Weaving Culture Into e-Commerce Written by Gary Hyman
Weaving Culture Into e-Commerce Copyright © 2003. All rights reserved You probably already know that non-English speaking Internet audience transacts 63% of global e-Commerce transactions. If you know that then you’re definitely aware that by 2004 this audience is expected to growth more than 10 percent. That’s at least 2 trillion dollars multiplied by 75%… ...need I say more. I going to share two words with you that should help towards your International e-Commerce Market Entry initiative. These word need to be taken very seriously if you wish to become truly successful in International e-Commerce. “Local and Language!” Yes local language of your Internet audience needs to be considered very carefully. Not only is it polite to show your non-English speaker their local language, but also you’ll find a keen sense of trust that develops by time your purchaser hits that purchase button. It’s all about developing trust and a comfort level sufficient enough that your customer will purchase your product. I have spent many years working Internationally and there’s nothing more important than developing a relationship through use of language. When it comes to shopping carts you don’t want to be one of those abandoned shopping cart statistics. A high percentage of your non-English speakers will abandon purchase if your website is not in their language, but more importantly if shopping cart is not in their native language likelihood of an abandoned transaction will be very high. If they do not have a comfort level to understand for example fine print, shipping costs, product that they’re getting you can expect – No Purchase! The Multilingual Shopping Cart ****************************** This short articles focuses on two key International, multilingual, commercial grade shopping cart solutions. One is free and other one will cost you some money. Without a doubt its a significant challenge to implement a shopping cart solution that has ability to service International (and more specifically non-Englising) Internet Population. There are many ‘ready made’ International Shopping Cart solutions. Most of solutions are ready to integrate directly into your existing e-Commerce infrastructure, one of which is OSCommerce (OSC) and another is Shopfactory. If you’re on a tight budget then OSC could be right for you. It is 100% free, although it may require an ‘OSC expert’ to handle integration. OSC does make a claim that software is an ‘out-of-the-box installation... minimum effort...". You should take into account your level of expertise. It may be more cost effective to bring in an OSC guru. OSC is extremely robust. It includes PHP modules (a web scripting language), and runs on top of various platforms such as Linux, Solaris, BSD, and Microsoft Windows. OSC also makes use MySQL as a backend, and probably as no surprise Apache version of OSC is most stable. OSC is a mature product. At last count they had about 1,400 implementations, and are backed by a well rounded International development and Support organization. Some of OSC members are from Spain, Japan, France, Australia, USA, and Germany. OSC is a true Open Source Solution, just like that of UNIX. There are customized versions of OSC, but public source is still controlled as an Open Source License. It seems that intent of OSC is to keep license in public domain. Here are some live examples of OSC implementations. Please note that these are random selections, and are not necessarily endorsed by The eCommerce Growth Group: Japanese: http://usa-generalstore.com/index.html Spanish: http://www.nucleodigital.com ienda/default.php German: http://www.bbsstore.de/ You can get more details on OSC at their website: http://oscommerce.com They also have a companion website that handles product documentation and support. The website can be found at: http://oscdox.com Over 100,000 Shops ****************** The other product is Shopfactory. This is a product that I have covered in Japan Online: New Opportunities and New Markets. I included this software because it has Japanese language and currency support (amongst many other software vendors too) capabilities. In fact, solution has been thoroughly tested in and for Japanese market. Unlike OSC this product comes with a price tag attached to it. The cost is affordable though - an entry level price of $179, and a high end of approximately $1,000 for full blown International version. Shopfactory boast more than 100,000 shops globally and supports a dozen languages.
| | Keep your business computer trouble free.Written by John Watson
I see Danny Burke of PC Magic once a week to sort out any problems on my computer and to help me move ahead with an internet info product business. He spends most of his week rescuing business owners who are having problems with their computers.Last week I asked him for advice he would give a business owner who was having trouble with his computer. This is advice he gave me: Keep things simple on your computer. Don’t use it for games etc. Just use it for business. Danny finds that half his customers have caused their own problems by extras they have downloaded from internet such as: Additional toolbars for internet explorer. Unnecessary utilities like internet speed boosters which seldom work. Eye candy such as wall paper changers, animated cats etc All most businesses need is A base operating system An email client A web browser An office suite A firewall and anti-virus system Don’t download any old stuff off internet. The more stuff you put on your hard disk, more likely it is that you will have problems. Microsoft cannot check all different applications you might download for compatibility. Your first graphics package and another graphics package might fight over file extensions. Try to stick with one package. Similar problems occur with music and video players which should not be on a business system anyway unless you are in that field. Don’t upgrade unless you could name three good reasons to upgrade. After Danny gave me this advice, I rather guiltily tried to upgrade my BT broadband service to new combined BT Yahoo broadband service. Sure enough as soon as I had installed new service, things started to go wrong. Things that had worked before (like links in emails) no longer worked. I’m not blaming BT Yahoo. I just had too much stuff on my computer! When I uninstalled new service everything started working again.
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