eCommerce - Where to Start and Why..
We've made getting started with e-commerce easy but you should fully understand your current and future needs so that you can determine the best solution. Here are the broad steps that you'll need to take to conduct e-commerce and e-business on the Internet:
Establish your basic services. Establish your web site by registering a domain name and obtaining web hosting services. Make sure that your hosting plan has services and features that support the tools needed for e-commerce. For example, a dedicated IP address and web server that supports secure transactions are required. HTML.COM's LEVEL 3 hosting plan is a great place to start.
Obtain e-commerce software. Obtain e-commerce tools that help you manage the web site sales process. Specifically, your e-commerce tools (ie. shopping cart) should be able to handle sales tax computation, inventory management, shipping options and more. Or, if you know that you aren't going to have very many products, you can use a much simpler (and less expensive) tool to get started with e-commerce. See our e-commerce solutions page for information on our various packages. Make sure that you e-commerce software supports your merchant account! (see below)
Ok, so how do I get paid?! First, you will need to determine if you will be accepting credit cards online. If the answer to that question is "yes", then you will need to do the following:
Establish a merchant account. In simple terms, a merchant account is a special banking account with a company that acts as a "go between" for your business account and the credit card companies (your customer's credit card issuers). HTML.COM offers Internet Certified Merchant Accounts through its partner e-onlinedata. Click here to apply for an Internet Certified Merchant Account.
Establish an account with a payment gateway service. A payment gateway service transmits your customer's credit card transactions to your merchant bank in a real-time and secure manner. When selecting a payment gateway service, you need to be sure that both your e-commerce software and merchant account provide support the service! If the 3 parts are not compatible, your solution will be broken. This is why we recommend Authorize.Net as a payment gateway. The e-commerce tools that we provide (and require a payment gateway service) are certified to work with Authorize.Net. In fact, the application we have is for BOTH a merchant account and an Authorize.Net account!
What about PayPal? Now, if you do not wish to go through the process of getting a merchant account with payment gateway services, you can use the number one alternative - PayPal. PayPal is an easy to use service that effectively combines the services of a merchant account and payment gateway. All of the e-commerce solutions that we recommend support PayPal. Most merchant do both - they get a real merchant account AND setup PayPal accounts, thus giving their customers the most flexible way of submitting payment.
Secure the process. Security is the number one cerncern with e-commerce. If you will be accepting credit cards through an online shopping cart, you will need to make sure you have what is called a secure certificate. A secure certificate is the tool that allows a secure connection between your customer's web browser and your web server. This allows your customer to enter sensitive information such name, address, credit card, etc securely. Secure certifcates can range in price and it really depends on which certificate authority (the people who issues recognized secure certificates) you wish to deal with. Secure certificate providers include companies such as VeriSign, Thawte and GeoTrust. Once your secure certificate has been obtained, it will need to be installed or integrated into your web server. Secure certificates typically need to be renewed annually, in a similar fashion as domain names. At HTML.COM we provide setup, installation and annual renewal services at extremely reasonable rates.
So there you have it. The information above will help you get a handle on just what needs to be done. If you have specific questions, please don't hesistate to contact us - we'd love to hear from you and help you build your e-commerce project.
