How to Build an Ecommerce Web Site

You've got a brilliant idea for selling products onlinethat's been festering in your mind for a long time Thismeans you need to build an ecommerce web site or onlinestore as others would call it, but have no idea what isinvolved and how much it is going to cost you.

This article will put your mind at ease as I will try to give you the necessary knowledge for creating, building and promoting your ecommerce store.
Steps involved in building an ecommerce website:

1 Do the necessary online research - you first need to seeif your product is in demand। It's no point spending timeand money building your ecommerce store.
only to find out noone is interested in your products.Enter the keywords or keyword phrases that visitors woulduse to find your web site in the overture suggestion tool:This will give you a good indication of the number ofpeople that regularly search for that term। If there are nosearch results, you may want to reconsider what you intendto sell or do more extensive research on other types ofkeywords that may match your products.

2. Prepare your product information - if you organize yourproducts ahead of time in an excel spreadsheet, it willmake it much easier for you (or your web site designer) toadd them to the ecommerce web site.

Here are the columns to create in your spreadsheet:
a) product categories and subcategories ie horse supplies-horse boots
b) product options ie sizes, colors
c) product ID number ie SK105
d) product description
e) product image
f) product price
g) shipping calculations
h) tax calculations

३.Open a PayPal account - the paypal shopping cart is oneof the easiest payment solutions to integrate with your ecommerce web site.
You won't have to bother with a merchant account, payment gateway or shopping cart and signing up for a paypal account is free. Paypal integrates all these services automatically and just charges you a small processing fee for each purchase You can accept both paypal and credit card payments online. Customers don't even have to open a paypal account to purchase products with their credit card।

There is plenty of online documentation on how to set up your paypal shopping cart should you get stuck।

4. Register a domain name - choose a name that is easy tospell and remember. This makes it easier for the customer to return to your online store without looking it up. You can register a domain name for around $9.00 at Godaddy.com.

5. Select a web host company - here are some features to consider when choosing a web hosting company for your ecommerce web site:
web space
bandwidth
email accounts
autoresponders
site statistics
database (if needed)
fast customer service
reasonably priced

6. Build your ecommerce web site - decide on how many pages you want on your site (this won't apply if you have a database driven site). Name the navigation links for the web pages according to the main product categories you are using.

Here are some suggestions:
Homepage
Category 1
Category 2
Category 3
Category 4
Category 5
Category 6
Policies
About Us
Contact

Some points to consider:
-There should be a consistent theme and design running throughout your site ie same header image and/or logo, slogan, navigation, copyright and colors.
-The homepage should include a summary of what products your site has to offer. Customers can always delve deeper into your site for more information.
-Add a paragraph of text at the top of each page (250-500 words) which includes the keywords you have researched for that product. This will attract potential visitors to find your site based on the keywords they insert in the search engines.
-Include a contact form to build a contact list so you always keep in touch with your customers.
-Include a policies page for shipping, refund and terms of service policies.

7. Test your web site - after uploading your site files to your web host, thoroughly check your site by testing for these factors:
-broken links
-browser compatibility
-screen resolution
-html/xhtml vaildation
-contact form works
-site loading time

8. Market your web site - you will not make any sales if you don't actively market your web site. The most important action you should do on a consistent basis to increase your presence in the search engines is to build your link popularity (number of links pointing to your site). Contact sites related to yours and exchange links with them. You should also submit your site to the main search engines and directories.

Other methods of marketing include writing articles related to your site's material, advertising in ezines and pay per click advertising. Be sure to include offline advertising by including your web site address on all your stationary.

Conclusion - building an ecommerce web site doesn't have to be complicated task. By following the steps outlined above, you can quickly and easily set up your site and start selling your products.=====================================================

Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) and owner of iSiteBuild.com Web Site Design, Web Hosting, Web Site Promotion
Author of “Marketing Tips” newsletter. To subscribe, send an email to:subscribe@isitebuild.com and place "Subscribe me please" in the subject line

Website Designing Tools – Guide to Design an Effective Website

While designing your website, aim to get a high ranking in the top three search engines- Yahoo, Google and MSN Avoid fantastic graphics, slow loading time and inaccurate spelling when designing your website. You can write feature articles while designing a website. Graphic Tools for designing your own website online are also available.

