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Add You - A Guide to Online Shopping Options/Providers/Carts
Can we make money online? And how do we go about doing so? It’s a regular occurrence to see individuals offering us money making opportunities that can help us quit our day jobs, and get the life we strongly desire.The way people bring it across to us, it sounds like if you give them $50, they will give you a special website that deposits money into your bank account.Is it really possible though? Is it really possible to make money online, enough money to live a comfortable, stress free life? With minimal effort, and little time required.I wanted to get to the bottom of this particular fascination of making money on the internet, I knew it was possible, I just didn’t know if it was easy for someone with little computer knowledge to take in and get a result from. I had seen many websites with amazing testimonials where normal, everyday people just like me and you had changed their life around with particular money making programs.I set out to look through as many get rich quick, online money making opportunities as I possibly could. As I had expected beforehand, I came across a large number of individuals who lacked general honesty, these type of people didn’t respond to emails, had websites with out of dates links, did not give refunds and the information they proposed was completely useless, they only cared about getting your money. It didn’t get anyone rich, apart from them, selling it to people with an ambition for a better life. It’s low. It’s not what we want.I carried on searching, I didn’t want to give up with this, I managed to find a few individua
* You will need a good web developer to integrate it all together.
Conclusion for full blown Ecommerce:
This should only really be considered if you are going to be taking a high volume of transactions at a reasonable order value per transaction. Due to the set up costs and ongoing costs you need to have a minimum number of orders to be processing to make sure you break even. There is also a high development cost associated with these sites.
3. The In between options
So after all that, there are some inbetween options available to people that do not want the full flexibility and cost associated with option 2, but would like to adopt a more professional and powerful approach than option 1. There are two main ways to have this half way house:
1. Many payment providers also allow you to use their secure servers to process transactions. This means that you will still need an IMA to receive the payments but will not need the SSL certificate on your site as they will do the secure part for you. You can also normally make the payment pages on their server look like yours pages, and so the customer is more often than not none the wiser.
2. You could use Worldpay they are well known and trusted and have been around a long time. This solution is where they give you an IMA and payment provider service all in one via their service WorldDirect. This takes out the pain of getting an IMA from a bank, and you also won't need the SSL certificate for your site as they will handle the secure part for you. They do this on a quote by quote basis and this available via filling in this request form.
<The Federal Trade Commission which governs the franchise industry thru the franchise rule, which enforces Franchise Disclosure laws seems to think that consumers need to be protected even when they lie. Often The FTC takes complaints from consumers who claim they had been ripped off or lied to from someone selling a Biz-OP or some corporation, which sells franchises. The Federal Trade Commission will not admit that at least two-thirds of the incoming complaints are made in falsehood by consumers; as a participant in the industry I can safely say that much misrepresentation comes from the buyers side and not from the sellers.I would like to discuss the fact that many franchise buyers who have 2.2 kids, credit card and short term debt in excess of 150% of annual earnings, college degree, BMW, Mini-Van, will claim on application forms that they have excellent credit and cash in the bank in excess of the amount needed to start the franchise. Over 70% of the applicants who claim this cannot even get an additional credit card or buy a car without 0/0 financing option currently available. Yet they often say they have “X” amount of cash available when really they have nothing and many are about to lose their jobs, through downsizing, right sizing or their current employer filing for bankruptcy. You know the companies I am talking about.Without placing judgment on the falsehoods and giving these consumers the benefit of the doubt (which they showed to not be worthy of), maybe they just do not realize that if they lose their jobs they will be out of money and pushing a Home Depot shopping
This seems to come up in a lot of different places from different people so i thought I'd try and write an encompassing overview of the different options and routes out there, or at least the main ones. There is a lot of discuss here. I will cover:
* You need ballpark figures
* Some definitions
* Different options on how to take payment
(All in one, Full blown, and the inbetweens)
* Different shopping carts to choose from
* Conclusion
This article is not that long (even though it may appear so) and I fell it is very informative about your different possibilities. The conclusion at the end I would read even if you don't read the rest!
