How to Succeed in E-commerce?

I was searching online on how to succeed in e-commerce and I came across these points that I thought are appropriate by Steve Windhaus:

Non technically, what is important are

1. Your legal business structure

2. Business Plan

3. Occupational Licensing

4. Sales Taxes

Here, Windhaus describes these as the foundation to opening an e-commerce business.

So after these 4 things are accomplished, technology comes in with:

1. Web site hosting

2. Search Engine Optimization

3. Web site analytics

Out of the above that is mentioned, I would say that most of them are jargon to me, as I am not exactly into the business of e-commerce.

What caught my eye though, was the non-technical part of starting the e-commerce business.

Creating a legal structure, and a business plan may just seem like a must-do, or a basic requirement in the business, but I feel like how good these ideas are can simply make or break the whole e-commerce plan.

Another term that caught my eye was "Website analytics".

From wikipedia, it simply means " the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet date for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage". In the situation of e-commerce, website analytics helps to determine the web site's popularity after advertising, and detects the web site's traffic.

I had in mind to do an online business once - a blog shop. When I had the idea, I never thought it was tough at all, till i actually started doing everything up. Although it is not as tedious and big scale as e-commerce, but it did have the gist of it in there. My partner and I never really considered the technological part of the blog shop. We simply put up the page, and pasted flyers every where in hope of getting a response. We did not consider at all any website analytics, or business plan, neither did we invest in search engine optimization, or any web site hosting. And true enough, we stopped the business in a month.

What I have learnt from this is that e-commerce is not just about creating a website and doing business on it. But it is a creation of a new idea, that could attract attention, one that could sustain and develop.