Online Storefronts

eStores

Portals

eBooks

eStores

Componets of an eStore

The earliest mode of operating an business on the internet was to set up an online storefront, sometimes referred to as an e-store.

It was popular then because you do not need to rent a physical shop lot to start an estore. You also need not go to the municipal council to apply for a trading license and the various authoraties for this permit and that license.There is no need to hire shop assistants, you yourself can handle every thing, the beauty is, during your free times.
Also here you have the choice of whether to keep stock or not. If you do not have enough capital, you can arrange for drop-shippers to deliver the goods to your customers directly. There is no need for you to handle any logistic matters. Sounds like fairy tales ins't it? But sometimes it is not as simple as you think. More on this later.
An e-store is basically a website designed solely for business purposes. It does not have the usual bells and whistles of an ordinary personal home page of a college student. The key emphasis of an estore is effeciency not fancy, you will drive away your prospects if your estore is too fanciful and takes ages to load. Remember most people who browse the net for informations and compare prices do it during meal breaks or when their bosses turn their heads away and not looking over their shoulders. They do not have all day waiting for your pages to load.
To properly set up your estore, you need the followings:

web hosting account
domain name
online shopping carts
payment processors
order-taking sofwares
automatic message handling tools

Web Hosting Account

Creating an account with a web hosting company is just like renting a brick-and-mortal shop lot in the real life world. You pay the company a monthly fee for a disk space on their server to house your web pages. How big is the size of the space varies just like in real life world. So you have to spend some time to shop around for the best deal.
Do not use free web hosting like Tripod and Geocities for your estore if you want to appear serious and professional.
I recommend these web hosts:

GoDaddy.com
If you do not have credit card or paypal or stormapay account,then sign up with my company and pay by money order or bank into my bank account.
caricash.com

Domain Name

Your domain name represents these things of your online business:

Your brand name
Your website's address
Shortcut to your website
Nature of your business

Therefore you have to put some serious consideration before deciding on a domain name.
Check out these domain registrats which help you to register your doamain for a fee: Enom.com,GoDaddy.com

Shopping Carts

After buying an item, a visitor to your eStore should be provided with some facility for him/her to continue shopping so that he/she need not check out immediately to complete the purchase.Once he/she checked out, he/she may not log in again.Providing shopping carts in your website will prevent this from happening,because your customers can put the selected items in the cart and continue shopping.

Payment Processors

The single most important facility of an eStore is the payment processor, an eStore is not an eStore without one.When a visitor likes an item and decides to buy it, imagine his frustration when he finds out that he has to send you a check or money order. He may simply move to another site which sells the same item and enables him to pay online instantly. This problem was the main reason why many Malaysian online business failed because it was very difficult to open an merchant account which enables online payment. You need at least 40k ringgit in your bank account only the banks will consider your application.
Fortunately now there are some free online payment processors as listed here:

Alternative payment methods

If you do not have account with any of the above payment proccessors,there is an alternative mode of making payment online - using E-Gold.This is an electronic currency, issued by e-gold Ltd., a Nevis corporation, 100% backed at all times by gold bullion in allocated storage.
E-Gold Ltd does not sell or buy e-gold themselves,the buy/sell transactions are done through independent e-gold exchangers. Look for a local e-gold exchanger so that you will be able to trade in ringgit with them, and also we are more confortable to deal with someone nearby,aren't we? But you still need to open an account with E-Gold Ltd because the e-gold exchanger will only be able to transfer e-gold through your E-Gold account number.
Open a free E-Gold account now:

Order Taking Tools

Nothing can be more disheartening than a potential buyer leaves your website at the last stage when he finds it too troublesome to complete the ordering procedures.Install a software tool which will make the ordering process as smoothly as possible and with as little fuss as possible to encourage your customers to complete the purchase.

Autoresponder

Your eStore should have the capabilty to send out a "thank you" message to your customer to confirm his order automatically. The autoresponder can also be set up to send follow up messages to your buyers informing them of any upcoming special offers and events. Do not neglect this step, in fact most of your income may come from this source because you have gained their trust. People tend to buy from whom they trust.

From my personal experience in running online storefronts, I discover that we Malaysians faced these inherent drawbacks:

Lack of hardware infrastructure
Although Malaysia boasts of a highly cyber-oriented zone, namely the Multimedia Super Corridor(MSC) to woo top notched internet enterprises from overseas, but our internet infrastructure is relatively primative as compared to those of overseas countries.
Low Online rates among the population
Less than 3% of the population had access to internet when I first went online.
Cost of PCs were high then, the internet access rates may seem low at first, but with the low speed (2.4k), and if you liked to download things from the net, the eventual high phone bills were scary!
The situation has approved alot nowadays, we now have Streamyx and other wide band internet service providers. But I heard they are not very stable, if that is true, building your business upon them is like building your house on sand.
High shipping costs
Sending the goods to overseas customers by courier service or by Pos Laju, the costs can be 3-5 times of the actual price of the items sold. To cut down on the shipping costs, one can send goods by sea, but the time it takes may be so long that your customers could be starting to feel impateint and demand for refunds already!
To overcome this we should consider going into joint ventures with local producers/manufacturers.This is most suitable for traders like cake bakers and florists, when a customer makes an order on your website, you will process the order and inform the joint-ventute partner nearest to your customer to deliver the product and you pay the partner a commission.Another method is to sign up with a drop-shipper, where he will handle the delivery and bill you later at wholesales prices. The difference between your selling price to your clients and the cost price will be your profit. In this mode of internet business you need not worry about the high shipping costs, but you are not selling your products.So bear this in mind.
Payment proccessors were expensive
In those days,in order to receive payments online you must open a merchant account with the online paymeny proccessing companies or your local Malaysian banks. But many budding online enptreprenuers can not meet the strict requirements put up by these companies.
Up to recently, your bank account should show a balance of at least 40k rinngit then only you are elegible to apply for a merchant account.
Paypal was in its infancy then, the features were limited and not many people know about it.
It was a common practice for Malaysian website owners to request potential buyers to follow a lenghty instruction page on how to make payment by cheques or money order, and to the appropriate address. Now looking back, it all seems like a joke!
Internet scams phopia
Malaysians are not comfortable to reveal their sensitive information while buying online, many of them changed their minds at the very last seconds when they were asked to provide their credit cards' details. We have heard too many stories of internet scams.
Very sad that our government are not doing any thing to protrect online shoppers like inposing strict internet security laws, join other countries in their efforts to fight internet crimes. Instead, all the government does is to warn the people about the existence of such scams, further eroding the confidence of online shoppers!