Step by step guide

How to

[willybfriendly]

You guys are leagues ahead of me here. I need to find a basic, neophyte guide to setting up an e-commerce site. I did a site search and looked through the library without success. Looking for something that answers basic quesitons about SSL Certs, merchant accounts, etc., but as a coherent whole.

Can anyone give me a lead?

WBF

[Corey Bryant]

Most sites are biased one way or another towards merchant accounts and SSL certs. They are trying to push their own information.

Did you have specific questions that you needed answered?

-Corey

[willybfriendly]

SOmeitmes a person is so green thety don't know what questions to ask.

Having never run an ecommerce site, I am clueless. But, I have also been tasked with comparing the costs/benefits of a system that is currently running on a Yahoo Store vs. moving it in house.

While I won't be setting up or operating the system, I need to know what all I am covering so that I can compare aples to apples. So, a simple list will get me started.

Something like

1. Hosting
2. Software
3. Merchant Account
4. SSL Cert
5. etc.

with a brief blurb of the role and minimal specs of each piece of the package. I can take it from there

Thanks,

WBF

[Noximus]

Yea, sure. Is there anybody who can tell , how to set an online shopping site? How should one sell some widgets online?

[bono]

everyone seems to be selling widgets on here or is that just the impression you all give.. :-)

my advice is make a list of what you need.. and then compare that list to the things that a company / software package can offer..

I went for secpay as they allow you to totally customise your payment screen and also charge a flat fee per transaction rather than a percentage.. but really its up to you and what you need..

[Marketing Guy]

1. Hosting
2. Software
3. Merchant Account
4. SSL Cert
5. etc.

Hosting will be dependent on the needs of:

> Software
> Bandwidth, etc
> Budget

So best to wait till later to sort that out.

Software is a good place to start - have a look around at some free systems to get an idea of features that are generally available and look at your options further. Do you have a budget to buy a paid for system or get one designed?

Banking, finance etc - in UK if you setup a business bank account you are usually allocated a business manager who will answer a lot of questions for you. Not sure if it's a similar situation in other countries, but I would assume there would be some sort of similar service.

When you have the basic business ready to trade and have decided which ecommerce system you will use, then you can look into things like secure transactions and hosting, both of which should be fairly straight forward (hosting will be largely based on the needs of your ecom system).

The big online payment companies (PayPal, WorldPay, etc) will have vasts amounts of information available on trading online, so I would check out the features and services they offer, then read up from there.

MG

[Corey Bryant]

It does depends on what country you are in and who your target audience is for the merchant account. You might also consider Paypal in conjunction with a merchant account if you are in the US and doing more than $1,000 a month.

So far though it seems like you are on a pretty good start

As far as the SSL, it depends first with your hosting company. Some will only install a certain kind etc. If you can buy your own, check out servertastic or ev1servers. They offer some certs at a cheaper rate.
-Corey