While both business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce will need to support multiple languages, currencies, payment methods and delivery vehicles, the business segment of your plan should take account of fundamental differences between the two types of sites. For instance, to sell to businesses, you must support purchase orders, and you may need to work directly with the purchasing management systems in customer organizations. The need for integration is high; for customers faced with thousands of products from many vendors, the only thing worse than multiple paper catalogs is multiple electronic ones.

Many teams study the issues of business-to-business versus business-to-consumer, and physical goods versus digital goods, and arrive at conclusions very different from initial assumptions. Consider Ingram's case: It's natural to imagine its service as a business-to-business application. After all, its entire customer base is made up of VARs, and all products are provided directly by manufacturers. However, Ingram's solution really targets its customers' customers and thereby became somewhat more service-oriented. It is imperative to address such redefinitions early in the process. Most solutions focus on either business-to-business or business-to-consumer. Picking the wrong one can be a very expensive mistake.

Cultivate and Value Customer Information

The data on buyers and sellers that you accumulate over time becomes your most precious asset, but it is only as valuable as your plans to cultivate and leverage it. This is doubly important for business-to-consumer sites; business-to-business sites already operate under a contract or purchase-order relationship.

Just how to convince consumers to register at your site and provide accurate data is still a mysterious process. The exact nature of the registration data you require will vary, but there are a few rules of thumb to help you get it. First, customers zealously guard privacy and security. Plan to post a privacy policy. Customers will be more inclined to register if they see a declaration of the intended use of their registration data as well as a mechanism to opt out.

Privacy policy intersects with e-commerce implementation in the following ways:

· Note that at least one leading portal site was accused of selling registration data. How will you notify buyers that you're selling mailing-list information? How can they choose not to participate?

· What information will you collect and report about each consumer? How can customers review and correct that information?

· Will you be using persistent cookies?

Although in theory it is possible to create totally anonymous transactions that are both secure and guarantee payment to the merchant, in practice you will need to collect enough data to identify and authenticate the customer and ship the product. If you're selling digital goods, that may be as simple as an e-mail address, and for physical goods it may be just a validated mailing address.

In addition, terms and conditions of the sale, customer service and escalation policies need to be clearly specified, and ideally online mechanisms provided to handle returns, credits and back orders. Web users have high expectations of instant gratification and self-service. If you don't deliver, you've lost them and they're probably not coming back.