Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0: Ecommerce Web Developme...

Microsoft “Project Green” phase one is reflected in Microsoft Great Plains/Dynamics GP 9.0 realization. It is exposed to .Net developer currently through eConnect and as time goes – more and more eConnect object will have XML web service interfaces. In this small article we will be touching the set of object, deployed in eCommerce application, using Microsoft Dynamics GP as a backend.

• Sales Order Processing (SOP). In the light eCommerce case – you push data into SOP10100 – SOP Header table and SOP10200 – SOP Line table. If you do create Sales Orders Only, do not accept deposits against sales order – then you do not care about SOP Distribution table: SOP10102. All these tasks could be realized through eConnect.

• Inventory Tables. If you sell from your inventory (not just services), then you use Inventory module tables: IV00101 – Item master, IV00102 – Item QTY master, the last one shows you quantity at the specific location and in general

• Receivable Management Tables. RM00101 – Customer master – in case if you create and register new customer or update existing customer info in Great Plains.

• eConnect extensions. Obviously eConnect will be repeating the logic of former Great Plains Dexterity objects. In Great Plains you typically create work documents: Quotes, Orders, Invoices and then you post them individually or in the batch – posting process is functionally assigned to the operator, this is why you will have hard time to program it via eConnect (which allows you to create work documents). You will need eConnect extensions or simply stored procedures, which post work records in Sales Order Processing and potentially Receivable Management modules – it is not recommended to create ones from scratch – posting and order transferring logic is very complicated.

• Stored Procedures approach. We see more and more cases when eCommerce is built around Microsoft Small Business Financials, former Microsoft Small Business Manager – in such a situation eConnect might be too expensive and too complex – you may need just several SOP oriented stored procedures to create SOP orders and invoices at the back end in SOP SQL tables. The advice to the developer in the case of Small Business Financials – ask SBF user to create sample transaction – Sales Order and watch how did it distribute across SOP tables – you will get the idea and replication pattern for your SQL coding

• Development Tools. Microsoft Visual Studio.Net is becoming the tool of choice (over now legacy Microsoft Dexterity or Great Plains Software Dexterity). However if you are eCommerce developer – you will have to use SQL scripting. Usually the first question is – where do I get Great Plains table structure description: Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Sometimes developers ask about Great Plains Integration Manager. This tool is in process of being rewritten with eConnect panidea. Integration Manager up to version 8.0 was relatively slow in its technical ability to integrate bulk number of records – it used legacy OLE Server technology – Great Plains was OLE Server and IM used GP screens to validate integration records. New integration manager should be more powerful and it is in the process of the creation as we write these lines.

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM web front. In some cases we see this scenario. Microsoft Great Plains – MS CRM integration is in process of being rewritten on eConnect – currently it uses BizTalk server (and does a nice job, however sometimes you have to programmatically tune the BizTalk integration). In CRM you can create Account or Contact that will be integrated to Great Plains Customer, then Order when submitted can be integrated to Great Plains if needed. Sometimes developers complain, that they have to force credit limit for the CRM Account to be non-zero – in order for the invoice to come through.

About the Author: Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com/ http://www.greatplains.com.mx/ http://www.enterlogix.com.br/ ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner. Please do not hesitate to call or email us: USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918 help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Great Plains eCommerce: overview for dev...

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains was designed back in the earlier 1990th as first graphical ERP/accounting system for mid-size businesses. The architects of Great Plains Dexterity – this is the internal mid-shell, all Great Plains was written on, designed it to be easily transferable between graphical operating systems (MAC, Windows, Solaris – potentially) and database platforms – initially Great Plains was available on Ctree (both Mac and PC) and Btrieve, a bit later high end version Dynamics C/S+ was available on Microsoft SQL Server 6.5. But the idea was to catch or switch winning/losing database platform – nobody could predict if MS SQL Server, Oracle or DB 2 become a dominant DB platform, like Windows among OS. All these trade-ins for being potentially cross-platform application make the life of nowadays eCommerce developer difficult.

• eCommerce developers were using Microsoft IIS and ASP-based Great Plains eCommerce around 4 years ago. Today, with the move to .Net and ASPX platform, server based scripts are replaced with .Net code behind approach and Great Plains eCommerce should be rewritten.
  
