What ethical issues as companies add e-business to their operation?

Most companies do not understand website promotion or SEO. When companies start their online store they need to watch out for SEO firms that believe in spam and other slimmy methods of web promotion.

The biggest ethical issues faced by a company when ADDING an e-operation are all privacy related. A so-called brick-and-mortar business would not be used to the protection of client information (like credit cards, addresses, phone numbers, etc.) because it was always just in internal systems. When adding eCommerce functionality you are opening up this information [potentially] to individuals that aren't quite as honest as we'd like them to be. The ethics comes from the amount of protection that you provide to your clients.

Another ethical consideration is what you do with this information once you have it. Do you sell the information to email lists? Do you nail the users with pop-ups and nasty scripts that break into users computer files? The business needs to keep focused on what it wants to accomplish with the addition of the eCommerce and STICK TO IT.

Considerations for types of advertising used, mailing lists, newsletters, types of web sites used for advertising mediums. Customer information is a big ethics issue both in how you use information gained form visitors and how yo protect client information obtained from online forms, billing, account data, etc. The regular mix of don't slander, over promise, under service, cheat, etc...