Ecommerce Site Prerequisites

It is not necessary to have taken other courses to get the most out of this course. However, you should have a basic understanding of e-commerce and some courses that might help prepare you for this course are

1. ecommerce Fundamentals and
2. Planning Web Site,

or equivalent knowledge and experience.

To run an ecommerce website, you will need:

1. Domain name and web hosting: Choose a domain name that reflects your brand and register it with a web hosting provider.
2. Ecommerce platform: Choose an ecommerce platform like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, etc. that provides a complete solution for setting up, managing, and running an online store.
3. Payment gateway: Choose a payment gateway like PayPal, Stripe, etc. to securely process transactions on your site.
4. SSL certificate: Secure your website with an SSL certificate to ensure the protection of sensitive information and provide a secure shopping experience for customers.
5. Product catalog: Set up your product catalog by adding product information, images, and descriptions.
6. Shipping and tax configuration: Set up shipping and tax rules for your store.
7. Marketing and promotion strategy: Plan a marketing and promotion strategy to attract and retain customers.

Additionally, you should have a clear understanding of legal requirements for online businesses such as sales tax, consumer protection laws, and privacy policies.

Shopping cart software is a platform that enables ecommerce businesses to manage their online sales process. The key elements that make up a shopping cart software include:

1. Product catalog management: A catalog management system to add, update, and manage products and product categories.
2. Shopping cart: A virtual shopping cart that allows customers to add and remove items from their cart and view the total cost of their purchase.
3. Payment processing: Integration with payment gateways to securely process transactions.
4. Tax and shipping calculation: Automated calculation of taxes and shipping costs based on customer location and product weight.
5. Order management: A system to manage orders, including order tracking, fulfillment, and customer communication.
6. Customer management: A system to manage customer data, including customer profiles, order history, and billing information.
7. Marketing and promotions: Tools to run promotions and discounts, such as coupon codes and email campaigns.
8. Reporting and analytics: A reporting and analytics system to track key metrics, such as sales, traffic, and customer behavior.
9. Mobile optimization: Responsive design and mobile optimization to ensure a seamless shopping experience on all devices.
10. Security: A secure platform with features such as SSL encryption, fraud protection, and secure data storage to protect sensitive customer information

Shopping cart software is software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online, analagous to the US English term "shopping cart". In British English it is generally known as a shopping basket, almost exclusively shortened on websites to basket. The software allows online shopping customers to "place" items in the cart. Upon "checkout" the software typically calculates a total for the order including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) and taxes, if applicable. There are a lot of technical problems in ecommerce websites such as server glitches, onsite and offsite conflicts, and latency. For example your keyword ranks well on Google but shows different results for search engine Yandex. Recent technical advances like the introduction of canonical tags were designed to help resolve this problem . In the next lesson, course requirements will be discussed.