E-Commerce Services: Basic Vocabulary

Do you want your business to expand to the largest market in the world but have no computer skills? You don’t have to limit yourself because you didn’t study computers and programming in college. You still can open a virtual business or extend your regular business to the Internet by hiring an e-commerce services company.

However, if the quotations you get are full of words that you don’t understand, don’t worry. Here are the most common terms used in ecommerce development services that you’ll find across.

Domain. Domain is the name of your company online. It usually ends with a period followed by three letters. For example, google.com or yahoo.com.

Hosting. Also known simply as host. It’s the service of renting a space on someone’s computers that are connected to the Internet all the time. You have to rent this to put the files that create your virtual store and make it available to the public.

Shopping cart. A program that allows you to handle your virtual store. It does many things, but mainly you need it to organize your products, present them to the clients, and let them buy them.

Payment gateway. A program that allows you to receive payments through one or more ways. You should have at least capability to receive payments through Visa, Master Card and PayPal. Other ways depend on your market or area. For example, if you have an important quantity of sales in the USA, you should probably get American Express as well.

PPC/PPA. Two very common ways of paid advertisement on the Internet. PPC stands for “pay per click,” a marketing scheme that pays according to the number of clicks on a button. PPA stands for “pay per action” and it is similar except that payment is done when a certain action is done; for example, when a visitor types his or her e-mail.

SEO. One of the most popular e-commerce services there are. It stands for Search Engine Optimization. It aims at making a website naturally rank higher in search engines such as Google and Yahoo by using a series of online techniques and processes.

Understanding the several types of e-commerce services is important if you want to hire a company to put your business online. You don’t have to know how e-commerce services are done exactly, but if you know what they are about, you will be able to negotiate a much better price and avoid looking like a beginner.