• Microsoft Great Plains subdivision released SDK – eConnect which was targeted to eCommerce developers to manipulate Great Plains objects, such as Customer, SOP Order, Invoice, Quote, etc. What is a bit unpleasant – eConnect requires license key and is quite expensive for small internet eCommerce sites.
  
• Custom Stored
  
  Procedures. Companies, like Alba Spectrum Technologies have implemented multiple diversified eCommerce projects with Great Plains at the back end. So, these custom stored procedures are available on the market, but they are not packaged as eConnect and could be purchased on the individual agreement base with Microsoft Great Plains partner.
  
• Some Great Plains tables structure logic is required. You usually need consultant help, however you could try to make maximum work done at home. Tool->Resource Desciption->Tables, re-sort by Table Group technical name, then make test transactions in Great Plains (SOP module) and see where records go. This is how you design and test your queries
  

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

About The Author
Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com/ ) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia
help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Small Business Manager eCommerce–overvie...

Microsoft Business Solutions Small Business Manager is scaled down Great Plains Dexterity based version of Microsoft Great Plains or former Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise. Small Business Manager first release 7.0 and all the following version was available on MSDE (MS SQL Server 2000 with limited usage and database size – 2GB maximum).

It is nice situation on the market in eCommerce niche – we see huge number of customers, who have purchased and implemented SBM for their small and mid-size businesses and then realized that customization options for Small Business Manager are very limited: in comparison to Great Plains SBM doesn’t have VBA/Modifier, it has very restricted version of Integration Manager. These restrictions lead you, eCommerce developer to direct SQL programming. Again – being scaled down version of Microsoft Great Plains – Small Business Manager has a legacy of relatively complex tables structure.

Tom stored procedures way here:

Tables Structure. Small Business Manager has similar to Great Plains structure and similar System DYNAMICS database and the company. As you could see tables structure in Resource description in Great Plains – so you do in SBM

1. Stored Procs. Yes – we can go ahead and create stored proc in DYNAMICS and companies databases or Small Business Manager. Now – there is one issue. Technically Small Business Manager comes with MSDE and MSDE doesn’t have lovely tool SQL Server Enterprise Manager with Query Analyzer, etc. So somehow you should deal with this. If you have consulting programmer – she or he can connect to your MSDE installation, using MS SQL Server Enterprise Manager, installed on consultant’s laptop




2. Visual Studio.Net. This is the development tools to use – because you will need a lot of web-debugging, considering complicated tables structure and records workflow. Some developers might suggest to use VS.Net data designer to link to Great Plains
   tables – this idea is rather very difficult to realize, because of the simultaneous population of multiple tables, while creating internet orders: Order Header, Order Lines, Order Comments, Customer Master, Customer Address Master to name a few. So we would recommend sticking to stored proc.
3. SOP. Sales Order Processing. Usually eCommerce solution works around Sales Order Processing tables. The reason is – it works with Inventoried items and typical eCommerce is ordering specific items off the internet. Look at SOP10100, SOP10200 and other tables with SOP prefix. Also you should know that SOP1XXX – are so called working tables and you populate mostly these, when orders are transformed to invoices, order record goes to SOP3XXX tables – these are called historical




4. RM. Receivables Management Module – When Sales Order Processing Invoices are posted – they create record in Accounts Receivables or Receivables Management Module. RM has RMXXXX tables and the ones you are interested to know are RM00101 – customer master and RM00102 – customer address master
5. Batch Processing. We recommend you consider just order creation via web interface. Then these orders should be processed by operator in Small Business Manager

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com/ ) – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, New Orleans, Toronto, Montreal and having locations in multiple states and internationally

Microsoft Great Plains eCommerce–stored procedures...

Since Version 8.0 Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains & Great Plains Standard are available on Microsoft SQL Server and MSDE (which is in fact MS SQL with database size limit of 2GB). As eCommerce designer you should be aware of several options and customization tools in your disposition, when you utilize Microsoft Great Plains 8.5 (June 2005), 8.0, 7.5, Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise 7.0, 6.0, 5.5 or 5.0 Great Plains Dynamics C/S+. When you have old versions (7.5 and prior) we assume that you are on MS SQL Server 2000/7.0, because if you are on Ctree or Pervasive SQL/Btrieve – you should use ODBC / RDO connection tools, such as MS Access and its queries or use MS SQL Server Linked Server technique with OPENROWSET statements. So, lets assume that you are on MS SQL Server. You have basically two options eConnect (you should pay for the reg key/license and this is SDK) and custom stored procedures. We’ll only consider custom stored procedures way here:

