Choose The Right E-commerce Solution For Your Website (Aikednea Johansen)
Sep 1, 2010
Increasingly more businesses nowadays are starting to sell and distribute their products and services via the Internet. It's a win-win situation - consumers get the very best selection at the most affordable prices, and retailers get access to markets outside their geographic location. But dependent on the kind of e-commerce web site the business is pursuing, the cost to implement the project could range from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars.
E-commerce on the Cheap
It's a typical misconception that in order to conduct business on the Internet you have to have an expensive merchant account which will allow your clients to pay you by credit card. This used to be the case, but these days there are a number of services obtainable that make e-commerce a very affordable option. These services come in the form of third party credit card processors.
A third party credit card processor acts as an intermediary between the customer and your website. Generally, a customer will click on a link to purchase a product and be taken to the third party's web site to process the credit card information in a secure environment. The payment for the purchase is deposited in your account, and the order information is forwarded to you. The single cost to the e-commerce retailer is usually a small fixed fee and / or a small percentage of the sale.
Even though using a third party credit card processor could be cheap, it does have its drawbacks. The shopping cart system might not easily incorporate with your web site because it's not simply customizable. Furthermore, it looks a little much less professional when the purchaser must leave your website in order to enter their credit card information. But, when weighing these drawbacks with the costs linked with creating a professional e-commerce web site, they really do not appear to be a big deal.
Really Taking the Plunge
Opening a completely functional online store with the ability to process credit cards on-site could be quite a expensive production. Here is a list of elements that all require to be integrated: a shopping cart system, secure web server, payment gateway, along with a merchant account.
There are some shopping cart systems which are available for free, and many web hosts provide the capability to integrate a shopping cart system into your website. But, if you would prefer your system to be fully featured, simple to use, easily integrated with your web site, and consist of advanced functions such as automatically calculating tax and shipping charges, the cost could run several hundred dollars.
The most costly and difficult part of the procedure is obtaining a merchant account to process credit card numbers. These accounts generally have monthly and transaction fees associated with them. Fortunately, most businesses currently have merchant accounts, and these could be made use of to process credit cards over the Internet as well.
In combination with the extra expenses associated with processing transactions directly on your website, there is also a substantial difference in the cost. Your webmaster will charge to setup the various solutions. Using a third party to process transactions generally simply entails inserting a few lines of code into the website which shouldn't cost very much.
Just like any project, it's most likely greatest to begin small before shelling out large bucks for a professional e-commerce solution. And don't forget, even after you have spent thousands of dollars obtaining your e-commerce website launched, you're probably going to need to spend thousands more marketing your website in order to recover your investment. E-commerce is not cheap!
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