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E-Commerce,
Shopping Carts & Ecommerce Merchant Accounts
Nationwide and locally
for the San Francisco Bay Area, Oakland, San Francisco,
the East Bay, Tri-Valley, Pleasanton, Livermore, Danville,
San Ramon, Dublin, Concord, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill,
Hayward, Fremont, Castro Valley, and San Leandro, California,
CA
If you plan to sell products
or services directly on the Internet you will likely
need a "shopping cart" as part of your e-commerce
website to allow customers to make purchases
directly from your site with credit cards, PayPal, or
other forms of payment. Most people are very familiar
with buying over the Internet these days, but if you
are new to the "seller side" of e-commerce,
we can help to explain the many different options and
what is involved with each. Also, please see our related
articles - Getting
Started In E-Commerce - Part One and Part
Two.
Shopping Cart Basics
We have many years of experience
with shopping carts and we are happy to explain their
various features and capabilities, which vary widely.
They can run the gamut from simple sites with just a
few products or services to full
database shopping cart software with features to
rival Amazon.com. At a basic level, however, shopping
carts generally perform the following functions:
- List and total the costs for items
being purchased
- Calculate Sales Tax
- Calculate Shipping and Handling
costs
- Accept Shipping and Billing information
and instructions
- Allow for multiple forms of payment,
including secure credit card transactions
- Electronically process the transaction
- Notify the site owner of the sale
While shopping carts can sometimes
include many more involved functions, all shopping cart
software or services should provide these features as
a minimum.
Examples of other capabilities (see
shopping
cart features) include:
- Secure password protected administration
section
- Ability to create and maintain product
and/or category pages
- Template-driven designs for easy
customization
- Unlimited number of products and
categories
- Wide variety of options for shipping
charges
- Real-time shipping rates for UPS,
Fedex, USPS
- Support for downloadable products
- Most Popular products display
- Discount coupons and gift certificates
- Specials listings
- Moderated product reviews and ratings
- Related products, accessories, and
cross-selling
- Support for wide variety of payment
types and gateways
- Online orders tracking
- Customizable printable packing slips
and invoices
- Product stock accounting / inventory
- Comprehensive orders statistics
and reporting
- Many more...
Different companies, products, and
services have widely different requirements for ecommerce
websites. Because we've developed ecommerce sites for
over 12 years, we're familiar with and can recommend
a variety of solid e-commerce/shopping cart software,
online e-commerce services, or custom solutions depending
on the needs of our clients. Because we are
familiar with a wide variety of options, we can recommend
the solution that best fits your needs.
Merchant Accounts
If you want to allow your customers
to use a credit card, you will need a merchant account
specifically for that purpose. If you take
credit cards directly now, you already have a merchant
account. Unfortunately, the major credit card companies
require that you have a separate merchant account for
use with online transactions. Many businesses set up
merchant accounts through their bank, and that can be
a good option. However, particularly for lower volume
businesses, independent credit cart processing companies
can often provide very good service at more competitive
rates. We can help with recommendations.
Whatever solution you choose, your
credit card processor can arrange a "payment gateway"
to work directly with your shopping cart software or
service. This is the service that allows your
online store to process credit cards "realtime".
The alternative is for credit card information to be
stored for secure retrieval, but this kind of system
is not used as frequently as it once was. Also, it's
important to coordinate the choice of your "payment
gateway" company, because your specific payment
gateway must be compatible with both your credit card
processing company as well as your shopping cart software.
Security Issues
Credit cards represent the
most common way of paying for items in the Internet,
and they are the reason why serious security precautions
must be taken by any website that is set up for e-commerce.
Our customers typically do not want to take any chances
with credit card security, and we very much agree with
that position. Consequently, we normally set up shopping
carts for our clients to use a "payment gateway"
which allows you to have a fully-functional ecommerce
website without ever having to receive or
store credit card information.
Contact Us to Discuss Your Needs
If you would like to discuss your ecommerce
needs further, please contact
us for a free initial consultation.
We can help to explain the various options and
considerations, and we can suggest the most appropriate
solutions for business and your website.
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