1. Stored Procs. The first question is – are we allowed to create stored proc in Great Plains DYNAMICS and companies databases. The answer is Yes – opposite to such products as Microsoft CRM (where you are banned to create any custom object in MS CRM database, and instead you create your own custom database and place all your procedures and views there) – you are encouraged to create your stored procedures and place them in both DYNAMICS and Company databases. You need to know the anatomy of Great Plains tables structure
   
2. Tables Structure. If you launch Great Plains workstation and follow this way: Tools->Resource Descriptions->Tables – then you are in tables descriptor, sorting by tables Physical, Logical or Tables Group Technical names. This is all Great Plains Dexterity architecture realm and it is relatively complex and not
   
   
   “developer-friendly” – but if you create sample transactions in Great Plains – you can figure out where data should be populated
   
3. Sales Order Processing. Or SOP module. This is usually the core of eCommerce development – transactions should go into SOP tables (with SOP prefix): SOP10100, SOP10200 and others. If you are selling to your existing customers, then customers are in Receivables Management module (AR) with AR prefixes: RM00101 – is Customer Master, RM00102 – customer address master, etc.
   
4. Sales Order/Invoice Allocation dilemma. Great Plains SOP module is working in concert with Inventory control, making allocation of inventoried items in IV. So, this is very challenging to replicate allocation logic. We recommend do not allocate in Orders and Invoices and do allocation by operator, who processes the internet orders batch
   
5. Sales Order transfer dilemma. If you are using eConnect – this is kind of issue, so you have to appeal to GP internal architecture and do it with the stored procs approach.
   

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

About The Author
Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, New Orleans, Toronto, Montreal and having locations in multiple states and internationally
Help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Ecommerce Web-development: Great Plains ...

In our small article we’ll consider Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains Sales Order Processing module as eCommerce backend. Plus we’ll cover what is possible and impossible in eConnect and why.

Microsoft Great Plains is one of the most popular ERP in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Middle East, Latin America, UK and South Africa. Due to the MBS strategy – Great Plains Dynamics was pulled from other markets, such as continental Europe (Germany, France, Russia) – where Navision and Axapta are the promoted and recommended solutions. If you have Navision or Axapta – please read our publications on these products on Alba Spectrum Technologies publication site.

• Great Plains Platform – Great Plains Software Dynamics is written on GPS proprietary platform in Dexterity program language. Dexterity is based on very shrewd application development philosophy – ERP application will stay decades if it is independent from the graphical computer environment and database platform. Back in 1992 C programming language was believed to be the rescuer and be cross-platform.

• Great Plains Architecture. Here we need to give you highlights on Great Plains Dynamics initial design. General Ledger (GL) was intended as core module, then you see modules, posting directly to GL: Receivables Management (RM), Payables Management (PM), Payroll, Inventory Control. The next level – modules, posting to GL through other modules: Sales Order Processing (through Accounts Receivable), Purchase Order Processing (through Accounts Payables), etc. The second principle – Great Plains would never allow you to post the batch of transactions behind the scene – only via the user interface – checked and approved by the user.

• eOrder – this IIS ASP application was initially available for all the platforms: MS SQL Server, Ctree and Btrieve (later on Pervasive SQL

2000), in 1998 Great Plains Software made it available for MS SQL server only. eOrder was predecessor of modern eCommerce sites and all the attempts to customize eOrder were dubious in the version upgrade.

• .Net paradigm. Instead of inventing and making you use standard eCommerce solution - .Net gives you the choice to select from variety of products available on the market. This means that no more eOrders – you just need the connector which will allow you to address Great Plains objects from your eCommerce application. As usual you are free to use your language of choice: VB or C#

• eConnect. Yes – exactly – it was initially developed for eCommerce programmers. Later on eConnect was extended on the majority of Great Plains modules, including distributions

• Restrictions. As you see above – Great Plains allows you to address work tables only – this means that you can not post transactions using eConnect. Other reported issues were related to Sales Order transfer to Invoice/Backorder

• Custom Stored Procedures. Right – you have to use these custom SQL scripts to post transactions, created with eConnect.

