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| There are many different options
open to you for E-Commerce. Contact us to learn the
specifics of the our e-commerce plans. |
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E-commerce
is a service, or, in some cases, many services in
one, like anything else, the more services one uses,
the more you use, the more that additional companies
must be involved in making your commerce work, and
therefore, the more it will cost to operate. Every
single fish along the chain needs to feed.
However, you may not need every service to make your
e-commerce server your needs. available
For example, you may need just the shopping cart/basket
to collect information about the product and the credit
card number. That would be true, for example, if currently
had a business with the ability to take credit cards,
and you wanted to verify the credit card yourself
in order to save money. On the other hand, you may
want to have the process completely automated and
have the money transferred from the purchaser's bank
account to your account.
Since you may not need every service, you will want
to discuss your needs before selecting a type of e-commerce.
Some plans are designed for the "startup"
business which will have fewer transactions per month.
These plans, obviously, won't be cost-effective for
a web presence witha large monthly sales volume. We
suggest you contact us and let us assess your needs.
Otherwise you may find you end up with the a plan
that isn't cost-effective.
You may look at the list of options below and think
there are too many alternatives listed here to select
from. If so, don't worry. We've included the entire
list of choices for those customers insist upon doing
"research" before making a decision. But
if you simply want us to figure out what best suits
your needs, we are happy to do that for you. | options
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The
shopping cart, or shopping basket is the software
that enables shoppers to pick a product and quanity,
enter the personal and credit card information, and
then finalize the sale. Every option needs this feature.
HOWEVER, if you already have a business
However, if you already have an in-house credit card
terminal from your existing banking institution, the
shopping cart may be all you need. In which case the
shopping cart can be added to your web site without
all any additional expense. You can gather the information,
and print out a report of the sales log, and manually
process all the information manually, without paying
anyone a percentage of your gross sales. After all,
why pay for service that you don't need, especially
if costs you money?
Many FREEDOM customers use this option, since they
already have credit card processing, and they are
very happy with the easy-to-use shopping cart that
comes packaged with FREEDOM. |
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If you
are new to the Internet, and don't already have
an the "brick and morter" storefront with
ability to accept credit cards off-line, you may
want to start with E-commerce in gradual manner
and upgrade your services as web business traffic
increases.
Let's
say, for the moment, that your web site is new and
you don't have regular traffic or constant sales,
and you also don't have an actual "brick and
morter" storefront where you are selling goods
right now. In other words, the example of a completely
new business. In such cases, the "Payment Gateway"
is a good option.
The "Payment Gateway" is a service that
you use, which routes the "payment" verification
services off-site to another site, whcih functions
as your credit card collection service. With an
account that you open with them, the money is then
transferred from the purchaser to the Payment Gateway,
and after the sale is complete, you may transfer
the funds to your own bank account.
| There
several companies that provide Gateway services.
We suggest either or both of the two most prominent
ones: |
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| Payment
gateways are less expensive to set up, initially,
and they offer a quick way to get started selling
right away.
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Perhaps
one of our most excellent starter packages for startup
E-commerce is the Signature
Hosting ($15 per month) with Authorize.NET.
This gives you an inexpensive server while teaming
up with the most respected name in payment gateways,
Authorize.NET. With a special arrangement between
Authorize.net and Wells Fargo (merchant bank services)
you can establish an online account that can accept
credit cards and electronic check payments.
more
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You may have already noticed that
we offer both shared hosting and VPS (Virtual Private
Server hosting) and E-commerce options are available
on both of them.
You will find that it's a little less expensive,
at the low end, to get into the shared hosting e-commerce
than to get into VPS e-commerce, and it's also true
that shared e-commerce best fits a very much smaller
store. Although it can accomodate enough products
to fit the needs of many, you still need to be careful
about the size of the web site and demands placed
on this shared environment.
The
least expensive option ....
... is a 15 product store which runs under Unix
(SSL included) and Windows 2000 based environment.
But these stater E-commerce plans start at $24 per
month (remember these are for the shared environment
... not VPS servers). Both the Unix and the Windows
versions offer some similar features, although the
shopping carts are from different vendors. The Unix
platform offers a 15 product Mecantec cart, and
the Windows platform offers a 15 product Shopesite
platform.
Both the Unix and the Windows starter programs can
be updated to accomodate up to 100 products. The
price is $60 per month.
Of the two plans, we would suggest that try the
Shared Windows 2000 option, due mainly to the ease
of setup and the ease of use in the Shopesite shopping
cart.
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Miva
Merchant is a browser based storefront development
tool that integrates cataloging, product maintenance,
category management, shopping basket, order and credit
card processing. E-Commerce developers can use the
browser based interface to build stores or can get
"under the hood" with complete access to
the underlying source codes written in XML based Miva
Script. Merchants manage their stores with a user
friendly browser based interface. Our Miva Merchant
Server offerings provide Resellers with an excellent
E-Commerce bundle including SSL, your choice of either
a FreeBSD Server A, B or C andthe latest version of
Miva Merchant. Please
see overview | back to options
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Mercantec
SoftCart is a browser based storefront development
tool that integrates cataloging, product maintenance,
category management, shopping basket, order and credit
card processing. Mercantec SoftCart includes many
powerful features which make it attractive to resellers
interested in building high-end E-Commerce sites.We
offer Mercantec SoftCart as an addon to VPS accounts:
Additionally, we offer Mercantec SoftCart Shared Hosting
accounts.
Currently, we are suggesting Miva for most users and
Freedom with Authorize.NET for all our Freedom clients.
If you need to use Quickbooks with your softcart,
and wish to use Mercantec's add-on module, please
contact us for more information on Mercantec Softcart.
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