Designing your website, pay attention to the following - Since the online community is generally impatient, your homepage must be able to capture the visitors’ attention within the first few seconds, or they are likely to lose interest quickly and leave your website। Perhaps you would like some help in writing proposals, designing a new website, or sending out press releases.

For instance, if you write an E-Book on web designing, then this may sell great on "guide to web design" website। Check out these points to avoid any such happening with your website. Web designing is a perfect combination of creativity & technical expertise and both are equally important. Just to name a few, there are - Selection of a product, preferably a niche product - Selection and registration of URL - Acquiring web hosting for your website - Designing the website - Optimizing the website for top search engine placement and ranking & Submission of your website.

It's not easy to build your own website and the following reasons will convince you that designing a website that suits you and your market may lead to increased profits। Whether you are building a brand new website, or re-designing an old website, or currently using a web design company for ongoing maintenance, these tips will help to make sure you are getting the best deal. Do not underestimate unique photo stills when designing your website. Designing a site with the web standards will ensure that website backbone will not need to be redone any time soon, which reduces the amount of work on the site and the expenses of the site owner.

Whether you are designing sites for clients or designing your own business website, your color choice is vital। A customizable website builder which includes page editor features is superb, and means that you don't have to rely on any web designing company or website designer to update your site. Planning and organizing are the most crucial steps in designing a website. The designing of your website by yourself will be helpful with website templates or use a professional designer. Underestimate unique photo stills when designing your website.

The number one most essential thing you should always be aware of when designing a website is to make a good first impression। Website designers can work as freelancers, designing and maintaining websites for a variety of clients. Your marketing objective defines your results. Business owners and marketers have a tendency to think in broad terms about their marketing objective by focusing on ones such as “generating traffic” or “designing a website. Whether you are building a brand new website, or re-designing an old website, or currently using a web design company for ongoing maintenance, these tips will help to make sure you are getting the best deal.

About the Author:www.29-web-design-tricks.com.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/web-hosting-articles/website-designing-tools-guide-to-design-an-effective-website-567592.html

Why You Should Not Use Free Web Hosting By: Dhruv Patel

If you want to start online business or want to take your local business online, you need a web site. Just making web site won't take you online. You need one reliable and good web hosting company to host your web site on the Internet. Many web masters and entrepreneurs make mistake at the beginning. They think of hosting their web site at free web hosting company. There are many problems attached with free web hosting. In this article, I am going to discuss some of them.
Advertising
The most common problem with free hosting is ads. Free hosting providers are not taking money from you but they need money to maintain their hosting service. So they will give ads on your web site and they will make money from your site. If these ads are content ads from Google AdSense or Yahoo! Publisher Network than we can understand that those ads are related to your content and it will add some value to your contents. However, in many cases these ads are not related to your contents. So your site will not make your visitors happy. You don't have any control over the ads given by your hosting company. You are forced to show their ads on your web site at the time of sign up service agreement. So there is nothing you can do about these ads.
URL and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Issue

Another big issue with free web hosting is with URL। They don't allow you to host your own domain to their hosting company. So you will have to use their sub domain to name your web site. Now you definitely don't want to name your web site using their sub domains. There is solution for this issue.

Use Redirect URL
Using redirect URL feature allows you to redirect users from your domains to the hosted sub domains। This makes sense from user point of view but redirecting creates another problem. When you redirect user from your site to another site, you are just forwarding all requests to another site. So in reality, your site doesn't have any data. When search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN live requests for your site, you will forward them also to another site. So search engines will think that your site doesn't have any data and they will not index your site. So there is no chance that you will get organic traffic from search engines.

Limited Control & Limited Band Width
Free hosting service providers don't give full control to you. So you cannot implement some advance operations like databases and .htaccess file. You are just given an ftp account to upload your files. No other access!
There is also a limitation on the bandwidth you use. So when you run out of your limit, your site access will be blocked. When any visitor visits your site, they will get message something like "This user has exceeded the data transfer limit. Please visit back again after a month". So nobody will get an access of your site until the end of that month.

