How to Use the Internet to Advertise, Promote and Market Your Business or Web Site: With Little or No Money

First Chapter

How to Use the Internet to Advertise, Promote, and Market Your Business or Web Site-With Little or No Money

Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc.

Chapter One

E-commerce is a simple concept that you'll need to understand so that you can see exactly the steps you need to take to use the Internet for promoting your business. E-commerce is a broad term that we will discuss in great detail, all with the intent of providing you with low- or no-cost ways to improve your Web site marketing campaign.

E-commerce: Any sale or purchase that takes place using the Internet or through electronic means.

Let's cover some of the basics of fundamental Web site terminology and theory. For a potential customer to visit your Web site, you must have a Web site and it must be hosted. There are thousands of companies that offer Web site design and hosting services, and some offer both services together. The first step is to obtain a domain name for your Web site. Most Web design firms offer inclusive hosting, Web site design, Web site maintenance, and domain name procurement. We highly recommend Gizmo Graphics Web Design (gizwebs.com) for their quality customer service, rapid site development, inclusive Web hosting, and domain name service as well as overall low cost. If you want to search for and buy your own domain name, we recommend GoDaddy (godaddy.com) as the premier service for domain name management. GoDaddy has proven time and again to be far superior than any other competitor in the domain name market. Once you have a domain name and a Web site established, you will need to ensure that the domain name server for your domain name is updated to point to your Web hosting company's DNS servers. GoDaddy simplifies this process by providing you with an intuitive Web-based management tool.

At this point we are assuming that you have a domain name, a completed and professionally designed Web site, and that your site is hosted, enabling access to anyone on the Internet. At this time you have what we would consider to be a "static" Web site. Your Web site may contain vast amounts of data and images about your products or services but offer no advanced or dynamic features such as shopping cart services or dynamically generated content.

There is nothing wrong with a static Web site, and, in fact, it is completely appropriate in most instances. The Silvermine Tavern (www .silverminetavern.com) in Norwalk, Connecticut, is a classic example of a superb static Web site. The Web site contains vast amounts of information about wine and dinner events, lodging, lunch and dinner menus, banquets, weddings, corporate events, and holiday gatherings. The site content is updated often to reflect new events, jazz artists, and unique culinary treats. Since the Silvermine Tavern Web site is designed to promote an establishment and not to sell products directly off the Internet, a static Web site is completely appropriate. Small and large businesses that wish to sell products online, such as Atlantic Publishing Company (atlantic-pub.com), have taken their sites much further by incorporating e-commerce into the Web site, enabling shoppers to buy and securely pay for products online. We will go into much more detail throughout this chapter.

The first thing that you need to understand is how e-commerce works: A consumer, or potential customer, accesses the Internet and navigates to your Web site. If you have a brick-and-mortar business, you'll want to have vital information on your Web site so that your customers can find you; as we discussed earlier, this would be a static Web site. This may include current products that are on special as well as other product listings that make consumers believe that your business is where they want to make their purchase and is both appealing and a good value to the consumer. Likewise, if you have an online business, you'll want to convince your potential customers or Web site browsers to make a purchase for the products you are selling from your Web site. Once consumers decide that they're ready to make a purchase, they'll need to be guided to an online transaction or secure Web server so that you can collect their personal and payment information using a secure encryption method. It is possible to create a Web site that can collect credit card and other sensitive data without offering encryption; however, most savvy shoppers will never enter credit card information into a nonsecure Web site. Therefore we highly discourage any attempt to create a simple shopping cart that does not include secure socket layer encryption of personal or sensitive data. Operating a Web site without encryption for personal or credit card data is a sure-fire formula for disaster and loss of potential customers.

