Introducing e-commerce for small and medium businesses

If wish to trade from your website you will need a virtual shop which should be just like any other part of your website in its general theme and appearance. Usually, there is a catalogue which allows customers to browse through your products and their details, such as description, weight, colours availability, price, whatever would appear in a hardcopy catalogue, usually with a picture of the product, if relevant. If you only have a few products or customers are only likely to purchase one product: You may not require a shopping cart as this would complicate matters for the customer. The advantages an online shop has over a bricks and mortar shop is that there is no need to rent a building to conduct your trading from, staff are not required for customers to make purchases and your customers can order goods from the comfort of their own home or office. E-commerce solutions and packages come in many shapes and sizes depending on your requirements and budget. There is some thing to suit most business small and large. So first of all you need to decide do you want to give your customers the choice of paying by credit card? The answer, usually, Yes! Credit cards allow spontaneous purchasing, whilst cheques give the customer time to change their mind about a purchase.

A typical e-Commerce solution includes a website with a data backend, a shopping cart, a payment gateway tied to a merchant account.

Fully automatic Credit Card system

This allows your customers to browse your catalogue of goods adding items they wish to buy to a virtual shopping trolley (or shopping cart). At any time they may add or remove items from their shopping trolley. Then the customer proceeds to the checkout and enters their credit card details, delivery address etc. confirms the order with the knowledge that their credit card details are safe and secure. They then await delivery. This is typical of most e-commerce systems. However its a bit more complicated than that.

1. Customer browse your catalog of products and add / removes products to and from their shopping cart
   
2. The customer proceeds to the checkout and confirm they wish to purchase the products in their shopping cart
   
3. The customer provides their credit card details and they are sent to the payment gateway for authorisation. Communications between your website and the payment gateway are secured using SSL technology.
   
4. If authorised funds are reserved in the customers account
   
5. Funds are transferred from the customers account to your merchant account
   
6. Funds are transferred from your merchant account to your business account.

Your website product pages operate as they would in a Fully Automatic System, each product has an "add to cart " or "buy now" button and the customer can check their shopping cart and go to the checkout when finished. This all happens from your website. Once the customer chooses to order the goods they have in their shopping trolley they are taken to a payment webpage on a secure server hosted by a service such as Paypal/ CC Avenue . The disadvantage here is that the customer once they have ordered their goods are taken to Payment Gateway website to complete the order and enter their creditcard details. Therefore the appearance and continuity of the website changes from that of yours to theirs. (If you do not want to integrate payment gateway, customers can pay by cheque or bank transfer or direct communication with company's concern department)

Once on Payment Gateway website order page the customer can pay for their goods using any major credit card . The money is paid to Payment Gateway people who take a percentage of the transaction (usually around 1-2%) and transfer the rest of the monies into your account . Your Payment Gateway account is not a bank account it is simply an online account showing all transactions and the total sum Payment Gateway company has in reserve for you. Once a month (or as frequent as you wish) you can credit your bank account with the sum in your account. Since the actual payment of goods takes place on Payment Gateway website secure servers there is no need to pay for a secure server, SSL certificate or merchant account or any other costs normally associated with e-commerce.The downside is that customers are taken to a different website to make their payment which looks different from your website and may be confusing for some people. The goods news is that services like Payment Gateway are gaining popularity with businesses and customers so customers nowadays are used to such services as part of the online payment process.

Payment Gateway can also be used to sell single items as opposed to a fully functional shopping trolley system which may be overkill if you only sell as few products or customers are unlikely to purchase more than one product at a time. Using a single item system when you press the "buy now" button you are taken straight to the order page to purchase you product of choice.

Payment Gateway website effectively take care of the checkout webpage, payment gateway, SSL certificate and merchant account.