By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!

See Also   How to Build a Web Store for FREE   How to choose mailing list management software   How to Grow Your Web Business   How to Accept Credit Cards without a Merchant Account   How To Develop Online Products That Sell   How to Change Your Web Hosting Service (ISP)   How to Deal with Disgruntled Customers   How to Get Top Search Engine Positioning   How to Beat Credit Card Fraud   How to Design an Affiliate Program   How to Accept Credit Card Payments   How to Choose a Shopping Cart

The heart of any Web store is the software that it runs on. However, up until relatively recently, software solutions for e-commerce were largely do-it-yourself affairs, consisting of a number of disparate tools lashed together to fulfil the major tasks of an online store.

This situation is changing rapidly. From the large number of press releases that pass across my desk it would seem that every day sees the launch of a new software product, each of which claims to be a complete e-commerce solution. However, close investigation reveals a huge difference in the features that these products offer and the price that is charged for them.

It's not surprising therefore that the selection of a suitable e-commerce solution is a decision that many aspiring Web merchants agonise over.

So what features should you look for when choosing an e-commerce solution?

There are three basic areas to examine: how easy the store is to set up, how easy it is to process orders through it and how easy it is to administer on a day-to-day basis.

Set Up

To an extent, the desirable set up features and options will depend on the skill levels of the individual storeowner. For example a storeowner with no HTML or CGI experience should look for software that creates a complete store via wizards and templates. On the other hand, more technically savvy merchants will want a solution that provides them with a higher degree of flexibility and enables them, for example, to create their own HTML pages.

Regardless of technical skill levels, there are several features that all merchants should look out for. Good documentation and support is a must, of course. Also vital is the ability to import product data from a database file. For once you have more than, say 10 to 20 items for sale, entering product details manually becomes a major chore.

Would-be storeowners should also think carefully before selecting an e-commerce solution that relies on the use of cookies to track visitors in a store. Although much of the media hype surrounding the use of cookies is dying down, there is still a fair amount of misleading and confusing information around. And as a result many people still surf with cookies disabled in their browsers and are therefore unable to shop in stores that rely on them.

An important part of the set up process is the specification of sales taxes and shipping charges. Be careful - many e-commerce solutions currently available have major limitations in these areas. For example they may have no way of specifying shipping charges for international shipments or they may be limited to being able to collect sales tax from one US state only. The best solutions come with pre-set tax tables that ensure the correct levels of tax are collected on each order. Some solutions also interface directly with information from carriers such as UPS and can automatically calculate the shipping cost for each order.

Another area to investigate is the range of advanced features and services that are provided. Services like domain name registration and automatic search engine submission can save a lot of hassle. And additional features such as autoresponders and chat rooms can help build a top class store.

More: Order processing and store administration