Are you ready to do business online? There are many
things that you need to make sure you have, to ensure
flexibility and security for your online store. In
this article, we will outline the basics of bringing
your business online.
Shopping Cart Software There are several different
solutions that you should consider for your shopping
cart software that we will go over here. First off,
you can open a Yahoo Store. This is a good solution
for people without much technical knowledge, and doesn't
take too much to set up. However, you need a lot of
flexibility, you should probably consider another
solution. My personal favorite is osCommerce. This
is an open source (so its free!) shopping cart solution
with a big, very active community to help you out
along the way. Your host will need to have PHP and
MySQL for osCommerce to function. It is very simple
to run an unmodified version of osCommerce. You just
download it, upload it to your server, and run the
web-based install, or if you have Fantastico, you
can automatically install it from there. There is
a web-based administration backend allowing you to
add products to your store and edit configuration
settings. There are many contributions that you can
install to customize your store, but minimal knowledge
of PHP is needed. I think that osCommerce is a great
solution for many people. Another popular shopping
cart is Miva Merchant Pro. Unlike osCommerce, this
one isn't free, but there are hosts who can license
it to you at a monthly rate. This can be a very costly
solution, but they do have many very happy users of
the program. There is a clean GUI (graphical user
interface) and a nice administrative backend. Both
osCommerce and Miva Merchant Pro require you to find
a web host, but with Yahoo Stores you are hosted directly
by Yahoo.
Merchant Account This is a necessity of any ecommerce
business, because you need to be able to take payment
in your store. There are several different ways you
can go here. You can either go with a 3rd party processor,
or a true merchant account which is built into your
shopping cart. The most well-known 3rd party processors
are Paypal and 2CheckOut. If you are going with Paypal,
I would strongly recommend you have another payment
processor as well. There are many users who won't
buy from someone who only accepts Paypal, but then
again there are users who would only go with someone
who accepted Paypal. Personally, I'd recommend using
Paypal and a merchant account. A merchant account
makes your store a lot more professional, and gives
you more flexibility. There is a unique company that
you can get a merchant account from called ProPay.
You get a "virtual credit card terminal"
and there are no monthly fees, just a low annual fee.
Web Host If you have a website, you need a web host!
For most shopping carts, you will need PHP and MySQL,
so make sure that you look for hosts that support
the technology that you need. If you go with a Yahoo
Store, your hosting is taken care of by Yahoo. If
you choose osCommerce, Miva Merchant Pro, or another
shopping cart program, you will need to find a web
host. If you plan on collecting credit cart numbers
directly on your website, you will need a SSL certificate.
To have a SSL certificate, you need a dedicated IP
address. Most hosts will offer you a dedicated IP
address for an extra monthly price. You can get a
SSL certificate for $29.99 at GoDaddy (http://godaddy.com).
