Ecommerce

Shopping carts

To set up ecommerce on your web site you will need these elements:

A web site hosted with a web hosting provider that supports ecommerce.
A Secure Socket Layer (SSL) server certificate is necessary to protect the information about the transaction as it passes through the Internet. A certificate may be acquired from a provider such as Verisign, GeoTrust, or Thawte. They generally cost about $125/year. Check with your web hosting service provide before purchasing a certificate.
An online catalog/shopping cart of products and services. This keeps track of what the shopper wants to buy and sends the total to your payment gateway.
A Payment Gateway (such as AuthorizeNet and CyberCash/Verisign) is the credit card processor that provides a secure bridge between your web site and your merchant account. Payment gateways range from no setup/no monthly fee but high per-transaction charge, to high setup plus monthly fees and inexpensive per-transaction charges.
An Internet Merchant Bank Account that deposits the money into your bank account (expect $20-$100/month plus fees for this service). Merchant accounts may be offered by your bank. Verify that your account can connect to your payment gateway.

Third party payment processors: Third party processors such as PayPal will handle the payment gateway, merchant bank account, and SSL portions of your ecommerce site.
Processing manually: You can use a virtual terminal to manually process orders submitted through a secure (see SSL above) web page or over the phone.

Online Malls: You can build a store using an online mall such as Amazon's zShops and Yahoo Shopping.
Auction Sites: List your items on an auction site such as eBay, ubid, and Yahoo Auctions
Hosted Store-fronts: Host your ecommerce web site with an ecommerce provider, such as Bigstep, that provides all the necessary software to catalog, shopping cart, and process your sales.


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