If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

About the Author: Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states ( http://www.albaspectrum.com )

Microsoft Great Plains eCommerce - know your options and alternatives

As eCommerce designer you should be aware of several options and customization tools in your disposition, when you utilize Microsoft Great Plains 8.5 (June 2005), 8.0, 7.5, Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise 7.0, 6.0, 5.5 or 5.0 Great Plains Dynamics C/S+.

Since Version 8.0 Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains & Great Plains Standard are available on Microsoft SQL Server and MSDE (which is in fact MS SQL with database size limit of 2GB). When you have old versions (7.5 and prior) we assume that you are on MS SQL Server 2000/7.0, because if you are on Ctree or Pervasive SQL/Btrieve – you should use ODBC / RDO connection tools, such as MS Access and its queries or use MS SQL Server Linked Server technique with OPENROWSET statements. So, lets assume that you are on MS SQL Server. You have basically two options eConnect (you should pay for the reg key/license and this is SDK) and custom stored procedures. We’ll only consider custom stored procedures way here:

1. Stored Procs. The first question is – are we allowed to create stored proc in Great Plains DYNAMICS and companies databases. The answer is Yes – opposite to such products as Microsoft CRM (where you are banned to create any custom object in MS CRM database, and instead you create your own custom database and place all your procedures and views there) – you are encouraged to create your stored procedures and place them in both DYNAMICS and Company databases. You need to know the anatomy of Great Plains tables structure
2. Tables Structure. If you launch Great Plains workstation and follow this way: Tools->Resource Descriptions->Tables – then you are in tables descriptor, sorting by tables Physical, Logical or Tables Group Technical names. This is all Great Plains Dexterity architecture realm and it is relatively complex and not “developer-friendly” – but if you create sample transactions in Great Plains – you can figure out where data should be populated
3. Sales Order Processing. Or SOP module. This is usually the core of eCommerce development – transactions should go into SOP tables (with SOP prefix): SOP10100, SOP10200 and others. If you are selling to your existing customers, then customers are in Receivables Management module (AR) with AR prefixes: RM00101 – is Customer Master, RM00102 – customer address master, etc.
4. Sales Order/Invoice Allocation dilemma. Great Plains SOP module is working in concert with Inventory control, making allocation of inventoried items in IV. So, this is very challenging to replicate allocation logic. We recommend do not allocate in Orders and Invoices and do allocation by operator, who processes the internet orders batch
5. Sales Order transfer dilemma. If you are using eConnect – this is kind of issue, so you have to appeal to GP internal architecture and do it with the stored procs approach.

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com/ ) – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, New Orleans, Toronto, Montreal and having locations in multiple states and internationally

The Ecommerce Business Plan

Simply put, business plans can make or break your business. Starting a Drop Ship business online is no different from starting a traditional non-online business. With the strong emphasis individuals place on writing business plans for starting up non-internet-based companies, it is equally crucial to prepare a business plan for your online business.

A business plan serves many important purposes for the online business. First, because the business plan has a detailed list of the tasks to undertake, it is a call to action for you to promote your business actively and not procrastinate on your marketing efforts. Second, it provides a blueprint that describes your company effectively: the market, the products and the steps you need for effective marketing. This serves to guide your business through the months ahead.

Business plans normally comprise of five sections:

1) The Objectives. This section will describe the objectives for the venture, and the mission statement that defines the online business. It states both the financial and strategic objectives and is normally about one page long. There should be a concise description of the Drop Ship business at the start. A brief example:

‘Magical Stores Online is an internet company that provides quality tools and resources for magic tricks. We aim to consistently provide magicians with reliable tools for conducting magic tricks, and also accurate information and guides on how to properly perform the magic tricks with our tools. In our first year online, our target is to have U.S. $400,000 in revenues and $100,000 in profits. This can be achieved by attracting an average of about 5000 visitors to our website every month through effective internet marketing. Our strategy is to attract recurring traffic to our website by continually updating the useful resources and information on our website. Magicians will constantly return for more useful tips on magic tricks. This cuts our marketing costs drastically and adds to our profit margin.’

