As a business you probably understand that in order to stay competitive you must integrate ecommerce to your present business strategy. A little research will show you that there is an extensive array of technology and solutions for enterprise and web store building available in market. You also perceive that ecommerce sites can cost you from a mere couple of hundred bucks to hundreds of thousand of dollars. How to choose something from so many options that will exactly fit your present need?

Although, this might look like a daunting task, a little preparation will definitely help you taking right decision in your quest for an appropriate ecommerce solution. To understand your requirement better and create a proper ecommerce strategy, you have to ask yourself a number of questions. Below I jotted down some of questions that, hopefully, will spur your imagination.

* What should be look of my web store? * Do I need a database for my product catalog? * How should purchase order generate on my web store? * Do I need to handle different pricing system for dealers, wholesalers and end customers? * How do I bill my customers? * How easy can I make my web store to navigate? * How many search options should we have? * Can I show my customers a product comparison table? * What should be my merchant account gateway system? * Finally, how much should I invest to build my web store?

If building an ecommerce site from scratch feels too overwhelming to you and you are a small business, my suggestion is - to build a web store with one of providers similar to Yahoo, Bigstep, Rusbiz etc.

The web stores that you can build directly on Internet have all necessary features like shopping cart, product catalog and payment gateway as any regular ecommerce site. In most of cases, you construct web store online from templates and easy-to-use editor and you hardly need to know html or other script languages.

You can order your Web Store from Rusbiz right now.

The benefits of using a web store that you can build online are enormous.

Quick to build: If you have all materials handy, you can build a web store within a day.

Easy in use: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a fully functional ecommerce site. Step by step procedures of making pages from templates allow anybody to create a professionally looking web store in no time.

Affordable: Although, some of providers charge commissions on your sales, as Yahoo does, in most of cases your expenses are less than US$ 100 a month to have a good web store.

Consider this:

According to an annual study of Internet trends by marketing research firm Ipsos, almost two third of Internet users in United States have by now purchased a product or service online. That’s a dramatic increase from only 36 percents of respondents in 2000. Studies show that more than 35.5 million U.S. Internet users made shopping trips to web shops during week ending November 3, 2002, which is roughly 14 million more than almost same time period in 2001.

While hype over new economy is maybe over, one thing is for sure that Internet has revolutionized way we do business and positioned itself as one of biggest and most unique sales channels. Many companies, finally, started to realize that their very existence may get jeopardized if they are slow in integrating Internet to their business model.

But question still remains - is there any effective method of doing business online?

Below I have outlined some components crucial to any online venture. While these might not be only vital components of web based business, understanding them correctly will significantly improve your chance of doing online business effectively. Business Plan Business plans are like road maps. Imagine, you ended up in a unfamiliar town and you have to find an address without a map! How would you feel? Definitely, you would have been much better off with a map of locality! The same thing goes for business plan. Though, many successful ventures may have been started without benefit of a formal business plan, a good business plan improves your chances of success and help you avoid many mistakes.

A recent AT&T study of successful entrepreneurs shows that businesses are more successful if they have a written business plan than ones which don’t. With a written business plan you get a better picture of your planned venture. So, before starting you online venture, take some time and write down what are you planning to do. Product or Service If you are a brick and mortar company merely trying to expand sales of your products or services on Internet your task is easier! You at least don’t have to mull over what to sell. But, what an entrepreneur who decided to start a new venture should sell on Internet?

Actually, you can sell virtually any product or service through Internet. You may say, "Wait a second, you can’t sell big ticket items over net, right?" Wrong! The car and part industries alone forecast to generate US$ 274 billion in revenues from online trade by 2004. There are incidents of consumers buying corporate jets online!

If you are serious about starting an online business, finding a product or service that suits you should not be very difficult.

Knowledge base products like e-books, how-to-reports and hard to find information and data sell quite well on Internet. Drop-ship items are bountiful on Internet. Thanks to global reach of Internet finding manufacturer for any item that you plan to import to your country or export from your country became lot easier. If you have expertise, online services similar to web design, travel arrangement etc. are also good sales. Internet users are paying readily for various types of online contents. Global online content market will add up to 50 billion US$ in 2003. You can consider this too!

Website/ Web store Since you customers take their decision, whether to do business with you or not based on what they see on your site, it is critical to have a professional-looking website with good related content.