:::: The Media Professionals ::::

So you want to start your own online business? Here are eight points that you will need to consider before you start selling on the Internet.

Think about your product and your target markets. Determine your sales process, mapping out how the customer will purchase from you. Here are some example questions which can be of relevance:

Although it is not necessary to formalise these processes in the early stages, you should walk through each item in your mind and ensure you understand what you are aiming to achieve.

If you are in business already, you will already have a logo, corporate colours and you may have a website or sales literature and an Internet domain for email (such as yourcompany.ie). Your new eCommerce system should incorporate the look and feel of this existing corporate style.

On the other hand, if you are starting a whole new business, or revamping an existing one, it is good to start thinking about branding early on: if there are lots of different stakeholders, each with different opinions, branding can soon find itself on the critical path towards launching your new site.

If you want payments to go directly into your bank account, you need a special kind of merchant account that will allow you to trade online. If you are expecting high turnover this is the best option for you. Money will go directly into your bank account within three days. Transaction fees are generally lower than those for Third Party Processors.

To trade with credit cards (either offline or online) you need a Merchant Account (also called an Merchant Services Agreement). To obtain one of these, you contact your local branch and they will put you in contact with their Merchant Services Department or their "Acquiring Bank". It is the acquiring bank which provides retailers with the ability to process credit and debit cards.

The following diagram shows how a transaction on your website gets through to your bank account. It depicts a buyer with an AIB card purchasing from a vendor who has a BOI account.

Bank	Acquirer
AIB	AIB
Bank of Ireland	Euroconex
NIB	Streamline
Ulster Bank	Streamline/Worldpay

Even if you already have a merchant account from your bank for retail or mail-order channels, you will still need a merchant account for the Internet.

This Internet Merchant Account provides you with the ability to accept online payments and the mechanism to settle them directly to your bank account.

The types of credit and debit cards you can accept from shoppers, and the currencies in which you can trade, depend on your agreement with the acquiring bank.

Bear the following points in mind when you considering your Internet Merchant Service Agreement:

Your "payment processor" provides you with a facility to accept both credit and debit cards on your website and will allow you to process these in real time. Your payment processor also helps you manage your exposure to fraud by employing automated detection.

This section is by no means an exhaustive review of the operators in the Irish market but it does highlight some of the most prominent solution providers.

Realex Payments are Ireland's leading Payment Service Provider processing for some 1,500 online traders across all the major banks. Realex Payments have an 'Online Trader' package that caters for small to medium sized businesses who wish to transact via the web.

Dovetail recommends Realex Payments as the payment processor - we have partnered with them for many projects over many years and have found them thorough, professional, friendly and not least - good value

Associated with the Royal Bank of Scotland, Worldpay is an alternative to the Realex partner selection and is an Acquiring Bank and a payment processor combined. If your start-up has difficulty obtaining an Internet Merchant Service Agreement through AIB or Bank of Ireland, then Worldpay (based in the UK) is a fallback. They claim 90% of applicants are signed up.

If you do not want to go through the hassle of obtaining an Internet Merchant Account, you could opt for a Third Party Payment Processor.

There are many Third Party Providers on the Internet which get around the necessity for you to have an Internet Merchant Account by acting as a middle-man in the transaction. It is illegal for them to use their Merchant Account on your behalf (termed "factoring") so instead, they effectively buy the goods from you and sell them on to the end customer.

There can be significant delays in receiving payment from Third Party Payment Providers. Furthermore using a third party processor is often very expensive - 5% (or more) commissions not being unusual.

PayPal is the eCommerce wing of eBay and using it is a fast and cheap way of getting your payment systems up and running.

To get a PayPal merchant account you simply sign up on the website, providing your credit card number. Once you are set up, all payments received from your customers will go into your PayPal account and you will have to transfer this money to your bank account.

PayPal has its detractors: On a practical note, PayPal does not take Laser cards, which is important if you are selling into the Irish market. Other issues exist with PayPal's perception: Until recently, you had to be a PayPal member before you could purchase from a PayPal-based site. This extra hassle turned people away and, though it has now been addressed, PayPal can still evoke a negative reaction from potential buyers. Customer confidence is another issue - it is so easy to set up an account, many people will simply not buy from a PayPal-only site.

On the plus side, PayPal is widely used in the United States and if this is one of your markets, it is definitely worth adding a PayPal option to your site. Because of the fast setup and low fees, PayPal is ideal if you are a small trader or if you want to test the market.

Choosing your eCommerce partners is very much a function of how your business will operate - how many transactions do you expect, what is the average cost of these transactions, how quickly do you need the money to go into your bank account and what territories you are operating in.

The public ordering system is only one part of a potential eCommerce solution. Depending on your turnover, product set and staffing levels, you may need other business process support systems for the "backoffice".

