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Another requirement for efficiently running your online store is a virtual shopping cart. This actually is an electronic order form that serves as the first step in the fulfillment process. Its purposes are to securely:

1. Enable your customer to browse and select items, and then later decide which ones they want to purchase.
2. Display a summary of items that your customer has selected.
3. Provide links to information for your customer to consider before confirming the purchase, such as the return policy or the description page for each product.
4. Allow your customer to change the quantities ordered or remove items before checking out.
5. Enable your customer to navigate to the checkout process or to return to the store to choose more items.

This shopping cart software allows you to accept orders for multiple products from your website(s). It automatically calculates and totals your customer’s order, including tax and shipping charges. Some shopping carts are even integrated with the fulfillment capabilities of UPS or the U.S. Postal Service to make the order acceptance and shipping process much smoother.

There are several services that offer secure online shopping cart technology. PayPal, for instance, offers a free shopping cart program to its merchant members. At checkout, shoppers indicate that they want to make their purchases through their PayPal accounts, and the process rolls out automatically.

Other application service provider (ASP) companies also keep your shopping cart on a third-party site, where it is secure and regularly updated. Securenetshop.com provides this type of service for a monthly or annual fee. Popular software packages that can be purchased include Miva Merchant and QuickStore.

If done correctly, e-mail marketing can deepen customer relationships and add a personal touch to the sales process. Carried out improperly, an e-mail campaign can turn a customer off to your business forever.

E-mail newsletters for customers who “opt in” (request or otherwise sign up for them) are a terrific marketing tool for online businesses. Rather than being a hard-hitting price-and-product flyer, an online newsletter ideally provides useful information and/or news relating to your lines of business.

A popular outdoor and camping-gear store, for example, sends its customers a newsletter with information on camping trips and outdoor activities. As an incentive for opting in on the company’s website, the store offers new subscribers a coupon for 10 percent off their next order.

In fact, e-mail newsletters commonly are used to promote special offers or discounts to their subscribers. They are an inexpensive way to place your brand and products in front of a highly receptive customer base that already has demonstrated interest by signing up for your newsletter.

And because it’s in digital form, its free and unlimited. Giving you a huge advantage over your paper pushing competitors.

With hundreds or thousands of competitors, how can a business get its product upfront in online search engines? Gaining a listing in the first page or two of a search engine’s results is often considered the “Holy Grail” of e-commerce.

So, how do you get to the front of search results? There are two approaches to ensuring that links to your company’s website appear high on a search engine page: “natural search” and “paid search.”

To rank highly in natural search, the content on your company’s website should include the keywords a consumer might type to search for what you offer. These keywords should also be included in the links to your website from other websites.

For example, if you own an online jewelry store, you may want your company’s website to show up when a consumer searches for the words “diamond earrings.”

There are various strategies to improving your company’s rank in natural search. Most are legitimate, but there are some vendors that don’t comply with the rules and regulations that the search engines have in place to ensure honest marketing.

If you decide to work with a third-party to implement a natural-search strategy, be sure to check references, look at other companies they’ve worked with, and make sure they are forthright about their policies on working within search engine service agreements.

For paid searches, companies get to the top of search listings the old fashioned way–they buy their way there! Search companies, for example, allows businesses to suggest keywords that relate to their products and services, to create a description and even to choose a geographic area that they want to reach.

The company’s listing appears high in the results of search engines like Yahoo! and MSN, and the merchant is charged a fee each time a visitor clicks on the listing to get more information.

The most popular search engine, Google, has a cost-per-click pricing plan based on keywords called Adwords. Here, business listings (called Sponsored Links) with short descriptions appear next to the list of related search results, attracting attention and clicks.

Business owners should explore a variety of search engines to see which kind of program works best for their products or services.

Now that you’ve gotten this far and you have a business plan and a strategy for your online store, what do you need to build it? Just as with a brick-and-mortar store, the first two lines on the checklist are a name and a location. In cyberspace, they’re usually the same thing. The address of the online business is expressed as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

Usually the address is a name that ends in dot com (.com), which indicates a “commercial” site, or dot org (.org) for an “organization.” If a business is lucky, its address will be the same as its company name or a close reflection of it.

Staking a Claim in Cyberspace

Businesses can register and claim a URL for a small annual fee. The URL, however, is simply the address — the entrepreneur will need a piece of property that the address defines.

That plot of cyberland is the space on a computer where all the electronic files that compose the web site will reside. Numerous commercial “hosting” services, will rent you space on their large computers (called servers) for a nominal monthly or annual fee.

Some mid-size and larger companies host their sites on their own in-house web servers, but they remain responsible for maintenance of the site and the hardware to be sure it’s accessible 24/7. An ISP can also speed the time it takes for online shoppers to download your web pages.

Before Hiring an Attorney You Need To Ask Yourself These 4 Questions

• Is this person really a frustrated businessperson disguised as a lawyer? Some lawyers get tired of being on the outside looking in when it comes to business dealings. Such a lawyer may attempt to second-guess your business judgment. Be wary of a lawyer who takes too keen an interest in the nonlegal aspects of your work.
• Does this person communicate well? J. P. Morgan once said, “I do not pay my lawyers to tell me what I cannot do, but to tell me how to do what I want to do.” The right lawyer for your business will not respond to your questions with a simple “That’s OK” or “No, you can’t do that,” but will outline all your available options and tell you what other businesses in your situation normally do.
• Are the offices conveniently located? You will need to visit your attorney frequently, especially in your first few years in business. You should not have to waste a day traveling to and from the nearest city each time you need legal advice. When in doubt, choose a lawyer close to home.
• Do I like this person? Don’t forget to follow your instincts and feelings. You should be able to communicate openly and freely with your attorney at all times. If you feel you cannot trust a particular lawyer or you believe the two of you have different perspectives, keep looking. Just remember good looks and a dynamic personality are not as important in a lawyer as accuracy, thoroughness, intelligence, the willingness to work hard for you and attention to detail.

A great place to start is with the American Bar Association. The ABA’s website has a wealth of information for consumers and professionals alike who have legal questions. In the “Hire a Lawyer” section, you’ll find information on public service lawyer referral programs, wherein you are interviewed to have your needs diagnosed and then provided with a referral to a lawyer or to helpful community resources.

There are also commercial lawyer referral services on the web. Go to FindLaw, for instance, and you have instant access to thousands of lawyers. You can search by city and state, and several results come up within the area you specify, with details of each firm’s background, areas of practice, published works, attorneys on staff and so on. There are other similar services listed on the ABA site.

For a fee, you can also request a search of the ABA’s National Lawyer Regulatory Data Bank to see if any disciplinary action has ever been taken against the lawyers you are interested in.