To provide a  successful online e-commerce solution, the following items should be considered:

• A product wih a reasonable chance of selling at a price point that makes a profit
• A place to sell the product - in e-commerce, a Website displays the products in some way and acts as the place
• A way to get people to come to your Website
• A way to accept orders - normally an on-line form of some sort
• A way to accept money - normally a merchant account handling credit card payments. This piece requires a secure ordering page and a connection to a bank. Or you may use more traditional billing techniques either online or through the mail.
• A fulfillment facility to ship products to customers (often outsource-able). In the case of software and information, however, fulfillment can occur over the Web through a file download mechanism.
• A way to accept returns
• A way to handle warranty claims if necessary
• A way to provide customer service (often through email, on-line forms, on-line knowledge bases and FAQs, et cetera)

In addition, there is often a strong desire to integrate other business functions or practices into the e-commerce offering. For example -- you might want to be able to show the customer the exact status of an order or allow them to look up their own shipment tracking number.  When you reduce the workload on your staff, your profits rise.

There some advantages to having an online shop including:

• Lower transaction costs - if an e-commerce site is implemented well, the web can significantly lower both order-taking costs up front and customer service costs after the sale by automating processes.
  
  
• Larger purchases per transaction - Amazon offers a feature that no normal store offers. When you read the description of a book, you also can see "what other people who ordered this book also purchased." That is, you can see the related books that people are actually buying. Because of features like these it is common for people to buy more books that they might buy at a normal bookstore.
  
  
• Integration into the business cycle - A Website that is well-integrated into the business cycle can offer customers more information than previously available. For example, if Dell tracks each computer through the manufacturing and shipping process, customers can see exactly where their order is at any time. This is what FedEx did when they introduced on-line package tracking - FedEx made far more information available to the customer.
  
  
• People can shop in different ways. Traditional mail order companies introduced the concept of shopping from home in your pajamas, and e-commerce offers this same luxury. New features that web sites offer include:
  
  
  • The ability to build an order over several days
  • The ability to configure products and see actual prices
  • The ability to easily build complicated custom orders
  • The ability to compare prices between multiple vendors easily
  • The ability to search large catalogs easily
    
    
• Larger catalogs - A company can build a catalog on the web that would never fit in an ordinary mailbox. For example, Amazon sells millions of books. Imagine trying to fit all of the information available in Amazon's database into a paper catalog!
  
  
• Improved customer interactions - With automated tools it is possible to interact with a customer in richer ways at virtually no cost. For example, the customer might get an email when the order is confirmed, when the order is shipped and after the order arrives. A happy customer is more likely to purchase something else from the company.