As well as providing a customer-facing shopping cart, off-the-shelf eCommerce systems we provide facilities to perform the following operations:

You must consider the features, functionality, expandability and general "fit" of such an off-the-shelf solution compared with that of a bespoke development. All businesses are unique, but most have core common practices.

Sacrificing desired business processes and protocols and accepting a generic solution can save you money at start-up, however some businesses are so different that no off-the-shelf solution will exist (specifically, any system that encodes your unique business processes or interfaces with third-party or legacy systems). In this case an entirely bespoke system will have to be written from scratch.

As a compromise: buying an off-the-shelf system and getting a developer to tweak it to your needs might work best. This is not necessarily any more cost-effective than building from the ground-up, but it depends on your needs.

Whether you are building your own system or using an off-the-shelf package, you should avoid storing credit card numbers in your database. If you do need access to credit card numbers (for recurring fees or for customer convenience) then your Payment Service Provider will provide you with a solution.

If your website also stores a lot of textual copy, which changes regularly, you may need to invest in a CMS, which will allow you or your staff to alter web pages, without having to learn HTML. Such systems range in cost and complexity: simple webpage editors can be a few hundred Euro; large complex publication engines can cost hundreds of thousands of euro.

A backend accountancy system, such as Sage or Pegasus, may be needed in order to keep your books. Ideally, you would like your sales system to automatically interface with this package, but such functionality will depend on your budget and choice of software.

Your website will need to be hosted and, if you are taking in credit card details, will need a Secure Sockets Layer Certificate. An SSL Certificate is a file which is stored on the server and which ensures that the website belongs to who it is claiming to belong to (the padlock icon appears in the browser when SSL is on). It also provides security by encrypting any information that the user submits.

Budget €300- €500 euro for year one, €200 for ensuing years for this (depending on how many emails you need, how much disk-space, if it is Windows or Unix, if there is a database, etc. - your developers will tell you more when the system is sized).

If you do not want the expense of a secure server, your Payment Processor may offer an alternative. Instead of taking in credit card details on your site, you can redirect the customer to a secure page on the Payment Processor's site. One disadvantage of this is that the URL in the address bar will change to the URL of the Payment Processor. Another is that you may not have full control over the data that is collected or the look and feel of this secure page.

The physical location of your hosting company could be important: if your primary market is Ireland, you should host your site in Ireland as search engines can prioritise local websites when executing a search. If you are registering a new domain name use a .ie domain if you are targeting Ireland.

Finally, your website is up and running and your stock is ready to be sold. Now you need to attract the customers.

Internet Marketing is a complex job and there many Irish companies who specialise in this area. Unless you get visitors to your site, you simply won't do any business, so it is a good idea to set aside a budget of at least €1,000- €3,000 at the beginning of your project.

Appearing high in search engine rankings can make a monumental difference to your site's revenue potential.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of gearing your website content and structure so that it appeals to the ranking algorithms of common search engines. Generally, target keywords are repeated in prominent parts of the HTML page copy, the theory being that a search engine will return your page when those keywords are used in a search.

SEO also includes a strategy for getting links to your site. Incoming links - particularly from popular sites and sites which are related to yours - will greatly increase your site's "page rank", particularly if the text on the incoming link includes your target keywords.

Note that the ranking algorithms used by search engines are not in the public domain and may change at any time, so any SEO strategy employed at one moment in time cannot be guaranteed to succeed or to last.

When people in Ireland mention search engines, Google most often springs to mind. Ireland is indeed Google-centric and countries like the US and UK have large Google usage however this does not mean Google is the only option and if you are drawing customers from around the world you will be able to attract people from a multitude of engines and directories more easily than spending endless hours trying to crack Google.

We recommend that good HTML, good copywriting and good content are the best principles to adhere to when optimising your site for search engines. The technologies applied by the major search engines are improving constantly and it is now more difficult and more dangerous to attempt to fool (or "spam") them: what is a nifty trick today may get your site "blacklisted" as spam tomorrow. Good copy, good content, good referrers and good code all add up to a good site, which will, by its own popularity, produce high rankings. So ancillary informational content should be sourced, which will complement your shopping portal, bulk up your site, drive inward links and bring in new visitors.

PPC or "Pay Per Click" refers to the text-based advertising you commonly see on the sides of search result pages and blogs. If your advertisement appears, and the surfer clicks it, you will be charged for the click.

Where you appear on this advertising strip, and how often you appear is down to how much you are willing to pay for the "keywords" which trigger your advertisement. Be warned that you must monitor and restrict your spending carefully when you set up a PPC campaign, as costs can spiral rapidly.

