New To ECommerce

[wfernley]

Hi Everyone. :)

Well I'm new to ECommerce and I need to make a few sites. I know MySQL and PHP so I have the skills to build most of it, until it gets to the credit card payments.

Basically my first few questions are these:

-Can anyone give me a basic rundown of the online credit card payment?
-Is PayPal a good choice to use for online payments?
-How time would be involved in building a site from scratch to have online purchasing capability? (I know hard to estimate, but a rough estimate would be good :))
-How much should I charge?(Another good questions lol)
-Is Purchasing Keywords good for ECommerce sites?

Thanks in advance for all your help :)

Wes

[webtress]

-Can anyone give me a basic rundown of the online credit card payment?

Question is to vague.

-Is PayPal a good choice to use for online payments?

I have had store owners use paypal only and then add additional payment providers and sales soared 3 times over using non paypal payment providers. Paypal is still offered as a option just not the first.

-How time would be involved in building a site from scratch to have online purchasing capability? (I know hard to estimate, but a rough estimate would be good )

Why bother spending months coding when you can purchase a shopping cart for under $150 and customize the design in a couple of days-weeks. My favorite is ecommerce templates generic template you get all features and mult-payment provider intergration. If a customer wants to change payment providers just turn on or off in the admin. Check out their site and see the demo.

-How much should I charge?(Another good questions lol)

What are you willing to do and how much is your time worth? This is not something that anyone can tell you. Each site will have different needs some may need image opt services or flash you may need to contract certain work out.

-Is Purchasing Keywords good for ECommerce sites?

Each industry is different highly competitive industries have to use every avenue available to suceed and spend more, niche markets can use those same avenues but spend less. Basically spending money on advertising and marketing can and does pay off as long as the money is spent wisely.

[Corey Bryant]

Can anyone give me a basic rundown of the online credit card payment?

Check out [linkpoint.com...] - they will provide you with a test store. Now you can use that to test. They offer an API which will allow you to process credit cards on your website (under a secure environment). Or you can pass a few variables over to their secure gateway & let it do it for you.

Is PayPal a good choice to use for online payments?

For your customers... It depends - what are they selling? If it is high end electronics, no. If it is maybe clothes or crafts, yes.

How time would be involved in building a site from scratch to have online purchasing capability? (I know hard to estimate, but a rough estimate would be good :))

How fast do you type? Check out [oscommerce.com...] for some ideas on the shopping cart

How much should I charge?(Another good questions lol)

I would charge for the web site as a whole, not per hour. Most people want to know how much they are going to spend. Most people do not like leaving it open, i.e. well it will take me about 50 hours or so to do it.

Is Purchasing Keywords good for ECommerce sites?

It is possible. Anything to help get more hits to a site could be usefuly. But keep in mind about the keywords.Do use to general since everyone is probably already using them.

-Corey

[edited by: TallTroll at 11:27 am (utc) on April 7, 2004]
[edit reason] tidy up [/edit]