If you have something that can be sold without consultation on line then considering e-commerce is worthwhile. You’ll need to set up a relationship with a Bureau or with your bank. You’ll need a Merchant Account and ultimately an Online Merchant Account with your bank or supplied via a Payments Bureau. This will let you take Credit and Debit Cards.

You don’t have to have e-commerce in place to sell online. If you have a Merchant Account then a simple “Call Now” could be enough to close the deal. A method to let the customer track their order online is all that is required after that to keep the fulfilment management down to a minimum.

Don’t think that you can only sell products online. You could provide a mechanism for customers to pay your service based invoices online using a Credit Card once the invoice has been delivered (by mail or email).

It’s getting easier and easier to sell the products and services of another business without ever having to speak to them. Affiliate deals allow you to set up a simple website that points to the products of another company. Amazon allow this, providing a simple to use system that lets you present Amazon products in a format similar to your own website.

Typically commission is low but the set up costs are low. You’ll only receive your commission when it goes above a certain threshold where the electronic transfer to your bank account is worthwhile.

It is important to make the buying process easy. Amazon and other lead players excel at this. A good online shopping experience will let you choose the product, the quantity and the shipping method with only three or four clicks. And they also remember who you are – either because they oblige you to login or they have cookies you (see our online profiling section). And the ability to track orders is essential to give your customers the comfort they require.

Inquiry forms are a simple mechanism to get qualified leads from your website. Your online inquiry form needs to be simple – the simpler the better. In some cases just an email address and phone number is all you need to ask for. After that it’s up to you.

In other cases the inquiry form simply needs to ask for details related to the inquiry in the briefest of ways – date service required, special requests etc. But keep it short and sweet, you can always ask for more information later.