The fundamental concepts of electronic commerce, typically paying for goods using a credit card over the internet, have been around for some time. Yet,there are still plenty of businesses, often, small local businesses that are not ecommerce enabled.

It's actually much easier to 'ecommerce enable' a small business than a large one. So, let provide some background to getting started.

What makes eCommerce tick? Firstly we need to know the core components of ecommerce. Think of a local store and you can peg each feature of the physical store to features which exist in ecommerce.

A physical store has products, so your ecommerce store needs a list of products, this we call the product database.

Next is the replacement of the ability to touch and feel the product in a store with product pictures and a description in the ecommerce store.

A visitor picks up products in shopping cart and pays at a till that connects the store with a bank to process payments. So, a virtual shopping cart and checkout form the core of the ecommerce engine. And just like the physical store, the checkout connects to a payment provider (for example PayPal) and through that provider to a bank.

The analogies are straight forward. The challenge is often the wide variety of solutions to the analogies! So, let's describe 3 common ways of putting an eCommerce solution together.

Pre-Built Online Stores The first option is one of the many quick and simple online store builders, where everything is taken care of. You type in a list of product details and prices and tell the system how to pay you. Sometimes you provide details of a payment provider and sometimes they pay you direct.

Usually you can customise the look of the store and add your own logos. Once this is complete, pay your monthly fee and you're away - you have an online store.

The 'techie' term for this model is '3rd Party Hosted Solution' and they are available from a number of vendors and at various price points. A quick search on 'store builder' will bring back results such as GoDaddy Quick Store, Yahoo! Store, Paypal Store and many more.

For all its ease, this approach does have its downside - firstly if you already have a web site, this will be a separate site and secondly, to make them easy, these solutions may

Mixed Hosted eCommerce Systems The second breed of solutions have the shopping framework ready to go, provide a good amount of flexibility and can be used with your existing web site. These solutions are still hosted by a 3rd party, but assume you will provide the storefront to display the products - a mix of 3rd party service + your site. As soon as someone clicks 'add to cart' or 'buy' the solution takes over, proving the shopping cart, checkout and so on.

One example of this kind of solution would be ValuedClientSystems.com. All of the components you need for eCommerce are provided. Connect your payment provider, add the 'buy' or 'add to cart' links to your web site, pay the monthly and you're away.

In the case of ValuedClientSystem.com the ecommerce functionality is also fully integrated with a set of marketing tools like email marketing and affiliate marketing for added effectiveness.

If you already have a web site, this kind of solution will help you ecommerce enable it, with enough flexibility to suite most businesses.

Enterprise eCommerce solutions for the big boys If you want even more flexibility and control, you might consider the route that many of the large enterprises take - to buy 3rd party commerce software that you install and manage on your web site.

Enterprise solutions from companies like Microsoft and IBM form part of the ecommerce strategy in large organizations. The entire shopping process can usually be customized and extended by software developers.

This kind of solution, also known as a 'self hosted' solution, is suitable if you have a qualified IT staff to implement and maintain it. Though there are companies like Actinic who work to provide simpler solutions in this space.