TAKING ONLINE ORDERS

 

Now that you know about setting up a successful commerce site, lets go through the steps and knowledge necessary to get the money! Well talk about the ins and outs of setting up a shopping cart and charge credit cards online.

 

Shopping Carts

A shopping cart is a program that displays a users order, calculates the final cost, and charges the users card. Many hosts provide free shopping cart software, although you will usually need a programmer to help you with set-up. There are some free solutions that anyone with some patience and a familiarity with HTML can learn. The Zen Cart is a free online ordering and invoicing system that can be implemented by any web designer. It comes with excellent instructions and allows you to offer clients an Internet commerce site at a fraction of normal database driven prices.

 

www.http://zencart.com

 

While the Zen Cart comes with good set-up directions, dont be afraid to call your Host for guidance if the directions ask for something you dont know about. I would recommend setting up a fake order form once before offering it to clients.

 

FreeMerchant.com (www.freemerchant.com) offers a totally free Internet commerce site, free of banners or intrusive advertisement. They make money with partnerships and by trying to get you to sign up for credit cards through them. All Free Merchant stores must be designed with the Free Merchant Online Store Builder. You can add your own graphics and backgrounds, but it is currently not possible to upload sites or pages created in other programs (like Dreamweaver) to Free Merchant. You can have your custom pages hosted elsewhere and then place a hyperlink on your main site to take shoppers to your FM store for the shopping cart. The design for your products pages will be limited, but limited is way better than non-existent or super expensive. Free Merchant can also be used to charge credit cards online and will work with most charge software.

 

Accepting Credit Cards Online

Credit card processing is first thing that comes to mind when considering on-line payments. Some people remain reluctant to use their cards on-line, but in general credit cards have become the standard method of payment on the Net. 

It is possible to run an on-line business without accepting credit cards, but this is really only viable if you are in a situation where you are not likely to get an impulse buy. (If you're selling yachts or executive jets for example.) For most small E-businesses, accepting credit cards is essential.

 

If Your Business Already Accepts Credit Cards

If you or your client already accepts credit cards, youre most of the way there. Call them and tell them that youre starting an online business and ask them want to accept credit cards over your site. Usually theyll give you a CGI credit card accepting program and instructions to link it to your site. Depending on the complexity of the directions (each CGI is different), you might still need the help of a programmer to set up the site.

 

Acquiring an Account to Accept Credit Cards

If you dont have a credit card account yet, youll need to get one. Usually the easiest way to apply is through either:

 

www.charge.com

or

www.creditcards.com

 

Its a pretty pain free process, but youll want to look around for the lowest rates. For example, FreeMerchant.com offers credit card services that seamlessly blend with their service, but charges slightly higher rates than other companies.

 

Merchants can also choose to manually charge for orders when the order is shipped. Legally, this is the way to go, as the law states that you cant charge for a mail order item until you ship it. This also makes your life easier, as you dont have to connect the shopping cart to an automatic credit card processor.

 

Taxes

There is a lot of uncertainty about Internet taxes. Heres how it works. Your company is required to charge state sales tax if youre selling to someone in the same state that you physically do business. If your company is located in California, you have to charge California residents sales tax.

 

Easy, Low Cost E-Commerce Alternatives

If your client doesnt have that many products, you can build a website that contains a form with product purchasing information. That form can be sent to the client via e-mail or by creating a file on the server for secure download. You can set up such a form using:

FormMail: http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/formmail.shtml

Or

Zencart

or

You can use the same one that we use. The web design course at the academy uses the easy shopping cart found at plug'npay.

 

The client can then e-mail the customer, confirming the order.

 

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