E-tutor/ CSS example

Our tutor will show you how to start without spending a fortune using instead your brain and creativity. We will give you basic knowledge about e-commerce and webdesign and let you know how get more benefits from free internet tools. Once you get real experience with your first simple website, you can expand your web presence and invest money in it wisely. Our e-tutor is the first step towards it.

Every website needs e-commerce features. Can you live on the modern Net without automated mail forms, responders, polls, surveys, databases, processing and so on? You can't if you want to attract, keep and communicate with your visitors. this e-tutor is for those who want to successfully sell online as well as for families, writes, entertainers, non-profits and others who want to be on the Net.

Myths of e-commerce: it's cheap, lucrative and for everyone. They are not myths anymore, they are reality.

Yes, it's cheap. Starting a business on the Internet is a lot cheaper than starting any other business. Before the Web, if you wanted to sell direct to consumers, you either had to build retail stores or do catalogue mailings. In either case the entry fee is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. The Web gives you something that has never existed before in history: an inexpensive sales channel direct to consumers.

Yes, it's lucrative. With less money you can get bigger profit selling on-line the same product or service then off-line because electronic commerce brings new rules of doing business. On the Net, how good your product and management are matters less than how easy it is to find your site and how many those who find it stay there and for how long.

Yes, the Web levels the playing field. On the Net, how big you are matters less than how your website is presented. There are a lot of examples of small business sites which look and function better than big e-businesses.

E-store requirements: For selling something on-line you need to have your website. Any e-commerce website must have:

On-Line Store that is a commerce-enabled Web site where goods or services can be described and selected.

Payment Processing that is mostly the process of accepting on-line payments; at the moment this means credit cards.

Shipping/Order Fulfillment that is the process of getting orders and shipping products It's better to have this process completely automated, meaning you can do everything from ordering to shipping through your website.

Customer Service that is not different from off-line customer service except that support, complaints, and returns are done through the Web.

Promotion that is a complex ongoing marketing campaign 24 hours 7 days a week, both on-line and off-line.

Credit cards are the standard method of payment on the Net. You MUST be able to accept credit cards online if you plan to do business on the net. If you can't, you will lose over 60-70% of your business. Customers on the net are impulsive and want everything NOW. If they have to get off the net to call you (most families only have one phone line in their house), or if they have to write a check, fill out an order form, address an envelope, put it in the mail, etc... you can forget about doing any kind of volume. You have to make it easy for them to order. Other advantages of accepting credit cards: it gives you a measure of credibility because your business will not seem like a basement operation and also speeds and simplifies a billing process.

How Credit Cards Work On-line

1. The customer enters the credit details into a secure on-line form, which is usually part of the shopping-cart system provided by the Web-Store Service. The next stage is basic fraud avoidance such as checking the card number is valid and Address Verification.

2. The details are then forwarded from the transaction-processing system on the Web-store site to the Credit Card Association (e.g. Visa or MasterCard) via a Payment Processing Network.

3. The transaction is either authorized or declined, depending on the state of the customer's credit limit. If it is authorized, funds are reserved to cover the transaction.

4. The results are communicated to the merchant. After the goods ship, the merchant can issue a Capture Request which is a request for Settlement, the final stage where the funds transfer takes place

You need to have a merchant account to accept a credit card on-line. American banks make it easy for american business to open a special e-commerce merchant account.It's more difficult for non-american businesses to open it.

Non-Merchant Accounts allow you to accept credit card payments without having to open a merchant account. There are a number of companies on the Net which can help you process credit cards. These companies are often happy to accept international merchants including Canadians. Charges are usually greater than for conventional credit card processing and there may be other restrictions - but for small start-ups they might be a good bet. One word of warning though - scams are not unknown with this type of company so be careful. Check out the company thoroughly and ask for (and follow up) references before you sign up.

Other options of on-line payment. Old-fashioned methods of collecting payment such as asking your customers to send a cheque or money order are still working but mostly for not impulsive products such as yachts, horses, real estate. Other methods are becoming available and include charging purchases to a phone bill, using electronic funds transfers (EFT), paying by electronic check, and various forms of prepayment. Each of these methods requires payment processing either in the form of software added to your Web site or by linking to a payment processing service.

Electronic Cheques New technologies make it easy to accept checks on the Web. You can do it by yourself or ask those online companies which are willing to do it for you. While it is probably not a good idea to accept checks and not accept credit cards, if you can accept both you will have a clear advantage over your competitors.