Benchmarks
Now there are quite a lot of different possibilities to start trading on the Internet and many of these decisions are based upon a few criteria you need to decide ball park figures for before you start your search:
* How many transactions you will make in a time period (normally a month)
* The average order value (e.g. the basket size)
* And therefore the total cash you see yourself processing
The reason that these are important is that many payment providers base their fees on these values and so having some kind of estimation will allow you to compare the packages more effectively.
Once you have decided these there are three basic routes you can take to Internet trading. The first thing to keep in mind is that there is no right or wrong route - no route will fail completely compared to another one - but it is best to get the one which fits your business correctly.
Definitions
Before I go into the different routes I think it will be useful to define a few terms. Don't worry about them for now as they will all be used in context below and so will make much more sense:
* Internet Merchant Account (IMA): This is effectively a bank account that allows you to recieve payments over the Internet directly into your account. These are normally purchased from your bank and vary in cost but normally are around ??200. This does involve speaking to your bank, filling in forms, checks etc etc. This DOES not have to be from your current bank, so shop around.
* Payment Gateway: A company that actually takes the payment over the Internet. They provide the payment processing systems to talk to the credit card companies and such like.
* SSL Certificate: This is a certificate that you can purchase for your website that means you get that padlock in the bottom right of your screen (or wherever it may appear on different browsers). These can cost from around ??150 a year and is dependant on your hosting company and current set up.
Payment options
1. Use an all-in-one solution.
These are the solutions that can provide you with everything that you need in one place - the shopping cart, the payment system, the lot. The most well known of these solutions is Paypal.
With this solution, there is no need to get an IMA off your bank, no need to engage a seprate payment provider and no need to purchase an SSL certificate. This is why they are very popular with small business as there is almost 0 set up cost (just your time and any time you/your developer needs to integrate it into the site). Paypal makes it's money from the fees it charges on transactions. The costs as of time of writing are available at:
https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiving-fees-outside
As you can see these are based on the total transaction value per month. So what are the pros and cons of this approach?
Pros:
* You don't need an IMA, Separate payment gateway or SSL Certificate
* It's easy to use and to set up (with some basic web knowledge/developer)
* With no monthly fees you don't need to worry about dry periods of little or no purchases as you only pay when people buy.
* Paypal is a well recognised name by a lot of people and so trust is already there. Although it also has to be said that because they are so big they are the subject of regular fraud attacks (email fraud mainly) but deal with it reasonably well.
* From the above it can be seen this can be perfect for micro to small businesses with basic needs.
Cons:
* If you are dealing with high value transactions or transactions on a very regular basis, Paypal's fee structure will work against you and be less profitable.
* Paypal can be perceived as a 'cheap' solution by people as it is so easy and cost effective to set up people may not take you as seriously as you need them to to trade with you: this depends largely on what products you are selling and your perception in the market place. E.g. you wouldn't sell Aston Martins through Paypal.
* Their shopping carts and shopping tools are not very flexible and so they may not be right for your business needs. Although Paypal can get more advanced with the aid of a good developer if you still don't want to go the IMA routes (But this will incur further costs of the developer of course).
* Paypal isn't always the quickest. It sometimes can add extra steps to a transaction.
Obviously every extra step added is another chance to lose your customer. This step is added by Paypal to encourage people to sign up for their account before they purchase. There are ways around this, but that is more advanced use of Paypal.
Conclusion for Paypal:
Paypal is very effective for small enterprises you want as small as possible start up costs and a pay as you go attitude to Ecommerce. It is simple and fast to set up and you need no extra bits and pieces apart from the possibility of employing a developer to intergate the Paypal system with your website.
2. Use all separate parts.
The complete opposite to the Paypal solution is to go all out for a full blown Ecommerce solution that is fully flexible and in your control. This involves purchases the IMA, getting in touch with a payment provider and buying an SSL certificate for your site. There are many providers around but I have had good dealings with Protx and also heard that Sec-Pay are good.
This allows you to have a completely bespoke shopping cart solution that has integrated payment pages. At no point will the customer be sent to anyone else to pay and no payment provider logos will appear unless you want them to to back up the credibility of your system. You take all their details on your site (hence the need for the SSL certificate)
Pros
* Full flexibility to do whatever you like in your entire payment system.
* No possible confusion for the customer between your site and the payment site (although this is less important these days)
* Normally no Pay per transaction fees: a flat monthly fee is the normal way of dealing with these payment providers, or a flat fee per transaction, just not a percentage.
