New to Ecommerce

[niz85]

I am very new to ecommerce. I am thinking of building a storefront.
What I have read is that I will need two things... one is shopping cart... and the other is a merchant account.

For shopping cart, I liked oscommerce. And I have installed it also. I have few questions now.

1. will I have to get my own SSL certificates?
2. how can I make oscommerce shopping cart search engine friendly?
3. are there any more soultions for building a small shopping site?

Thankyou for your time
Niz

[bcolflesh]

1. will I have to get my own SSL certificates?

Some virtual hosts offer a shared cert you can access, otherwise you'll need to purchase one.

2. how can I make oscommerce shopping cart search engine friendly?

[oscommerce.com...]

There are a couple SEO contribs you should browse on their site.

3. are there any more soultions for building a small shopping site?

Hundreds - many people start out w/hosted carts. I recommend a free one: Mal's e-commerce

[Corey Bryant]

One other thing to note - a lot of electronic payment gateways provide their own SSL cert. It is usually better to have your own though. Talk to your host -if you are able to purchase your own, you might check out EV1 Servers - they resell some.

-Corey