The most popular form of advertising on the Internet's World Wide Web is currently banner advertising. This is the clickable graphic that you see along the top and sides of most popular web sites. Rates vary depending on the target websites and are usually quoted in CPMs (cost per thousand).

Many banner advertising companies (such as SalesOnline.ie, Doubleclick) offer a portfolio of websites over which your ads will run. Your banner advertising partner should provide "click-tracking" so you can monitor your campaign and ensure you are getting what you paid for. Banner advertising can be expensive and there are concerns by marketers regarding the over-exposure and effectiveness of this type of advertising.

Your existing customers are already "warm leads" - they are obviously interested in your products so you should keep them abreast of additions to your catalogue, any special offers you may be running, and general news about your business.

To do this, ask your site visitors to opt-in to receive newsletters from you, then periodically (but not too frequently) send an email to those who have subscribed. Keep the newsletter concise and always include call-to-action links ("click here for more").

Make sure that all your recipients have explicitly consented to receive emails from you and always include an "unsubscribe" option, or you could potentially be prosecuted for sending unsolicited commercial emails under EU and Irish law.

Special software is available which will allow you to monitor the success of your email marketing campaigns - how many people opened the mails, how many clicked each link. Your Internet Marketing partner will be able to provide more details.

After spending all that effort getting someone to your site, you really want to convert this potential customer. Thought must be put into the site design, its message, its style and its ease-of-use in order to ensure that baskets are not abandoned and customers are not driven away by a confusing site. Every page, even informational, should at least try to elicit an email address off a visitor, so at least the lead does not simply die.

As you will be keeping personal information in your order database it is highly likely that you will have to register with the Data Protection Commissioner as a data controller.

According to the Data Protection Commissioner, you must register as a data controller if you can answer "yes" to the following question: "Do you keep or process any information about living people?"

If you are unsure if you should register, please review the Data Protection Commissioner website at www.dataprotection.ie.

Your payment processor has sophisticated fraud-detection systems which engage every time someone makes a purchase on your site. But fraud is unfortunately a fact of life on the Internet and at some stage it will reach you.

Always apply common-sense to orders you receive: if something looks wrong it probably is. If you receive an order for five hundred sweaters from a third-world nation, you shouldn't dispatch the order, you should rebate the transaction and notify your bank.

Your payment processor applies a multitude of sophisticated fraud detection techniques, searching for patterns of usage which indicate suspicious card activity. There are also some security measures built into the card itself. The CVV/CVN code (the 3 or 4 digit code on the back or front of the card) provides an extra check and you should ask your Payment Provider to enable this.

3DSecure (3D) is a new initiative by all the major credit/debit card players and it is good news for merchants. At the moment if a merchant dispatches goods for a fraudulent order, the real owner of the credit card can query the transaction, forcing a chargeback, and the merchant is out of pocket for the dispatched goods. Once 3D is implemented, it will put the responsibility for fraudulent transactions with the originating cardholder and the issuing bank. The liability has now moved from you and your bank to the purchaser and their bank. During a 3D transaction, the customer will have to enter a personal ID code (a PIN or a passphrase) which is known only to the customer and their credit card company. It is the responsibility of the issuing bank and the consumer to ensure that the personal ID code is kept private.

Chargebacks occur when your customer queries a payment with their credit card company. It can be very frustrating as a vendor when you have fulfilled an order and then the payment is taken back from your account.

When a chargeback occurs, you will be notified by post, so be very diligent about opening all correspondence from your bank. To reverse a chargeback, you will have to go through a tedious process of contacting the buyer, getting them to contact the credit card company, possibly getting a signed letter from the customer, compiling the original invoice/receipt and then persuading the bank that the transaction was legitimate.

To keep chargebacks to a minimum, you should ensure that the reference on the credit card statement is the same as the brand name used for the purchase - even if you are using a Trading-As name. For example, your company may be ACME Ltd, but your website may be IrishGoods.ie. Make sure IrishGoods.ie appears on the customers' credit card statements. Set up IrishGoods.ie as a Trading-As name through the CRO and ensure that you specify this name when you are applying for your Internet Merchant Account. If you are using a Third Party Provider you should ensure that it will not be the Provider's name that appears on the customers' statements

Selling on the Internet is much like selling on the High Street - it is one campaign after another. When you are over the busy time at Christmas, you will be planning for Valentine's Day, then Easter or Mothers Day. You will be monitoring your PPC statistics, trying to reduce abandoned baskets while increasing visitors through further SEO and newsletter campaigns. You will expand and experiment with your catalogue, set up an affiliate scheme, a loyalty scheme, a referral system and perhaps even try viral marketing. You will be surprised how quickly you learn new tricks and techniques and one year into your new online business, you'll be an expert on trading on the Internet.

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