The amount of people in the UK starting up their own business has soared over the past year, with Britain now second only to the USA in terms of entrepreneurship among industrialised countries.
Figures released by the Work Foundation and London Business School revealed that 6.4 per cent of the UK population was involved in entrepreneurial activity last year, up from 5.4 per cent in 2002. Business-to-business sales are five times retail sales on the Internet, according to recent industry surveys. Big and small companies are selling millions of pounds worth of goods and services every day.
However, to get all the commercial advantages of the internet, businesses need to set up a fully-fledged e-commerce site. That is one where online customers can browse stock, select items to fill a shopping basket and then go to a virtual counter to pay for the goods.
Many businesses owners are finding that setting up an e-commerce website isn’t as costly as they might have first imagined. In the last couple years, a number of e-commerce software systems have arrived in the market which businesses can simply hook-up into their existing brochure type website. The selection of an ecommerce software system however needs to be made carefully as a wrong decision could end up costing a whole lot more in the long run. Of course you will need to check that the e-commerce software can be easily adapted to your existing website colour scheme; whether it has a secure socket layer (SSL) encryption, which is the e-commerce standard for protecting customer information; and the additional features such as calculation of the shipping charge and that it will work with your own payment processing company. On the whole however most of the major ecommerce software systems will have features that will meet most of these requirements.
It is also important to differentiate between “locally hosted” & “remotely hosted” ecommerce software systems as the type can have significant long term cost implications for the smaller business. Locally hosted software such as Actinic (www.actinic.com) and Oscommerce ( www.oscommerce.com ) need to be bought packaged or downloaded from the internet. Setting it up on your web site will require technical skills in database management and web programming, as well as arranging special e-commerce hosting facilities. Generally speaking you will need to get help from a professional web developer to get these systems working properly on your web site.
Remotely hosted e-commerce software such as BazaarBuilder (www.BazaarBuilder.com), on the other hand, can be used without any of the encumbrances of the locally hosted solution as the e-commerce software system is provided on a turnkey basis. Your online business can be set-up and managed from any computer connected to the Internet, anywhere in the world. After registering, you simply add your products to the online database and customise the software to match your own web site, without the need for any web programming skills or any special web hosting requirements. Remotely hosted software therefore become an ideal choice for web site designers who perhaps do not have expertise in web programming and for those who need a quick and low cost solution to setting up an e-commerce website.
With good planning and selection of all the tools available, even the smallest businesses are starting to make profits by selling their products online. Many of the earlier barriers such as high launch costs and technical expertise have been removed by recent advances in software capability. EBusiness has finally come of age for the small business owner as well.
Kamran Khan, E-Business Director, www.BazaarBuilder.com
Kamran Khan is eBusiness Director for BazaarBuilder.com responsible marketing of the BazaarBuilder ecommerce software to web designers and small businesses
