Thinking of setting up an e-com site? You have to take care of three functions here—a storefront where customers can shop and place orders, validation of payments, and maintaining a customer profile, apart from getting the back-end infrastructure in place. Here, we help you create your storefront. Validation of payments can be done through e-mail, or by direct communication to the bank’s server in case of credit cards. Otherwise, to avoid these validation hassles, you can enable payments through check or demand draft or send the product by VPP.

We’ve used a software called StoreFront Web Creator to create the storefront and add a shopping cart. This software is wizard-driven, and you don’t need to know HTML or any kind of scripting. It takes you through the process of setting up your site, and helps you decide its look and feel and navigation.

So, let’s get started with using the software to create your storefront. We’ve divided the process into five simple steps.

Basic information: You have to provide your company name, address, logo, phone and fax numbers, a link to your homepage, and any other contact information that you want to give to your online customers. Then, you have to specify how you’d like to receive the orders. There are five options:

• E-mail, that is, orders are sent to you via e-mail
• A form per product ordered
• A shopping cart, where the customer browses around your site, and adds the products he wants to the shopping cart
• An order form with a list of products
• An order form with an entry field, where the customer types in the name and the number of units of the products he wants

A shopping cart is the preferred method of these, as it is convenient for you as well as the shopper, who can edit his purchases when he’s through with the shopping

Data entry and updation: The next important step is to prepare a catalogue of the various products. Tell the StoreFront wizard how you would like to set up the navigation. Then enter the actual data. You can create a new catalogue, or open an existing catalogue, if you have to update the data. It’s also possible to import a catalogue if you have one as a text or a LST file

Shipping information: You now have to specify the shipping modes. If you have more than one shipping option that the customer is free to choose from, specify them here. If you have some extra charges for each shipping mode, you’ll have to specify those too. Other policies like warranty and return have to be declared here. If you want to send an order confirmation to shoppers, enter that here too

Mode of payment: Here, you decide the modes of payment a shopper on your site can use—credit card, check or demand draft, or VPP. You have to specify all the payment options here. You can specify a maximum of five options, as StoreFront doesn’t accept more than this number. Also, specify the currency of transaction