seansquared - 8:07 pm on Aug 20, 2010 (gmt 0)

Don't necessarily offload credit card processing to a 3rd party, as someone suggested above. While it's true that you're not in the business of "processing payments", you are in the business of "order management", and a seemless Shop/ Checkout/ OrderStatus/ Reorder experience for the customer reflects a professional website, much more than a boomerang payment system that bounces a shopper to a different url for payment details. Especially for foreign shoppers, who might not recognize the url of a payment processor.

Great point here. Also good to point out that most modern payment gateways don't do page forwarding like this any more but instead use API or datasource calls, ensuring a seamless user experience.

Still a great point though! Avoid those payment gateways that are still stuck in the old page forwarding model of payment handling!