Since 1999 Bahamas Business Centre has provided Offshore International Business Clients with the components necessary to sell successfully online: Offshore encypted E-Commerce data servers, E-Commerce store building tools, design services, merchant accounts, and web site promotion services.

The Bahamas Business Centre's E-Commerce department is large enough to serve and small enough to care. We are proud that we can provide each and every offshore client direct access to top management and unlimited access to technical and after hour's emergency support.

Listed below are some questions and answers for those of you new to Offshore E-Commerce.

Q: Is it difficult to market via the Internet?

A: Offshore E-Commerce may sound daunting to you, but do not be intimidated by the word. Think of it simply as opening a shop in a new area. A new area located where everyone can easily drive past and with a parking lot that will be the envy of your competitors. All you have to do is inventory your goods in your own shop in this new area called the Internet. This has been made very easy with special shop building software that the Bahamas Business Centre allows you to accomplish with a few clicks.

Q: How did the Internet become used for Offshore E-Commerce?

A: The Internet was originally only used by governments and academies. But as it continued to grow and improve, more and more people gained access to it. Today there are hundreds of millions of people using the Internet throughout in the world. While it did not start like this, it was not long before business people realized that wherever lots of people meet, you can market your company's products or services. E-Commerce was born when the first shop opened on the Internet in 1994. In the beginning there were not enough customers on the Internet to support the investments necessary to open an Offshore E-Commerce site, but that has changed with the low costs now associated with opening an Offshore E-Commerce Business and the positive results many businesses are experiencing.

Q: How does an Offshore Internet E-Commerce Shop work?

A: You can display virtually any information that you desire about your Offshore Business Companies products or services. Today marketing goods or services on the Internet have become much more sophisticated and consumers expect more. Simple information pages are no longer enough. Today a real Internet shop is interactive. It allows customers to easily navigate through the company's products or service information pages, to search for specific products or services and to preferably obtain more information than they would obtain from a paper catalogue or company brochure. The BBC E-Commerce shop also allows customers to click on buttons to add products to a virtual shopping basket by using a software program which remembers which products a customer wants to purchase. The software program calculates the total costs payable, including tax and shipping, and sends the encrypted orders to the company from Internet customers.

Q: Should your Offshore International Business Company join the revolution?

A: A few years ago nobody had heard about the Internet. Today, many customers prefer the internet to TV. You could ignore E-Commerce, continue with business as usual, and it might not hurt you for now, but shopping habits are dramatically changing. Customers expect more and more service and demanding that among these services that they be accessible via the Internet. Research has demonstrated profits increased by up to 10% in brick and mortar business that opened a shop on the Internet and promoted it to existing clientele. Many customers who checked out products on the Internet then purchase them in the brick and mortar business.

Q: How expensive is it to set up an Offshore E-Commerce site?

A: Setting up an E-Commerce shop on the Internet is very inexpensive. A few hundred dollars will get your offshore business into the E-Commerce business. The software made available through the Bahamas Business Centre will ensure your shop has the right look and features to compete with the biggest stores on the Internet.

Q: What are your options for opening an Offshore Internet E-Commerce site?

1. Create your own web pages from scratch.

   This requires a strong knowledge in writing your own HTML computer code, knowledge in CGI programming and JavaScript or Java. It is not the easiest way. Professional web page developers use special software for this purpose.

2. Pay someone else to create your shop for you.

   This may be a good option, depending on the company's budget. With the right developer it can make your life easier. The software made available through the Bahamas Business Centre makes creating the Offshore E-Commerce shop very affordable and very easy to create. You can personally create the Offshore E-Commerce shop or you can have one of the professionals at the Bahamas Business Centre create the shop on your behalf.

3. Use shop building software.

   For best results, utilize software that takes care of all issues associated with Offshore E-Commerce sites, such as design, tax, shipping calculations and so on. All you have to do is enter your International Business Companies products or services and shop information. You are in complete control.

4. Build it directly on the Internet

   The Bahamas Business Centre will allow you to build your shop directly on our offshore encrypted servers via the Internet using our specially developed software. We will assign you an Internet shop address.

Q: How do you make your Offshore E-Commerce site a success?

