How do I Fulfil Orders?

A customers place orders, you're responsible for making sure they get what they paid for. ShopSite will send you an e-mail to notify you when a customer places an order. For security reasons, the e-mail does not include any customer payment information. You can go to the Orders section of your back office to view the order details. You can print an invoice or packing slip for the order as well. If you offer more than one shipping option to your customers, the method selected for each order will be displayed beside the shipping rate in the totals section of the order. When you package the ordered items for shipping, make sure you use packaging materials that are appropriate for the selected shipping method. Be sure to provide adequate padding to avoid damage to your products during shipping. You may also want to include a copy of the invoice or packing slip in the package. Follow the shipping service's rules for sealing and labeling the package.
After you have the order ready to be shipped, capture the funds for the order. In many places, the law requires you to have the order ready to ship before you can capture funds. Most payment gateways will allow you to authorize an order, which puts a hold on the funds in the customer's account, then capture the funds to your merchant account at a later time. You should, however, capture the funds before you actually ship the order.Once the shipping carrier has the package, it is a good idea to notify the customer via e-mail that their order is on its way. If the carrier provides a package tracking service, you can include the tracking code in the notification message so your customer can track the package as well. After the package arrives, you can also send a follow-up message to check that the order arrived in good condition. Good customer service during order fulfillment is a great way to encourage repeat customers.

Do I need to incorporate my small business?

Whether your team consists of 2 individuals or ten, all businesses will have the benefit of incorporating.

Advantages of forming a company or financial obligation company (LLC) include:

Personal asset protection.

Both firms and LLCs enable house owners to separate and shield their personal assets.

In a properly structured and managed company, owners should have limited liability for business debts and obligations.

Additional credibility.

Adding "Inc." or "LLC" after your business name adds instant authority and legitimacy.

Consumers, vendors, ANd partners could choose to do business with an incorporated company.

Nationwide availability. All 50 states and the District of Columbia now recognize both corporations and LLCs.
Name protection. In most states, other businesses may not file your exact corporate or LLC name in the same state.
Perpetual existence.

Corporations and LLCs exist constantly, even if their ownership or management changes.

Sole proprietorships and partnerships end if an owner dies or leaves the business.
Tax flexibility. Though profit and loss typically pass through an LLC and get reported on the personal income tax returns of owners, an LLC can also elect to be taxed as a corporation.

Likewise, a company will avoid double taxation of company profits and dividends by electing Subchapter S tax standing.

How does E-Commerce Work?

E-Commerce is driven by the software, so the exact way it works depends on the shopping cart software you select. There are several components, however, that make up any online shopping cart solution:

A. Web Hosting – The foundation of a good online store is a good Web server to host it on. Some shopping carts come packaged with a specific hosting provider or product. Others, such as ShopSite, can run on a variety of Web servers and are offered by a wide range of Web hosting providers. Factors such as support, reliability, bandwidth, features, and cost will drive your hosting provider selection. You may already have a Web site through a provider you are happy with where you can put your online store. If you're looking for someone to host your online store, check out our ShopSite Hosting Partners.

B. Merchant Interface – The merchant interface is the tool you use to manage your online store. It's what you use to set up and use all the other tools. It's more important to have a usable merchant interface than having a fancy-looking complex interface. On the other hand, if your merchant interface is too simple, you lose flexibility. A good merchant interface has to strike a balance between these opposing requirements. ShopSite is an incredibly powerful and flexible Shopping Cart, but the merchant interface is kept as simple and straight-forward as possible. In addition, there are a variety of wizards and tools to optimize common or complex tasks.

C. Product Catalog – Your product catalog is what your customers see, and how they find out about the products you're selling. It is the part of your online store where you want to invest the majority of your time and effort. Just like a printed catalog, your online catalog consists of products and pages. The pages create the structure of the catalog, but they also establish the look of the catalog. The pages are also one of the main ways you will present product information to your customers. The way you design your pages and how you present your products will have a significant impact on how potential customers perceive your store. We'll discuss this in greater detail when we cover how to create a product catalog in ShopSite later on.

D.Shopping Cart – The shopping cart is what your customers will use to place orders. Customers add the products they want to purchase to the cart, provide information about shipping and payment, then submit the order. Like the product catalog, how the shopping cart looks has an impact on customer perception. More importantly, however, how your shopping cart works can make the difference between an abandoned or completed sale. One of the biggest turn-offs for potential customers comes from not knowing the final price until they've completed several tedious forms. ShopSite prevents this by presenting the final cost on the first Shopping Cart screen, after the customer provides only the essential information for calculating shipping and tax rates. Shop Site also has a number of other features to make completing an order as simple and straight-forward as possible. This topic is covered in more detail in the taking orders in ShopSite section of this tutorial.