To enable your Web site for e-commerce, you must install and configure your products in a shopping cart; we will offer you several low-cost and high-quality shopping carts. It is important to recognize the elements of a credit card transaction: your Web site contains the product pricing, description, and images, and the shopping cart is embedded into your Web site and stores the dynamic data regarding your product. When he or she is ready to "check out" from the Web site store, the customer typically clicks a "checkout" button and is taken to the encrypted version of the company Web site. The customer will typically continue with the checkout process by calculating shipping costs, entering personal information such as credit card data and a shipping address, and securely completing the transaction. All credit card companies charge a percentage of the sale as an overhead fee for using their credit processing services. The added service layer between your credit card processor and your Web site is known as a transaction service or gateway service. This layer recognizes an e-commerce transaction, performs immediate credit card authorization, and processes the transaction. While this service is not uncommon, it does add a layer of cost to operating your Web site, and we will discuss some lower-cost alternatives. There are two distinct possibilities that account for how your order may be processed: as discussed previously, after the order has been placed, all of the necessary information travels through a private gateway toward the "transaction/ gateway processing network." This processing network is where the transaction is approved or denied, depending on the credit history of the consumer and the funds available. Although this may seem like a long process, it takes only a few seconds to complete. For the business owner, offering an e-commerce service is an added service and an added fee. Another lower-cost option is to eliminate the transaction/gateway processing network. Many Web site owners prefer to manually "run" credit card payments through their desktop credit card processing/ authorization systems and merely use the shopping cart as an order processing and retrieval system, where the credit card is processed manually after the online session is completed. This low-cost alternative eliminates the cost of the middle-tier authorization and does not affect what the consumer sees after completing the checkout process. With both options, the consumer should be sent an order confirmation by e-mail. We will discuss the other shopping cart and authorization systems in detail throughout this chapter.

As mentioned, you will be able to use many different systems of payment to accommodate your online transactions, depending on how many transactions you average in one day. No matter what type of payment method you choose, you need to ensure that it is encrypted and secure so that the privacy and personal information of your customers is never jeopardized. As a reminder, never operate a Web site where you collect personal data or financial information without offering a secure and encrypted connection.

Digital Certificates

One of the first things that you're going to need to obtain when you're doing business on the Internet is a digital certificate. A digital certificate is also known as a "secure socket layer server certificate," or SSL certificate for short. A digital certificate is used to protect any communication that you have with your customers that contains private information. You'll need to have a digital certificate installed on your Web server so that you can take credit card orders in a safe and secure manner. You want to make sure that no one but you, your customer, and the bank receives your customer's financial and personal information. A digital certificate is going to ensure this privacy and security.

In most cases you'll be able to get a digital certificate through the Web hosting service where your Web site is hosted; however, it is not uncommon for them to mark up the cost of this service more than 100 percent over the cost of procuring the service directly from the providers listed below. If you wish to pursue buying your own SSL certificate, your Web hosting company will need to generate a key for your license from the Web server software (e.g., Microsoft Internet Information Server). You will need this piece of code (which will be sent to you in Notepad) to submit your SSL application with any service provider. After your SSL certificate is issued, you will be given a piece of code, or an encryption key, which you must provide to your Web hosting company. This ensures that encryption takes place and validates your corporate information to anyone wishing to view your certificate online. If you choose to buy an SSL certificate, you can expect to pay between $80 and $300 annually. The following are four reliable places to obtain your digital certificate:

1. GoDaddySSL (godaddyssl.com) Go Daddy will issue you a digital certificate using up to 256bit encryption for under $100 per year.

2. Geotrust (geotrust.com) Geotrust offers quick SSL certification for as low as $189 per year. Geotrust has always been a superior performer, and we highly recommend them.

3. Thawte (thawte.com) Thawte will issue you a digital certificate for $149.00. You can also receive a trial version for 21 days, and they typically offer other discounts.

4. VeriSign (verisign.com) VeriSign uses 128bit encryption for its digital certificates, ensuring your privacy and the privacy of your customers; however, it is also one of the most expensive services available.

Obtaining your digital certificate should be one of the first things that you implement if you're going to be doing business on the Internet. We do have some low-cost alternatives, which may be an option if you don't want to purchase an SSL certificate, are on a tight budget, or don't possess the ability to install your own SSL certificate on the Web hosting company's servers (some Web hosting companies will only allow you to utilize SSL certificates procured through them, and some don't offer SSL services at all).