1. Map out a plan for your website and shop so that you can arrange your different products or services into different departments for easy navigation.
2. Decide how you want your shop to look. Make sure the text color and the color of the background complement each other.
3. Different computers support different text styles. If you want your website to look the same on all computers, then only use Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman.
4. The first page of your Website - your "home page" - is your "welcome page". Make sure you state who you are and what you are about. This may sound obvious, but many Internet sites fail to do this and loose customers as a result.
5. Your home page will have links to the different departments inside your shop. Make sure the company's links are obvious, so customers can easily find their way around.
6. Make sure you include all the company contact details and provide a direct e-mail link from your Offshore E-Commerce site to you. Not having a direct link can cause your prospective customers to be suspicious that you are hiding something.
7. Make sure your BBC Offshore E-Commerce site is not overloaded with images and visual tricks. Gimmicks distract customers from the message you want to convey.
8. Pictures should only have a small file size in kilobytes.
9. Your BBC Offshore E-Commerce site can look completely different in Internet Explorer then Netscape. Internet Explorer has more than 80% of the market. Good development software will create an excellent appearance for the shop in both Internet Explorer and Netscape.
10. Most customers have computer screens with a screen size of 800 x 600 pixels or above. Your BBC Offshore E-Commerce site must be designed to look good in different resolutions. An Offshore E-Commerce site programmed for one resolution only may fall apart at a different resolution.

Q: How am I sure that my Offshore E-Commerce site has the best security?

A: Security is an important issue on the Internet. The reason for security being so important is not that there are so many problems, but that many customers believe there are many problems. Research has shown this is not true. Web-based transactions are safer than those that take place over the phone or even in brick and mortar buildings. A shop on the Internet can be best compared with a mail or phone order business. Customers buy products from you without you actually seeing them or their credit card. According to VISA and MasterCard, transactions via the Internet pose no additional risk to customers compared to mail or phone orders. Other research has shown that companies selling via the Internet actually experience less problems than their phone and mail order counterparts in the real world.

Q: How do I receive money from my Offshore E-Commerce site?

A: The Internet is just an additional sales channel - albeit a very powerful one. So accepting money over the Internet is no different to accepting money from a customer who orders a product from you by telephone. You can ask people to send you a check, money order or to transfer money into your account. Or you can offer them Cash On Delivery or use any other payment method you can think of. Just be satisfied that the selected payment methods meet your security requirements. Accepting credit cards is a little more complex, as it requires you to have a special bank account. This bank account is called a merchant account. The staff at Bahamas Business Centre can assist you in obtaining an offshore merchant account for your International Business Company or if you prefer the Bahamas Business Centre can accept all of your credit card transactions under their corporate merchant account and then transfer the funds from your sales to your company's bank account on a daily basis. The Bahamas Business Centre will provide daily accounting transaction journals as to each specific sale.

Q: Can I accept payments in real-time?

A: Real-time payment service providers can help your Offshore E-Commerce business in two ways. If you have a bank account allowing you to accept credit cards over the Internet then real-time service can make the payment approval process very advantageous. For example, without a real-time payment service you would receive credit card details of a specific customer with the order, but you would then have to approve them manually. If your company has their own account and it is not real-time, then you would forward the customer credit card information through a small credit card terminal device to your bank or by calling a special phone number. This is a cost effective method and works well unless you receive a substantial amount of orders. If you anticipate receiving many orders then using a real-time payment service is much more cost effective. The real-time service provided by the Bahamas Business Centre will provide your company a cost effective method and will streamline your international business operation, allowing you the benefit of receiving your dollars from sales in an expeditious manner. There are various types of credit card services available through the Bahamas Business Centre and each of these services provides for sophisticated credit card fraud detection methods, helping safeguard your company's Offshore E-Commerce site from fraud.

Q: Why should I use the Bahamas Business Centre for hosting my Offshore E-Commerce site?

A: Web hosting companies such as the Bahamas Business Centre specialize in renting space to customers who need it. However, the Bahamas Business Centre specializes in hosting sites for Offshore International Business Companies. The Bahamas Business Centre is located in Nassau, Bahamas, the capital of the Bahamas. The Bahamas has the strictest confidentiality and privacy laws in the world. The Bahamas is a well renowned world banking centre and because of the strict confidentiality laws associated with banking in the Bahamas it has taken the path for initiating some of the most aggressive laws in the world regulating privacy and confidentiality to companies desirous of hosting their Offshore E-Commerce International Business Sites here in the Bahamas. No subpoena issued outside the jurisdiction of the Bahamas is recognized by the Bahamas government. If the Bahamas Business Centre host your International Business Company's Offshore E-Commerce site then you can be assured that your financial privacy is just that-----------private and confidential. While the Bahamas Business Centre may be somewhat new to the Offshore E-Commerce Business, which all companies are, who offer these sorts of services, the Bahamas Business Centre is certainly not new to providing offshore services to beneficial owners of Offshore International Business Companies. The Bahamas Business Centre has been providing offshore business support services for many years to attorneys who create Offshore Asset Protection packages for beneficial owners of International Business Companies located throughout the world. While some ISP's offer very good hosting services, web hosting companies are a much better option. The reason is because of the traffic the ISP has to deal with to cater to customers who want to get to the Internet and this traffic is from potential customers who desire to view pages hosted by the ISP. A web hosting company only has to deal with traffic from the Internet who is desirous of viewing pages of the web hosting companies' clients. Your website will appear much faster when a visitor contacts the site hosted on an encrypted sever at the Bahamas Business Centre.

