Starting an ecommerce business, or adding ecommerce to your existing one always sounds like a good idea. Given the growth rate of online businesses clicking at 10% per year or more, ecommerce is a valid consideration for a wide variety of reasons. Ultimately, the one reason that defines it as a good business decision is that it can make money.

There are many pitfalls that many businesses can fall into when venturing into the ecommerce territory. As you might expect, most online business fail to deliver. Because they are relatively easy to set up compared with their brick and mortar counterparts, the risk is lower and the loss is palatable.

If an ecommerce business has a good product and is competitive in the market, why would it fail? Most owners of failing online businesses have no idea how to answer this question. The answer almost always is that they “winged” the business. They may even have a beautiful website but forgot to implement the basics of business planning.

Very few business succeed without a business plan. Ecommerce planning is just as much a requirement although developing a plan for an online business requires a different approach. Sadly, if most ecommerce failures had established a plan starting with the following guidelines they would probably not have failed. Some may not even have ventured online as a result of understanding the challenge ahead of them.

Ecommerce planning begins with this simple approach to developing a plan for a predictable ecommerce business. Begin with the end in mind.

1. ESTABLISH YOUR REVENUE TARGET

If this is a new ecommerce site, be realistic. How much revenue do you need to turn over in the first year to produce a profit? What would you be comfortable with? I don’t know what a good number is because it depends on the product. ,000 might be a great number if you’re selling an e-book but might not carry your overhead if you’re selling physical goods that you have to stock and inventory. In any case, know your target. Let’s use ,000 for this example.

2. ESTABLISH YOUR SELLING PRICE FOR YOUR PRODUCT

A little research is in order to make sure your price is consistent with your competitors who are already selling on the net. You are always in a better position if you are selling unique products but we don’t all have that luxury. In any case, once you’ve established your price, you can by simple division know how many units you need to sell to meet your revenue target. So far, so good. For this example, lets use per sale.

Revenue / Product Price = # of Sales required

,000 / = 1000 sales required

3. ASSUME A CONSERVATIVE CONVERSION RATE FOR YOUR WEBSITE

E-Books usually have a conversion rate of 0.5 – 5 percent. More expensive could have lower conversion percentages. Also, and very importantly, how the visitor got to your site has a dramatic affect on the conversion rate. If the search terms that your site gets ranked for are very closely related to the product or services being sold, it is likely that your conversion will be higher. If you know personally some of the owners of competitive sites, broach the conversation and ask what a good conversion rate is. Whatever you establish, make sure it’s conservative (a low number). So now, you can calculate how many visits your site will require to meet your revenue target. Let’s use 1% conversion for this example.

Visits = sales required / conversion rate

Visits = 1000 / .01

The website needs 100,000 visitors to meet plan.

This is where the rubber meets the road. The challenge is to figure out how to get 100,000 visitors who need your products and services to visit your website. For many clients, this represents the 1st time they’ve been able to express definitive business goals and requirements for their ecommerce solution.

CHOOSE KEYWORDS THAT DELIVER YOUR TRAFFIC REQUIREMENTS

Your ecommerce solution involves a website that is optimized for keywords relative to your market. Basic keyword research will highlight whether there are enough searches in your business category to meet your goals. Choosing the correct keywords, ones that you know you can rank for is extremely important especially for start-up ecommerce sites. New sites won’t have the momentum to compete with the established players! Carefully select your niches (keywords) or you won’t get your site noticed by the major search engines and you won’t hit your visitor targets.

Ultimately your ecommerce solution needs enough funding to support a well thought out website and an on-going search engine optimization plan. Skimp on the SEO and the money you put up for the website will in all likelyhood have been wasted. Build the SEO into the marketing plan of your ecommerce site (or learn how to do it yourself) and your online business should be predictable and profitable.

By: Greg Newell
Posted: Aug 03, 2009

PrecisionWeb.net is quickly rising to the top as one of the best e-commerce Web hosting providers on the Web, which is why it is no surprise PrecisionWeb has been named a Top E-Commerce Host. PrecisionWeb.net has also taken home awards for Best Cart Features, Best SEO Cart and Most Friendly Cart by 100Best, Inc.

As one of the top e-commerce Web host providers, PrecisionWeb.net has been working since 1998 to provide customers with the best Web hosting experience on the Web. Bsed on the overall service and quality offered by the company. PrecisionWeb.net’s low prices for a high quality product make this company an easy choice for such an award.

As a result PrecisionWeb received the coveted award of Top E-Commerce Host from http://www.100Best-free-web-space.com. The best e-commerce Web host provider received top honors from bestshoppingcartreviews.com for best shopping cart software features as well as an award from webhostranking.com for having the best SEO cart. Lastly, PrecisionWeb.net also received an award from besthosting101.com for having the most friendly cart.

These honors are further proof that PrecisionWeb.net has successfully carved themselves out a marketable niche with e-commerce among the Web hosting industry and continues to strive toward providing customers with the best service and product available at an affordable price. Since inception, PrecisionWeb.net has grown to now providing services to over 3000 e-commerce companies. This best e-commerce Web hosting provider offers a variety of Web hosting features to successful use the Web site. The features includes a search engine friendly shopping card, free Web site building tools with over 400 templates to choose from. Security is also of the utmost importance to the folks at PrecisionWeb.net. Free secure directory using SSL encryption is also available. Full FTP access and Fileman software for password protection, file editing and more is also included even in the most basic package. With 99.9 percent network uptime, 24 hour monitoring, back up generators, and secure backup, Web site builders can feel confident in PrecisionWb.net.

About 100 Best, Inc.

