Might as well start out with a bang. Revenue, cash, that's what makes the business tick. So how do we manage the process of marketing, selling, fulfilling and collecting in NetSuite. There are 3 main input channels of revenue in NetSuite: E-commerce through your website; Direct Sales using the NetSuite forms; Indirect Sales through Partners/Dealers/Distributors. In today's post I want to talk about the sales process through E-Commerce. We'll follow up in the next few days and weeks on the other channels. In many conversations with NetSuite prospects I have heard a lot of confusion about NetSuite E-Commerce which is unfortunate, but one of the problems of offering several choices to the user. In fact there are really 4 possible configurations of E-commerce in NetSuite. First and foremost, you have the ability to generate the site within NetSuite itself. Let me quickly explain how this is done and then I'll get into the nitty gritty of a NetSuite site and some of the pros and cons. Domain name. There are several well known players in this area and essentially you must go to their site and check to see if the www.mydomainname.com is available, first. If it is then you can buy it. If you are looking for a Domain Registrar then I would suggest typing 'register a domain name' in a Google search. You'll find several companies that can help you do this. You might also think about using the same company for email, many of them also offer several email addresses along with the domain name. Once you have the domain you can ask the registrar to redirect it to NetSuite. At this point you will already have your NetSuite licenses and there is a very good document in the Help files to assist you. Search for 'Redirect the domain'. Generation of a NetSuite site is actually very straightforward, if you are looking for a straightforward site. The first step would be to do the necessary keyword research and start to layout your site to match your research results. You can decide on the colors to give your site the appropriate look and feel and make other adjustments to the layout. Then you put together the Tabs and Categories, along with keyword rich descriptions. Finally you can begin to setup inventory and within the setup of each item you will decide what categories to place it in, pricing, photos, etc. Now, if you want to kick it up a notch, there is an add-on product called Advanced Site Builder which enables you to really customize the look and feel of the site through the use of custom templates. That's the first option - the NetSuite site. It's a great idea if you have standard E-Commerce requirements (What's standard, right? Well, the site look and feel can be as custom as you wish, but the main business functions should be limited to the presentation and sale of items and their related items. Some other functions may be doable, but that would have to be determined one function at a time. Of course you can also include information items, and you can always place custom online forms on the site for capturing leads and service issues.) The second option, for those who already have an online presence which they are fond of and want to keep, is to use NetSuite supplied custom code in an external site so that it can communicate with your NetSuite account for Item inventory and pricing, etc. This is an ok idea for a small E-commerce site, a site with 50 or less items perhaps. But if you sell a lot of different items online then beware, this option is probably not for you. The setup and maintenance of this much custom code is a real challenge once the number of items starts to climb. If you have an information only site then of course you can also import the site files into NetSuite and NetSuite can host the site for you, Option 3. This might save you some hosting fees, and keep your site at arms length for when you need to make edits, additions, etc.. Again, this option would be limited to informational sites. The final option is to create a hybrid site. In this case, most of the site is custom and hosted on servers external to NetSuite, but the shopping cart is NetSuite. This option creates the greatest freedom but is also the most costly. But if you have requirements for business functions outside of what NetSuite offers, this might be your only answer. It requires setting up NetSuite, of course, and also setting up a separate, external system on an external server. Then, a developer would program the communications between the two systems to keep them talking and in sync. It's not easy, in fact it must be done anew each time the challenge is undertaken, but it has been done successfully many times. Four options for setting up the Website. If possible, option 1 - generating the site in NetSuite - is great. Once completed, you can add to, subtract from and edit the site easily. Start with what you have and then start to build. Once the look and feel are complete you should be able to manage maintenance yourself for most circumstances. A little HTML background doesn't hurt but it's not necessary either. Implementing a site in NetSuite is also a lot of fun and very gratifying. It's really interesting to hear people describe their concepts from product line to target markets and then assist them in building a site that matches their vision of the business. Remember, regardless of which option you choose you can always create custom online forms for capturing new leads and service issues on your site. We'll go into more detail on site generation in a later post. Also, I think a discussion of the architecture of the NetSuite solution might be in order. Now, don't let the big words put you off, but tomorrow I want to talk about how the solution is put together. A little technology talk in layman's terms. | 
