“E-Commerce… consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet….” - Wikipedia

Since the underlying principles of the digital and physical marketplaces are the same, there are a number of lessons you can take from one to the other.

Here are four key elements of e-commerce drawn from the needs of brick-and-mortar businesses and enhanced by technology.

Online Storefront - The Product Manager

The online storefront is your digital place of business.  As with any business you want to customize it to fit your customers’ buying habits, your chosen branding, and the logistical needs of your business.  A product manager lets you enter, store, and share information on products, pick what data is visible to customers, and generally manage the informational aspects of the shopping experience.

To design this well you need to think like a customer.  How can they see what they’re getting?  Pictures, certainly help, but they’re not the only way to learn about a product.  What do other people think of it, has it won any awards, how does it stack up against other products and services?  Customers are going to want to make these sorts of comparisons.  If you want them to stay on your site, you need to find a way that makes it easy for them to do so.

Building an Order - The Shopping Cart

There are a number of ways for customers to build their orders, but the most common is the shopping cart.  A shopping cart integrates with a storefront so that shoppers can add items to their purchase list without ever leaving the product pages.  It also gives shoppers a way to see what they’re planning to order and make changes before completing the sale.

The shopping cart software handles everything from when you first indicate you want an item through submitting your delivery address with one exception - the exchange of funds.

However, in settings where you do not need to build an order, like for charitable giving, or single product stores, it is possible to remove the traditional shopping card screens from the user’s experience while retaining all it’s functionality.

Payment - The Merchant Gateway

The merchant gateway serves the same function as the electronic card reader in the checkout line at your favorite brick and mortar store.  It creates a secure online connection to confirm the availability of funds, initiates an electronic transfer, and creates a record of the transaction.  The more reliable merchant gateways also build in safety precautions like address confirmation to cut down on fraudulent purchases.

Because much of the information required for the merchant gateway is also used for the shopping cart (amount, address, and so forth) it is important that your shopping cart software is compatible with your merchant gateway.

Fulfillment - Return of the Product Manager and Shopping Cart

Just as the Product Manager lets you store and display information for the shopper, it also lets you enter and retrieve information necessary for filling an order (such as product numbers, vendors, and handling instructions).  This information is handed off to the Shopping Cart software, which can then generate an order form or report that includes all necessary information from every product in the order.

More sophisticated and integrated systems can take this process a step further and automatically generate purchase orders for any additional stock you need.