2) The Executive summary. The executive summary should contain a few important details. It should outline the basic model of the company, how the business functions, the market environment, and also the business opportunity in the market. A continuation from the previous example:

‘Magical Stores Online is a retailer of magic products on the internet. We specialize in card and coin tricks and stage magic, and classify our products according to age group, skill level, features, and the occasion they are used for. Magicians can browse the product catalogue on our website and buy their products with a shopping cart software. They can choose to pay either by credit cards or by checks. We use a third party credit card merchant to process our payments, hence eliminating the need to have a merchant account ourselves. A profit is realized whenever a sale is made, because we obtain our products at a wholesale price and we sell them at a retail price. Since our supplier, Company XYZ, drop ships the products directly to the customers’ address, we do not need to hold any inventory. Our market comprises of magicians of any age group who specialize in card and coin tricks and stage magic. The opportunity lies in the internet as a marketing medium for magic products. Since the rise of the internet in the mid 1990s, we find that the major magic product retailers do not use the internet effectively to market their products. With effective internet marketing skills, we believe that we can reach a wider audience than the other major players, thus claiming a large market share.’

*Note that in a real business plan, the business owner should aim to provide a more detailed version than the examples given above. The examples here only serve to illustrate an overview of what the basic business plan should encompass.

3) Marketing Strategies. In this section, you will describe the steps you intend to take in order to market your business effectively on the internet. There are a few basic marketing methods available on the internet. Mentioned below are three of the most popular methods.

- Email Marketing. Ezines and newsletters are powerful tools. It is simply the most cost-effective form of marketing on the internet. Sending out email promotions or newsletters to your subscriber base costs virtually nothing, except for the time you spend on writing your newsletter. With the web form on your website, you can capture the names and email addresses of the customers who subscribed to

your newsletter. I do not recommend that you send your subscribers with product promotions regularly, but you should continually provide them with useful tips and information. In this way, you establish your credibility as an expert and maintain a strong relationship with your customers, instead of appearing as someone just out to make money. Promotions for your products should only be sent out about once or twice a month.

- Search engine optimization. Optimizing your website for high search engine results on google, yahoo and msn, is a powerful way of getting large volumes of traffic at low cost. However, you have to put in a lot of effort for a long period of time, as top rankings do not appear overnight. There are two factors for search engine optimization: On-page or Off-page optimization. On-page optimization involves tweaking the page title, header and meta tags to include the website keywords. It also involves scattering the keywords throughout the page to improve the site relevancy. Off-page optimization, on the other hand, is much more important than on-page. It involves soliciting links from relevant websites. The more the websites that link to your site, and the higher the importance/relevance of the website linking to yours, the higher your website will be ranked on the search engines. Google places a very strong emphasis on this.

- Pay-per-click (PPC) Search Engines. This requires you to pay a sum of money for every visitor that clicks through the search engine to your website. The higher the amount you pay, the higher your website will be ranked on the PPC search engine. The basis for profiting with this marketing tool is by bidding less than the amount that each visitor to your website is worth. Overture is definitely the market leader for pay-per-click search engines.

4) Competitive Analysis. In this section, you have to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, and the factors that will differentiate your products or services from your competitors. You have to analyze your competitors and record what makes them so successful, and also the weaknesses you can capitalize on to get an edge in the market. For example, competitors may not be using email marketing effectively to promote the products to customers. You can capitalize on this by using newsletters more intensively, establishing your credibility as an industry expert. To differentiate an online Drop Ship business, it is more viable to provide a reliable service from your website. This usually means providing a wealth of tips, articles and information for your visitors. This will attract them to continuously return to your website for the latest tips and resources that will benefit them. Fast response to their email queries and also fast shipping are also good services you can provide.

5) The financial projection section. In this section you can project the profit-loss statements and the cash flow statements for your business. The profit-loss statement records the monthly profit/loss realized over the months, while the cash flow statement records the difference between revenue and expenditure over the months. The costs for an online Drop Ship business will include:

- One-time costs for software like shopping cart software, email marketing software, and also search engine optimization software.

- Recurring costs for the wholesale price of the products, web hosting fees, a proportion of revenue paid to your third party credit card merchant to process your payments, and also internet marketing costs.

This section will be useful for you to gauge how your Drop Ship business performs according to your expectations.

In conclusion, business plans do not only apply to real-world businesses, but are equally critical to online businesses as well. They serve as blueprints of the companies and also as strong calls to action for the aspiring internet entrepreneurs to achieve their success in ecommerce.

*You are welcome to reprint this article as long as you include the Author’s resource box with the article and the entire article remains unchanged.

About the Author
About the Author: Ray Yee is the founder and president of Dropshipperscentral, a website which provides a wealth of informative articles, tips and resources on everything you’ll ever need to know about setting up a Drop Ship Business and marketing it. Click here for the Wholesale Drop Ship Directory from http://www.dropshipperscentral.com

The Rumors of Ecommerce Death

The Rumors of Ecommerce Death

As Nasdaq sputters along in dot com shame, a few million few dogged Internet consumers have ignored the crash. They continue to happily buy away. The good-news story is not popular with business writers, but Web retailing continues to grow seemingly unaware that the online mall is crashing down around them as they choose garden tools, sell sports cards and order vacation
packages. Things aren't perfect. There has been somewhat of a dip since Christmas, but I think most Net retailers can live with a post-holiday. Retailers have weathered after-Santa blues since the English switched from wassailing to kids toys in the mid-1800s.

We decided to take a look at recent reports on Internet retail sales just to see if the Net stock gloom was blunting the steady expansion of online commerce. We found some softening in the rate of growth, but we certainly didn't find any contraction in consumer behavior. The shrinking effect right now seems limited to the number of dot coms rather then the number of consumers. In fact, if you subtract the bizarrely heightened expectations for the Internet, its growth is coming along just fine. By any standards other than the Net-boom mentality, Internet expansion continues to be fairly spectacular.

Net buyers hit ten quarters of continuous buying

Greenfield Online reported that for 10 consecutive quarters, 60 percent of U.S. Online consumers have made at least one purchase on the Web within a 90-day period. And 28 percent of these shoppers have clicked on Internet ads while shopping. Not surprisingly, those with an annual income of $50,000 and above are more likely to purchase goods (81 percent) than those whose income is below $50,000 (64 percent). Women on the Net buy at a slightly higher rate
(74 percent) than men (71 percent). The top categories of goods continues to be books and CDs, followed by clothing, toys and computer software.

Rich buyers seek service basics online

Forrester Research looked at the shopping habits of rich consumers, those with investable assets on $1 million or more, and found that these shoppers are more interested in strong basic serve than they are in virtual exclusivity, extravagance and entertainment. Affluent shoppers have been buying linger, feel more comfortable buying, buy more frequently and, of course, spend more money," said Ekaterina O. Walsh, a senior analyst at Forrester. "They buy online for the same reasons for the same reasons that all online buyers do and care about price and positive experiences with Web stores." Forrester recommends that sellers of luxury goods should concentrate on purchasing ease and a convenience return process.

Visitor traffic dips

PC Data Online found that traffic to leading ecommerce sites declined about 4 percent in February following an 18 percent seasonal drop in January. Goldman Sachs analysts cited port-holiday seasonality, a slowdown in the rate on new consumer adopting ecommerce and slower overall consumer spending as the factors in the slower month-by-month growth of Internet retailing. However, this year's figures are up 63 percent over last year. Hey. Did anybody see
that? I'll say it again. We're up 63 percent over last year! Some blues.

Features that will keep your sales growing

Consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers released a survey that identified the site features that are most likely to capture sales. The research found that with the exception of search capabilities and close-up product views, most Website features are never used by the majority of Internet shoppers. The search function is overwhelmingly the top feature used by consumers, with 77 percent saying they have used search functions while shopping.

Other site features such as wish-lists and personalization were found to be less important to shoppers. As a side note, we found a study by the International eRetail Association that listed wish-lists as a tool that works well for building loyalty, so go easy on making assumptions based on Internet studies.

The take-away on all of the recent information about Internet retailing is that it continues to grow rapidly in spite of the gloom that fills the business media. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of the death of retail ecommerce have been greatly exagerated.

About the Author
Rob Spiegel is the author of Net Strategy (Dearborn) and The Shoestring
Entrepreneur's Guide to the Best Home-Based Businesses (St. Martin's Press).
You can reach Rob at spiegelrob@aol.com .

Meeting the UK Ecommerce Regulations

Many UK small businesses with ecommerce web sites are failing to meet the legal requirements of the following acts and directives:

• Ecommerce Directive 2002


• Data Protection Act 1998


• Distance Selling Act 2000

This is often due to misunderstanding their responsibilities or simply lack of resources. However, failing to comply with these legal requirements may seriously damage your web site and your business.

By promoting compliance with these legal obligations, your web site will gain more credibility and increase customer's confidence.

