e business: 2007

E-Business: Domain Names - Wrong Faith

Ian McMillan registered the internet domain name TrivialPursuits.net and won the right to continue using it, after a challenge from Horn Abbot, the makers of the board game, failed to stop him using the domain name. The makers of the Trivial Pursuits board game failed to obtain the TrivialPursuits.net domain name from the person who said he registered the name to lament life's loss of individual creativity.

This decision has gone against the long established principle that once a brand is "well known", the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)1 part of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), would be able to effect the transfer of the name. However, in this case, the panel was unclear about the intentions of the respondent, and his motive for registering the domain name. The panel did not believe that there was enough evidence to support an application for bad faith activity on behalf of the respondent.

Respondent Ian McMillan informed the WIPO panellist that he bought the name with with the intention of creating a website dealing with "the 21st Century's unique trivial pursuits, specifically the fact that most aspects of life now involve a commodity as opposed to individual creativity, from sex to salvation via surgery and sweeteners". Currently, the site is only one page long, and refers to the WIPO case as "a fine example of a quite unnecessary and utterly trivial pursuit," adding that more content will be added, "but at the convenience of my lazy nature."

There was little evidence of bad faith found by the panel, although McMillan does not appear to have intention of using the website.

Comment: Usually in cybersquatting cases where there "is no use of a sign in the course of trade" plus difficulty in establishing trade mark infringement or passing off, the UDRP approach is the recommended recourse as it is far cheaper and sometimes quicker.

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E-Business Cards

Ebusiness cards can hold the same content as a compact disc ROM, but will fit in a wallet. The capacity of an Ebusiness card is approximately 35Mb compared to the 700Mb of a CD ROM. An ebusiness card can be used instead of using a regular business card, or it can be sent via mail as an information sheet. The card can hold a gist of services that the cardholder's business offers, and can also hold a copy of the cardholder's website.

Ebusiness cards connect to online resources such as a website or a videotape, and permit the user to launch an e-mail. E-Business Cards are a new and revolutionary way to allocate or disburse small or large amounts of information, presentation, pictures, archives, forms, video, websites and other types of multimedia. E-Business cards provide the user with a cheap and reproducible marketing tool, and can be used in combination with other marketing tools. When the designing of an E- business card is finished, it can be reproduced in large numbers.

Ebusiness cards are revolutionizing information technology, providing a cheap and hassle free way to give information anywhere around the world at anytime. Another major advantage that these cards provide is that they are cheap compared to normal business cards and do not require the set-up and printing fees like a normal card.

Ebusiness card allow the user to post a hyperlink on the card itself, and this makes it easier for the person who is reading the card to access the cardholders website. This is important because a hyperlink can cut down the searching time required for a person who wants to access the cardholders website.

Other advantages include delivery of resumes, files and pictures, small videos, newsletters and brochures. These cards are multipurpose devices that help in the expansion of business activities in a way that was unfathomable only a decade ago.

Oracle E-Business Suite: XML Publisher

n 2004, Oracle has delivered a new tool for developing reports on Oracle Applications. It was named Oracle XML Publisher and it is available within the technology stack of the E-Business suite (sometimes also called Oracle Financials).

Most of the companies that utilize Oracle Applications as its ERP system have a long backlog list of reports to be constructed. Oracle has delivered this tool for helping organizations on this issue. Using this tool, users can create a template of the reports layouts using a set of familiar desktop tools such as MS Word and Adobe Acrobat or instead of creating, a user can just enter a template, such as a Government PDF form. The data is still handled by the E-Business suite, but now users can design and control how the report outputs will be presented using a familiar desktop application.

The classic approach to create reports was to combine 3 components: Data Logic, Layout and Translation in a single file what makes it very inflexible. Even a simple change on the layout of a report, a new report file has to be generated with all components. With this new product, just a minor change on template file is necessary. The picture below shows how the three components are treated separated by the XML Publisher at the design time, and at runtime they are brought back together by XML Publisher to generate the final formatted output. XML Publisher allows user to choose the output format of the report. The most common formats are PDF, RTF, HTML, Excel, XML, EDI and EFT. This tool also has a delivery service where users can choose what they want to do with the report. Using this service, it is possible to send the output directly to an email address, to a printer, to a fax or to a WebDAV server.

E-business Advice

E-business advice goes a step further than just training people in ecommerce basics and helping them to create Internet and marketing strategies. It is highly customized to suit the requirements of both a new entrant and an existing player in e-business. Professional E-business advice can be broadly categorized into four major areas: starting an e-business, designing and maintaining the website, marketing the e-business, and e-commerce operations.

