What is E-Commerce?
E-Commerce stands for Electronic Commerce. An e-commerce system allows you to sell
your products or services online,
making it possible for your visitor's to use their credit card
on the Internet directly from your website.
The most common e-commerce type of system is called a
Shopping Cart or Shopping Basket.
This is basically an on-line catalog program
where you can look through products, add them to
your shopping basket and then buy them
on-line at the website with your credit card.
After you have picked what you want you are
routed to what is called a virtual checkout,
where everything including tax and shipping charges
are totaled and you fill in your card information
and click the submit button. Presto- E-Commerce.
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Yes. It is being done on thousands of sites,
but you should be aware though that credit card
processing online will require a
merchant account with a bank that supports
Internet-based credit card transactions.
Your retail merchant account may not be able to interact with
the Internet, so check with your merchant card service
provider.
You will
also need a secure clearing service provider
(also known as a Gateway account).
This company will be gateway that connects your
website order system to the credit card company's
system in order to authorize and record the payment.
Alternatively, there are products available that allow
you to operate an on-line catalog where the order is
taken on-line, but the transaction itself is processed
off-line using your regular credit card merchant account
(you collect the order details from a secure area
of your website and process them like your regular orders).
If you don't have credit card facilities, you'll need a
third-party clearing agent who will process transactions on
your behalf. They take your customer's funds, clear
them into their own bank account, take a commission
for the service they provide, and then pass the
remaining funds on to you by
check or bank deposit.
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No. Visitors can email, telephone or fax in their orders to you. It all depends on your company, the product or
service and your budget. Sometimes, it is more cost effective to not set up e-commerce
if it really is not vital as it can be get expensive. It is sometimes true that
people like to get things easily and so are more likely to order from you if they can do it right from your website immediately, but you can still make it possible for them to buy from you off-line. Just make sure
to provide them all the information needed to place their order offline with you.
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