"E-Commerce" (electronic commerce) is the service of transfer of goods or payments over global information networks. This includes not only interactive transactions but also specific marketing activities, research of market potential, keeping up relationship with customers and consumers, as well as a flow of corporate documentation. Thus e-Commerce is a complex concept, yet every transaction includes a transfer of electronic data.

In this book, we have examined various technical and practical issues that can help you to create your own online shop on the basis of TYPO3 CMS. But, with the development of e-Commerce, there are more and more online shops that offer various goods. Therefore, you must not only pay attention to the technical development of your online shop, from placing it on a server, to integration of the payment system, to security issues, and of course, to the goods themselves, but you must also know how to make your online shop popular and thus profitable.

The global development in economics and business predicts that e-Commerce services will become even more popular. Thus an online shop is a good way to sell goods and services in terms of profit per investment.

E-Commerce increases the efficiency of trade in the following ways:

The potential customers have the technologies (Internet access, computers, credit cards) to choose the needed goods and to make payment online. This saves time, as it is possible to see the offers of many goods or services over a short period of time. It is possible to purchase goods from other cities internationally.

The business, however, can optimize its costs of sale by, for instance, offering the goods only in an online shop. E-shop has a great potential for growth by offering the goods to customers from various target groups or from various countries. Yet, the main goal of an online shop is still making profit.

The management of an online shop includes using the same marketing methods as in traditional businesses. Yet, a number of new notions have to be considered—e-mail marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) activities, context advertisement, banners, affiliates marketing, among others.

Likewise, the competition is different in e-Commerce. Every business, which offers similar goods or services online, immediately becomes the competitor of your online shop. The situation is complicated because if, for example, your online shop offers berries to customers in Europe, every online vendor of berries for the same group of customers becomes your competitor.

The physical location of your shop or warehouse is less important than in the case of traditional shops, where the location closer to the potential customer is immensely important for business success.

When establishing an online shop, one should prepare a strategic business plan; one must identify potential risks and threats and scenarios to avoid those dangers. Likewise, necessary calculations of prices, discounts, and other things have to be prepared.

There are two general ways of how to plan the online shop. One way is creating a detailed business plan while the second is creating a strategic plan. The choice of either way depends on the availability of initial investment and the availability of time for preparation.

Your experience in dealing with the specific goods that would be sold through your online shop is crucial. Basically, there are two ways:

If the first way is the case, you will know, based on your experience, a lot about berries—the various kinds of berries and the details about storing and transporting them. You will also know about the producers of berries, the quality they offer, and the terms and conditions of their selling contracts. This experience will help you greatly when opening an online shop. You may also have some experience in selling. Maybe you have a fruit business that is not available on the Internet. Again, this is an advantage for your potential e-business.

The second scenario means that you do not have any prior experience in selling berries and no knowledge whatsoever about this product. Maybe you have some other business experience or maybe you have sold something online. If this is the case, opening a large-scale online berry shop includes much more business risks.

If you have never sold berries before, it is recommended that you do some test sales before you go for a large scale business. Thus the risks will be reduced by gaining some information about the market and the customers.

In some cases, it is useful to set up a test web page in order to explore the demand of your goods. Thus the initial costs of your large scale business will also be reduced. Create, for example, an online shop that offers various kinds of berries.

During the test sales, you must follow the statistics of visitors and purchases. Your test online shop also has to be advertised, and the customers have to be informed about the production. If there is a stable demand over a certain period of time, you can begin a large-scale sale and plan greater investments for creating an online shop.

After the test phase, you might learn that some kinds of berries are demanded more than others. Thus you will know which berries will be sold at larger volumes.

Sometimes it is a good option to sell goods on demand. Yet, creating and developing such an online shop is much harder because potential customers like to purchase goods that are available immediately rather than wait for a long delivery.

Certainly, such business models are feasible if you communicate the benefits of such an approach to your customers—for example, that the berries will be picked after placing the orders, thus keeping them fresh for a longer period of time.

The next step is planning your business in general and planning the specific activities for creating an effective and technically well-developed online shop. In addition to deciding to sell certain kinds of berries, you must also determine the main directions of development: this is the business mission, vision, and the values. These form the so-called "business philosophy".

The mission of your berry business might be, for example:

The vision might be:

When defining a mission and vision, one must keep in mind that these are not just plain words or just an obligatory step. Indeed, it is possible to develop an online shop without the "philosophical" side of it, but in the long run, the mission and vision show the way for the management of the business as well as for the employees. These formulations motivate heading in the right direction for achieving the main goals of the business.

Our mission and vision define the stand the company takes that health is a value and that the berries offered by the online shop stimulate the health and well-being of people.

Thus the values underlying the popularization of the online shop might be as follows:

Every business idea has two initial challenges:

Arguably, the main component in the process of making the profit is the product. If, for example, there is no online berry shop, two explanations are possible: either there is no demand for such goods or the producers of berries use different channels of distribution.

The demand for a product, as mentioned before, can be identified by the test sales.

If the test sales show that there is some demand for the berries, then you have certain advantages if you are the first one to set up an online berry shop. But this is until other competitors appear.

But if the berries are sold in online shops, you must create your specific approach to attract customers and ensure the competitiveness of your online shop.

If you plan on increasing the sales in future, then your initial strategy might be a good basis for the development of your brand. This also means development of your online shop (and your business) on the international level.

In the case of an online shop as a form of business, the main aspects when creating a profitable enterprise are:

Creating an online shop is an interesting and exciting process. But it also has to be done responsibly, because it is the basis of you business success.

Before creating an online shop, the time and especially the financial resources have to be considered. This is the advantage of TYPO3 CMS because it makes it possible to decrease the costs of technical development while maintaining functionality and flexibility of the web pages.

Before opening an online shop, it is necessary to identify the target customer and the target geographical area. These considerations determine the visual, functional, and technical requirements of the online shop.

Here are some other considerations before starting an online shop:

These considerations will determine the technical requirements of your planned online shop.

In relation to the online purchases, an important question to be decided is whether the visitors of the online shop will have to register. On the one hand, it is recommended not to force the client to register, as it is an extra inconvenience, but on the other hand, the information about the registered customers can be useful in marketing activities. Therefore, it is a good idea to make the registration optional.

An important technical aspect is automatized operation of the online shop. This decreases the costs and ensures that the purchases made in your online shop are not dependant on any other factor than the wish of the consumer to buy the goods.

And certainly, the most important aspect for the future of an online shop is its popularization and marketing activities.

When planning the advertisement of your online shop, the aforementioned business strategy and values have to be considered. The advertisement must generally follow the main goal of the popularization—be it the introduction of a new product in the market or the popularization of an already established online shop.

The popularization activities also have to react to the actions of competitors. Sometimes an intuition might be helpful when quick and effective solutions have to be found.

The suggestions for how to popularize an online shop can be divided as follows: