implosion linefeed: Starting up your own e-commerce store ? having an online presence ...

The online e-commerce industry is thriving, and you have a huge market opportunity because of the amount of people that use the Internet, and the consideration of international business as well. I am a strong believer that the UK will thrive well in the services sector, and online is no exception. Setting up an e-commerce store can be easy, depending on what you?re looking for, what you?re going to sell and what your target audience are. And you don?t necessarily need technical or website development or creation experience to get an online e-commerce presence either.

It?s obvious, the Internet shopping and e-commerce market is big and there is always a market opportunity even though it is very much saturated. Many people make a living online with their online business, whether it?s an e-commerce store, web design business, web hosting provider, etc., and the opportunities to make money online are numerous. Although it?s safe to say making money online is not as what the advertisements make you believe ? I?m sure you?ve seen the adverts on the Internet ?on how to make money with Google.? Whether you want to make a personal website or start a business online ? whether an e-commerce store, forum or to bring your business presence online, you should definitely consider it. Internet usage is by no means decreasing like the worldwide economy has. Of course, the recession has affected online companies, but to be fair, online companies have probably done fairer than if they were trading similarly exclusively offline.

No matter what your business does, sometimes you need to spread your footprint to protect the future of your business.

Do you run a business selling bespoke items or products? Whatever your business trades, many of your customers will have a computer and Internet access. Whether you want to launch an online e-commerce presence or a company website showcasing your latest products with the ability for customers to?reserve products online to collect in store, it can surely help your business having an online presence.

CCL Online sells computers and other electronic equipment online but they also have a physical retail store as well. It really wouldn?t be surprising if they make more revenue online than with their physical store presence, because there are obviously no location constraints with an online store.

Online businesses are successful with the right marketing and search optimisation.

Search engines like Google and Bing make it easy, convenient and fast for us to find millions of websites that are visible on the World Wide Web. But how does Google and Bing (and other search engines) curate these ?millions of websites? into a bunch of relevant search results? Well, Google and Bing algorithmically detect this ? it?s a very complex process as you would imagine ? to determine what website should appear before another, but the process of making sure your website is high in search result listings is?search engine optimisation. If you want to make your website noticed to visitors, you have got to first make your website noticed by Google and other search engine bots. These?bots will, all the time, determine the importance of your website to other?similar websites, and would algorithmically determine whether your website should appear higher than your competitors, for example.

Some basic factors Google and other search engines will likely take into account.

Google and other companies do not specify what their algorithm consists of, or precisely how they determine the ranking or relevancy of websites ? and this is one of the reasons why there is an entire market on search engine optimisation and marketing. In fact, many companies will have entire teams devoted to search engine optimisation and the marketing of company websites. But really, the bottom line is, if you focus on good quality content, advertising and other aspects, search engines will start to take notice of your website. In fact, within days of your e-commerce store being up and running, Google bots will likely already be trawling your site and indexing your website?s pages in its search engine result database ? and obviously, as you start to advertise your e-commerce business and submit it to relevant directories, Google will likely increase the importance of your website, which over time, can bring a positive impact on your e-commerce site?s general listings in search engines like Google.

I?ve always said Google before other search engines like Bing, because Google does indeed have a superior algorithm and search engine relevancy (and market share ? which is important to anyone) than any other search engine out there, including Bing. However, Bing is becoming increasingly relevant and indexing faster than before, and Microsoft (who owns Bing) is continuing to improve Bing. You shouldn?t by any means dismiss other search engines like Bing, because they?re good search engines and they are used by many people. So having high listings in Bing and other search engines as well as Google can definitely help your business.

Primary considerations with an e-commerce business

You?re an exciting target for criminals.

Had you previously heard about the hacking incident that happened with Sony?s PlayStation Network? Well, it caused millions of PlayStation Network subscribers debit card details and personal information to be stolen, and for sure Sony has likely got into legal trouble as well. One important Act concerning information security in the UK is the Data Protection Act (and there are equivalent provisions in other countries as well, especially other European countries). While this article is not to be used as professional legal advice, it?s safe to be sure that as an e-commerce store, you will be as responsible for compliance to the Data Protection Act as you are as a business solely operating without any online presence. And when you have an online presence and you have sensitive customer information stored in a database that works with your e-commerce store, it is very important to ensure that information is extremely secure and encrypted. Many e-commerce systems have the security provisions implemented into the software, but if you are to be having a bespoke e-commerce system created, you will need to work with the company that is developing and supplying this to ensure that information that is to be stored is secured according to your custom requirements.

On a daily basis, any company will be having their web servers having unauthorised attempts to gain access, sometimes by automated computer bots that do this on behalf of the organisation, entity or individual that created the application that does it. Some things that can happen include:

- Trying to gain unauthorised access to the administrative software of the web server;

- Trying to scan network ports. Different services (such as mail) reside on different conceptual network ports. Network ports on a web server are in existence to essentially segment different types of services on one server to a specific port number on the server. Similar in concept of house numbers to ensure mail is delivered to the right person; the case of network ports is to ensure data is sent to the right application or service on the web server. This is a technical overview, but you do not necessarily need to understand the underlying technical aspects of web servers in order to run an e-commerce store. In fact, if you choose shared web hosting, you do not need to understand how to run a web server, as shared web hosting is simply an account set up on a web server for a customer to use to have their website visible on the Internet through the web server that holds the account;

- Social engineering: This term means criminals perhaps targeting people based on trust or identity (for example, pretending to be the owner of a company). A primary example is criminals gaining unauthorised access to a social networking client, pretending to be the person owning the account and posting a website address as a status update. Friends of this compromised account will likely click the link because they wouldn?t think otherwise, or out of trust (or both).

What are?web servers?