Cons
* Expensive and time consuming to set up due to dealing with the Bank, Payment providers and also your Hosting company.
* You will need a good web developer to integrate it all together.
Conclusion for full blown Ecommerce:
This should only really be considered if you are going to be taking a high volume of transactions at a reasonable order value per transaction. Due to the set up costs and ongoing costs you need to have a minimum number of orders to be processing to make sure you break even. There is also a high development cost associated with these sites.
3. The In between options
So after all that, there are some inbetween options available to people that do not want the full flexibility and cost associated with option 2, but would like to adopt a more professional and powerful approach than option 1. There are two main ways to have this half way house:
1. Many payment providers also allow you to use their secure servers to process transactions. This means that you will still need an IMA to receive the payments but will not need the SSL certificate on your site as they will do the secure part for you. You can also normally make the payment pages on their server look like yours pages, and so the customer is more often than not none the wiser.
2. You could use Worldpay they are well known and trusted and have been around a long time. This solution is where they give you an IMA and payment provider service all in one via their service WorldDirect. This takes out the pain of getting an IMA from a bank, and you also won't need the SSL certificate for your site as they will handle the secure part for you. They do this on a quote by quote basis and this available via filling in this request form.
Where did the weekend go? It’s Sunday night and although you had a lovely time leaving your butt imprint on the couch for the last 48 hours, suddenly there’s a lurch in the pit of your stomach again. Yes, looming on the horizon, there is it, another Monday morning. Another Monday, you’ll face the gridlock and angrily express your dismay with the world with one finger and clutch the huge cup of coffee that you’ll need to drag yourself through the bore that is your job. The highlight of your day, other than seeing the clock hit 4:59 will of course be the secret glee you have knowing that you’ve spent hours of company time playing Solitaire and sending out countless resumes. You know you’re a lousy employee, but in a tight job market, with younger and more qualified applicants taking greeter jobs at Wal-Mart, is it really time to find a new job?If loving what you do is the key ingredient to success, and your job gives you symptoms similar to dysentery, should you pack it in? Do you need a new attitude or a new career? If you’re going to spend about 80,000 hours of your life at work, don’t you deserve to like some of it? When is it time to move on?Before you change the “objective” paragraph on your resume to read: “Doing anything other than what I’m doing in this hellhole”, make sure you answer the following questions.Did I ever love this job? If your job were a relationship, is it just on the rocks or was it just a time filler until Mr. or Miss Right came along? Remembering that in order to have gotten this job in the first place, at some point you actually asked for
* Internet Merchant Account (IMA): This is effectively a bank account that allows you to recieve payments over the Internet directly into your account. These are normally purchased from your bank and vary in cost but normally are around ??200. This does involve speaking to your bank, filling in forms, checks etc etc. This DOES not have to be from your current bank, so shop around.
* Payment Gateway: A company that actually takes the payment over the Internet. They provide the payment processing systems to talk to the credit card companies and such like.
* SSL Certificate: This is a certificate that you can purchase for your website that means you get that padlock in the bottom right of your screen (or wherever it may appear on different browsers). These can cost from around ??150 a year and is dependant on your hosting company and current set up.
Payment options
1. Use an all-in-one solution.
These are the solutions that can provide you with everything that you need in one place - the shopping cart, the payment system, the lot. The most well known of these solutions is Paypal.
With this solution, there is no need to get an IMA off your bank, no need to engage a seprate payment provider and no need to purchase an SSL certificate. This is why they are very popular with small business as there is almost 0 set up cost (just your time and any time you/your developer needs to integrate it into the site). Paypal makes it's money from the fees it charges on transactions. The costs as of time of writing are available at:
https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiving-fees-outside
As you can see these are based on the total transaction value per month. So what are the pros and cons of this approach?
Pros:
* You don't need an IMA, Separate payment gateway or SSL Certificate
* It's easy to use and to set up (with some basic web knowledge/developer)
* With no monthly fees you don't need to worry about dry periods of little or no purchases as you only pay when people buy.
* Paypal is a well recognised name by a lot of people and so trust is already there. Although it also has to be said that because they are so big they are the subject of regular fraud attacks (email fraud mainly) but deal with it reasonably well.
