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Accepting credit cards online / e-commerce site

an_altan_alt Registered User regular
edited September 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
My better half has a wholesale business that's been going quite well for years and we have a website that just directs people to retail outlets. After posting pictures on Facebook lately, friends are asking to buy things directly including those who are out of town. This means it's time to step up and turn the website into one where people can actually place orders and pay with a credit card.

Since we're just dipping our toes into online selling, I'm thinking a third party processor would be the way to go and there's always the option of getting a merchant account down the road. From a quick glance, PayPal seemed to be the cheapest and easiest to set up. Does anyone have experience with setting up e-commerce sites? How did you accept cards? Have a different company to recommend? Any tips in general would be appreciated.

I do know my way around coding and databases so getting the technical bits to work shouldn't be a problem. Also, we're in Canada if that makes a difference.

Pony wrote:
I think that the internet has been for years on the path to creating what is essentially an electronic Necronomicon: A collection of blasphemous unrealities so perverse that to even glimpse at its contents, if but for a moment, is to irrevocably forfeit a portion of your sanity.
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Posts

  • Fuzzy Cumulonimbus CloudFuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud Registered User regular
    edited September 2009
    Uh, I know some people use microsoft access and then route it to a client.
    Not sure though.

    Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud on
  • t_catt11t_catt11 Registered User regular
    edited September 2009
    Well...

    I do web programming for a living (and have done quite a few ecommerce deals). Paypal is free to start with, and easy to get going. Paypal is more expensive once you start seeing volume, however. If you feel that you are going to have volume enough to offset the initial setup fees, authorize.net is a super way to go. Your fees are lower, the customers stay on your site all the way through, etc.

    I'd be happy to help you more... drop me a PM if you like.

    t_catt11 on
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  • an_altan_alt Registered User regular
    edited September 2009
    Thanks for the help, t_catt.

    Do you know much about pre-packaged shopping carts, integration to shippers, order tracking, etc? I would imagine enough people have done it already that it would be much easier to buy something existing than to roll your own from scratch.

    an_alt on
    Pony wrote:
    I think that the internet has been for years on the path to creating what is essentially an electronic Necronomicon: A collection of blasphemous unrealities so perverse that to even glimpse at its contents, if but for a moment, is to irrevocably forfeit a portion of your sanity.
    Xbox - PearlBlueS0ul, Steam
    If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
  • PracticalProblemSolverPracticalProblemSolver Registered User regular
    edited September 2009
    With paypal payments pro customers can stay on your website throughout the checkout process, but it costs $30 a month, plus the transaction fees.

    You don't need to buy a shopping cart, you can use any of the free ones, like magento, os commerce, etc etc. If you are at all capable of reading and following instructions it will be no problem to set one up by yourself. I recommend you start looking at the shopping cart solutions out there and demo the admin interface to see which one fits you best.

    PracticalProblemSolver on
  • t_catt11t_catt11 Registered User regular
    edited September 2009
    There are plenty of prebuilts out there you can download and install - PPS is right. A lot of them are pretty bloated, too... just depends on what you really want out of it.

    t_catt11 on
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  • mspencermspencer PAX [ENFORCER] Council Bluffs, IARegistered User regular
    edited September 2009
    I work for a payment processing company, but I won't say which one because then this comment would reek of spam.

    In my experience, you should consider that whole "web site that takes a card and processes it automatically" as a labor-saving device -- a luxury -- that you don't need until your business grows into it. When you start seeing so many sales that the sheer effort of processing all of those sales is so difficult that you'd pay $50-$100/month to not have to do it any more -- a nice problem to have, to be sure -- then you should start looking at a shopping cart.

    Until then, have people call you on the phone and give you their payment information that way.

    mspencer on
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  • zeenyzeeny Registered User regular
    edited September 2009
    Do you do business with US customers or Canada & World only?

    zeeny on
  • an_altan_alt Registered User regular
    edited September 2009
    PPS, that's a good call on the free shopping carts. I'll take a good look at those this weekend.

    mspencer, I think my better half would consider $50/month a low price to not have the phone ringing any more than it does. As it turns out, if you pay extra to get an unlisted business number, they'll publish it anyway...

    zeeny, we're keeping it Canada only for now and probably wouldn't expand beyond the US at any point.

    Thanks for the advice everyone!

    an_alt on
    Pony wrote:
    I think that the internet has been for years on the path to creating what is essentially an electronic Necronomicon: A collection of blasphemous unrealities so perverse that to even glimpse at its contents, if but for a moment, is to irrevocably forfeit a portion of your sanity.
    Xbox - PearlBlueS0ul, Steam
    If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
  • mspencermspencer PAX [ENFORCER] Council Bluffs, IARegistered User regular
    edited September 2009
    Understandable. Some people go to the extra trouble because they seem to feel like they have to, or their business is somehow less legit if they don't do that. You're under no such delusions -- your reason is a good one.

    mspencer on
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  • SzechuanosaurusSzechuanosaurus Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited September 2009
    A shopping cart and built in payment processing also makes it a lot easier for customers to buy your products compared to making an order and/or payment by phone, increasing the likelihood of sales. If you're doing any sort of business online involving preset product configurations and predictable pricing (ie not bespoke quoted services) having an online payment system is rarely a bad idea. Even people who do work in fields involving bespoke estimate work - such as freelance designers - are turning to online payment sytems where they can bill via online services and recieve payment by cc, paypal etc.

    Szechuanosaurus on
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