An e-commerce website refers to a website where you can buy and sell goods and services on the internet. Fulfilment of orders can be online i.e. electronic products or services or it can be offline i.e. for physical products or services.

So you want to set up an e-commerce website. While it may appear daunting, it is very easy if you set your mind to it. There are several ways of going about it,

You can build an e-commerce website on your own if you have the necessary skills. Some popular software for building a website include Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver.

After building you website, you will need a shopping cart software program that will help you take orders, calculate shipping and tax. It should be able to send sales notification too. Several options include GoEcart.com and 1shoppingcart.com. You can also make use of the e-commerce solution provided by Ezhostcafe.com.

Next, you will definitely need to obtain a means of receiving payments online. For this to be possible, you need a merchant account and a payment gateway. Some banks might reject you but keep trying until you get one that will accept you. Some leading payment gateways include Authorize.net and Verisign.

Of course, it might be too expensive to get the above or you might not even have access to a merchant account especially if you in Africa. This therefore means that you might have to consider a third party payment processor like Paypal
etc.

Next, you need to host your website. You need to find a web hosting company that supports e-commerce websites such as Godaddy. Network Solutions, Ezhostcafe.com etc or for some people who prefer a local option where they can initiate a direct contact especially in times of outage, use redwoodng.com.

Another option is to use a hosted solutions such as Prostores by Ebay or Yahoo stores by Yahoo. This typically costs between $30 – 40 per month plus setup fees of up to $50 per month. Ensure your hosted solution offers a full wizard-driven setup, multiple templates, SSL encryption, database driven system, multiple payment options etc.

Another option is to completely outsource the building of your ecommerce website to a company that will build the website from scratch. The company can handle the building of your website, a custom built shopping cart and advertising. Such a company include Ezhostcafe.com, redwoodng.com etc

Of course, you don’t even need to build or setup an e-commerce website. You can simply make use of several services or auctions websites to sell your goods and services. Such websites include Ebay, Craigslist, swapthings.com etc

Thats about all. If you have any comments please don’t hesitate to drop me a line below.