Rich Media Technologies Just Add Commerce ( justaddcommerce.com) is a unique software/service which eliminates the need for a third-party SSL certificate and shopping cart since both are built into the JAC software. JAC is a plug-in to Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver software that allows you to quickly generate products and e-commerce enable your Web site in minutes. The HTML-based application is simple to use, cost effective, and includes SSL secure processing on the JAC Web servers, eliminating the need for both the SSL certificate purchase as well as the purchase of shopping cart software. You can even choose to incorporate a merchant credit card payment gateway or manually process credit card orders. When an order is placed by the customer, you are notified via e-mail of the order and then securely retrieve the order from the JAC Web site. The robust package includes e-mail order notification, customizable checkout templates, and good technical support. The service starts for around $329, with a reduced renewal for subsequent years. JAC is a very simple tool to use, and you don't have to be an advanced Web site designer to quickly implement e-commerce onto your Web site.

PayPal (paypal.com) is free alternative to buying an SSL certificate or a shopping cart. You will be required to open a business account with PayPal (which we highly recommend anyway). PayPal offers a very simple process to create an e-commerce-enabled Web site at no additional cost. Basic HTML (we suggest Microsoft FrontPage) is all that is required. One common myth is that for shoppers to utilize a PayPal shopping cart, they must also be PayPal users. This is not correct; there is no requirement for shoppers to join PayPal to allow them to securely shop and buy products from your Web site.

Web Hosting

Web hosting is an important aspect of e-commerce that you're going to have to establish before you can start doing business on the Internet, and typically before you complete your Web site design (which can be done without the Internet). Even if you are just planning to promote your traditional brick-and-mortar business online without e-commerce enabling your site, you must have a Web hosting account.

Shopping Carts

We have discussed, in general terms, the purpose of the shopping cart, which e-commerce enables your Web site, in conjunction with an SSL certificate and the Web server on which your site is hosted. A shopping cart is simply an application or program that keeps track of items a site visitor picks to buy from your site until he or she proceeds to the "checkout" phase of the buying process. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the shopping cart simply manages the process of keeping track of the products, financial data, and customer information, which is then passed to the credit card merchant gateway or is stored in a secure database, where the order is manually processed through a merchant credit card authorization process. The credit card merchant or payment gateway service, if implemented automatically, utilizes your Web site's secure connection through the appropriate financial networks and obtains an approval or denial for the credit card charge.

There are hundreds of shopping carts available-some are excellent, and some are not. They all have pros and cons, and we will recommend several for you. Before we make recommendations, it is important to understand the features available in a shopping cart so that you can determine which are desirable for your business.

There are many free shopping carts available, most of which are written in basic Perl language and may require extensive knowledge of scripting language as well as access to the Web server. Many Web hosting companies will not install third-party shopping carts, and most do not provide any technical support at all, so you need to be very cautious when selecting a shopping cart application. Full-feature shopping carts can cost upward of $800, so it is very important to review the features you truly need and select the most appropriate and cost-effective shopping cart solution.

As we already discussed, PayPal is one of the best free e-commerce shopping cart solutions. PayPal integrates basic shopping cart functions within your Web site, and it links via the PayPal network as the payment gateway. When the transaction is complete, the funds are automatically transferred and deposited into your PayPal account and can then be moved into your business checking account. The main resistance to implementing PayPal on a global scale by business owners was the reluctance of potential shoppers to join PayPal to complete a transaction; however, this was recently changed so that customers can complete a transaction without creating a PayPal account. Another advantage is that PayPal is universally accepted throughout the world, similar to major credit cards. With PayPal, there are no monthly fees, no purchase costs, and no setup costs. You are charged only a small percentage of each sale total. PayPal has an extensive program for fraud protection. Online merchants are offered a wide array of tools available from paypal .com to assist with the Web development and integration effort. The only "free" shopping cart we recommend is through PayPal.

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Excerpted from How to Use the Internet to Advertise, Promote, and Market Your Business or Web Site-With Little or No Money by Bruce C. Brown Copyright © 2006 by Atlantic Publishing Group, Inc.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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