Shopping Cart / e-Commerce

If you have a website, or are thinking about selling your products and services on the Internet, you have probably come across shopping carts and e-commerce. Electronic commerce (e-comm, e-commerce, or eCommerce) simply means selling or buying products and/or service thru electronic systems – mainly the Internet. An on-line shopping cart is basically a specialized website that assists a visitor to your website to purchase your merchandise.

Shopping carts are very popular these days on the Internet and they come with many variations, styles and features. A shopping cart will generally allow a visitor to brows products, compare items, calculate shipping, etc. Selling your wares on-line, however, is not as simple as just buying a shopping cart and loading it with items and being bombarded with orders. Even a simple shopping cart can become costly because it involves collecting sensitive information, like credit card information.

In order to allow people to “check out”, or purchase your items from your shopping cart, you will probably need a merchant account. A merchant account allows you to accept payments with credit cards. PayPal and Google Checkout are other alternatives to a traditional merchant account. In either case, there will be costs associated with processing payments on-line.

If you intend to use a traditional merchant account to collect sensitive credit card information on your shopping cart to sell your products and services, you will also have to purchase a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL certificate.) The SSL certificate will be required by the merchant account in order to function. Again, there are many different options and features, but the main purpose is to secure the transfer of sensitive information thru encryption.

I am in the process of structuring my e-commerce and shopping cart products. Please check back soon for a complete low cost shopping cart / e-commerce solution to sell your products and services on-line. If you need more information now, please feel free to contact me directly.