What is involved in setting up an e-commerce site?

The MUST HAVE's:

  • Your site must inspire trust above all else so you may want a "Secure Certificate" to guarantee you are who you claim to be
  • You must have a shopping cart - the equivalent of a supermarket cart to collect the items the customer wants to buy.
  • A secure way to take payments.

Also consider:

  • how much will your site grow over the next few years.
  • how many products do you want to sell.
  • are there any additional features you want to offer .

Trust is the most important thing you must convey - visitors will not give their credit card numbers to you unless they feel safe doing so. Credit card fraud is everywhere in the news, so the most important thing is you must inspire trust with secure, protected connections and certificates assuring customers you are who you say you are.

A "shopping cart" is a program that allows visitors to choose products, fill in delivery addresses and payment methods, decide how many products they want and in what style and color. It can be very simple, or quite complex. Often they will allow the visitor to store his information (name, address, phone, even credit card numbers) with a username and password so that it does not have to be reentered on subsequent purchases.

There are a large variety of shopping cart systems, from simple scripts designed to handle just a few products, to complete solutions that can handle 1,000's of products, monitor stock levels, up sell related items, and allow the site owner to update or add products through their own browser.

The size and type of shopping cart depends on:

  • how many products you plan to sell
  • how often you are likely to add or change products
  • what extra features you would like (size, color, special shipping, etc.)
  • what kind of budget you have

Every e-commerce shopping site is different, so it's important to look at the needs of your site, before recommending a specific shopping cart to you. We don't want you to pay for features you'll never need or find that in 6 months you've outgrown your shopping cart and have to start over.