Nowadays, the number of people who make their purchases from their home or office via internet, increases rapidly.
This practice has an impact on overall business practice. More and more companies turn to online business in order to increase their sales and therefore their market share.
The new philosophy of business practice is summarised to the following sentence:
“Sales of goods and services to anyone, anywhere, anytime”.
It is a fact, that some small businesses, do not have the desired levels of profitability through e-commerce.
Numerous factors are responsible. Some of them concern the customers, their mentality, their culture or their habits. Unfortunately, some factors rely upon the companies themselves. Sometimes they do not run the online store with the same professionalism as the fiscal one. Data, from the Consumer Centre in Greece, has shown that a large percentage of complaints concern non delivery of order, delivery of defective products or products that they do not meet their standards.
Other factors have to do with the online shop itself. Poor design, infrequent updates, difficult user navigation, of an online store can reduce consumption and therefore profitability.
An e-shop, is nothing more than a website. As a website, it needs proper design, operational structures and of course, it should be user friendly. An e-shop have mainly two parts, the administrative part as well as the actual user area.
The website that users see and navigate, should include all products properly categorised, with all of the information like name, code, description, photo, available options, stock available and price. Users must register on the e-shop, using a registration form, in order to help them make their future purchases easier without filling their data every time the visit your e-shop. It is also essential to give to users a cart, so they can review their choices at a glance before completing the transaction of what is selected. Payment options have to be included prominently and detailed. Finally there should be a customer file, through which the customer can monitor himself the progress of is order or see his purchase history.
All data, regarding both customers and products are stored in databases, totally accessible by the e-shop administrator.
In product database, information about the product, such as category, name, code number, description, photo, options available, stock available and price should be included. The e-shop administrator will be able to add, delete or modify the details of any product in the database.
In customers database, for every customer there should be his personal informations as well as his purchase history.
Databases should be designed and developed in a way that the administrator can easily access data, even if he is not a computer expert. The structure and design of the e-shop should not be in danger from any administrator’s action made by mistake.
Since e-shop website is so complicated, it is obvious that the design and development should be assigned to professionals with high level of expertise and experience.
E-shops that intros.gr has designed and developed can help you decide to expand your business to e-commerce. Do not hesitate to request a quote for your e-shop or to contact us for any questions you might have.