E-Commerce 101
An Overview of E-Commerce Solutions:
In the broadest sense, E-commerce is thought of as conducting
business over the Web. More specifically, E-commerce is the
ability for a website to accept and process credit card or
other forms of payments in exchange for goods or services.
Today, there are many E-commerce options for website owners.
This article will outline those options which are available
to you.
E-Commerce Options:
 Shopping
Cart:
A shopping cart includes software which lists prices for
products or services and provides the ability to accept personal,
shipping and payment information. We are a Miva Merchant website
designer and set up our shopping carts using Miva Merchant
Software. Miva Merchant has the ability to be customized to
maintain the look and feel of your website, offer various
shipping configurations, add any product attributes necessary
and provides a multitude of payment processing options. Earthlink
provides e-commerce web hosting accounts with Miva Merchant
software and has proven to be a very affordable and reliable
choice.
Options for shopping cart payment processing include:
- A fully E-commerce enabled website with a payment
gateway to automatically process order information
and an internet based merchant account that hooks into the
site owner's bank account with automatic deposits.
Benefits include - automatic payment processing, automatic
deposits, a virtual terminal allowing you to take orders
via phone, FAX or mail, and detailed reports including item
sales statistics.
- A PayPal “Website Payments Pro” account which
functions much like an internet based merchant account.
This type of PayPal account does not require a customer
to leave your site and go to a PayPal page to enter their
personal, shipping and credit card information. It also
provides you with a virtual terminal allowing you to take
orders via phone, FAX or mail.
Benefits include - reduced cost to obtain over an internet
based merchant account and gateway and control of the check
out experience. Draw backs may be withdrawal limits on PayPal
accounts, having to request money be deposited into your
bank account and the lack of reports which are available
when orders are processed thru an internet payment gateway
(Option 1).
- A Standard PayPal account with a PayPal pay now button
which takes your customer to a PayPal payment page to enter
their payment information. After entering their information,
they return back to your site for order confirmation.
Benefits include - no set up fees, no approval process and
the ability to add a virtual terminal account (additional
fees apply) for processing orders via phone, FAX or mail.
Some draw backs may include customers must leave your site
to make a payment, the possibility that some customers don’t
like or trust PayPal, withdrawal limits on PayPal accounts,
having to request money be deposited into your bank account
and the lack of reports which are available when orders
are processed thru an internet payment gateway (Option 1).
- Simple Validation Payment Processing. You log in to your
shopping cart account to retrieve customer credit card information
and manually process credit card payments with an existing
or local bank merchant account or thru a PayPal
Virtual Terminal*.
Secure Online Order Forms:
If you have only a few products or offer services, we can
design you a custom order form which allow your customers
to select the product or service they want and then submit
their order with their personal, shipping and payment information
to you. This requires the purchase of a secure certificate
(aprox $100.00 / year) and also special CGI coding at the
server to encrypt submitted credit card information. When
someone places an order you will receive an email to log in
to your secure area to retrieve the order information. Credit
card processing is done manually with an existing or local
bank merchant account or PayPal Virtual
Terminal*.
Non Secure Online Order Forms:
We can design a custom order form where your customer will
select the product or service they want and submit contact
information to you via an email form. You then need to follow
up and collect payment information via a secure method such
as Phone or FAX. (Email is not considered a secure method
of transmitting sensitive information such as credit card
numbers etc.) Payment processing options include an existing
or local merchant account or PayPal
Virtual Terminal*.
*PayPal Virtual Terminals:
PayPal now has a Virtual Terminal for processing payments
for goods and services. You can log in to your virtual terminal
from any computer and process payments by entering your customer’s
billing, shipping and credit card information.
Features of the virtual terminal are listed below:
- Supports Visa, American Express, MasterCard, and Discover
- Processes transactions for customers without PayPal accounts
- Generates custom packing slips
- Pre-integrated into PayPal reporting systems
- Allows you to create unique logins and access permissions
for your employees
- Includes fields for shipping and tax
- Supports shipping to non-billing addresses
- Sends an optional email receipt to customers
Payment Gateway (or IP Payment Gateway):
A payment gateway is the infrastructure that allows a merchant
to accept credit card and other forms of electronic payment.
This service automates the payment transaction between the
shopper and the merchant. It is usually a third-party service
that is actually a system of computer processes that process,
verify, and accept or decline credit card transactions on
behalf of the merchant through secure Internet connections.
The gateway transfers order information to the merchant account
and may provide records, reports access to orders and other
features.
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