* From the above it can be seen this can be perfect for micro to small businesses with basic needs.
Cons:
* If you are dealing with high value transactions or transactions on a very regular basis, Paypal's fee structure will work against you and be less profitable.
* Paypal can be perceived as a 'cheap' solution by people as it is so easy and cost effective to set up people may not take you as seriously as you need them to to trade with you: this depends largely on what products you are selling and your perception in the market place. E.g. you wouldn't sell Aston Martins through Paypal.
* Their shopping carts and shopping tools are not very flexible and so they may not be right for your business needs. Although Paypal can get more advanced with the aid of a good developer if you still don't want to go the IMA routes (But this will incur further costs of the developer of course).
* Paypal isn't always the quickest. It sometimes can add extra steps to a transaction.
Obviously every extra step added is another chance to lose your customer. This step is added by Paypal to encourage people to sign up for their account before they purchase. There are ways around this, but that is more advanced use of Paypal.
Conclusion for Paypal:
Paypal is very effective for small enterprises you want as small as possible start up costs and a pay as you go attitude to Ecommerce. It is simple and fast to set up and you need no extra bits and pieces apart from the possibility of employing a developer to intergate the Paypal system with your website.
2. Use all separate parts.
The complete opposite to the Paypal solution is to go all out for a full blown Ecommerce solution that is fully flexible and in your control. This involves purchases the IMA, getting in touch with a payment provider and buying an SSL certificate for your site. There are many providers around but I have had good dealings with Protx and also heard that Sec-Pay are good.
This allows you to have a completely bespoke shopping cart solution that has integrated payment pages. At no point will the customer be sent to anyone else to pay and no payment provider logos will appear unless you want them to to back up the credibility of your system. You take all their details on your site (hence the need for the SSL certificate)
Pros
* Full flexibility to do whatever you like in your entire payment system.
* No possible confusion for the customer between your site and the payment site (although this is less important these days)
* Normally no Pay per transaction fees: a flat monthly fee is the normal way of dealing with these payment providers, or a flat fee per transaction, just not a percentage.
Cons
* Expensive and time consuming to set up due to dealing with the Bank, Payment providers and also your Hosting company.
* You will need a good web developer to integrate it all together.
Conclusion for full blown Ecommerce:
This should only really be considered if you are going to be taking a high volume of transactions at a reasonable order value per transaction. Due to the set up costs and ongoing costs you need to have a minimum number of orders to be processing to make sure you break even. There is also a high development cost associated with these sites.
3. The In between options
So after all that, there are some inbetween options available to people that do not want the full flexibility and cost associated with option 2, but would like to adopt a more professional and powerful approach than option 1. There are two main ways to have this half way house:
1. Many payment providers also allow you to use their secure servers to process transactions. This means that you will still need an IMA to receive the payments but will not need the SSL certificate on your site as they will do the secure part for you. You can also normally make the payment pages on their server look like yours pages, and so the customer is more often than not none the wiser.
2. You could use Worldpay they are well known and trusted and have been around a long time. This solution is where they give you an IMA and payment provider service all in one via their service WorldDirect. This takes out the pain of getting an IMA from a bank, and you also won't need the SSL certificate for your site as they will handle the secure part for you. They do this on a quote by quote basis and this available via filling in this request form.
<These ten simple tactics are just that, simple. Each one is a nil cost or low cost ways to improve your business and together they form a formidable armory of weapons at your disposal to make your business grow.So, read, study and think about them all so that you can devise the best ways to implement them in your business. Here then are ten simple tactics to improve your business.1. Concentrate your efforts on those people who are most likely to buy from you. If you sell only apples, don’t waste your time on people who really want to buy oranges. Qualify the people who come to you (your prospects) and pre-qualify the viewers and readers of your ads so that you don’t spend all day dealing with lookers and tire kickers. When you qualify the inquiries as they come in, you’ll be able to spend the majority of your time with people who want or need your product or service, want it now and have the ability to pay for it now. All others are just a waste of your time.2. Get ‘connected’ to your customers, at least the top 20% who may produce as much as 80% of your business. Get in touch with these ones personally and stay in touch with them regularly. Cultivate them and reward them for their loyalty to you. After all, these are the ones who provide the bulk of your income. However, do not neglect the rest of your customers. Assign members of your staff or sales force to look after them as their ‘personal customer care officer’ as these ones, with proper attention have the potential to join the top 20%.3. Follow up with all qualified prospects, not with blatant sales blurbs or
As you can see these are based on the total transaction value per month. So what are the pros and cons of this approach?
