Jeepers! Web Sites are confusing, hopefully you'll find these short explanations a useful guide figuring out what you're after.

What Is It?

E-commerce for most web users will generally involve the purchase or sale of products and services online.

But more than just the ability to buy nice tan moccasins from nice-tan-moccasin.com it also involves, but isn't limited to, processes that promote the service, process the payments and convert users into customers. After all what good is selling if nobody is buying.

Why Have It?

Well broadly speaking the obvious advantages of e-commerce should be enticing enough, global reach, limited overheads, malleable frameworks. But specific aspects can be a little more nuanced to discern.

For example there a multiple ways to process a customer order, the simplest way might be to let customers get redirected to services like PayPal or Google Checkout. Alternatively banks and companies such as RBS Worldpay and Sage Pay respectively offer more professional, seamless systems but require higher initial investment and monthly subscription commitments. Why have one but not the other will come down to a businesses unique needs.

Integrating e-commerce invariably involves careful compromise, but the advantages go way beyond simply selling products. Some organisations will want encourage account sign-ups to collect personal information and get a better gauge of their sites visitors. Some will want to ensure users spend as much time on the site as possible, maybe to boost page impressions for ad revenue, or maybe to guarantee a message or viewpoint is being acknowledged.

What's An Example

The Closet, a designer dress hire service, needed an attractive, usable online presence to the allow users to complete orders online. TMS Web Design produced a site using a familiar shopping cart approach to allow customers to browse and appraise dresses, check for availability and pay through a secure online merchant account service, fully automating a process that had previously been restricted to telephone orders. This all while complementing the aspirational, luxury nature of the service with a suitably mature, professional and classic design.

Special care was taken to ensure customers could examine the unique detailing of the special dresses with zoom functions and the ability to showcase multiple angles. A distinctive and customisable front page was also added to allow weekly promotions or pushes of certain dresses and styles, as well as push the supplementary make-up range the business also stocked, and any special offers or news that might happen to be taking place.

As a further example of the dynamic and customisable features of the site, a new blog section was added in a cross promotion with one of the businesses owners Jennifer Metcalfe appearance on Strictly Come Dancing. In addition to personal comments and adding photos from the show entries included product links to encourage the new visitors into the commercial ares of the site.

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