Electronic Cash Electronic cash was heavily hyped a few years ago, but has fallen out of favor. One-day there will be a universal e-currency that will make life a lot easier - but it's still some way off. Until then you might want to look at the hybrid currency/rewards schemes like Beenz and CyberGold. They wont replace credit cards, but they are useful marketing tools and may help increase sales.

Conclusion To sum up then, it is probably mandatory for small on-line businesses to accept credit cards, but if you want to avoid hassles it's best to avoid the bottom end of the payment processing services market. If you have difficulties getting a merchant account consider using one of the services that don't require one. On-line checks and rewards/tokens schemes are also worth looking at as ways of increasing sales.

Webdesign of your website is important. To make your e-business successful, you need to conceive, design and create effective web interfaces with the understanding of and respect for human factors and technical constraints.

Get Web and HTML knowledge. There are still no perfect html editors and wysiwyg programs. You need to clean codes to avoid problems with appearance, functionality and downloading of the site. Fortunately, basics of web and html are not difficult and anybody can understand its ideas.

Make your site convenient to navigate. It is important to make experience of surfing your site for your customers as easy as possible. They must be able to find your product and service descriptions and ways to buy fast. Find successful sites and get good navigation ideas from them. There are a lot of navigation tricks. Choose what is best for you and do not be afraid to change if it does not work well.

Make your site informative and beneficialExchange of information is most important for establishing your web presence because information is what the Internet is about. People stop at a site to get information. Give it to them. Also people buy from sites they trust and stay at those they like. Build your on-line community: add chat rooms, guest books, polls, surveys, feedbacks and responders, offer newsletters, site search, online demo and downloads, news and knowhow pages, - everything you feel can attract and keep visitors coming back to your site.

Design the site that is search-engine friendly. People still find 80-90% of sites through the major search engines. You need to understand how search engines rank sites to be able to design a site with the possibility to put yours before others. Search engines rank sites automatically depending mostly on text inside pages, site description and Meta tags. It's difficult to know which one prefers what. It's better to put as much information related to your product or service as possible.

Creat the site that is easy to update. Updating that is not difficult for a small e-store tends to be very complicated and time-consuming when a site is expanding. Put updating features from the time you start your e-commerce site. You cannot avoid updating; it's important part of e-commerce. People like to come back to sites to get new information or new services. Also surfers think that non-static sites are more likely to be in business than static ones. And it's true. Many dead e-stores are still online even if nobody bothers to maintain them.

Your uniqueness is the basis of success. Even if you have a good idea for making money on the Web, the chances are dozens of people have thought of it already. Hundreds of sites are coming on the Web every minute and competition is becoming furious. Only something that makes you very different from others can keep your e-commerce alive and profitable. Here comes the USP.

What is a unique selling proposition (USP)? The proposition that very clearly answers the question, "Why should I do business with you instead of your competitors?" In developing your marketing message, it's very helpful to develop a Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.

Benefits of developing the USP. First, it clearly differentiates your business in the eyes of your current and potential customers or clients. Second, it focuses you and your team on delivering the promise of the USP, helping to improve your internal performance. The USP does not need to be expressed in 25 words or less. It could be a detailed set of performance standards. It should be tested to ensure that the USP addresses the needs that are truly important to the buyer.

Promote your USP. Put your USP on your website and printed promotional materials. Let your customers know what exactly you can do for them. Help them to like and remember your USP and more than half of your marketing campaign is done.

Electronic market is huge. There will be over 250 million Internet users in less than four years, and one billion users in less than eight. And there are new Internet connection products now available including wireless and TV Internet making surfing and shopping on the Net part of our life.

The Electronic Market Place is the beginning of the next business revolution. E-market place is becoming a new communication approach that will affect the way you and your family live, work and play for the rest of your lives. Everybody will be there and everybody will benefit from this new world.

The electronic market is an almost "perfect" market. Most of the users are educated, can afford a computer (proving they have disposable income and money to buy what you're selling). Almost all of them have credit cards (most pay for their Internet access this way), and because they are "netters", most of them are impatient and impulsive buyers.

The electronic market place has been leveraging small businesses with big ones. Until now it has been difficult for self-employed and small operations to make real money on the Internet. Only big guys could attract a flow of visitors to their sites and automate customer communication and payment processes because they could afford servers, software, advertising budget, and a large staff. Modern technology which is becoming more affordable and understandable brings the same possibilities to small guys. It is possible to set, run and market e-business including full automation on budget.

The electronic market makes e-business lives or dies on its marketing. Possibilities to start or expand online business cheaper and faster than off-line sharply increase online competition. It does not matter if you are small or big, you have to stand above the rest to sell your products or services on-line.

