payment stage. The disadvantage of this is that it can be disorientating and confusing for the customer, which could result in lost sales.
Attracting customers
The final stage for an successful ECommerce website is to of course attract customers and for them to place orders. If your business has an offline presence then it may well be suitable to advertise using offline methods. Advertising using online methods is recommended for all sites and the main way to do this is to use search engines. (See our article: Attracting customers using search engines) For a new business one of the quickest way to attract customers is to use some of the pay per click (PPC) schemes such as Google Adwords or Overture. An account can be applied for and adverts can appear within a matter of days.
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About the author
Mark Roper is the proprietor of ropernet IT. ropernet IT supply web design & development, site hosting, stock photography and domain registration services. For full information please visit www.ropernetit.co.uk
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