Account Cancellation
All above problems are still fine but what if they cancel your free hosting account? Yes! It may Your months of efforts to promote your site will be wasted. So there won't be any online business for you. If you are really serious about online business then don't go for free hosting service. There are many cheap and reliable hosting services available. You can use any one of them.

About the Author

Dhruv Patel is a customer of DreamHost. He has created site to help new DreamHost customers and to promote DreamHost by giving DreamHost coupon. You can also find detailed DreamHost review there.

Published At: www.Isnare.comPermanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=288485&ca=Internet

Secure PHP Programming by: Michael McCann

Writing insecure code is easy. Everybody does it. Sometimes we do it accidentally because we don’t realize that the security issue exists, and sometimes we do it on purpose because we suspect the bad guys won’t notice one little vulnerability. Secure programming is often overlooked because of ignorance, time constraints, or any number of other factors. Since security isn’t flashy until something goes wrong, it is often easy put it off.

Once your application is compromised, you will realize there’s nothing more important. The best case scenario is that you lose days of productivity and suffer downtime while you fix what was damaged. The worst case scenario &em; your data is compromised and you have no idea if it is correct, much less what the hackers managed to copy and read. Did you expose usernames and passwords to the world? Did you happen to release the credit card information for thousands into the den of identity thieves? You’ll never really be able to know. It’s best to practice secure programming so you never need to ask yourself these questions.

With this in mind, let’s examine three different classes of secure programming "no-noes," storage risks, system risks, and exposure risks and discuss how we can prevent each of them. Server configuration and data transmission security are beyond the scope of this article, but the reader should be aware that they also play a major role in securing a web application.

Storage risks are those risks involved in the storing data and interacting with a database server or file system. The most widely known of these in the infamous SQL injection attack. SQL injection is when you allow the user to input data into a query, and instead of a value he adds his own SQL into the query. The easiest way to prevent this type of attack is to escape every user variable that could touch your queries. Luckily, PHP has several build in functions for handling this, such as mysql_escape_string(). Essentially, this works by escaping characters in a string that could conceivably be used to terminate your query and run a user specified query.

When should you escape user data? It all depends on who you talk to. Some programmers prefer to escape as soon as it enters the application, while others prefer to wait until just before it is placed into the query. Personally, I prefer to escape right before it is inserted into the query. I do this because I can always look at the code, see the database interaction, and see that the data was escaped before it was being used. I don’t need to search the entire source to make sure something was escaped.

The second storage risk we’ll talk about is storing passwords as plain text (hereafter referred to as clear text). I know you guys do it; I’ve seen too many open source applications and too many in-house applications to believe that it doesn’t go on. Simply put, there is never any reason to store a password in clear text. It doesn’t matter if you’re storing the password in a database or a flat file, always store passwords as a hash. You can accomplish this simply enough by using PHP’s md5() function to transform the password before you insert it into your storage medium. Since md5 is repeatable, you can validate a password by simply using

When should you transform the password to a hash? You should do it as soon as possible. Don’t let the password variable float around your application at all. As soon as you grab the password input, convert it into a hash. I prefer to do this by setting the password variable to its own hash, this avoids the chance of using the wrong variable in later code.

Next, let’s talk about the usernames and passwords your program needs in order to interact with other applications (like database servers). You should always separate these out into a different PHP file than the rest of your code, and reference them as constants or variables. This not only makes your code easier to maintain (if you need to change a password, you know exactly where to look), it the event that your source gets released, you know that the password isn’t in that file. While it’s certainly true that they could grab your password file, it does reduce the risk considerably.

Before we leave usernames behind, I want to touch on the concept of division of power. We’re not talking about the government in this case, but about database users. The database user accounts your program uses should have the minimum level of access they need in order to function correctly.

If your application only reads from a database, then the database account it uses should only have SELECT permission on that particular database, and no access to any other database.