The electronic market brings new marketing opportunities. Search engines, directories, indexes, guides, portals, online classified ads, affiliate/reseller/associate programs, community tools, newsgroup promotions, discussion lists and newsletters, opt-in email techniques, auto responders, bulletin boards, electronic malls, They are open and affordable to anybody who is on-line.

Some rules of thumb of the modern electronic market:

E-business can be the fastest way to lose a lot of money quickly. There are a lot of business owners who have lost thousands of dollars they put in designing and running their websites.
E-business can be the fastest way to earn a lot of money quickly. There are a lot of online companies including small operations that are selling successfully on the Net.
If the business doesn't have the budget, every marketing dollar must do the work of two (if not five, or even ten).
In fact it is harder to get someone to buy on the Internet than in a normal business environment. While it is true that millions of computer owners are now online, it simply isn't true they are just sitting there eagerly waiting to send you money the moment you contact them.
It's easier and more fun to earn money from e-business than from off-line business. You can earn a substantial income from your home or office computer with an online business while having free time to do other things in your life.
What lets e-business become a truly moneymaking machine is a complete automation.

What is the Internet and the Web? The Internet, also known as the Net, is a worldwide collection of connected computers. cooperating with each other to exchange data. Information data are transferred from one machine to another through telephone lines and wirelessly. People access the information database through their own computers connected to the global computer network. Special software (called protocol) organizes, administers and provides access to the Internet information.

The earlier Internet had a not so friendly way to access information from the computer network. Internet users were able to see only sets of strange numbers, letters, and signs on their black computer screens and retrieving information demanded entering special commands. The rapid growth of the Internet users has resulted in an increasing number of those who have neither patience nor desire to learn all needed commands. They needed an easier and more understandable way to communicate. The Web idea brings it to them.

The Web is a new user-friendly interface. It is not the Internet by itself. It's a way to access information from a computer network. If we use it to retrieve and exchange global information, we can call it the World Wide Wed (WWW). Web interface allows users to see text, images, graphics, animation, and video and even hear sound Instead of non-understandable letters and numbers, Users can link to any electronic documents on the Net by simply clicking on link(s) from an opened document and hopping to another. Any text, image, animation can be used as a link. Such connections between one piece of information and another are called hyperlinks. A text with hyperlinks is hypertext. A method of presenting information in discrete units that are connected by hyperlinks is hypermedia. The information may be presented using a variety of media such as text, graphics, audio, video, animation, image or executable documents. If they are integrated on a computer they are called multimedia.

Webpages are electronic documents translated from text documents with codes to visually understandable forms Special software, called a browser, interprets codes to a web page. There are a lot of browsers. The appearance of websites may be different on different browsers. Website is a set of related web pages. Homepage is the entryway to a particular site on the Web.

HTML (hypertext markup language) is the formatting language that describe mostly the structure and content of the document. HTML tags indicate document elements, structure, formatting and links to other documents.

Documents written in HTML are plain text with the text of the document itself and HTML tags. Most HTML tags look something like this affected text. HTML tags generally have a beginning and an end tag. Few tags are one-sided. All tags are case-sensitive. Anything within angled brackets is assumed to be an HTML tag by the browser and thus is normally not displayed on-screen for the users to see. The raw HTML is a document marked up with HTML tags. It is called the "source" file (you can see the source of any web page on your screen choosing View and then Page Source). Your browser takes the "source" of your file and creates the final copy for you and others to see on your computer screens.

The modern Web is nothing without HTML but the future is developing alternatives. HTML is limited to describe mostly the structure and content of the document even with recent additions of new technologies. XML, VRML, DHTML, PHP, mySQL are a few but not all tools to enhance and even replace HTML.

Five easy steps to create your first website:

1. Have a clear idea of what you want to put on your webpages (text, photos, links, downloads, demo, video, audio, etc.) and draw it on paper

2. Open any word editor, for example Notepad (every PC has it), and type HTML tags

3. Save a file with typed html tags and all needed images in a created folder. Remember, a file with tags must be saved as a html file and images are saved in jpeg or gif formats (means type your file name and end with suffix .htm .html .jpeg .gif)

4. Open a created html file in any browser on your computer. You can see your first page the same way as it's supposed to be seen on the screen by other web users. To open your page choose "File" from a browser menu, move cursor on "Open", choose "browse" or "open" option and find a folder where you saved all your files, then click on any html file in this folder and you can see it on your browser.

5. Put your site on the Internet. You need to find a company to host your pages, then transfer files you created for a webpage on your computer (called a client computer) to a remote host computer calles a server. Your files on your computer can be seen only by you. When you move files to a server, anybody can retrive your webpage from the server and see it.