e-com Newbie - help

[oneeye]

OK what are the pieces to the ecomm puzzle.

1.Shopping cart
2. payment processing - what is the cost/options? Will this involve 1 3rd party or two? What are their roles.

Thanks

[StevenAllen]

Apple Pie shopping cart is a good choice and access to a gateway and having a merchant processing plan are a must. If you need help on the last two drop me a line.

[Corey Bryant]

As far as the shopping cart - you have thousands of choices. Are you wanting ASP or PHP? I have a small ASP script that does do sizes & colors & is hooked into LinkPoint & Paypal. For PHP, I would recommend osCommerce and check out this one site: http://oscommerce.snappyserver.com/

For credit card processing - you have a cc processor and a gateway (LinkPoint as mention above, Verisign or authorizenet.com). These are used for merchant accounts. The gateway set-up should not be more than $150. You will probably pay about $10 a month for most gateways (Verisign is a little more expensive). Then you might have a $10 a month statement or customer service fee. There is usually a monthly processing minimum of $25.00 - but if you are selling over $1,000 a month, you never have to worry about it. The "usual" discount rate is 2.39%. There are a few processors that are somewhat cheaper - some seem to be OK - others just seem to provide horrible services.

Third party processors (like Paypal, 2CO, Paysystems) will also help you out. I usually tell all my customers if they do not have anything against Paypal - sign up with them in addition to a merchant account.

Some of the differences between a merchant account & a third party merchant account:

• A merchant account will deposit your money automatically in 24-48 hours. Third party processors will either hold onto your money until you either sign in & request it or you get it on the 1st and the 15th of every month.
  With a merchant account, your name appears on the cc statement. Usually with a third party - their name appears on the statement.
  The rates will vary and they are usually higher with a third party - at least the transaction rate is. The transaction rate is what you must really watch since that can really eat into your profits.

[marketershandbook.com]

Hi,
In my personal experience, I have never had trouble with paypal.com so I owuld suggest you use them.

It has shopping cart and single sales order taking capeabilities. Its free to get started and they only take a very small percentage from each transaction as a fee.