E. Payment Processing – Accepting payments is the backbone of any online store; without it, customers can't place orders. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you probably already have a system for processing credit card payments. Online payment processing is a similar process; customers enter payment information, which gets forwarded to a payment gateway that validates the information and confirms available funds, then transfers the funds to your merchant account. There are many different payment gateway and merchant account providers, as well as online payment services such as PayPal and Google Checkout. How to do this will be covered in more detail in the accepting payments in ShopSite section of this tutorial. You can also learn more about accepting payments online, as well as what payment gateway and services are supported by ShopSite on the Payment Processing in ShopSite page of our Web site.

F. Shipping – Once you get an order, you need to gather the products, prepare them for shipping, then send them to the customer. You will need to plan how you will handle the various costs and effort this involves. It's common practice for online merchants to pass this cost on to the customers — although offering free shipping is great incentive to get customers to buy from you. There are also different shipping services, such as next-day, second-day, and ground shipping, which you may want to offer your customers. With all of this, your customers want to know what their shipping costs will be before they place an order. ShopSite includes a variety of options for providing real-time shipping cost calculations. You can read about this in the taking orders in ShopSite section of this tutorial.

G. Tax Calculation – Calculating, collecting, and paying appropriate sales tax is another part of your online store that you need to consider. How you handle it depends on the laws where your business is. In the United States, for example, you are currently only required to collect sales tax for orders shipped within the state your company operates from (your customers are responsible for paying sales tax in their home state otherwise). In Europe, you are responsible for collecting and paying Value Added Tax (VAT) based off your business location, your customer's location, and the type of product you are selling. ShopSite includes tools to automatically calculate and collect the taxes you are responsible for. These are discussed in the taking orders in ShopSite section of this tutorial.

I. Advertising – Drawing customers to your Web site is a critical part of any online store, and good shopping cart software includes features to help you with this task. One key element of advertising an online store is making sure it shows up in the popular search engines, such as Google, Ask, and Yahoo!. Another excellent advertising tool is E-mail marketing, particularly to customers who've bought from you before. ShopSite includes a variety of tools to help you spread the word about your online store. These are discussed in the getting customers in ShopSite section of this tutorial.

These are only a few of the biggest components of shopping cart software that you will need to have a successful online store. If your shopping cart software does all these things well, you'll avoid unnecessary headaches and problems managing your online store.

What is E-Commerce?

E-commerce is anything and everything having to do with buying and selling products using electronic tools — computers, PDAs, cell phones, or whatever else. More commonly, E-commerce refers to business-to-consumer (B to C) Web sites that allow customers to place orders online. This still includes a broad range of sites including major retail chains, small local stores, Web-only stores, and individuals selling on aggregate sites such as eBay. E-commerce is powered by Web-based programs commonly called E-commerce Software or Shopping Cart Software. For most small and medium sized businesses, it's much more cost effective to create a store using an existing shopping cart software solution such as Shop Site, rather than trying to create the entire E-commerce solution from scratch.

When you consider what's involved, it's helpful to look at the two different ways people deal with E-commerce. First is the customer's viewpoint. For a customer, E-commerce is all about finding and ordering the right products. Potential customers are thinking about only a few things:

1. Where Can I Find What I Want to Buy?

2. Is This What I'm Looking For?

3. How Much Does It Cost?

4. How Do I Order It?

5. Am I Actually Going To Get What I Ordered?

And, the merchant's viewpoint. For the merchant, it's a lot more complex. There are several things you have to consider, and third-parties such as shipping carriers and payment processors you have to work with. Here are just a few of the things you'll need to think about:

A. Creating and Managing a Product Catalog

B.Drawing Potential Customers to Your Store

C. Taking Orders from Customers

D. Being Notified when Customers Place Orders

E. Accepting and Processing Customer Payments

F. Charging Appropriate Tax on Orders

G. Shipping Ordered Products

H. Calculating and Charging Shipping Rates

I. Protecting Your Store from Hackers

And there are several different components involved in any E-commerce software. If you've worked in a brick-and-mortar store, you probably already know about displaying your products, managing your inventory, and accepting payments when customers buy your products. You may also already know about the variety of advertising, pricing, and incentives you need to draw customers to your store. A Web-based store has all of those components to it, along with taking orders and shipping the products. Fortunately, good shopping cart software includes tools to help you with all of these jobs.

