What to Know When Choosing an E-Commerce Company for Your Website
E-Commerce Key Terms and Definitions
E-Commerce Regulatory Guidelines
Choosing Your E-Commerce Shopping Cart
E-Commerce Tips

The rules that govern an e-commerce site are different than those of a physical retail store. It is important to take note of the rules and regulations accompanied with making sales online.

Sales Tax

Most states charge a tax on the sale of goods and that rate varies depending on which state you are in. If you operate a physical store as well as an e-commerce site, the applicable sales taxes are governed by the state in which your physical store is located.

If your business is solely an e-commerce site and has no physical presence or “nexus” in any state, then you are not required to collect sales tax. However, even if you operate totally online, if your company has a warehouse or manufacturing facility, that does qualify as a nexus and you must collect the applicable sales tax for that state in which it is located.

Privacy Laws

Most customers operate under the basic assumption their personal and private information is protected when they use your site. Any website you visit, usually at the bottom of the page, will have their privacy policy for users to read. The FTC, has made efforts to ensure corporations, especially related to e-commerce, are adhering to the promises made in their privacy statements.

International Sales

The beauty in e-commerce is that you are not limited to customers who are in the same physical location that you are, such as with traditional retail. You are able to make sales to customers anywhere in country, or even world. This means it’s important to familiarize yourself with international laws pertaining to importing, taxes, duties, customs and consumer protection. The FTC has a guide that can assist with learning the details of electronically selling goods internationally.

Website Security

Website security is important whether you are involved in e-commerce or not, but when you are it’s not only your information at risk, but your customers as well. The very nature of e-commerce requires customers to trust your site with their home addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers or bank information, all of which could be dangerous if in the wrong hands.

The best way to prove your site is trustworthy is to obtain a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, which is actually comprised of two other certificates–the root and server. These certificates all visitors to browse your site securely.

In order to get the certificates you must:

1) Submit a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to any certificate authority SSL website,
2) Wait for the certificate authority to verify your business,
3) Upload the certificates onto your web server (this requires some familiarity with HTML, otherwise for a fee many of the certificate authorities will upload them for you, so keep that in mind when shopping CSRs)

Websites such as SSLShopper and dmoz.org are good starting off points when searching for certificate authorities.

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