To take this concept a step further, I prefer to create multiple database accounts for my web applications. Typically I create one account that only has INSERT permissions for the particular tables the software needs to write to, and a completely separate account that only has SELECT access. This makes sure that no INSERT queries are accidentally performed and mitigates the possible damage done by SQL injections.

Of course, multiple accounts work best when there’s a clear separation between those who can write to a database and those who can read it (such as a CMS). In theory, you could use multiple accounts in any application but you run into problems with the number of open connections to the database. This is simply something that should be considered as a possibility during the design phase of your software.

I’m a big advocate, as are most programmers, of breaking source code down into multiple files at every logical opportunity. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of PHP programmers have a nasty habit of naming PHP files they intend to use as libraries or other include types with the extension .inc, or .config, or some other non .php extension. This is a horrible idea because the server its running on might not be setup to parse these extensions as PHP files, so anyone loading the file would be exposing their source code (and potentially passwords, usernames, and other protected information) to the world. I prefer to prefix filenames myself, using inc_ or class_ when needed.

While we’re discussing included files, I would like to talk about to other security precautions. If you have a PHP file that you intend to use only as part of a larger PHP application, add this line to the beginning of the file (__FILE__, $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']).

This will cause the file to immediately terminate is someone tries to run it directly. A well written include or class file shouldn’t do anything when loaded on its own, but you can never be too careful &em; especially when a one line cut and paste can potentially save you so much heartache.

The other include-related item I’d like to talk about is the difference between include() and readfile(). Include will tell the server to parse the file as PHP, while readfile tells the server to output the file as straight text. You should never use include on a file that is publicly writable (for example, if you have an application that appends user submitted data to end in order to simulate a graffiti wall or guest book) or on a file that you don’t control (files on other servers, or that others can edit). A malicious user could easily inject his own PHP into your system, causing untold amounts of havoc. At the same time, you should never execute readfile on a file that ends in .php. On a misconfigured system, this runs the risk of exposing your source code to the world. To summarize, use readfile() on html, txt, and remote files. Use include on local files with php code you want to execute.

Now let’s talk about system risks. I think of system risks as those things related to the way code executes. The primary system risk in any application is invalid data. You can never valid data enough. As soon as user data enters the system, you should immediately verify it exists and that it is what you want it to be, if not your program should halt and prompt the user for better input.

When validating data, you should use the tightest filter possible. For example, if your program is expecting a percentage, you should not simply verify that they entered something. Your program should verify that it is numeric and between 0 and 100.

You should also validate at every level. Every time a function accepts input, verify that the data is what you expected it to be and react accordingly if the data is bad. This will make it more likely that you will catch bad data due a programming oversight, it also has the added advantage of catching logic errors in your software.

Next, I’d like to talk about eval(), exec(), and their ilk (shell_exec(),system(), passthru(), and pcntl-exec()). Visit their respective php pages to find out more about them, but in actuality there is very rarely any reason to use them. Eval will run any php code passed to it as a variable. This is inherently dangerous because you no longer have absolute control over what code is executed. If you must use eval(), don’t ever run it with a variable that has been derived from a user determined value, otherwise you run the risk of a hacker injecting his code. Exec() and the like pose similar threats, allowing your script to interact with the command line is a level of power you should rarely, if ever, need.

Finally, let’s talk about a couple of exposure risks. Usually, you don’t want to show your error messages to the world. For one, they freak people out. Secondly, they give hackers a wealth of information about potential bugs in your code. On production systems, always turn your error reporting off and use PHP’s errorlog() function instead.

The last risk we’ll talk about is using session IDs. Simply put, try not to ever send the session id to the user. Sessions aren’t secure, but if you transmit the session ID you run an even greater risk of someone other than the expected user to act as a "man in the middle" (to steal an analogy) and piggy-back off of the legitimate user’s session. An example of this would be using a session id to hijack someone’s shopping cart and change a delivery address, get credit card information, or do something even more malicious depending on the system.

We’ve discussed many security risks involved with programming in PHP, but they boil down to a few simple concepts.