E-business advice involves solving not only the day to day operational issues in running an e-business, but also correcting strategic business decisions. For example, a reasonably well-researched fact such as, ?almost half the US population will be aged 50 years or more by 2020, and that they will enter a new phase of active living and spending in their retirement age?, tells an e-business owner to make the Web site and marketing campaigns in such a way so as to target these 50+ years of age target groups.

E-business advice also offers pointers to some of the most pained areas of e-business ? measuring return on investments (RoI), and increasing customers while reducing customer acquisition costs. The advice on Internet marketing and branding help the e-businesses plan and execute integrated online campaigns better. Such advice even helps in search engine marketing by advising on better search engine optimizing techniques and paying for sponsored links on some famous search engines. Search engine optimization helps the prospective customers to get to find an e-business owner?s website in the top 10 searches given a few e-business specific keywords. This increases the number of visits to the Web site drastically and creates a positive impact on the revenues of the e-business.

E-business advice also includes areas such as web usability and Internet project management. Advice on Web usability includes advice on the existing IT infrastructure, ease of navigation and getting the right equipment and software for optimal performance of the Web site.

Thus, getting an advice for an e-business is extremely useful not only for new entrants into the business, but also for existing players who are facing operational or strategic issues with their business model.

Oracle Discoverer: A Reporting and Decision Support Tool

Oracle Discoverer is a business intelligence tool to support organizational decisions. It uses a repository called EUL (End User Layer) which is based on information stored and controlled by transactional applications. The main EUL goal is to hide details and complexity of a transactional database, organizing data to reflect the company specific business areas, making all data queries faster and easier.

Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS - also known as Oracle Applications and sometimes called Oracle Financials) has a BI module with an EUL mapped from Oracle EBS transactional data, which permits Oracle Discoverer to be used as a decision support tool for information stored into Oracle EBS database.

By using Oracle EBS security schema, which uses responsibilities to control access rights, Oracle Discoverer shows its repository in a user friendly way, using folders for each business area, listing all items that you can select for a query.

When you select an item for a query, all items that don’t have relationship with this first selected item will be disabled for selecting because every relationship and dependencies are mapped through EUL.

All Oracle Discoverer queries can be viewed in a tabular or matrix formats, allowing the definition of data fields (items) at the header of a report. This is used to filter the result set of data to be shown. There are many data format functions and it is possible to change the reports layouts, allowing conditional format of characters fonts and colors for each column of data. Besides this features, you can change columns positions, order and group data dynamically.

Oracle Discoverer can be executed by a local desktop software installation (Oracle Discoverer Desktop Edition) or using a browser via web (Oracle Discoverer Plus). Additionally you can export the reports for Html files, Microsof Excel and other file formats.

Oracle Financial Statement Generator for E-Business Suite

Oracle Financial Statement Generator is an Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS – also known as Oracle Applications and sometimes called Oracle Financials) module for reporting. It enables users to generate financial statements from within the Oracle General Ledger. These reports show basic accounting data that helps investors and other users to understand a firm's financial history and activities. Below there is a list with some of these FSG reports and a brief description of them:

Actual/Budget Income Statement Income Statement to include

Period-to- date and Year-to-date Budget and Actual

Budget Analysis Review Budget Information for each I/S Line Item

Budget/Actual Report PTD Budget vs Actual Report

Company Balance Sheet Balance Sheet - no detail of accounts

Company Income Statement Company Income Statement

Comparative Income Stmt Current & Prior Period Comparative Income Statement

Cumulative Balance Sheet Monthly Cumulative Balance Sheet

Cumulative Monthly Inc. Stmt. Monthly Actual figures in thousands for each month and year to date

DBI Annual Comparison Report displays Current PTD vs Prior Year PTD, Variance and Var %

DBI Report Report designed to review balances for P&L Portal Page

Income Statement – EPS Income Statement with EPS calculations

Income Statement Consolidated Income Statement Consolidated

Income Statement with Variance Income Statement with Variance

Responsibility Report by Dept. Departmental Responsibility Report - Actual, Budget and Variance in Units

Rolling Income Statement Rolling Income Statement

Statement of Cash Flows Statement of Cash Flow

Summary Income Statement Summary Income Statement

Trial Balance Trial Balance with subtotals by type of account

WW Con. IS WIP Worldwide Consolidated Income Statement

WW Consolidated Balance Sheet Worldwide Consolidated Balance Sheet Report

WW Consolidated Expenses Worldwide Consolidated Expense Report

WW Consolidated Income Stmt Worldwide Consolidated Income Statement Report

Oracle E-Business Suite Development 2

• J2EE: is an architecture to define standards to solve enterprise level problems, like persistence, scalability, availability, security, distributed computing, etc. This standard should be followed by application server vendors, so a J2EE application would run on any J2EE application server complaint, like Oracle OC4J (OAS), IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, JBoss, etc. It is not a simple architecture to solve a simple problem. Get ready to study and understand the complexity of enterprise programming (we will deal with this matter on others papers to help you).

