Forum Moderators: buckworks
I promise to be gentle:>)
I've never found the fact that the checkout takes you to a secure site to be a problem. (So I've never done it myself.)
I think what you are looking for is called a SSL certificate. Your host may or may not have this ability. I looked into doing that early in my Webmastering career, but decided that I want to SELL things...not be an expert on SSL. Furthermore, I discovered the cost was about the same and I didn't need to worry about security and scripting issues. I just left it to the experts.
The WYSIWYG program you use shouldn't matter. SSL is on the hosting end of things.
Many shopping cart add-ons allow you to customize the shopping cart to look just like your website, a very nice feature.
Again, Welcome!
Let me make sure I understand what you wanted: you want the customer to checkout & pay for purchases on your website - that is, not to be transferred to a different site to pay for credit card, right?
Most shopping carts can support integrated credit card processing - what is your cart and what is your cc gateway?
You'll need a cart script/program to handle the shopping process, and interface with your credit card gateway.
The cart script will install on your host and handle the transactions and other things associated with your store.
What cart you choose will depend on several things: what kind of hosting do you have? Is it Windows or *nix? Can you run php or cgi scripts? (If it's windows asp or .net) Do you have access to a database like MySQL? (many carts run off a database)
Do you have your own non-shared IP address? (you'll need your own IP address to have an SSL cert) What credit card gateway do you use (the cart you choose should support it)
What other features do you need in your cart - do you need realtime shipping calculations? Do you need to do volume pricing, discounts, or offer coupons, or gift certificates, show related items? How many categories/items do you have? Will the number of items grow or stay pretty much as they are?
Finally, your designer, or a developer will need to set it all up on the server side, by installing and configuring the cart, the SSL cert and depending on your site, customize it fit in with the look and feel.
Those ought to get you going in the right direction. There are so many choices for carts, ranging from free or open souce to $$$ - there's one out there that will suit your needs. We use ClickCartPro and find that it fits many different scenarios...
Hope that helps.
LisaB
i do have a merchant account with my bank specifically for online credit card processing
Your merchant's account has to work with an online gateway to process transactions. Some of the large providers are Authorize.net, Linkpoint, Verisign, Echo (& many others) Your cart sends the transaction info securely to the gateway and the gateway returns a response (generally whether the transaction was good or not) then in turn the gateway interfaces with your merchant's account/bank. Your cart will handle the response back from the gateway to present your customer with an invoice if successful, and a message if not.
It's possible to have just a virtual online terminal where you manually do your transactions and not have gateway access for your shopping cart. You'll have to ask your merchant account provider exactly what you have.
LisaB
