'Tis the season for online shopping, according to comScore, a global leader in internet marketing data and analytics. Recent reports show that "U.S. shoppers have already spent close to $25 billion online this holiday season, marking a 15% increase in e-commerce since last year." Cyber Monday, the online equivalent of Black Friday, also "had its biggest year ever, with $1.2 billion spent online."

It's not just due to the holidays, either. Reports from the U.S. Department of Commerce continue to indicate a (fairly) consistent rise in e-commerce sales over the past decade, currently totaling 4.6% (or approximately $1.05 Trillion) of all retail sales for the third quarter in the United States.

With numbers like that, it's easy to see why everyone is clamoring to get a piece of the online action. But in order to build an effective e-commerce business, it needs to be right for your site.

Every Site Is Different

Take the world's largest beverage company, for example. Coca-Cola sells  an average of 1.7 billion servings worldwide each day, but none of those purchases were made the brand's website. Why not? Think about it. When you want something to drink, you want it immediately, not in a few days. Even though Coca-Cola has an extensive web presence,  selling their product online just doesn't make sense.

However, if you have a retail product or service that doesn't require immediate fulfillment and can be easily described and shipped, an e-commerce site could bring you lots of business. If you have big enough margins, high enough prices or plan on selling enough product, e-commerce could even become a major part of your business plan.

Building An Effective Selling Site

While there are many different third party options available for creating or adding an e-commerce catalog and shopping cart to your website, many of them are not optimized for search. This doesn't do you much good when potential customers need to be able to find your product online in order to buy it.

Fission CMS is one of the few content management systems that offers the ability to optimize your product catalog, because all of the tools are built right into the platform. With Fission Storefront you can create alt-text for each product image to help it show up in image searches and add keyword-rich product descriptions to improve organic ranking. Fission also gives users the ability to create custom SEO-friendly URL's on individual product pages.

Most importantly, however, is the fact that you can manage every detail of your e-commerce business yourself, directly from the back-end of your website. From adding product details to selecting payment gateways and shipping options, Fission Storefront puts you in complete control of your website.

Fission Storefront: More Than E-Commerce

Don't let the name deceive you. Just because Fission Storefront has the word "store" in it, doesn't mean that the powerful component cannot be used for purposes other than retail sales. There are many other uses for Fission's customizable e-commerce component including: creating online product catalogs, donation management, and accepting payment for event registration.

To learn more about the selling power of Fission Storefront and building your custom E-commerce site, contact an Account Manager at www.360psg.com or call 716.829.7373.