• EJB: is a J2EE standard to define components to write business logic at the server side (Session Beans), to define a domain layer to access data (Entity Beans) and to deal with asynchronous and queuing messages (Message Driven Beans). The last EJB standard release (the 3.0), not commonly used yet, became much easier to develop with. The previous one (the 2.0 and 2.1) should be used with a series of design patterns to solve common problems, what make the code not so easy to program and understand. The first one (the 1.0 and 1.1) was useless to enterprise level development; it did not implement even a one to many relationship.

• Oracle ADF: according to Oracle, ADF is an application development framework design to simplify J2EE development and bring productivity and ease of use of Oracle forms to the J2EE platform. ADF with JDeveloper is the best choice for Oracle E-Business Suite, because Oracle made this environment familiar to Oracle Forms, Reports and Designer developers.

Oracle E-Business Suite Development 1

We have already talked about the importance of Java Technologies at “Oracle E-Business Suite Customization: New Directions”. Not only for Oracle Company itself, but also for the Oracle E-Business customers, whose investments must be preserved. Now we present tools and frameworks, you will use if you intend to develop in Java:

• Java Language Itself: is an object oriented language, so if you are not used with this paradigm, we strongly advice you to study this already established paradigm. To develop in Java you will use a lot of standards and libraries, they are known by its name, J2ME, J2SE and J2EE, to portable, standard and enterprise applications respectively;

• JDeveloper: is an integrated development environment (IDE) built in Java for Java development. It is complete considering the development life cycle, so you can model, code, debug, test and deploy. It is prepared for Web, XML, Web Services, SQL, J2EE and Oracle ADF development. Provide built-in features for open sources tools and frameworks, such as Struts, Ant, JUnit and CVS. According to Oracle, JDeveloper is the tool of choice for Forms, Reports and Designer customers because it carries a similar development model.

• Struts: is a java framework considered a de facto standard to build web applications. Struts is a solution to organize what was happing when people used Java Servlets and JSP freely. Struts implements the MVC (Model / View / Controller) pattern, so you might separate business logic (Model) from web application flow of control (Controller) and JSP/html code (View).

Strategic Issues For A Successful E-Commerce

1. INTRODUCTION
Electronic Commerce is for the age of Information Technology what mercantilism, the quest for gold and the conquest of new lands were for the age of discovery. Like the prow of a large fishing boat, it draws towards itself all other interests and elements of society, and it will leave new discoveries and changes in its wake. The vast networking of world through optic fibers, satellites and wireless communication is creating a new global community and a new global market, in which most of the countries should participate. It is strengthening, almost paradoxically, the identity of small groups, isolated communities and minority interests and driving them towards a less costly social and economic activity and widening their opportunities. And most importantly, it is empowering small businesses to compete with multinational corporations and enabling consumers to search the world for exactly what they needed.

E-Commerce basically means using networks (Internet) to carry out all the activities involved in business management and operation: buying and selling of products and services, technology and partner search, dealing with counterparts, choosing the most convenient transportation and insurances, performing bank transactions, paying and billing, communicating with company salesmen, picking up orders, and any other activities necessary for trading.

A company will be able to post a complete catalog of it’s products and services on the Internet, which can be continuously updated to present new or updated products, proving a large virtual showcase for potential clients, a means to communicate with clients and in that way, adjusts it’s offer to their requirements; while at the same time it will get access to virtual markets where it can purchase what it needs.

Through integral systems already under development, one company will connect to other companies located anywhere in the world, to buy and sell, choosing the products and services which best meets its needs from a huge network. And it’s true that this revolution involves us all.

E-Commerce Solutions

With the growth of e-commerce over the past few years, the number of e-business solution providers in the industry has also grown drastically, especially in India. E-commerce can be compared to a 24/7 open shop or a showroom catering to its clients and buyers. Therefore, a lot of maintenance has to go into it. This is where the e-commerce solution providers step in, take things in their hands, spend time and further enhance your business.

Conducting business online may sound very easy as you avoid a lot of unwanted hassles but a lot of skills and innovation is required to keep it going. E-commerce involves doing market research, getting qualified traffic, converting hits to business advantages and using information to generate new e-commerce from existing clients.

E-commerce solution providers in India with their in-depth research and skills will provide you with tactics and strategies to make your business profitable. The first step for them would ideally be to understand your business and requirements. A research will follow to find out the predicted market potential, the best keywords and phrases, competition for keywords, search engine relevancy etc

The next step for an e-business service provider would be to find a way to get the visitor on your website to take steps to benefit your business. This is done by understanding the psyche of the visitor and creating an automated website, attractive and user-friendly for the visitor. Efficient e-commerce solution providers will definitely opt for internet marketing to get more visitors to visit your website. Launching a monthly newsletter for your customers is also a good idea. You can send them updates about the new and the latest that has been added to the portfolio of products on your website.