Useful Resources

The following links provide essential information related to the UK ecommerce regulations.

• The Data Protection Act 1998 - http://www.dataprotection.gov.uk/


• The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 - http://www.dti.gov.uk/ccp/topics1/pdf1/bus_guide.pdf


• The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 - http://www2.dti.gov.uk/industry_files/pdf/smallbusinessguidance.pdf

Data Protection

(a) You must register under the Data Protection Act if you collect information about people (for example, employees, customers and visitors). This information can include names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses.

(b) You must state what you do with your subject's data and not deviate from that statement.

(c) The Act is applicable to businesses of any size.

(d) You must not export the personal data outside the EC (European Community) without permission from the people you are collecting data on.

(e) You must ensure that all information is held securely and must be revealed or deleted upon request from the subjects of the information.

(f) You must only record pertinent data to your prime business needs.

Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations

The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 apply to many ecommerce sites. However, they are not applicable to ‘business-to-business’ transactions.

(a) You must provide clear information about your products and services before purchase.

(b) You must be clear about postage and packing costs and whether VAT is included in the prices shown on your website.

(c) You must provide a written confirmation of order following purchase, e.g., via email.

(d) You must allow a "cooling off" period of 7 working days for most goods. Certain exclusions do apply and include perishable and digital goods.

(e) You must inform your customers of their right to cancel their order with no loss other than return postage and packing.

Ecommerce Directive

(a) You must display the name of your business, the company registration number (or proprietor's name), geographical address (not PO Box number), contact information e.g., telephone number and email address, VAT registration number (if registered).

(b) You may refer to trade or professional schemes if applicable.

(c) You must provide clear information on price, tax and delivery to buyers.

(d) You must clearly display your site’s Terms and Conditions.

(e) You must acknowledge all orders.

(f) In commercial communication with your customers, you must clearly identify any electronic communication designed to promote your goods or services.

(g) You must clearly identify the sender of all electronic communication.

(h) You must clearly define any promotional offers and the qualifying conditions regarding these offers.

(i) If you send unsolicited emails, you must clearly identify them as unsolicited.

Other means of increasing Ecommerce Credibility In addition to ensuring that you satisfy the ecommerce regulations, you can gain extra credibility by:

• (a) Including verifiable testimonials.
• (b) Allowing payment via other means than online, e.g. via telephone or mail order.
• (c) Ensuring that all transactions that involve the transfer of personal and payment details are secure (via SSL).
• (d) Ensuring that your shopping cart does not make the following common mistakes:




• Call a shopping cart something else!
• Use a ‘Buy Now’ button instead of a ‘Add to Cart’ button
• Give no feedback that an item has been added to the cart
• Force the user to view the cart after each added item
• Make the user register before adding items to a cart
• Not provide a ‘Remove Item’ button

About the Author
James Saunders is the Managing Director of Site-Report.com Limited (http://www.site-report.com/), a UK internet consultancy offering holistic advice to UK SMEs on all aspects of website development and promotion including usability, accessibility, ecommerce regulations, internet marketing and search engine optimisation.

Introduction To Ecommerce

Many people new to websites and/or ecommerce are confused at the in and outs of ecommerce. Even many people who are fairly adept at scripting can set up a store using some popular package such as OSCommerce and then are left stumped by the idea of making it work with a payment gateway to actually collect money and put it into their account. In this article, I will give a brief overview of how the system is set up to collect your money. I will then discuss briefly what to look for in evaluating payment gateways. As usual, I will keep this basic and understandable just as I do with all of my articles.


The Basics - How Funds are Collected


Ecommerce simply refers to the practice of shopping online. From the site owner's perspective, it entails collecting funds from sales transactions on their website and depositing that money into the bank. In order to collect funds, you need to have a merchant account and a payment gateway (discussed below). Basically, when a person enters their credit card number on a website, the card number and buyer information is sent to a payment gateway. This is done securely. The payment gateway will interface with a payment processor to check availability of funds as well as any other criteria set for accepting transactions. If the funds are available, the payment processor will then deduct the funds. The payment gateway will then report back a successful transaction to the merchant, at which point the merchant's shopping cart system will respond by displaying a "Thank You" type message to the buyer. Funds will sit until the transaction is settled, which means the funds are collected and deposited to your bank account. Until a transaction is settled, the transaction will not post to your bank account and the corresponding debit will not post to the buyer's credit card account.