100 Best, Inc. is a comprised of a a diverse group of Web hosting provider and e-commerce experts who continually work together to find more and more effective methods of providing information to consumers about free web hosting and e-commerce solutions and services. Through its Web hosting review site, 100Best-free-web-space.com, 100 Best, Inc. continues to work toward providing individuals and business owners with the information they need regarding reviews of Web host providers and e-commerce Web hosting companies along with merchant accounts. This information can be found through an extensive article database and a variety of tutorials. Coupon codes and links to great online deals can also be found throughout the site.

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Posted On: St. George, UT (Vocus/PRWEB) February 16, 2011

eCommerce Merchants (http://www.ecmta.org), a leading educational trade association for small- and medium-sized online merchants, announced today its partnership with Mountain Media (http://www.mountainmedia.com). Mountain Media’s proprietary ecommerce platform, Mountain Commerce was named to Practical eCommerce magazine’s list of notable shopping cart solutions in late 2007. The Mountain Commerce suite enables online merchants to receive top search-engine visibility while providing powerful up-selling and cross-selling features, effective order management and fulfillment, pricing and promotions handling, payment processing and catalog management, all on a secure and reliable platform. Additionally, the company offers a full compliment of commercial Web services such as Search Engine Marketing, Graphic Design and Web Hosting and has been granted CISP certification by VISA as a level 1 PCI DSS compliant provider.

The reciprocally beneficial partnership arrangement will allow eCommerce Merchants members to take advantage of free small-business web hosting for an entire year when they implement a Mountain Media ecommerce website while Mountain Media’s merchants will receive free membership to the growing ECOMMERCE MERCHANTS organization which provides ecommerce education, best practices guidance, technology & infrastructure advice and sourcing & supplies solutions to merchants around the world who use the internet to sell or promote products and services.

“Our mission is to help businesses succeed on the Web by providing them with search engine friendly solutions and services,” Says James Curley, Co-founder and CEO of Mountain Media. “So we’re elated about the opportunity to provide our customers with access to the resources and tools that eCommerce Merchants provides to educate them further and help them improve their businesses and their online sales.”

“This partnership is a definite value to our members; our members that are using Mountain Media’s suite of services have been extremely pleased with the results they have received as well as the terrific hands on support they get,” Says Cresta Pillsbury, Managing Partner of eCommerce Merchants. “I couldn’t be happier to have Mountain Media as a partner and to be able to offer their services to our members at a discount.

For more information about Mountain Media products and services, please visit http://www.mountainmedia.com or call 877-583-0300.

ABOUT MOUNTAIN MEDIA

Mountain Media (http://www.mountainmedia.com) was founded in 1998 to heed the growing commercial demand for effective website design and development allowing small to mid-tier businesses to proliferate their message and expand into new market segments. Since then, the company has set focus on, and become a premium provider of customizable, search-engine friendly eCommerce products and services. The company offers a full compliment of commercial Web services such as Search Engine Marketing, Graphic Design, Custom Application Development, Payment Gateway Services and Web Hosting.

ABOUT ECOMMERCE MERCHANTS

eCommerce Merchants (http://www.eCommerce Merchants.org) is a leading trade association of small and medium sized ecommerce businesses. The organization provides best practices guidance, technology & infrastructure advice and sourcing & supplies solutions to online merchants around the world who use the internet to sell or promote products and services. The organization works closely with the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (http://www.gopesa.org).

For Mountain Media:

Taunia Kipp

Chief Operations Officer

877-583-0300 x214

taunia.kipp(at)mountainmedia.com

For eCommerce Merchants:

Cresta Pillsbury

Managing Partner

eCommerce Merchants

cresta.pillsbury(at)ecmta.org

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Posted On: New York, NY and Saratoga Springs, NY November 25, 2008

[eCommerce Merchants has been selected to provide a [merchant ecommerce education program by Inc.com, creators of the Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000, definitive lists of America’s fastest-growing privately held companies. eCommerce Merchants is a leading trade association for [ecommerce education.

eCommerce Merchants will provide online and in-person education to all Inc. 5000 companies beginning with the 27th Annual Inc. 500/Inc. 5000 Conference and Awards Ceremony at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington D.C. on September 18-20, 2008 where a dedicated eCommerce Pavilion will be included at the conference for the first time ever.

“Inc. 500/Inc. 5000 Conference is delighted to be working with eCommerce Merchants on this exciting and important new initiative,” noted Kelly Winkler VP, Events and Business Resources, Mansueto Ventures, Publisher of Inc. “This partnership will allow us to deliver valuable information to Inc. 500/Inc. 5000 business owners at our events and throughout the year.”

“We couldn’t ask for a better partner than Inc. 500/Inc. 5000,” commented Cresta Pillsbury, Executive Vice President of Business Development at eCommerce Merchants. “They have an impressive tradition of fostering entrepreneurial excellence, which complements our ‘best-practices’ approach to ecommerce perfectly.”

The Inc. 500/Inc. 5000 Conference in Washington is open for the first time to all business owners. Reservations can be made by visiting http://www.Inc500Conference.com or by calling 877-211-0489. eCommerce Merchant members who are not Inc. 500/5000 members are eligible for a special member discount by calling 877-211-0489 and asking for an “eCommerce Pavilion Attendee” registration.

Companies interested in exhibiting in the eCommerce Pavilion or working with eCommerce Merchants should contact Cresta Pillsbury at cresta.pillsbury@ecmta.org or (415) 342-7075.

eCommerce Merchants is a leading trade association of small and medium sized ecommerce businesses. The organization provides best practices guidance, technology & infrastructure advice and sourcing & supplies solutions to online merchants around the world who use the internet to sell or promote products and services. The organization works closely with the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (http://www.gopesa.org).

Press Contact:

Cresta Pillsbury

EVP, Business Development

eCommerce Merchants

415-342-7075

cresta.pillsbury@ecmta.org

http://www.ecmta.org

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Posted On: New York, NY August 8, 2008

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