Pros:
* You don't need an IMA, Separate payment gateway or SSL Certificate
* It's easy to use and to set up (with some basic web knowledge/developer)
* With no monthly fees you don't need to worry about dry periods of little or no purchases as you only pay when people buy.
* Paypal is a well recognised name by a lot of people and so trust is already there. Although it also has to be said that because they are so big they are the subject of regular fraud attacks (email fraud mainly) but deal with it reasonably well.
* From the above it can be seen this can be perfect for micro to small businesses with basic needs.
Cons:
* If you are dealing with high value transactions or transactions on a very regular basis, Paypal's fee structure will work against you and be less profitable.
* Paypal can be perceived as a 'cheap' solution by people as it is so easy and cost effective to set up people may not take you as seriously as you need them to to trade with you: this depends largely on what products you are selling and your perception in the market place. E.g. you wouldn't sell Aston Martins through Paypal.
* Their shopping carts and shopping tools are not very flexible and so they may not be right for your business needs. Although Paypal can get more advanced with the aid of a good developer if you still don't want to go the IMA routes (But this will incur further costs of the developer of course).
* Paypal isn't always the quickest. It sometimes can add extra steps to a transaction.
Obviously every extra step added is another chance to lose your customer. This step is added by Paypal to encourage people to sign up for their account before they purchase. There are ways around this, but that is more advanced use of Paypal.
Conclusion for Paypal:
Paypal is very effective for small enterprises you want as small as possible start up costs and a pay as you go attitude to Ecommerce. It is simple and fast to set up and you need no extra bits and pieces apart from the possibility of employing a developer to intergate the Paypal system with your website.
2. Use all separate parts.
The complete opposite to the Paypal solution is to go all out for a full blown Ecommerce solution that is fully flexible and in your control. This involves purchases the IMA, getting in touch with a payment provider and buying an SSL certificate for your site. There are many providers around but I have had good dealings with Protx and also heard that Sec-Pay are good.
This allows you to have a completely bespoke shopping cart solution that has integrated payment pages. At no point will the customer be sent to anyone else to pay and no payment provider logos will appear unless you want them to to back up the credibility of your system. You take all their details on your site (hence the need for the SSL certificate)
Pros
* Full flexibility to do whatever you like in your entire payment system.
* No possible confusion for the customer between your site and the payment site (although this is less important these days)
* Normally no Pay per transaction fees: a flat monthly fee is the normal way of dealing with these payment providers, or a flat fee per transaction, just not a percentage.
Cons
* Expensive and time consuming to set up due to dealing with the Bank, Payment providers and also your Hosting company.
* You will need a good web developer to integrate it all together.
Conclusion for full blown Ecommerce:
This should only really be considered if you are going to be taking a high volume of transactions at a reasonable order value per transaction. Due to the set up costs and ongoing costs you need to have a minimum number of orders to be processing to make sure you break even. There is also a high development cost associated with these sites.
3. The In between options
So after all that, there are some inbetween options available to people that do not want the full flexibility and cost associated with option 2, but would like to adopt a more professional and powerful approach than option 1. There are two main ways to have this half way house:
1. Many payment providers also allow you to use their secure servers to process transactions. This means that you will still need an IMA to receive the payments but will not need the SSL certificate on your site as they will do the secure part for you. You can also normally make the payment pages on their server look like yours pages, and so the customer is more often than not none the wiser.
2. You could use Worldpay they are well known and trusted and have been around a long time. This solution is where they give you an IMA and payment provider service all in one via their service WorldDirect. This takes out the pain of getting an IMA from a bank, and you also won't need the SSL certificate for your site as they will handle the secure part for you. They do this on a quote by quote basis and this available via filling in this request form.