The launch of your website if required is also taken care of by the e-commerce service providers. Site-management and promotion is also very important. The content, images and the layout of a website has to be continuously improved and worked upon keeping up to date with the market. Overall, your website should be designed to attract the first time visitors. The usability and utility factor should also be kept in mind. This will bring them back to your website whenever they plan to buy anything.

The web of e-commerce solution providers in India is vast. They offer a host of e-commerce solution and consulting services to support guide and help you at each step. Outsourcing e-commerce solutions will help you save time and resources while you can focus on other important business objectives. Some e-commerce solution providers also offer BPO services which can be used for telemarketing and cross-selling to maximize profits.

E-commerce solutions are a big support for businesses today. The demands and the expectations of the end-users are high and so is the level of competition in the industry. E-commerce solution providers help you streamline your process and cover all the gaps that might have gone unseen.

The Future of e-Business - Revamping Your Website to Modernize and Revolutionize Your Business

Are you at a crossroads in your business and thinking about the best way to redevelop your website using Web 2.0 technologies? Has the arrival of social networking got you interested in exciting ways to operate your business online? If so, then you're naturally at a positive junction in the growth of your business; I have several solutions that will both modernize and revolutionize your business at the same time - to get your website to the next level in every way!

First, let me provide an overview on my history and knowledge in this field. I am the President and CEO of Hudson Horizons, an e-Business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites and providing e-Marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses. The mission of our company is to develop websites for our clients in a way which will streamline their internal business processes and effectively position their business in their industry online.

Each website we create for our clients includes a highly sophisticated and comprehensive back-end system to completely manage and control their business online. Such administrative functions encompassed by our solutions include: Content Management, e-Invoicing and Online Payment Solutions, Custom Workflow Processes, Customer and User Management, Social Media Capabilities, SEO and e-Marketing Tools; the list goes on. Everything we do for our customer is 100% customized by us for their business. By doing this, we are able to supply our clients with solutions that increase sales, simplify their business tasks, offer online collaboration with their users, clients and employees, and offer a cost-effective solution that provides an immediate return on their investment.

Now that you are familiar with my background in this industry, let me offer several suggestions to revamp your website. If implemented, your website has a great chance to get to that next level - ultimately turning your business from an "ordinary business" into a "competitive e-business."

Content Management

Content Management is a system that allows your business to easily manage certain components and areas of your website. Such areas that a Content Management System allow you to control include: page content, page names, images, pictures, news events, frequently asked questions, articles, blog posts, and other website areas of importance. Most quality Content Management Systems are form-based and require no HTML coding experience to manage these elements.

Content Management offers a cost effective way to make changes to your website without having to hire a web developer or designer to make these changes for you. My company foresees all e-businesses eventually benefiting from a CMS component, which will effectively manage their website on a routinely basis. A solid Content Management System is the foundation to any productive website in today's Web 2.0 world. If you want to compete with the best then you have to utilize the finest tools. Implementing these advanced features will permit you to manage all areas of your website while keeping your overall operation costs down.

e-Invoicing and Online Payment Solutions

If your business focuses on product sales, would you benefit from collecting client payments through online means? If so, then an e-Invoicing or Online Payment Solution would be a great way to facilitate this process for you. There are various ways to setup an e-Invoicing and Payment Solution to process payments online. A few of the most popular methods include: Credit Cards processing, ACH and EFT transfers, Direct Deposits, PayPal integration, Google Checkout integration, and the list goes on.

Having a solution like this could truly bring your business up-to-date and allow you to focus more on growing your business and less time trying to manage the collection of payments from your clients and customers.

Here at Hudson Horizons, we use e-Invoicing to bill our clients via email. Our customers simply click a link in the email and complete their credit card details through a secure online payment form. Our system then processes their credit cards and the payment is deposited directly into our back account - it's that simple. e-Invoicing isn't all about making it easier for us as a business; it's also a more convenient way for our clients to make payments since they no longer need to write checks and mail payments to us.

Custom Workflow Processes

If your business has specific internal business processes that are performed everyday, you might consider having this process completely automated through your own website. If this process takes time and requires documents, contracts or other materials to be created and distributed, consider setting up a dynamic web-based workflow process that does all this for you on-the-fly.

