If you transmit/process credit cards transaction you must be PCI compliant.  There is no way around this. You first will need to fill out a self-assessment questionnaire on a yearly basis.  You will probably need to hire a third party to scan your site to look for vulnerabilities.  Do not wait for your bank to ask if you are compliant.  You should be proactive and ensure your site is PCI compliant.

PCI compliance is required for all merchants, no matter how small your business is.  Some banks will give you a free years worth of scan.  Or you pay a company like McAffee $300 plus / year to do the scans for you.

When I built my first website I didn’t have the knowledge or experience needed in building a site that is primed to close the sale.  I literally spent hours watching our shoppers.  It was an eye opening experience and I used this information to implemement changes that made a positive impact on the site.  So what can  you learn… here are a few things that caught my eye:

1. offers were not as great as I thought
I would create a graphic to an offer an put it up on the site.  What a great offer I would say to myself. I would put it up on the site and see visitor after visitor NOT click on the promo.   Why aren’t visitors clicking on this special offer? Is it the offer? Placement of the offer? The graphic not eye catchy enough?

2. people couldn’t find what they were looking for
I would watch shoppers enter the site and see they found our site by searching for a specific product (or line of products) that we sold.    Great! We sell that product and here comes the buyers.  In my disbelief I would see these shoppers leave our site before seeing the product (or product line) that they were searching for.  This told me our navigation was not user friendly and changes had to be made so shoppers could easily find what they were looking for.  Make sense?

3. lots of people left the home page (what!)
I thought I made an attractive home page that would start generating sales.  I could see people visiting our site and then quickly leave.   This made me go back and rethink the structure, content and graphics.

4. used the live chat feature to directly speak to customers
I used the live chat feature to speak directly with our customers. This gave me some insight to what our customers’ needs were and gave me ideas to how we could better meet those needs.

Those are just a few things I used the live chat software for.

Live Person – This is the service I use.   I believe the options below are cheaper and are worth checking out.

Other Options:
Provide Support
WebSiteAlive.com
Whoson.com
BoldChat.com

Start with a check list.  One list of of non-negotiable features and a list of features you would like.  Just to give you a starting place, here is a partial list I would use.

Non-negotiable Ecommerce Features

• Search Engine Friendly (SEO) Links
• Batch Printing (able to print off a collection of packing slips with one click)
• Coupons and Gift Cards
• Shipping calculated based on price/weight/shipping location
• Importing / Exporting Products (including variants)
• PayPal Integration
• Google Checkout Integration
• Customer Reviews
• Flexible Themes / Custom Changes
• Email Alerts
• Batching of Tracking Numbers / Order Status Updates

Ecommerce Features I Would Like

• Barcodes on packing slips
• Flexible/Modifiable Product Attributes
• Basic Content Management System (CMS) integrated in with ecommerce platform 
• Auto resizing of product images

When looking at solutions, focus on your non-negotiable list and try to weed out the solutions.  Intead of farting around and looking at screen shots, demos, etc. go right to the features list and starting making sure they have everything on your non-negotiable list. As soon as you find a feature they do not have, make a note of it and move on. Don’t waste another second looking at a solution that is not right for you and your company.

Good luck!

So where can you buy domain names? What should you look for in a domain name registrar?  My suggestion is to go with a reputable company with an established track record.  I would also buy all of your domains with 1 company.    It is much easier to manage your domain from 1 interface that you are familiar with instead of using a few different registrars.

Tips on Buying the right domain name:
1. keep it as short as possible
2. pick a .com
3. be creative
4. put 2 words togethers

Here are some companies to use:
GoDaddy.com – A very popular company.  They do a lot more than just register domain names.

Google Domain Registration – I don’t have experience with their service.  It seems like Google always does things right.

Network Solutions – I don’t have experience using their service.

You can manage your sites DNS settings with a service from DNSMadeEasy.com.  It costs only about $60/year.  I say only because I was paying over $500 / month for the same service form Ultra DNs. I just happen to be talking to one of our vendors one day and he mentioned how he used DNSMadeEasy to manage their DNS settings.

I was leary at first going from a $6,000/year service to a $60/year service.  At this point, and I am knocking on wood, there have been zero problems.  In fact, they also will ping our sites to make sure they are up and running. Within a minute or two of any of our sites going down, emails and text messages are  being sent alerting us the site is down.

I will be adding to this post in the future to talk about DNS settings.