<One of the uses for digital signage has been in the area of computer based training. Digital signage software solutions have been developed to allow training to take place at various monitors located in a training area or even at remote areas. The content sent to each monitor can be controlled separately allowing students to progress at their own speed and not have to wait for slower students. The applications of computer based training using digital signage solutions are actually mind boggling when considered from the standpoint of an instructor.If students are taking a computer class, the instructor can freeze individual monitors and create various situations that must be handled separately at each station. Once the problem has been solved, that student can progress on to the next lesson or view the next training video while the rest of the class continues to work on the problem. The instructor can monitor the progress of each student from the central control station.Computers have opened up possibilities in training from the time they became small enough to fit on a desktop. The use of training videos have also been a part of the basic training arsenal since videos were first developed. In the pre-video era movies were used and later closed circuit television systems. The use of images has been recognized by trainers from the very beginning and now digital signage solutions have brought this to its logical conclusion. The major savings have come in the all important area of time. Employees in need of training need not leave their workstations to go to a distant training classroo
Conclusion for Paypal:
Paypal is very effective for small enterprises you want as small as possible start up costs and a pay as you go attitude to Ecommerce. It is simple and fast to set up and you need no extra bits and pieces apart from the possibility of employing a developer to intergate the Paypal system with your website.
2. Use all separate parts.
The complete opposite to the Paypal solution is to go all out for a full blown Ecommerce solution that is fully flexible and in your control. This involves purchases the IMA, getting in touch with a payment provider and buying an SSL certificate for your site. There are many providers around but I have had good dealings with Protx and also heard that Sec-Pay are good.
This allows you to have a completely bespoke shopping cart solution that has integrated payment pages. At no point will the customer be sent to anyone else to pay and no payment provider logos will appear unless you want them to to back up the credibility of your system. You take all their details on your site (hence the need for the SSL certificate)
Pros
* Full flexibility to do whatever you like in your entire payment system.
* No possible confusion for the customer between your site and the payment site (although this is less important these days)
* Normally no Pay per transaction fees: a flat monthly fee is the normal way of dealing with these payment providers, or a flat fee per transaction, just not a percentage.
Cons
* Expensive and time consuming to set up due to dealing with the Bank, Payment providers and also your Hosting company.
* You will need a good web developer to integrate it all together.
Conclusion for full blown Ecommerce:
This should only really be considered if you are going to be taking a high volume of transactions at a reasonable order value per transaction. Due to the set up costs and ongoing costs you need to have a minimum number of orders to be processing to make sure you break even. There is also a high development cost associated with these sites.
3. The In between options
So after all that, there are some inbetween options available to people that do not want the full flexibility and cost associated with option 2, but would like to adopt a more professional and powerful approach than option 1. There are two main ways to have this half way house:
1. Many payment providers also allow you to use their secure servers to process transactions. This means that you will still need an IMA to receive the payments but will not need the SSL certificate on your site as they will do the secure part for you. You can also normally make the payment pages on their server look like yours pages, and so the customer is more often than not none the wiser.
2. You could use Worldpay they are well known and trusted and have been around a long time. This solution is where they give you an IMA and payment provider service all in one via their service WorldDirect. This takes out the pain of getting an IMA from a bank, and you also won't need the SSL certificate for your site as they will handle the secure part for you. They do this on a quote by quote basis and this available via filling in this request form.
<It's the oldest question in the sales world - which works better, a hard or soft sales approach? The answer is... both. The skill of a truly great salesperson comes from knowing when to use which tactic - being able to shift gears from soft-sell to hard-ball, and then shifting back again, as sales relationships, dynamics of the marketplace and the many different factors that affect the sale come into play.How do you know when to shift? Here are some suggestions:Hard sell works when you have to cut through misinformation that holds up a sale. In real estate, a homeowner who hasn't seen an offer in three months is ready for the aggressive approach.A soft sell is great during the learning curve, when you're building rapport. When you are gathering information on a client's needs, budget, time frame, office politics, etc., that's the time to listen and soft-pedal the sales talk.The hard sell works when there's only one piece of the puzzle missing. Get the deal in ink, and offer a contingency clause for that one piece, whatever it may be.Try the soft sell when your client needs to feel in control of the final decision. Be willing to back away for a defined amount of time, and create a deadline that's realistic but not freewheeling, twelve or twenty-four hours. Letting them make that final decision, even when it's apparent to you and the client that it's a win-win deal, leaves room for another sale in the future.Don't be afraid to hard sell when you know that doing the deal is the right thing for the customer. Some people need a little nudge to put them over t
* You will need a good web developer to integrate it all together.