Turning a specific business task into a dynamic workflow process will inevitably save your business time, money and simplify your operations in a very short period of time. We've had much success doing this for our clients. Recently, we implemented such solutions for a client's website, taking their wedding and event entertainment business to the next level. We set up a custom workflow process that now allows them to generate comprehensive event plans and contracts and electronically submit them to reception halls, bands, and clients in a few simple steps. This process now joins all the various parties that relate to an event in one simple-to-use system. This saved our client thousands of dollars per month and, because they require less time to manage daily operations and internal business processes, enabled them to take on more customers.

Customer and User Management

Having the ability to easily manage your customers and users in the back-end of your website is extremely important to the success of your business. Having this control within your website will enable you to: activate/disable accounts, reset passwords, view contact information, email users, track changes, view profiles, manage payments and view order history all in one centralized system.

Social Media Capabilities

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.

Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. The social media sites typically use tools like message boards, forums, podcasts, bookmarks, communities, wikis, blogs/weblogs etc.

According to Wikipedia, a few prominent examples of social media applications are:

Wikis: Wikipedia
Social networking: MySpace and Facebook
Presence apps: Twitter and Jaiku
Video sharing: YouTube (video sharing)
Virtual Reality: Second Life
Events: Upcoming
News aggregation: Digg and Reddit
Photo sharing: Flickr and Zooomr
Livecasting: Justin.tv
Episodic online video: Stickham, YourTrumanShow
Media sharing: Izimi and Pownce
Social bookmarking: del.icio.us
Online gaming: World of Warcraft

At Hudson Horizons, we develop customized online social media and networking websites for any industry. Providing a social networking community for your members, clients and customers to interface, network, collaborate and obtain information is the future for every business. SEO and e-Marketing Tools

Everyday, millions of people use search engines to find information on products and services. However, most people generally only visit the first few results of the search, causing helpful yet poorly-ranked sites to go unnoticed. Without top positions, your site could be overlooked as well. For this reason, it is vital to ensure that your site has every opportunity to be discovered.

As the Internet continues to dramatically increase in the number of users and websites, companies face more competition everyday. In order to keep your website competitive and its ranking as high as possible, you must execute what is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and continually perform e-Marketing Services to keep your website fresh and in the eye of your target audience.

Three of the most important and easy-to-implement SEO tactics are: content and keyword development, updates to META Tags, and search engine friendly URLs. You can find many SEO tools on the Internet to help you ease the process of SEO and e-Marketing.

Using FREE or paid SEO and e-Marketing tools and services is a great way to generate more exposure, ultimately increasing traffic to your website. It's extremely important to not only build a "kick-ass" website but to also market and perform SEO on a consistent basis. I recommend speaking to a professional e-Marketing and SEO Company to help increase the awareness of your website online.

So as you can see, there are many things to think about when revamping your website and this is just a preliminary list to get you headed in the right direction. As the Web becomes increasingly important for every business to survive and compete with their competition it's important that you not only focus on creating a new design but also think about ways to simplify, modernize and revolutionize your business with a custom back-end system. You'd be amazed what can be done with your website... All you have to do is dream it! As our company saying goes, "If you can dream it, we can do it".

I hope this article opens your eyes and provides a little insight to help you get your business to that next level. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me as I will be glad to help. I wish you all much success!

At Hudson Horizons, we provide website design, web development, content management, e-commerce integration, RSS content distribution, search engine optimization, e-marketing services and the development of custom applications such as blogs, newsletter systems, online payment solutions and any other Web application that may be needed to help simplify your business.

Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing and SEO services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business." By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our clients, we provide better ways to run and operate a business online.

Password Management For E-Life And E-Business

How many passwords do you need to remember everyday? In today electronic era, we all have many passwords to remember everyday. For examples, ATM, emails, internet banking, instant messenger, VOIP phone, blogging, etc etc. Do you find it a headache to remember so many passwords or to generate so many passwords for so many services? We will discuss in this article how you can manage the saving and generation of passwords.

First of all, we must understand that passwords are important to ensure security of our personal account or particular in electronic world. You should not compromise your passwords for ease of remember. It is extremely important you use unique passwords for every individual service you have for best protection.

However, what do we need to consider when creating a password?

Rule 1: Make sure you use at least 8 characters long. The longer your passwords, the more secure the password is and it helps to prevent hacking into your personal services.

Rule 2: Use alphanumeric characters if possible. Most of the passwords are case sensitive too, so, mix your passwords with upper and lower case character for better protection.

Rule 3: Add some symbols into your passwords, for example, #, $, %, &, @ are all good characters to use.

What are the precautions do you need to focus on?

Do you ever use name, birthday, address of yourself or your spouses as passwords. Those are very easy predictable by hacker. The first few iterations a hacking program will try are your personal information. Use random characters in your passwords as much as you can.