How to beginning a Drop Shipping Business

Estimates vary. however trade watchers have found that between twenty % to thirty % of on-line retailers use drop shipping.
So it is a verified business model, and you’ll be in sensible company if you go this route. Even huge retailers like Amazon use drop shipping.
With drop shipping, you'll sell on the subject of any product in any niche. and therefore the better part is you do not need to manage the hassles of ancient businesses, such as:
Storing your product (it will be terribly costly to shop for huge amounts of inventory, rent warehouse space… and United Nations agency desires to fill a spare room or garage with boxes)
Packaging or shipping any product (can you imagine the effort of taking orders and boxing them up multiple times a day… and heading to the post office?) this is often undoubtedly not a ascendible thanks to do business.
Most importantly… you don’t need to place down your cash direct to shop for product wholesale to resell… that you just aren’t certain can sell.
You see, once you run a business through drop shipping, you avoid all of these risks and potential loss of capital investment.
Now that we've taken a glance at the advantages of a dropshipping business let's take a glance at however the business model of dropshipping really works.
How Drop Shipping Works

With drop shipping, you're employed with a jobber or distributor that gives this service. Not all makers and wholesalers provide drop shipping, however several do.
You handle all the promoting for your business… you started your web site with a go-cart (or started a virtual front on Amazon)… write your blog… do social media and email marketing… you contact the prospects and customers. You tell all of them regarding the product and the way it'll create their lives higher.
Basically, you are doing all of the promoting, advertising, and promotion to induce the purchasers and create the sale.
But once it comes time to really transmit the merchandise and fulfill it… the drop shipper takes over. they need the inventory in their warehouse. You send them the orders that are available, paying the wholesale value for every order. this may be done by email, submitted on-line, or through a computer program file — it depends on the drop shipper. They place the order along and ship it to your client. Done.Of course, they are doing charge a fee for this service. simply what proportion depends on the merchandise. however sometimes, it’s regarding $2 to $5 — a handling fee. That’s on high of the wholesale value for the merchandise itself and therefore the value of shipping. which will appear to be lots.
But you'll still keep profitable as a drop shipping business, despite the agent margins.
If you would like to extend your profits you raise your costs — a minimum of the maximum amount as your market can bear. you'll conjointly sell a lot of volume. And you'll continually contact your drop shipper to barter a lower handling fee.
Remember although, that you just aren’t risking your cash direct. you're solely paying these fees if you really sell a product.
What product will be Drop Shipped
As with any on-line business, you would like to be in a very market that's “hot” and wherever there's an oversized variety of individuals able to obtain the product you sell. within the best-case situation, the niche you focus on ought to conjointly match one amongst your personal interests.

If you've got a passion for an exact market or variety of product, that enthusiasm can create your promoting efforts… and by extension your business… are going to be stronger. Not solely that, however you may really fancy what you are doing - creating your work appear a lot of like play. what is higher than obtaining paid to try to to what you love?
Fortunately, there square measure drop shipping corporations that employment with on the subject of each market, niche, and kind of product. Baby items, yoga garments, natural philosophy, clothing, art, books, beauty provides, supplements, home and garden items… it’s wide open.
A great place to ascertain for warm niches is huge on-line e-commerce platforms like Amazon. no matter things square measure on the bestseller lists there may be an excellent suitable a drop shipping business. however conjointly keep a watch on trends you see on Facebook and different social networks. Also, what’s within the news… what your friends and family square measure talking regarding.Here’s a professional tip: throughout the vacation season, season, and different special times of the year, connected product will do rather well.
A big mistake lots of individuals create once beginning any variety of business, dropshipping enclosed, is that if they see others doing it they assume it's too competitive and that they cannot create any cash in it. Nothing may be clear of the reality... if you see lots of competition that is the certain sign of a giant, healthy, profitable market.
Picking a Drop Shipper

Before you ever begin operating with a drop shipper, you ought to bear the order method yourself from a customer’s purpose of read. you would like to check however simple it's to order the merchandise, however long it takes to ship, however the drop shipper deals with any issues.
Of course, this may conjointly offer you the possibility to conjointly see the standard of the merchandise. you would like to create certain this is often one thing you’ll be proud to supply your customers. In some cases, dropshippers are going to be willing to send you a complimentary product for analysis or a minimum of sell it to you at their value.
If {you square measure|you're} into a distinct segment and have used different product that are similar, you'll check the merchandise yourself. Use it. Study it. will it do what's promised? Is it made from quality material or ingredients? Check the reviews of others on-line to check if your expertise matches up.
If you’re not into the niche, have an exponent or loved one attempt the merchandise. And even be bound to totally check on-line reviews, forums in this niche to check any comments from users, Facebook too. Do your analysis, in different words.
Knowing the merchandise also will assist you sell it. Your promoting are going to be that way more authentic and effective.