Great Freelance Tool

Fresh Books is an online time tracking / invoicing program. I wrote a case study years ago on it:

http://forum.freshbooks.com/viewtopic.php?id=49

If you are freelance, you really need to check this out!

eCommerce Checklist

ECOMMERCE CHECKLIST

Step 1 Products

• Product Keywords, Title and Descriptions – good product descriptions and titles are vital to be successful.
• Size and Variations - for example, “small, medium and large” or “red, blue and green”.
• Product Images - A thumbnail and a large version of each product are required. The sizes are unimportant as long as you remain consistent on the thumbnails, for example, 100x100 or 150x200. Catalogs look better when the thumbnails are consistent in size. The larger image can be any size you desire as long as the resolution is 72 dpi. Some shopping carts allow up to four images per product for the larger, detailed pages.
• Pricing Information – base price, B2B price, volume pricing, static pricing, prices of various options, etc.

Step 2 Payment Methods

• Merchant Account - Necessary for any credit card authorizations online or Brick and Mortar. Required for any credit and ATM/debit card processing, check guarantee services, purchasing card programs and electronic commerce.
• Payment Gateway Provider - Necessary for real-time online authorizations. Internet Protocol (IP) payment gateway services that enable merchants to authorize, settle and manage credit card or electronic check transactions anytime, anywhere.
• Business Bank Account - necessary for any business.

Step 3 Currency

• What currencies do you need to support?
• Does your merchant account / payment gateway provide support your required currencies?

Step 4 Taxes

• What state / country will operations be based out of? Does the company have more than 1 “node” (an office, warehouse, or distribution center)? if yes, where?
• What is the sales tax rate (or VAT if you are in Europe) in your state or country?

Step 5 Shipping

• Package tracking via UPS, Fedex or USPS.
• What carriers will you use? USPS, Fedex, UPS, DHL, etc.
• How will you charge for shipping? By value, by weight, a fixed rate based or a formula?
• Will you allow international shipment? If so, how much will you charge?
• Will the customer be responsible for paying customs charges?

Step 6 Technology Requirements

• Do you have any technology requirements as far as a programming languages (ColdFusion, PHP, ASP), operating platforms (Unix vs. Windows), or database platform (MS Access vs. MySQL vs. MS SQL)?
• Do you have/need your own dedicated server, or do you need a hosting provider?
• Do you have adequate space for your product catalog images?

Step 7 User Experience

• Will you want your customers to have the ability to register with a username and password so that customers can view previous order history and track orders?
• Will your site require a search engine for finding products, articles, etc?
• Will you have a newsletter for users to subscribe to? Will they be able to manage their own subscriptions? Will it be HTML formatted?
• Will you have sales and specials?
• Will you offer discounts or promotions?
• Will you have affiliates?