How to Go Ecommerce

Any quick tip sites?

[itrainu]

I have two clients that want to start selling online. Both have websites at present time, but only one already has a merchant account.

I started doing some research and think I have identified three possible streams:

1. An existing store such as Yahoo or Ebay. But I was shocked to learn that doesn't provide you with the ability to take credit cards - you still require a merchant account. So what are you getting? A shopping cart plus some add ons?

2. Integrate a shopping cart with your website. Need a merchant account.

3. Put paypal buttons on your site.

Does this sound like the three major options which are available? What are the pros and cons of each? I see several pros and cons in general: monthly fees vs. none; setup or integration price; need to change web hosts; ability to customize checkout page to insert tracking code; amount taken from each credit card transaction.

Any thoughts or resources would be greatly appreciated ;-)

[kodaks]

Greetings, itrainu.

Yes, those are basically the three major options that are available. Here are my thoughts on each:

1. Like you said, you will still need a merchant account to process credit cards. And with the Yahoo store, there is a monthly charge. With the eBay store, you must have a feedback score of 10 or more before you are able to open one.

2. That is the option that I would recommend, but it may take more time to design than a Yahoo or ebay store. But there is usually a monthly charge involved.

3. If you use a Paypal or likewise service, this would be the fastest and easiest to design. But, they do take a percentage of your sales as a fee.

I hope this helps!

[itrainu]

Thanks! I'll have to mull these ideas over!

Darlene

[surfweb]

I think having your own shopping cart can do the job! Things have changed a lot recently, personal shopping carts are now integrated with Paypal, authorized.net etc. With that it meets both your option 2 and 3 by adding a link from your homepage to the cart application. Because merchant approvals are done within minutes or 24 hours, you can pretty much be in business within 24 hours. You can also now use your existing merchant accounts. I believe authorized.net is the most popular one out there.

A good choice of a personal shopping cart is OSCommerce and you can host it anywhere.snipped

osCommerce is a powerful catalog application that allows you to offer goods and services for online ordering. It includes a merchant gateways for credit card processing such as PayPal, and a variety of other world-wide payment methods. The sleek tool allows you to store customer information, create invoices, track status, and generate newsletter. Little or no programming effort, requires a company logo.gif of course

To make life simple, use a cPanel host, which allows you to install within minutes.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 5:32 am (utc) on Aug. 8, 2004]
[edit reason] Commercial specifics removed [/edit]

[itrainu]

Thanks Surfweb!

A company that I like to host with actually uses cpanel so this would be terrific for me ;-)

I think that I will look into this option!

[chrisnrae]

There are actually a LOT of shopping cart options. I have been sifting through them for several weeks now trying to decide LOL - and have narrowed it down - have fun - there are a lot to choose from ;-).

As for using paypal - I wouldn't use them as the only option. Some people are very gun shy from paypal. An additional option yea, but not as a sole option. Just my two cents though.

[webwoman]

I have a site that I now feel warrants the additional expense of its own shopping cart. Up until now it has strictly been PayPal (it sells very inexpensive impulse items so this has worked out fine). However, I do want to add a shopping cart and have decided to use Bank of America's ecommerce solution for gateway and cart.

Question: I do not want to eliminate PayPal. How do I offer both to my visitors? Will I have to have a paypal buy button as well as my own button? Or, will the buyer be able to choose PayPal or other after entering the shopping cart?

[itrainu]

Hi Webwoman.

Check Paypals site to see if your shopping cart is compatible - typically this is how it works - you choose Visa, MC, PayPal, etc. as a form of payment ;-)

Darlene