E-commerce includes broad fields of tools and principles. The aim is to combine these tools so that the customer's requirements are fulfilled. The implementation of e-commerce should be consistent with the overall strategy of the company.

E-commerce as a kit

The following fields must be consistent in order to reach the highest returns:

E-shop in general

Internet business transactions have became a general standard in last couple years. Structured catalogue, photo catalogue and order system are the certainly the basic elements of an e-shop. To save time and to work effectively, it is good to know few things.

• How easily can data be transferred from the parent IS?
• How easily can results from an operation in an e-shop be transferred to the parent IS?
• Can these processes be automated so savings increases as a result cutting the cost of e-shop administration?

B2C – towards the end-users

Every activity of an e-shop, which is made for end-users, should focus on relationship with customers. Improving relationships and gaining the trust of the customers helps increase the numbers of orders. The following are the key factors:

• Graphic presentation – affects the customer’s mood, use of presentation as manual how to do certain operations in e-shops, e.g. incentives to buy new products.
• Quality content – high quality description of products, intelligible, and well structured for the targeted group of customers. It helps persuade the customer to buy the product.
• User simplicity – how easy it is to work with an e-shop. It is possible to find out how difficult the process of ordering goods is, what part of e-shop customers consider difficult to navigate through and if it loses customers because of that.
• Search ability – customers have to get to know about the e-shop. There are many concerning issues. Some techniques work with the content of the e-shop, others work with feedback and use an advertisement.
• Feedback – a complementary element that can increase popularity of an e-shop. It is a function that considers feedback from customers. Feedback includes not only communication between the company and customer but also sharing the product experience through discussions.

B2B – cooperation with partners

Relationships among business partners , their optimization, automation, acceleration, and simplification are the main points of B2B solution.

• Quickness, reliability, and security – The cornerstone of all B2B solutions are channels of communication containing these basic characteristics.
• Support of trade policy – after the business partner logs into the B2B portal, he/she must see everything from his/her company’s point of view. Access to data is a key element (e.g. the pricing field including individual price lists and setup of sales system from parents IS)
• Periodical orders and automation – simplification and automation of the most frequently repeated transactions is the general principal, which is commonly used in B2B.
• Evaluation – a lot of information goes through B2B and its evaluation is very important for successful business

Internet marketing and SEO

Running an e-shop or other web application with big traffic and visitor activity is a long-term goal. The content maintenance, distribution of news, marketing announcements, and marketing campaigns need permanent care. The quality of these operations lowers the costs of one order and increases the number of orders. Although the benefits of these activities are measurable, many people in the Czech Republic are still skeptical about it. The higher return on investment is caused by specialized firms, which are engaged in this separate field of internet technologies.

Intranet applications

You do not need to use e-commerce only when doing business outside the company. You can also optimize the processes inside the company. An example can be the ordering system in a company – on the level of offices as well as individual employees.

E-commerce, support of processes and savings

Interface among parent IS and e-commerce solution can be set up differently. The right balance of these two solutions brings considerable savings and can enable employees to change their roles.

Implementation

Extent and complexity of an e-commerce issue shows that we need to divide the implementation into several steps. We not only decrease the financial leverage at time but we also pay more attention to particular fields of e-commerce.