* Never trust the user &em; don’t let them run code on your sever and always validate any data they send you.

* Don’t give the user, or your software, any level of access greater than the absolute minimum needed to successfully accomplish their tasks.

* Don’t tell the user more than they need to know &em; don’t let them see your code, the session id, or any error messages that you didn’t create specifically for them,.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at michael@mmccann.com or visit my website (http://www.MMcCann.com).

About The Author
Michael McCann is a fulltime web applications developer aspiring to world in the worlds of Business Analysis or Embedded Systems Development. He currently does consulting in the data management sphere.

Four Critical Web Design Rules

"Content is King! If you want a website to generate back-links and have quality content the search engines love, be sure to make it readable by both people and search engines. Search engines are working to give people quality results. Thus, they are looking for sites with quality content. So - by building site content for people, not only are you getting back to basics (information dissemination to people via the Internet), you are creating a site search engines will love. So, build sites for people - and the search engines will come.

When creating a new website or redesigning an existing site, there are four critical rules which should be followed to make the site effective, functional, loved by search engines - and successful.

1. Easy to Read
When building a website, the first thing you need to be sure of is that your website is easy to read. When you write content, remember that most web site visitors don't read every word of a page - in fact, they only scan pages to find what they want.

Break up Your Content
Break up your pages and use headers between major ideas so people scanning your site can find what they want quickly. Use meaningful headers between each paragraph or major idea - this helps with SEO. Headers should be created with the H1 through H4 tags for SEO. Always use good writing structure. Additionally, avoid long paragraphs that run on. You should break up any long paragraphs.

Color and Fonts
To help readability, use high contrast colors between font and background. Black text against a white background may seem stark, but it is very readable. To make a website easy on the eyes, try an off-white background and a dark gray (almost black) text color.

Things to avoid with content color:
Avoid vibrant background colors like purple or yellow. Such back colors make text difficult to read.
Avoid using an image behind your text.
Avoid using bright text colors on bright backgrounds.

Fonts Matter
One simple statement covers the font issue:
Simple fonts are the best; the more fancy the font, the harder it is to read.
Since many browsers only have the standard font set, use standard fonts। In reality, there is no "standard", but there are certain fonts that are installed on most browsers. These include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Times New Roman. Your readers will see something different than you see if you use other fonts.

Standard Compliant Browser for Development
When developing and testing your site, use a Standards compliant browser like FireFox. If you develop your site to be standards compliant, it will work in most browsers, including MS Internet Explorer (IE). It is recommended that you test your site using the latest and last browser versions of IE (IE6 and IE7). To run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, TredoSoft.com has a free installer that will install multiple versions of IE. It works great!

Keywords in Content
Of course, when writing content, not only should it be formatted to be readable, but it must also be consumable by not only people, but by search engines. One way to make the subject of the content known to search engines is to use the keywords that people use to search for your site in your content. Be sure to use keywords in your header tags, your first paragraph and throughout your text. The keyword density should be between 4% and 7% - but any more than that could 1) be hard to read and still make sense and 2) be considered spam by search engines and banned. Keywords should also be used in your TITLE tags and your Meta description.

2. Simplify Navigation
The menus and links make up the navigation that the visitor uses to get from page to page in a site. Always plan a site around how people will get from page to page. A visitor to your site should be able to get to what they want within three clicks of their mouse.
Multiple navigation points makes it easy to find things। Repeat the top menu and at the bottom. Also create a left or right menu.

Using links within your text to other areas on your site। You can create links so that they are good for search engine optimization (SEO)।
There are generally two ways to create links within your text:
The wrong way: "For search engine optimization techniques, click here."
The right way: "Good techniques for search engine optimization are important to use।"

Using link text (anchor text) that describes what the link is about is the best way. Search engine web crawlers (programs that automatically index the contents of websites) visit your site, they "read" links. Spiders can index descriptive links into a subject or keyword category. Spiders have nothing to work with when reading a "click here" until it reaches the linked page.
This is Cross Linking - use it as much as possible when it makes sense to do so when writing your content.

