E-Commerce On A Shoestring

"E-Commerce On A Shoestring"

by Deborah Anderson

This article is written out of the experience that I had setting up our e-commerce enabled web site on a shoestring budget. It is not the only way and it is not necessarily the recommended way either, but this article may be helpful in guiding you along the sometimes confusing path to a more dynamic e-commerce enabled web site. For the sake of keeping this article as brief as possible, definitions for many of the terms below are NOT provided.

If you have any questions as to what is being discussed, please email your question to mailto:danderso@virtualis.com

1. Choose the Company and/or Bank
Although there are many quality companies out there that will help you set up your merchant account and credit card processing system, we found that Webtranz was the most economical (http://www.webtranz.com/cgi-bin/affiliate/banner.cgi?790) Some of the other companies may hold your hand and guide you throughout the system in a little more detailed manner, but will cost more. For a sampling of companies to choose from see the Featured Links column below.

2. Ask Questions Is there an application fee and credit check? What are the batch fees? What is the per transaction percentage fee? (this varies depending on your industry) Do they set up the Merchant Account for you or do you need to contact a bank? No - Contact Your Bank first Yes - Ask the following questions: Is there a monthly bank charge? Is there a monthly sales minimum? Will you be charged if your sales fall below the sales minimum?

3. Determine what type of processing that you wish to do.
Are you a retail store also? You may want a swipe card system. Are you desiring to process the credit cards with your computer hooked up to a modem? You may want the software option for your particular computer. Ideally you want real-time-processing which will provide you, the merchant, with the payment right away, without you being present and without you having to transmit the payment information yourself.

This is not always the most economical method if you are extremely limited on funds when starting out. You may transmit the payment information via the hardware or software method mentioned above after the order is placed and before the product is delivered. You may always upgrade to a real-time-processing system when your profit margin increases. For the purpose of this "shoestring" article, we are assuming that you are not using real-time-processing immediately. Also, it must be noted, that, for obvious reasons, this method does not work if you only check your email once a month.

4. Do you have access to a Secure Server?
Your potential customers will not want to provide you with credit card information if your server is not secure. You may opt to apply for your own Security Certificate if you like (http://www.verisign.com) but this can be quite costly. We opted to lease Secure Server space directly from our Host, Virtualis (http://www.virtualis.com/vr/danderso).

When determining whether or not to lease secure server space you need to ask the following: What is the application fee, if any? What is the monthly fee? How much space is leased? Is there a personal cgi-bin directory available on the leased space? If you decide to lease secure server space, you will need to upload any scripts that you will use to the secure serve along with all order forms that you decide to use.

Note: If you use a script like formmail.pl (Matt's Script Archives * Free Script * (http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/) to process your order forms, but use the script on a non-secure server, your customer's data is NOT SECURE during processing.

You will need to have the same script in a cgi-bin on the leased secure server. If you are not provided with a cgi-bin on your leased space, don't lease.

5. Shopping Cart System or Secure Email System
If you are requesting data on a secure server with a secure script you have one more security concern - how is the data being transmitted?

Option One:
Shopping Cart System
Most shopping cart systems will "automate" the ordering process with configurable features such as determining quantity figures, postage and handling, and applicable state tax. In addition, most shopping cart systems can be configured to save the order data securely on the secure server, notifying the store / web site owner via email that there is a order awaiting them.

In this manner the order is never transmitted insecurely via normal email. There are many shopping cart systems available in varying price ranges and varying capabilities. I recommend minivend (http://www.minivend.com) because it is free. To use it you will need to know something about cgi scripts, but there is a lot of support from other minivend users which is available through a discussion list.

Option Two:
Secure Email System
LqidSkin (http://www.lqidskin.com) offers a free script to encrypt the email that is received when an order is placed. It is called Encrypt-It. There is also a Professional Version available. Using this method, you may use a script like formmail.pl stored in the cgi-bin of your secure server, in combination with Encrypt-It and use a basic order form to collect orders and payment information.

6. Create Order Forms
This is not necessary if you use a commercial shopping cart system. The forms will be created for you in most cases. These would vary according to how good the program is, how much money you spent on it, etc. If you are choosing the simple method and using Encrypt It to transmit your order emails, you can create some very simple order forms in a basic HTML editor. To see an example of a form that we use, go to: https://caolson.virtualis.com/acreations/bannerorder.html

7. Accepting Checks Online
For this, I recommend that you use an external company rather than processing the checks yourself. In this way you are utilizing their very detailed instructions for the consumer to follow when filling out an online check. We chose ValidCheck (now ValidPay) due to their lower application fee and lower monthly rates (http://www.ValidPay.com/default.asp?RefWord=ACREATIONS) See review below.

8. Consider an All-In-One package
An example of this would be the new features of ValidPay.com where you can accept credit cards and checks in one package. This may be a very economical choice if you are just starting out. You may bypass steps 3 and 4 and possibly others depending on which program you choose.

Deborah Anderson is the editor of Webmaster Tips Weekly published by Anderson Creations.
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