Cab a Suite of Websites Using One Shopping Cart

websites and shopping cart issues

[hereyougo]

I am about to launch a suite of websites each concentrating on a speciific segment of a common market. In order to make this as economical as possible, I am thinking of having a common shopping cart (one ssl certificate) for all these sites.

I am afraid that having a different url (although similar in name to the suite of domains) might make shoppers nervous about buying.

Anyone have any experience of this?

[lgn1]

Visa requires that every website to have its own merchant id's (this rule came out last fall), even if the same company owns several websites.

Apparently, customers was getting confused about the company they were dealing with, increasing the number of chargebacks, so Visa implemented this policy, with an additonal recomendation that ecomerece sites use their URL instead of company name as the reference line that shows up on the customers credit card statement.

So a common shopping cart for all your websites is no longer allowed (unless you do not take Visa).

Now most Merchant Service Providers, will give discounts for mulitple merchant accounts, since much of the front end work is done only once (ie credit qualification).

[hereyougo]

Many thanks for the respone, very helpful indeed.

If I had a primary domain with sub-domains, would this be allowed? ie if I had www.aaa.primary.com, www.bbb.primary.com, with primary.com being the merchant ID?

[Corey Bryant]

You can have one merchant account for all your domain names. But you need to have your business name on all the checkout pages. You should have it in the footer as well. And on the receipt that is generated.

It should be non-specific as well - meaning if you are selling office products and dog food, don't call yourself Pens R Us.

Plus if you are selling something that might be in different NAISC (SIC), you would need a separate account since it might have a different rating

-Corey

[lgn1]

You can have one merchant account for all your domain names

Gee, who is your merchant provider, the new visa rules have been out for 6 months. We checked with 5 or 6 merchant providers, and were told that we needed separate account, until one merchant provider told us, that it was a new Visa International policy, and that merchant providers had six months to comply, or else they are subject to fines (merchant provider, not the merchant).