E - trade secrets.

'Out-of-the-box' e-commerce solutions may seem appealing, but they can lead to long-term disappointment if you haven't done your planning

Firms that can offer products or services online will have a competitive advantage over their traditionbound competitors. But initiating e-commerce may be tricky, especially if it's simply lumped on as an addition to existing business practices.

Is your business buying a true e-commerce solution, or is it purchasing software in a box and signing up for more questions than answers? More business leaders should ask these questions as part of their due-diligence process before adopting e-commerce.

When you see people going for these little e-commerce kits, you just have to wonder if they've planned enough. When you go into this arena, you have to make the right decision the first time in order to spend your money well.

Whose design is it?

Doing business on the Web involves giving people a reason to come to your site, and having a reason for people to stay at your site after they arrive there.

That means potential e-customers expect your e-commerce site to reflect the unique nature of your product or service. Customers sophisticated enough to be online at all have probably seen the good, the bad and the ugly in e-commerce site design. They'll be quick to recognize a generic site created from a boxed software program; some may own the same program and even be using the same site design.

As a result, your site begins to look like everybody else's site. It may take care of the process for e-commerce, but does it really take care of your customers?

It's important for businesses to recognize the difference between conventions -- which make a Website easy to navigate by putting information and buttons in consistent locations -- and design, which differentiates a site and conveys a company image. The most innovative company can look dull if it uses poor design.

If you are a quality company, your image is important to you. Your ability to control the look and feel of your site design is limited with a prepackaged program. You're just not going to get it out of a box.

Whose brand is it?

Some e-commerce programs don't actually give a business its own online presence in buying or selling. Instead, they may provide easy installation of software and a quick Web presence, but at a significant ongoing cost.

A boxed solution is really the way some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are selling their hosting service. You're buying a spot within their shopping area and the brand equity you're building may not be your own, but theirs.

How does it work? An ISP may sell an introductory e-commerce package with early business appeal. But to use that product fully, a business may be required to pay a monthly fee to lease the use of the ISP's exclusive shopping cart mechanism for buy/sell transactions.

Essentially, these ISPs are renting businesses a spot within their shopping mall, not selling a store that can build its own brand equity.

You may have your own domain name under this kind of arrangement, but the mall-type solution will not be housed on your domain. If a customer goes to the address of your e-commerce site, whose name are they seeing? It's not your store. It's not necessarily building equity for you as a business.

Who's got the key?

It's not just brand equity that can be impacted by an ill-planned e-commerce decision. Businesses need to pay strict attention to portability scalability and transferability issues -- especially when it comes to buying pre-packaged solutions.

If your business goes into e-commerce on the back of a subscription-type service, you face the risk of pouring lots of development time and connectivity into a Web presence that you don't own and may not be able to tailor to your own growth or success.

Perhaps your business will grow rapidly and you'll want to develop your own shopping-cart solution, merchant accounts and gateways to link to your own company Website. Or the ISP you initially were doing business with changes hands and the quality of its line connections drops, making it hard for customers to contact you. Your business tries to move its carefully-built e-commerce site to a new provider or address, and finds that nothing you've done is transferable -- or, worse, that you've inadvertently developed a highly tailored application for your company name that actually belongs to the ISP.

It would be like renting a new office, hiring the movers, and finding on moving day that everything at the old office is locked up by a landlord who won't give you the key.

Who's got the plan?

The key for business is not to trade speed for integrated planning. Quick e-commerce solutions may seem appealing, but unless the business knows what role it wants e-commerce to fulfill, quick action can lead to long-term disappointment.

Most businesses can probably benefit from adopting an e-commerce platform, but those who will reap the maximum benefit are those who know enough to develop a good fit between their existing business and potential e-enabled growth.

If e-commerce growth isn't included at the business plan level, it's unlikely that a business has truly considered either the advantages or challenges e-commerce can bring.

E-enabled businesses may decide to use e-commerce as a marketing tool, a sales tool, a key link both to customers and to suppliers or as a connecting node for vertical marketplaces within their own industry. E-business solutions can even be used as human resources tools, allowing employees access to benefits and insurance options or access to update basic HR files, freeing company managers to do more strategic and core competence-based work.

Whatever use a business may intend to make of its e-commerce tools, though, a key part of such planning involves connectivity.

More than introductory price, businesses need to investigate bandwidth needs, service longevity and ISP stability. The best Web-designed e-commerce site in the world cannot function if it is choked for data throughout or housed with an ISP that moves, goes out of business or fails to perform.

Now, take the leap!

Many businesses are reluctant to dive into e-commerce unless they can control all risks -- perceived and unperceived - that may be associated with the new discipline. But the real risk with e-commerce may be in delaying its implementation until your business is simply a follower, rather than a leader, in a new standard of practice.

It's possible to make the leap with imperfect knowledge, as long as a business sets itself up to take full advantage of potential benefits.

E-commerce is so new that there are few universally applied effectiveness measures. Common sense and ordinary business prudence can apply easily, though, especially when selecting basic service providers.

Randall Plasko is president of Awecomm Technologies L.L.C., a Southfield-based provider of high-speed Internet service and advanced technology networking for business users.

An e-commerce checklist

Eight questions you should ask before you pick your Internet Service Provider:

* Is the ISP an originator, or a reseller, of connectivity services?

* What is the bandwidth available to the ISP and to its customers?

* What is the ratio of customers to bandwidth; is the ISP over-setting its connectivity?

* Is the ISP a business- or consumer-driven provider?

* Will the ISP house your business servers in a secure environment?

* Is there a 24/7 contact for the ISP, and a local address where actual staff can be reached?

* What is the ISP's long-range plan; does it match yours?

* Does the ISP make sure that what your business develops, it can keep and transfer, especially brand identity, intellectual property or customer base?

Source: Awecomm L.L.C.