Of course, someone may ask, if you need an unique password for every individual service, there will be tens or hundreds of passwords to remember, how can you do it?

There are many passwords management tool you can use out there. Some traditional ways is to write it onto some notebook and keep in a safe place. Or you can use your handphone, your PDA to store those passwords. Make sure that you have a master key to unlocks those passwords in your handphone and PDA as protection.

There are some computer software you can purchase to help you manage all your passwords too. There are some free one you can find on the freeware or shareware websites.

In summary, be careful and pay attention to your passwords. Create unique passwords are very important to offer yourself the maximum protection and keep these passwords in a safe place will double protect yourself.

KP Yang is an online entrepreneur who is passionate about internet & blogging. Visit his website at http://www.kpebiz.com to learn all the simple tricks and widgets to make wordpress blogging more fun for yourself and more entertaining for your readers. To also find out about the secret of making money on your blog, visit http://www.kpebiz.com

Best Ebusiness - Make More Profit With Ecommerce

Ecommerce is the way trace is being done these days. The internet has changed the way of doing things. The way we do businesses today is different than the way we used to do business in the past. Now the internet is in the center of all the activities which are carried out in the world of trade and business. Ecommerce is the most popular way of doing business these days.

The best advantage of ecommerce is the fact that it is now possible to have the whole world as your target market now. With the ecommerce and ebusiness becoming the way to go, the political borders and the geographical limits are no more important. You can target the people living in other parts of the world as well. Now the customer range is varied and different as compared to the past. This has created a lot of opportunities for the web based businessmen. People are making lots of money through their ecommerce ventures.

You can make a lot of profit through your ecommerce venture. First of all you need to be very clear about the nature of your business and the kind of products you will be selling. This is something really important. If the products you are selling are unique, it will help you in getting more web traffic and good sales. Also, you need to be very sure about the demand cycle and the supply and distribution chain. Back your business with sound financial planning and good promotional efforts. Your ebusiness will help you in earning a lot. These are few of the ways in which you can make lots of money through your online ventures.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

For Making Your E-Business Solution A Success

Once you have decided to enter the online business scene you have taken the very first step, although the task ahead is not very simple. A reputed research company, the Gartner group, states that approximately 75% of the e-business projects that are started do not succeed as a result of planning that is not adequate and also due to very high expectations that are not realized. The profits that are actually estimated in the planning process does not get realized when the e-business solution is put into practice because the management of affairs and the execution of the plans are not as desired. Management of the business affairs is what is at fault in most cases where the implementation of the ebusiness solution fails. Some common mistakes that are seen are inability to understand the project, not being able to conceive the larger picture and expectations that are too high.

Pitfalls of E-business solutions installation process

Considering a case where a huge distribution firm has made the decision to use a new technique of managing an online supply chain. Those who were actually supposed to execute the solution had very little knowledge about the system and did not believe that the new system could be successful. Due to hurdles like these, it took approximately a year for the company to put the new system into practice. The time delay led to cost overrun and the cost incurred was very much higher than that expected. This is a common problem faced by many companies in the successful implementation of their ebusiness solution.

There could be several problems like the people who are to actually execute it do not really believe in it and thus, do not spend enough time to understand the ebusiness solution. Without knowing it themselves they would not be in a position to pass on appropriate orders lower down. They are unable to lay down any specific objectives and targets. Thus, they do not make a whole hearted effort in the execution of the new e-business solution as they don’t expect it to achieve any great results.

There may also be cases wherein the IT related infrastructure is not sufficient to support the latest ecommerce solution. Due to a lack of understanding and communication the funds allocated and the time spent for the execution of the solution is not adequate. Sometimes the new ecommerce solution formulated would be such that it complements the old solution and thus, if it does not involve proper planning then it may result in incompatibility problems.

How to avoid pitfalls

The implementation of ecommerce solutions has a far reaching impact on the company and therefore, proper planning must be done for successful implementation of ecommerce solution.

Preparation

The ecommerce solution must be prepared after careful planning and taking into account the requirements of the different user groups. The ecommerce software devised must have answers to questions like:

• The aim of the ecommerce solution

• The areas the solution is meant to address together with a great ecommerce web site design.

• Is it economically viable to implement the ecommerce solution?

• The target that the solution aims at meeting

It is important that you have a team of experts or a good web design company who would look after matters related to the implementation of the solution. The resources required for implementation must be allocated and the deadlines specified. The experts must at every stage consider the developments taking place and must see to it that the targets are met from time to time.

Education and Training

Education refers to finding the right team of experts who would be able to implement the solution successfully. The objectives and goals to be achieved must be laid down clearly and the staff must be trained so that they understand not only the details regarding the solution but also how significant it is for the organization. Evaluation must be done from time to time and the progress must be compared with the targets to ascertain if the targets are being met or not.