Merchant Accounts


A Merchant Account is a special type of account specifically for online retailers. They are designed to allow non-POS (point of sale) transactions using credit cards, or transactions where you don't have the person's credit card in hand. In other words, you don't have a card swiper. A merchant account is not the same as a bank account. It acts as a go-between between your payment gateway and your bank account, accepting funds from credit cards which are then deposited into your bank.


A merchant account is a relationship based on trust between you and the issuing bank. The bank takes funds from the buyer's account and deposits into your account. A payment processor takes care of checking for availability of funds and debiting from the credit card account. The bank issuing the merchant account is trusting that you will fulfill your end of the transaction by providing the product or service that the buyer purchased. In case where this does not occur, the buyer can dispute the transaction. This puts the issuing bank on the line because they are then obligated to return the funds to the buyer's card (a chargeback). Therefore, merchant providers are taking a risk in allowing a merchant to take credit cards under their name.


The organization providing your merchant account will do underwriting on the account when you apply to check your credit. If you have a history of too many chargebacks, you may be denied. In fact, too many chargebacks can result in you, as a merchant, being put on the Terminated Merchant File (also called The Match File). This is a blacklist which will effectively prevent you from ever receiving a merchant account again.


Payment Gateways


A payment gateway serves as the front end to your merchant account, allowing you to manage funds, transactions, and the like. It also serves as a connection between your website and your merchant account. It takes data submitted via your secure order forms and presents it to your processing bank. The processing bank then approves



or declines the transaction and sends its response back to the payment gateway. The payment gateway then turns around and provides this data back to the merchant for appropriate handling of the transaction. A payment gateway, then, does not offer services such as merchant accounts or shopping carts, although some of the larger-known gateways do provide such options as value-added services.


Some of the better known payment gateway services are Authorize.Net, Verisign, 2CheckOut.com, Linkpoint, Paysystems.com, Worldpay.com, and MerchantCommerce. Some of the things to look for in a payment gateway are compliance with CISP, SDP and DISC (security initiatives put out by the major credit card companies), virtual terminal (to be able to accept transactions over the phone by typing in their data rather than only relying on your website), fraud prevention, recurring billing, methods of integration, cost and whether they can accept e-checks or not.


Fraud prevention is a big one because, as stated above, too many fraudulent transactions will result in chargebacks which could end up putting you on the Match List and your merchant account closed. Some of the common fraud detection mechanisms are Address Verification (AVS) which compares the customer's address with that on file with the issuing bank, CVV2 which makes use of the 3-digit security code on the credit card (4-digit on American Express cards).


Most gateways will provide instructions on how to interface with their servers from your web store. Most gateways offer two methods of integration.


One method is to have your site POST a form to the gateway's server which is pre-populated with your customer's information. At that point, the customer will provide the customer with the payment form which allows them to type in their credit card number in a secure environment. After processing occurs, the customer is then routed back to your website along with the results of the transaction. Your site again takes over the process. This method is usually easier to set up for site owners and it also means the site owner does not need to purchase their own SSL certificate (allowing secure transactions on the site itself). The tradeoff is that you do need to send your customers off of your website for payment collection. Many gateways offer ways to make the payment form look like your website using customized headers and footers, but the fact remains that the visitors are leaving your website.


The second method is totally invisible to the customer. If the site owner has an SSL certificate, they can set up security on their own site. This means they can host the payment form themselves, totally customizing it to their website. When the customer submits payment, your site will securely and invisibly submit the information to the payment gateway. The payment gateway will do the usual processing and then invisibly send the response back to the merchant's website, allowing it to respond properly. From the customer's perspective, they never left your website. And they never did. This type of setup requires an SSL certificate as well as access to the CURL library.


Many gateway providers can get you set up with a merchant account at the same time as the gateway. So, in most cases, you do not need to sign up for them separately.


Conclusion


Hopefully this has given you a brief introduction to how credit card payments are processed on the internet.
About the Author

David Risley is a web developer and founder of PC Media, Inc. (http://www.pcmedianet.com/). Specializes in PHP/MySQL development, consulting and internet business management. He is also the founder of PC Mechanic (http://www.pcmech.com/), a large website delivering do-it-yourself computer information to thousands of users every day.

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