3. Consistent Design
At most, one or two layouts should be used in your site design. As a reader browses your site, they should be able to get used to looking in the same place for your navigation, for your sub-navigation and for your content. That's all there is to say about that.

4. Lower Page Weight is Better
Page weight is the total size of a page on your site in bytes - code, text and images. Your site's page weight makes a big difference to your viewers. Lighter page weight is better for your readers because the page will download faster. The faster a page downloads, the faster they will get to the content.

What it Means to be Light
No large images.
Fewer images are better.
Optimize images for the web at no more than 72 dpi
Use as small an image dimension as possible for the given design.
Use a table td bgcolor attribute or a background-color style attribute for solid color backgrounds.
Make gradients horizontal or vertical (not diagonal) so that you can use a small image "strip" and repeat it.

How "Heavy" Should a Web Page be?
Certain studies show that 64K is a good maximum webpage size. 64K is a maximum, however it is still, in my opinion, really big! The smaller the page, the better. 25K is good, 15K is even better. There is a balance between design and function. It is a good idea to focus more on function.
Try putting pages on your web host server as you build your site so you can test it as you go. For pages online, you can test the page weight at www.quasarcr.com/pageweight/ to be sure you are on track.

Ways to make pages lighter:
Use linked style sheets
Use DIVs instead of TABLEs where possible
Use simple repeating backgrounds for effect

Summary
Visitors to your website should be able to find what they are looking for within about three clicks. Search engines should be able to navigate easily through your site. Making a site easy to read with consistent page design, and easy to navigate will make it easy to find information. When people can find information, they are more likely to refer your site or link to it - which is exactly what you want to encourage. You will be on the way to building a readable and hopefully successful website that is loved by search engines if you follow these principals.

Author Bio
Nicholas LaPolla has been a web applications developer for 11 years। He created AcmeWebResources.com to help others build or improve, market, and monitize their websites with a focus on web design, website seo / internet marketing, and working to make money online.
Article Source: http://www.articlegeek.com/ - Free Website Content

Build A Website : The Costs And Benefits

These days in a world ruled by technology, virtually anyone can build a website, but few have the skills to build a website that functions। Even though there are plenty of low cost tools and services out there, far too many web sites are virtually useless, gathering virtual dust on their virtual shelves.

You can design and build your website with a lot of effort। But that alone does not guarantee that your website will be a success. You have to give importance to factors that will encourage people to visit your website. You can market your website in many ways, to increase traffic to your website.

However, online marketing is quite expensive। When you are operating on a small budget it is essential that you build a website that is optimize for search engines. You will save a lot of advertising dollars by ensuring that all your web pages have quality keywords.

Keywords are words or phrases that the world uses to find what they are looking for in the web। If you want to make your web page appear live for the world to view, you simply need to research a hosting company with experience, register your domain name, create your account, build your personal site, and then publish it. It is a very simple process! The important part is finding a hosting company that provides you with a domain name (your personal website name) registration, site builder tools, and hosting. Some site builder tools require you to be proficient in HTML (Hyper Tex Mark up Language). Otherwise look for site builder tool that does not require you to learn the language.

To build a website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) that works require upfront planning। After deciding on what niche you want to pursue, you will need to come up with a name for your website, build a keyword list, register your website name, sign up with a hosting company, and submit your website to the search engines. All this can end up costing you quite a bit.

In summary, building a Website that works is going to cost you। But, you have control over how much it costs you financial and emotionally. All you have to do is to figure out exactly what you want the website to do, identify the resources that you will need, establish a budget, then go build your site. It is that simple.

About The औथोर

Tem Balanco Building a website that works is a bit difficult. There are many tools and services available for anyone who wants to build a website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/). Even though your website may work, it is not necessary that it will attract people. Different marketing strategies can be used to increase traffic. Advertising costs can be reduced by having proper and good quality keywords. Planning is a major criterion in this matter. Once you decide on the theme of your website you have to find a name, gather the keywords, then list the domain name, link with a service provider, and optimize the site for search engines.