Many businesses are transitioning away from purchasing software to having their software provided on demand. Software on demand is when a third-party entity hosts, manages and distributes software-based services and solutions across a wide area network from a central data center. It provides a powerful mechanism for companies to receive their information technology needs at a lower total cost. Merrill Lynch published an article earlier this year entitled “Software Goes On Demand” in which they articulate that 2004 will be the turning point after which enterprise and business software will become more commonly used as a service rather than as a stand-alone purchase.

There are many benefits to receiving software on Demand:

1.) Software development costs are split among many customers. Implementation time is cut significantly and businesses can be “live” in a matter of days or weeks, not months or years. A positive ROI can be obtained very quickly.

2.) Pay only for what is used. Businesses are not charged for extra capacity, yet it is available if/when it is needed.

3.) Guaranteed Uptime and Service. Technology experts will be responsible for applications performance.

4.) Update and maintenance are often covered under the license fees.

5.) The sum is greater than the parts. The developer can provide additional tools and services to all of their clients that would otherwise not be financially available to a single client application.

6.) Remote accessibility - Businesses can access the applications from anywhere via any web browser with a net connection.

7.) Platform independent - Businesses can use any operating system making incompatibilities no longer an issue for web based software.

8.) Limit hardware costs and upgrades – The developer shoulders this responsibility.

9.) Save ongoing resources by not having employees and computers tied up in administrative system maintenance.

In the past, many companies believed that they would save money by building their own e-commerce solution. Most of the time, it would not take long to realize that the development costs were much higher than anticipated as well as the maintenance required to keep their software current and secure. Today, merchants have come to realize that using an on-demand e-commerce solution provides the most effective way to control costs and increase online sales.

The most popular reasons why people shop online are very simple. It saves time and provides a tremendous amount of convenience. Even though online customers are often charged for shipping, that cost is often less expensive than what it costs to go to a store (possibly multiple stores), find the product(s), stand in line at a register, and then come back home. When designing a website and store, consider the time element to meet the needs of today’s online shopper. Make sure the site has a good search feature and that the product hierarchy is intuitive so that buyers can easily find what they are looking for and check out seamlessly.

Online shoppers also enjoy the convenience of being able to shop at their home or office any time of the day. Many retail stores are only open during typical business hours but an online store is open 24 hours. For the working population that can’t get out to the stores during the day, the online channel is a godsend.

A large segment of the online population is online to compare prices and find the best deal. Online retailers should be conscientious of their competition and make sure their prices are reasonable. An added cost-savings benefit to online shopping is that if the retailer does not have a physical presence in the state of the ship-to destination, current law does not require that the retailer charge sales tax. This alone can be a significant savings to a cost conscious shopper and often offsets the shipping costs.

A significant portion of online sales occurs during the holiday season. With many people traveling to be with friends and family, online shopping provides the convenience of being able to have presents shipped directly to the final destination, often times with the option to gift wrap. With airlines limiting the number of bags that can be carried on a plane, buying holiday gifts online and having them shipped to their destination just makes sense. Why battle the traffic and crowded malls when one can browse and place their orders online with just a few clicks of the mouse? Over the next couple of months online retailers should make sure their sites are gift-friendly. Consider providing the options for gift cards, gift-wrapping, and even multiple ship-to destinations for the same order.

Shopping online is convenient and here to stay. If you are not currently selling online, it may be time to consider doing so, especially with the holiday season around the corner.

The following are some free tools available on the web that you might find useful as an online merchant:

http://www.whois.sc - this site enables you to check the destination of an order's IP address. The site proves useful when trying to determine the validity of a suspicious looking order.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox - this is Google’s keyword suggestion tool. This tool can give you some ideas for new keywords and phrases to use when bidding or optimizing your site.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion - this is another keyword tool. This site is great because it shows words from both Overture’s keyword inventory and those from Wordtracker.

http://www.mail2web.com/cgi-bin/login.asp?lid=0&il=0 - this application enables you to check POP3 email from the web. This application can be handy if you are ever traveling and need to check your email from a cyber cafe.

http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/reference/html_cheatsheet - this html "cheat sheet" can be handy if you need to shake the rust off of your html coding skills or if you are an html novice that needs to make a few modifications to a web page.

http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/reference/color_codes - this site displays color swatches with their corresponding hexadecimal code. This can be useful when toying around with the color scheme of your site.

http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm - this tools calculates keyword density for any specified web page. This can be useful when optimizing your web site for the search engines.

http://www.whatrank.com/wr - this site shows displays how your site ranks on different search engines for specified keywords.

http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/tools.htm - this page has several useful tools including one to measure the size of your web pages and validate your html code.

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools - a great collection of search engine optimization tools.

Are there other tools that you find useful as an online merchant? If so, please email the links to nexus@nexternal.com.

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