Q: Should I market my Offshore E-Commerce site?

A: Getting your Offshore E-Commerce business onto the Internet is a great achievement. But it is only the beginning. You have built it - now you must entice customers to visit your site. Unfortunately, this does not happen by itself. If you want customers to enter your Internet shop you must inform the potential customer about the site. It is unrealistic to believe you can put a web site on the Internet and it will be successful without marketing the site to potential customers. As with any business, marketing and promotion will be the key to your success. There are many guides on how to market your shop on the Internet. The Bahamas Business Centre has developed relationships with many well known marketing and advertising companies who specialize in marketing Offshore International Business E-Commerce sites. It is important to remember that marketing your Offshore E-Commerce site on the Internet provides you the opportunity of competing directly with large corporations located throughout the world and being successful in doing so. By utilizing the services of the Bahamas Business Centre you will be able to provide the looks of a major corporation without having to spend the dollars associated with being a large company.

Q: How will customers find your Offshore E-Commerce site?

A: One of the most important marketing tools you will need was explained to you in the last question and answer. Your own Internet address! But obtaining such an address and making it one that can easily be remembered is only the first task of your Internet marketing effort. Once you have it, you must let prospective customers on the Internet know how to find you. In the real world you could do this by placing an ad in your phone directory. The Internet uses search engines and is a much less of an expensive alternative then the normal advertising associated with the bricks and mortar business. Your task is to ensure your shop appears in search engines when someone searches for a product or service you might offer. This requires you to list your site with search engines. Most search engines such as Alta Vista, Goggle or Yahoo allow you to do this by completing a form on their site. There are only 10 major international search engines and only some of them are specific to your country. By informing these search engines of your site, you are inviting customers to your site. They will index your site so it can be found and displayed when someone searches the internet. To rank well in search results, you must provide special search result text in your shop, called Meta Tags. All you have to do to provide Meta Tags is to complete the appropriate fields in the software provided by the Bahamas Business Centre. Good software, such as the software utilized by the Bahamas Business Centre, should then automatically integrate the Meta Tags into your pages.

Q: Will Bahamas Business Centre continue to look after my Offshore E-Commerce shop?

A: An Offshore E-Commerce site must have constant management just as a bricks and mortar business. First, you must check your emails at least daily - to make sure you respond promptly to any customer inquiries and orders. If you do not respond to emails within a few hours, potential customers will loose trust in your business. Your Internet shop should also automatically send an order confirmation to your customers to confirm the order has placed. The Offshore E-Commerce site will be updated with any new information, additions or deletions, special prices or any text that you provide us within eight hours of receiving the information.

Q: What sort of email communication should I use to communicate with my Offshore E-Commerce customers?

A: You will need an email address so customers can contact you via their computers and to receive orders. It may look like this myname@mybusiness.com (the @ is pronounced like 'at'). You can then use emails to answer customer inquiries and accept orders. Special software on your computer called an email program makes this easy. Bahamas Business Centre will help you set this up. The Bahamas Business Centre will provide you with as many email addresses as needed to operate your Offshore E-Commerce company site. Emails are sent and received almost instantly, costing you virtually nothing. Once you have set up your email address, it will be just as important as your business name, address and telephone number and should be promoted as such. While some people will still want to contact you the traditional way via the telephone, by facsimile or through the old-fashioned "snail mail", most people on the Internet now prefer to receive emails. There are companies on the Internet such as Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) or (www.yahoo.com) which make this possible.

Q: Should I encrypt my Offshore E-Commerce site?

A: Internet browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator support a special encryption method called SSL. It ensures nobody can read an order while it is on the Internet. SSL is widely known and accepted and should always be used when accepting orders online. Because of the high security SSL offers, it is widely used in Internet shops to secure orders. The Bahamas Business Centre automatically provides for both SSL and PGP encryption when transferring data from E-Commerce sites.