e-skills UK Guide

Buying online

How to buy through e-auctions and other websites

Running a small business is more than just selling products at a profit, effective buying of goods can also make a significant difference to your monthly bottom line. The advent of the worldwide web has made it so much easier to buy from “online” suppliers and just as easy to compare prices and deals to ensure you are getting the best products at the best prices.

The range of products available to buy online is enormous and includes stationery items, office furniture, computers, pot plants and almost anything else you can think of that you may need to support a growing business.

Buying online can help your small business save money.

What is an online retailer?

 Over the past ten years there has been a huge growth in the number of people and companies selling goods and services on the web. Selling goods in this way is called online retailing, and many businesses no longer have a publicly accessible shop or store, rather they use their online presence to act as their shop window. Most will offer a telephone ordering system as well, but many are trying to focus on their web site as the main way of transacting business as it helps reduce their costs.

How difficult is it to buy online?

The answer to this question is that it should be easy to buy online! The retailer’s web site will probably comprise an online catalogue with images of their products alongside pricing and delivery information.  You can browse this catalogue in a similar way to a printed document, make your selections and then supply payment details.

As you would expect, some online sites are better designed than others. The retailer should make it easy for you to navigate through their products and place your order. Unfortunately this is not always so, and some web sites are very difficult to use. This poor usability will directly translate into reduced sales for the retailer as people become frustrated with the site. It is a cliché, but in the world of online retailing competition is only a click away, which is great news if you are a buyer and not such good news if you are a retailer.

We explore how you can use a web site to sell products in our selling online guide.

These representative web sites demonstrate good design and have established themselves as reputable online retailers:

MARKS & SPENCER

AMAZON

TESCO

The following sites are examples of online retailers that have products of interest to small businesses:

STAPLES 

VIKING DIRECT

The language of online buying

When buying online you will notice that the more efficient sites will try and use shopping metaphors to describe where you are in the buying process. As you select goods you place them into a virtual shopping basket or, for many US based sites, a shopping cart. At this point you have not spent any money – in fact you can simply leave the web site at this point and it does not matter. As an interesting point online retailers use a measure called the “abandoned basket” to see how many potential customers leave their site with out actually buying any goods as this may indicate a badly designed or performing site.

Once you have selected your goods and placed them into your shopping basket you can proceed to the checkout. Obviously the checkout is virtual and you don’t need to leave your chair, but again it helps explain the process to people new to online buying.

At this point you will need to pay for your goods.

Paying for goods online

The majority of business related online retailers will accept payment by credit card. Most small business owners would be issued with a company credit card by their banks, or alternatively there is nothing to stop you using your own credit card for purchases. You will be presented with a screen that requires you to enter your credit card number, expiry date and probably the security code number by the signature strip on the reverse of the card.

Note that if you are using a personal credit card there may be issues with the delivery address if it is different from your home address. This has been put in place by the card issuers to help reduce credit card fraud, but can be troublesome if you want to have the goods delivered to your work address. If this is a problem it may be advisable to call the online retailer and see if they can help.

A few sites can accept payment using a system called PayPal. This is primarily designed for consumers selling goods who do not have merchant accounts with credit card issuers. We cover the use of PayPal for small businesses in the selling online guide.

Most people would have heard the stories of online credit card fraud and personal details being stolen from web sites. It is an unfortunate fact of life that there is a large amount of credit card fraud, particularly with mail order “card holder not present” scenarios. We discuss fraud prevention in more the following projects - Protecting important data, securing computer data and controlling access to data.

No system is 100% safe. We suggest that if you are concerned about fraud then only deal with reputable suppliers. In reality the risks of online buying are small compared to the upside benefits in saving you time and money.

Commercial suppliers

We do not recommend specific products or suppliers; instead we provide you with a representative sample which covers the range of suppliers/products available. You may choose to look at these suppliers or products but this is entirely at your discretion.