Implementation

The ecommerce solution must be implemented as per plans so as to employ the resources efficiently and ensure that the targets are met. The senior management must evaluate the performance on a regular basis to see that the program goes as per plans. The solution must be evaluated at every stage and must consider the requirements of all the user groups. The satisfaction of all the user groups is very important for the successful implementation of the solution. Understanding the technology required for the implementation of the solution is very important, if need be employ the services of a professional so that you not only save on cost but also effort.

One must however, understand things and thus, have realistic expectations. The ecommerce solution is going to take time for bringing about the desired results and a change overnight should not be expected. A step by step plan and evaluation is necessary to ensure its success. Some of the ebusiness solutions that help in attracting customers include business portal, e-marketplace and the like. First of all, the business must consider the various factors and determine if there is a requirement of a new ebusiness solution for the business and whether it is economically viable to implement it. It would be helpful to keep abreast of the changes in technology and also the strategy implemented by the competitor.

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The 10 Most Important Statistics For Ecommerce Websites

Have you ever heard the maxim “you don’t lose wait by weighing yourself?” However, I actually take issue with this statement. Not in regards to weight loss, but rather in reference to monitoring web analytics. Every time I check my site stats and see improvement, I’m motivated to create even better results.

Below I’ve compiled a list of what I consider to be the most important metrics to monitor for eCommerce sites.

Landing Page Bounce Rates: A bounce occurs when a visitor visits a page on your site, and immediately clicks away and goes no further. High bounce rates can be caused by a number of factors including excessive loading times, irrelevant content, unattractive site design, etc. Be sure to monitor your bounce rates on all your important entry pages including your home page and any SEO or PPC landing pages.

Landing Page Load Times: As mentioned above, excessive page load time can wreak havoc on your bounce rates. Monitor your page load times on different connection speeds with a free tool from WebSiteOptimization.com

New Visitor Conversion Rate: Most online retailers rarely differentiate between their new and return visitor conversion rates. By isolating the new visitor conversion rate, you’ll be able to see a clearer picture of what’s happening when first time visitors land on your site from search engines or other ad campaigns.

Return Visitor Conversion Rate: Unfortunately, not everyone buys on the first visit. The next best thing, however, is getting them back to your site. By analyzing your return visitor conversion rate, you’ll see how likely you are to convert your return traffic. Most likely, you’ll find that your return visitor conversion rate is the higher of the two.

Orders Per Customer Per Year: Come up with a calculation of how many times a customer order per given time period. This serves as a good tool for determining how much you can afford to spend on marketing or re-marketing.

Page views / Visit: Page views per visit can reflect how well your site engages your audience. An increasing number of page views per visit can indicate that your content is interesting, therefore visitors are spending more time browsing it. However, a high page views per visit metric can also indicate unnecessarily complication processes such as checkout or product browsing.

Items / Order: If your site has a suggested product feature to encourage add-ons, you would benefit by tracking how many items you sell per order.

Average Order Value: While your target average order value will vary greatly based on your industry, it would be wise to monitor this metric over time. Ideally, you’d like to see a year over year increase.

Traffic Sources: Google analytics breaks visit sources into 3 categories: Direct visits (from typing your URL directly), Search engines visits (both S.E.O. and P.P.C.), and referring sites (any other sites linking to yours). Obviously, the percentage of visits from each of these sources will vary for every site. However, as your brand grows, you’d like to see more visits coming from direct URL entry. These tend to convert better.

Shopping Cart/Checkout Abandonment Rate: Measure what percentage of visitors abandon the shopping process at each step in your checkout. For example, how many abandon after adding an item to the cart? After entering shipping & billing info? After entering credit card info? Too high of an abandonment rate could signal a serious checkout problem.

eBusiness Launch - Tips To Get You Started

So you've decided to launch an Internet based business. Congratulations! You've taken your first step towards establishing yourself in global markets and taking your success into your own hands. Now what do you do? For starters, you need a domain name, a web page, and a way to take your orders. It can be quite a daunting experience to take these first steps into eCommerce. Here are some tips to help you get started on your way.

Your domain name will identify your particular business on the internet. When registering and deciding on a domain name for your business there are a number of things you need to consider.

ourproductsarethebestontheweb.com - Avoid using excessively long and tedious domain names. Choose something simple and easy to remember. Also try to use popular keywords that people would use to search for products or services such as yours. This can help you get ranked higher in search engines as well as help consumers remember your site.

.com vs .biz - Always use .com instead of .biz or .info. Your company will be taken more seriously. If necessary you can use .net, but more people are familiar with .com and will remember it more easily.

