Web Design - Web Site Creation
Online Transactions
Shopping Carts, Accepting Credit Cards, & accepting payment online.
This section deals with the intricacies of accepting payments online. I’m going to go over the various shopping carts, what they consist of, and what you need to look out for. Then, I will go over the various credit cards, merchant accounts, and how they work together so that you can begin to accept credit card payments online.
Shopping carts
Quite simply, online shopping carts are software programs that provide an online storefront where customers can make purchases and enter their information manually. Shopping carts work by allowing a potential customer to view the items, view their description, and add the product to the cart. Then, they can peruse more items and products or if they choose to, they can add the items to their cart, checkout by inputting their shipping/billing information, their credit card information, and then your dropshipper (or you if you personally ship the items) will send the products to the customer. Hopefully they’ll remain happy enough with everything that they’ll re-visit your site whenever they need your product or service!
Sounds exciting, right? Let’s take a look at the five-step process in a slightly different, albeit hopefully clearer way:
Customer logs onto the web site
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Customer looks around for a product
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Customer likes product, chooses product, and adds it to their cart
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Customer then provides their specific billing information (credit card, etc.)
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Your product is shipped either by you or your drop shipper
Are you getting excited yet? This is perhaps one of the easiest processes a customer will go through when they’re on your web site. They’ve gone through the hard part in making a decision, and they finally ordered your service or product! So you’re finished…right? Wrong! Then comes the task of making sure the customer is satisfied in each and every way possible. Ongoing customer support is crucial to the success of a service-based or product-based web site. There are online options out there (such as Kayako support software) that allow you to create a truly automated support system. You can even go so far as to find companies online that provide truly transparent outsourced support options.
Online Shopping Carts – This is a list of free solutions that can help you jump-start your business with little or no cost. But beware! These solutions ARE free and as such, unless you are one of those primo developers, you will want to obtain a solution that’s supported by the hosting company that you select. You don’t want to have to stay up until 3:00 a.m. working on resolving a security error that could have been avoided by setting things up appropriately in the beginning. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can seriously harm your business! My advice would be to hire a professional developer that has experience in such matters, and can make sure that all specific security holes are plugged accordingly.
OS Commerce – http://www.oscommerce.com/
ZenCart – http://www.zencart.com/
A list of do’s and don’ts when developing the integration of your shopping cart:
DO include SSL (Secure Socket layer) certificates and make sure your shopping cart is secure from prying eyes! There are incidents online that feature companies that were careless enough to not securely encrypt their customers’ credit card information and this information was hacked and stolen by thieves. Your hosting company usually has specific methods involved in making sure that you obtain a solid secure certificate. There are some pitfalls involved when attempting to obtain a certificate that I want you to be aware about. They include the following:
Don’t use those free certificates or certificates that are cheap. These are the worst of the worst and they can open your site up to major security issues.
The absolute BEST way to make sure your site is completely secure is to get a private security certificate installed on a separate IP address that your host provides. Make sure it is a private IP and that nothing else is hosted on it. These private IP addresses from web hosts are fairly cheap, usually costing around 2-10 dollars per month.
Do use 128-bit secure socket layer. There is a version out there that is less secure, the 64-bit secure socket layer. While it may still have some uses, it can have some minor security issues. Always use the latest security standards to make sure your client’s credit card information is safe.
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