Web servers are merely computers that have been designed and assembled to specifically be a web server. For example, all web servers will not have Wi-Fi built-in, because a web servers job is to be a web server, and all network connections on the web server (i.e. the Internet connection) would be via a cable, to ensure utmost security, speed and reliability. The Internet is just an interconnected network of computers which collectively is the World Wide Web.

Do you require external consultants to advise you on your company?s e-commerce strategy?

Have you got the technical expertise to understand what you require in such an e-commerce store? There are consultations who you can commission to provide advice to your business to understand what you require from a technical and employment perspective to support such an e-commerce store, and perhaps the security aspects. Security is a very important asset of any e-commerce store, because then it bridges compliance with UK and European legislation, which you are bound by as a UK company. Some considerations (however, for professional legal advice, please consult a qualified and experienced lawyer ? we disclaim the accuracy and completeness of any advice given within this article ? including anything that may be considered legal advice).

Data Protection

Yes, this is a very obvious example and everyone knows how security and disaster recovery procedures are necessary for compliance to data protection laws. It is necessary because your customers will be expecting your systems to be secure because they will be providing you with sensitive information such as their debit card details.

Copyright Law

Are you going to use product images on your e-commerce store? You need to make sure you have permission under Copyright law to use them on your e-commerce store for commercial purposes.

Distance Selling Regulations

Because you are trading online, the Distance Selling Regulations will apply to your business. Your customers have the right to cancel their order within seven working days.

Concerning security considerations

While many of the possible security issues that can arise with an e-commerce store (and the list below is surely concerning), with the right security provisions in place, there is no need for any real concern or worry. But we?ll list the primary security considerations below, as it is better to know because these things can happen ? and do.

Security technologies primarily used for online websites

Accessing websites alone is not secure. In fact, anyone can easily tap into the data being transferred between your computer and the web server of the website you are accessing. There is a technology called?SSL which essentially allows secure connections to be made to websites, where the data sent to a website and from a website to your computer is encrypted, and the data is essentially encrypted until it reaches either destination, at which point the data is then unencrypted using the?key that is specific to the encrypted data (similar conceptually to a password, and that being used to unencrypt data). You can purchase an?SSL certificate which proves the?key?being sent by the server to the end user is definitely being sent by the server, because it is technically and theoretically possible for anyone with experience to send a fake key to your computer and data being sent back?encrypted can be?decrypted by the malicious user.

Company policies

Social engineering is often the easiest way to fool a user into giving sensitive information. For example, WHMCS Ltd. was recently, in May 2012, the victim of a social engineering attack that caused criminals to gain unauthorised entry to the company?s web server by merely impersonating a senior staff member with a third party provider of WHMCS Ltd. You need to absolutely make sure your employees are stringent when having to deal with any customer support enquiries. Company policies need to be in place as criminals can be smart, and are always looking at ways to cause financial loss or destruction, whether for financial, political or ideological purposes or motivations. There has been questions before as to whether certain Denial of Service Attacks on some major websites are politically motivated by suppressive regimes in certain areas of the world. By any means, it is possible for state-sponsored online network-based attacks because it is very effective.

Denial of Service Attacks

Denial of Service attacks are very common, and unfortunately very effective because they are sometimes very difficult to prevent, especially for a period of time that can ultimately result in loss of service. Remember, all of these security concerns are also a business concern, because it can ultimately result in loss of revenue and customers.

Denial of Service attacks are where a large number of requests to access a website (or web server in general) are sent in a very short space of time resulting in the web server having too many requests to compute/process at any one time. If there are too many requests for a web server to handle based on its hardware configuration, it can ultimately result in the web server going offline ?and directly result in loss of service to your business. Malicious software created by malicious application developers can be created to be part of a denial of service attack. The originator / author of the software can execute effective denial of service attacks this way, by making all running instances of the application commit denial of service attacks (if in this case the application on an infected computer can communicate with a web server that is owned by the malicious author, organisation or entity that tells the application what to do). And if you imagine millions of computers executing a simultaneous denial of service attack, it can cause some substantial issues.

Concluding the concerning?

To conclude, it is concerning, yes. But there are many measures you can take to protect your online presence from loss of service, data theft and other potential security issues. For example, why do we have antimalware software on our computers? Primarily to protect ourselves in case malware is run or installed on our computers. ?Malware? is the collective term to refers to different forms of malicious software such as spyware, viruses, adware, trojans, etc.

Of course, this article is to emphasise the elements to consider with an e-commerce store, but isn?t specifically going to be a tutorial on how to set up an e-commerce store. But one thing that?s an important attribute of an e-commerce store is the design aspects of your e-commerce store. And different designs and colour schemes work for different audiences. So the first question to ask is, what is your target audience? What exactly are you selling, or will be selling via your e-commerce store? It is important to have a professional and complete design ? initial impressions are equally as important as the products being sold; it?s not good to have customers leave without a sale because of their perception of your business purely based on the image presented to them with your e-commerce store design, colour scheme, etc.

Other relative aspects ? ease of use.

It always helps to have a simple and easy to use e-commerce store ? to navigate, to use and to order. You want to make sure your customers have a stress-free, easy and convenient shopping experience. When you have an e-commerce store set up, is it easy to find products, product categories, or perhaps to search for products via a search box? How useful and relevant is the search function? These are design aspects because the design has to be well implemented and work well ? and it is an important attribute of good user experience.

So, before even designing and building your e-commerce store, whether you?re using a ready-made solution, purchasing e-commerce software or commissioning a bespoke e-commerce set up, always take into consideration design, ease of use, ease of navigation, target audience and user experience ? many times it all ultimately boils down to user experience.

Author ? Ben Stones (Customer Interaction Associate and Editor at eUKhost Ltd.)

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