Conclusion for full blown Ecommerce:
This should only really be considered if you are going to be taking a high volume of transactions at a reasonable order value per transaction. Due to the set up costs and ongoing costs you need to have a minimum number of orders to be processing to make sure you break even. There is also a high development cost associated with these sites.
3. The In between options
So after all that, there are some inbetween options available to people that do not want the full flexibility and cost associated with option 2, but would like to adopt a more professional and powerful approach than option 1. There are two main ways to have this half way house:
1. Many payment providers also allow you to use their secure servers to process transactions. This means that you will still need an IMA to receive the payments but will not need the SSL certificate on your site as they will do the secure part for you. You can also normally make the payment pages on their server look like yours pages, and so the customer is more often than not none the wiser.
2. You could use Worldpay they are well known and trusted and have been around a long time. This solution is where they give you an IMA and payment provider service all in one via their service WorldDirect. This takes out the pain of getting an IMA from a bank, and you also won't need the SSL certificate for your site as they will handle the secure part for you. They do this on a quote by quote basis and this available via filling in this request form.
So what are the pros and cons of these Inbetween approaches?
Pros
* They take out the hassle of at least some of the full blown ecommerce route by providing some of the services from the same place.
* This normally means you need to spend a little less money.
Cons
* You don't have the full flexibility fo the full blown option.
* You also don't have the full simplicity of the all in one option.
* You still need a shopping cart.
Conclusion on In Betweens:
The inbetween options can be very useful to many businesses as they can get away from the Paypal approach which can have a bad perception with some customers and also lacks some flexibility. It also allows them to not quite go as far as the Full blown approach as in many cases this is unnecessary considering the volume and value of transactions.
4. Conclusion of Payment options
It's all about what's right for your business and that's why you needed those benchmarks at the start - look at the cost to benefit analysis of each payment option and which will give you the best return considering not just the number of orders and their value, but also try and put a value on the intangible aspects:
* The perception of Paypal vs Worldpay vs Your own Payment pages for instance
* Do you want to have people logging in to buy and save their details? (Need to go full blown for that one really)
* What kind of service/product are you offering? Premium? Stack them high, sell them cheap?
Now, a very brief looks at shopping carts...
Shopping Carts
With shopping carts there are four main routes you can follow to decide what to have on your website. This decision is highly linked to what you decided above as your route.
1. Carts provided by your all-in-one provider. Paypal can provide a basic shopping cart system for you for instance.
2. Use one of the many cart solutions out there that require no technical expertise to implement and then can be hooked up to your chosen payment provider. An example of one of these is EKMPowershop is an example of one of these. These do tend to lack some flexibility that you may need but are cost effective at around ?20 a month + your payment provider fees.
3. Use one of the many Open source products available. These generally will need to be hosted on your website and will need a web developer to set them up for you but can be quite cost effective when implemented correctly. One of the best examples of these is ZenCart.
4. Get a web developer to build a bespoke cart for your business. This is a more expensive option than the others normally but will give you complete control over how the process functions, what details you take and what happens afterwards as well as much more.
Conclusion
It can be a minefield choosing a Payment provider and a shopping cart solution. The aim of this article was to try and show you that there are several options out there and to consider them all carefully before choosing the one you want. Very often this kind of ill informed choice can lead to money lost at something that is either ineffective or overkill for what you needed.
Many web developers may suggest that you need a full bespoke solutions because it can do this, that and the other; but what you need to consider is whether you need it to do these things and whether the associated cost outweighs the benefits.It's all about what's right for your business.
In today's society it needn't cost the earth to get a shopping system up and running on the web - but you have to be realistic about what you will get. As with all things in life, you generally get what you pay for. As a closing note, I would like to mention that there are far too many cowboy web developers out there in the same way there are many cowboy builders: they kind that you may not realise until it's too late. Get recommendations, look at people's testimonials and just do a little homework.
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