eCommerce has a lot to offer U.S. firms that are interested in using the Internet as another vehicle for exporting. Your marketing executive should be familiar with the steps necessary to make your website ecommerce capable. Many U.S. companies have a website that fulfills one or more of the following characteristics:

People who shop online are most familiar with this type of website. A transactional site may be an electronic storefront for a brick-and-mortar retailer or a catalog business, (e.g., Walmart), or a showroom for manufacturers that wish to sell directly to the public (e.g., Hewlett-Packard). Transactional sites can be either hosted or on-premise and can (a) conduct full end-to-end transactions via the website; (b) enable customers to search for, order, and pay for products online; and (c) allow customers to contact the company for after-sales service. The majority of transactional sites create efficiencies by seamlessly integrating the transaction process with back-office systems such as accounting, inventory, order management, logistics and fulfillment, marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), web analytics, and others.