E-Commerce Anatomy

In building an e-commerce section of one’s site, it’s important to keep in mind the scale of the operations. For larger corporations with products ranging into the thousands, e-commerce can handle as much complexity as is required in order to ensure proper execution of operations. For small businesses with a merchant account already established, it can be an excellent venture involving little additional cost to current procedures and overhead, as well as to ensure the security of the transaction in a simple yet confidential manner. We’ll explore the basic principles required in order to build an efficient though cost-effective solution for web-based commerce.

To begin with, a product description with a picture is required. This can be plain html text with a simple image or a dynamically generated site with a database featuring an extensive catalogue. The point is to firmly establish the product within the clients mind. A bed and breakfast business could use a photo of the premises and use standard fields for the credit card information and the senders email address. Larger companies may use brief descriptions, with multiple categories in a database, with an internal search engine.

For a small business, say with the bed and breakfast, it would be a simple matter to setup a server-side script (using PHP, Perl, or ASP) which takes the input from a credit card field and encrypts the number; this is then emailed to the merchant who takes the number and completes the transaction with their normal day to day offline merchant account. Another simple method involves using a service such as PayPal. With a larger company offering more products, a similar script will use a database to store the information from the users’ selection and build a shopping cart using those two elements. The credit card number is encrypted using SSL technology, which prevents outside parties from observing the transaction; this is also used to transfer the data of the shopping cart.

Verisign has become one of the most trusted services which offers encrypted transaction services and is used to verify that the merchant is exactly who they claim to be, without room for error. Large organizations will often make use of online merchant accounts with specialized services dealing with e-commerce.

These basics are incorporated in all sites that engage in e-commerce as long as the client can determine what the product is, ensure whom they’re dealing with, as well as having a method of secure transaction available. Engaging in business online is then simple and efficient.