The Internet is the most efficient and fastest growing sales channel for many companies. Automated ecommerce and ebusiness solutions use the Internet to increase customers and generate more sales. Choosing the right ecommerce supplier is a key decision: choosing one with a proven track record, experience and deep familiarity with all aspects of the online marketing and sales process is critical.
Amco IT Systems provides web shops and business integration solutions for a wide range of retailers, from the relatively small local supplier simply wishing to increase sales through to internationally trading businesses looking to automate and dominate particular niche markets world wide.
Amco IT Systems ecommerce solutions always involve Internet Marketing strategies and planning. With some customers we provide both B2B and B2C systems as well as systems that integrate accounts, stock control and till management. We also provide advice and training to help a company through the inevitable business transformation that results from Internet trading.

Control

Amco IT Systems ecommerce solutions are built around maximizing sales whilst minimizing effort. Online businesses are much easier to run and manage than offline business. Many tasks can be simplified or even fully automated. Key to all this is control.

At the core of any ecommerce solution sits a database - typically a large catalog of products. For each product there is a name, a description and product photographs. Descriptions can be as a short summary or as a detailed and comprehensive document containing lots of useful background detail on a particular product. Products can be tiered in terms of catalog and price so that different types of customers get to see a different range of goods at different prices.

The catalog is controlled and managed by the website owner and becomes a major asset to the company. Amco IT Systems is able to assist with catalog management by building systems that import directly from a manufacturers CD, an Internet feed or from an existing accounting or stock control system.

The catalog database not only defines individual products, but also how they are grouped together in product hierarchies or into special categories such as items that appear on a home page, a special offer or as a sale item.

Business Integration

Joined-up business is the most profitable type of business. The goal for any ecommerce business is to have all the various elements that make up the business fully integrated. One important area for integration involves product details, definitions, drawings, photographs or prices. Rather than manually importing this information, it is often possible to automate the process using data feeds. The same is true for both stock control and accounting. Not only do these systems need to be integrated, they also need to be scheduled and synchronized so that, for example, a sale in a high-street shop or on a website both join up correctly with a stock control system. Automated accounting with systems such as Sage again simplify any purchasing process and reduce the chance of manual error.

Joined-up businesses open up the possibility for real-time monitoring, real-time stock control and real-time accounting. Amco IT Systems achieves all of this for its customers as well as providing a real-time marketing dashboard where key aspects of a business can be viewed "at a glance".

Once a business is joined-up and integrated, many more business opportunities appear. It is relatively easy to add additional sales channels - rather like opening new shops where each shop can focus on a particular type of customer or market. Often, these new sales channels operate on a business-to-business (B2B) basis selling a very specific range of products at discounted prices. Different types of business customer may get their own catalog of products and have their own specific tiers of prices. This is easily accomplished online where a particular login to the website causes the system to show different details for products, prices or terms and conditions such as delivery details. These B2B channels can become very specialized and much customized in a way that is simply not possible to achieve offline.

Ecommerce Search

If a customer cannot quickly and easily find what they are looking for they will use an alternative supplier. Search is an important way in which your online business interacts with customers. People arrive at your website and want to know about a particular product. They might not know its name but they do know something about it. They might simply be interested in a type of product or a product range.

The key to search is relevancy. Most search engines on websites simply perform a simple match to a keyword. Amco IT Systems Enterprise Search uses a large number of expert rules and knowledge about a set of products to know how best to direct customers to particular products. Amco IT Systems search can be extended to include "did you mean ....?" functions. The search includes web 2.0 functionality such as showing related searches as a search is typed. All such behavior is standard to Amco IT Systems search.

Advanced search capabilities allow users to refine any search in terms of how keywords can be combined or even when products were added.

Payments

The basis of any ecommerce business involves the transfer of money. Although there are literally hundreds of available methods for transferring money of the Internet, Amco IT Systems has tended to focus on a few major suppliers that combine competitive rates with high quality of service and good security. Making the correct choice about the best payment service provider for your business is an important decision to get right.

There is no single best all-round payment service provider. Instead, any ebusiness user will have a different profile based on the product area in which they operate, a preferred choice of bank, different expectations over transaction volumes, setup charges, available levels of security, closeness of integration or range of International territories and currencies.

Trading on the Internet is now subject to a wide range of legislation and this commonly varies across different geographic territories. Amco IT Systems services customers that trade across the UK, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Far East Asia. The company has accumulated invaluable knowledge to help ensure best practice trading whilst avoiding the numerous legal pitfalls that apply in some markets. If global trading is your goal then let us help advise you and your business to get off to a good start.