Shop Around - There are a number of sites that offer domain registration. Prices vary, but expect to pay a yearly registration fee. Some popular domain registration web sites include GoDaddy.com, Web.com, and Register.com. Many domain registrars also offer web design, web hosting and email.

A web site is like having a store front in every corner of the world. What do you want people to see when they look in your window? Consumers today are more intelligent and wary than when the web was in its infancy. You need your web page to project a professional image, draw your customers in, and keep them interested long enough to see the value of doing business with you instead of your competitors. Easier said than done right? Successful web design is crucial to converting your web visitors into web sales. Here are a few avenues you can take to achieve a successful web site.

Hire Someone Who Knows - There are countless companies out there that you can pay to develop a professional web site for your business. Ask around. With so many to choose from, referrals are usually the best way to find a reliable and affordable company, or even person, with the expertise to create a professional web site for your needs.

The Fruits of Other's Labors - Web page templates are a less expensive alternative to having a site custom made. On average templates range in price from $13 to $300 dollars depending on how original you want your site to be as well as how large. Some come with only an index, or front page, while still others include the index as well as supporting content pages. Some templates will require you to have some basic knowledge of html editing and working with a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop to tweak the site to fit your business. Other templates allow you to simply enter in your text in the pre-designated boxes and you're ready to go. A good place to start looking is TemplateMonster.com.

Head Long and Feet First - For the ambitious or those on an extremely tight budget, there is a third solution. Do it yourself. There are many web page editing programs available and you may even have one on your computer already and don't even know it. A few of the most popular are Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage, and Adobe GoLive. All come with tutorials and if the help you need is not found there, it is not far away. Type your question into your favorite search engine and you're sure to find the information you need. Surf the web and look at other web pages. See what you like about them and what you don't. Does it look professional? Why? Does it inspire confidence and reliability? How? Most importantly, be patient with yourself. This is a big project you are undertaking and a lot of the learning will happen by trial and error.

No store, online or offline, can be successful without a way to make sales and take orders. With an online store you have a couple of options. Some businesses will want to encourage their customers to place their orders online, others will want them to call to place their orders, and some will want to offer both options.

Virtual Shopping Carts - If you are selling a number of different products online, a shopping cart will be necessary. This will allow your customers to add things to their cart as they shop your online store. Unless you are a programmer or having your site professional designed, you will need to find a shopping cart that you can add onto your site. You can choose to buy your software or take advantage of a free one such as that found at osCommerce.com. There are advantages to both paid software and free. Your exact needs will determine the best course for you.

Phone Orders - Because of the high rate of fraud on the Internet, many consumers feel more comfortable placing their orders over the phone with a live person. They like knowing there is a person behind the page. You will want a professional sounding phone system. Something more than your cell phone with voicemail. One of the best solutions for web based businesses is a virtual phone system, or virtual PBX. They allow you to forward your calls to any location - home phone, cell phone, VOIP phone - give you a professional sounding main greeting, multiple extensions and voicemail. Many will also allow you to have automated order taking over the phone, send and receive faxes, and receive messages to your email. You want to make sure that the professional business image you are presenting with your web page is continued when your customers calls you. Freedom800.com is a good place to start looking at what virtual PBX systems have to offer.

Starting an online business is an exciting time. It can also be a confusing time if you are unfamiliar with what it takes to establish yourself on the web. Getting your domain name, a professional website and setting up an order taking process are some of the first things that you will need to do to get started. The best of luck to you in your new business.

Ecommerce - Know More About Ecommerce and How You Can be Successful at it

Ecommerce is the great trend done by many online marketers nowadays. This is not shocking because the mere fact that the number of persons going online is very massive. Cyberspace has offered such a huge market for different people in the world. Though it is popular, not all marketers become successful.

Competition is unavoidable that is why one should consider applying smart techniques and strategies in order to have great profit from it. But is ecommerce difficult to understand? You might think that starting a business online is complicated but the truth is, it not that hard to manage. Though you must be wise enough in making decisions and you should consider all the factors in order to get your industry up and growing. You can give freebies or offer free shipping. No one would want to pay shipment charges so if the shipping is free. With this, there is a greater chance that your customer will purchase great amounts of orders from you.

For those who are just starting up, you can first find time to gain enough profit before you can decide to handle shipping costs. Give them the best customer service you can offer. A business would not be successful if it does not give quality service. Focus on what the customers need and answer to those necessities. Make them feel that they are not neglected. They should be on top of your priority so take good care of your clients. It is better if you can gather feedback from the.

No matter how awful their feedbacks may be, do not hesitate to accept it all because in this way, you will know the flaws of your market. Once you know where to enhance and develop, your business will surely be worth it all. Gaining your customer’s trust is very important also. So respond to them genuinely and urgently.

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