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Jaydogg12 · October 27th, 2009

Hello, I was wondering when I get my website up and running and someone wants to order a shirt, what are my options as far as a shopping cart, etc. Do I need to set up a merchant account? Will I and how will I be notified when an order comes in?

I am more concerned with the software and process looking professional and being reliable/foolproof than the cost, I will pay up for a good system. I have seen some people saying Cubecart, oscommerce, zencart, etc. but not really sure as to what they are and what's included.

Ideally I would like to have a system or software that someone could go on my website, click on the shirt they want, hit checkout, fill in all their info, including payment info(secure of course)

And immediately or very soon after I would receive notification(would this go to my email?) saying what the customer ordered, where it needs to be shipped to, etc.

I am pretty sure I will be using USPS, is there a way a shipping label could be automatically printed and order details(confirmation number, etc) could be sent to the customer, or would I have to go in to each email individually, collect the customer information, then go to USPS website and enter in all the info?

Thanks

Dennis Graves · October 28th, 2009

You can do a lot of that with a PayPal business account. I would recommend starting with that until you start to do a bigger volume. I use PayPal on all my websites.

Chap Ambrose · October 28th, 2009

I highly recommend checking out Shopify. Creating a store, tracking inventory, and accepting payment, and sending confirmation is very straight forward with their system.

Rodney · October 28th, 2009

Quote:


	Hello, I was wondering when I get my website up and running and someone wants to order a shirt, what are my options as far as a shopping cart, etc.

There are a lot of shopping cart options that you can install on your website like CubeCart, Zen Cart, OSCommerce, Magento, etc.

Quote:


	Do I need to set up a merchant account?

You'll need some way of processing payments.

That could be PayPal, where the customer is transferred to PayPal's secure servers to pay and then transferred back to your site after payment.

That could be a merchant account where you pay a monthly fee for the ability to accept major credit cards on your own account. Then you would need to get an SSL (Secure server certificate) installed on your website (not hard to do). With a merchant account, the customer stays on your site and is able to pay without getting transferred anywhere. You can also take credit card payments by phone/fax/mail and process them yourself through an online terminal provided by the merchant account (usually authorize.net is the online terminal)

Quote:


	Will I and how will I be notified when an order comes in?

Most shopping carts will send you an email when an order comes in. Also, most payment processors (PayPal or a merchant account) will send you an email when a payment comes through.

Quote:


	I have seen some people saying Cubecart, oscommerce, zencart, etc. but not really sure as to what they are and what's included.

Cubecart/oscommerce,zencart, etc are the shopping cart. That's what powers the "add to cart" buttons, shopping cart, and checkout parts of ecommerce sites.

When the customer goes to checkout, they need to pay. That's where the Payment processors (like PayPal or a merchant account or both) come in.

Quote:


	Ideally I would like to have a system or software that someone could go on my website, click on the shirt they want, hit checkout, fill in all their info, including payment info(secure of course)

Then you would need to get a shopping cart installed and apply for a merchant account with a place like e-onlinedata.com (that's what I use, but there are many other merchant account providers)

Quote:


	And immediately or very soon after I would receive notification(would this go to my email?) saying what the customer ordered, where it needs to be shipped to, etc.

Yes, that's what the shopping cart will do for you.

You can then copy and paste that shipping address into a label program to print out the shipping label and take the package to the post office.

Quote:


	I am pretty sure I will be using USPS, is there a way a shipping label could be automatically printed and order details(confirmation number, etc) could be sent to the customer, or would I have to go in to each email individually, collect the customer information, then go to USPS website and enter in all the info?

Using software like Endicia.com will allow you to easily input the shipping information, pay for postage, print a shipping label (with the postage on it) and send an email notification to the customer that their order has shipping with a USPS Delivery Confirmation number.

hostingdiva · October 29th, 2009

I think that Rodney answered your questions - I just wanted to add in my two cents.

You should not get a merchant account until you can afford the fees. With a merchant account, you have to pay monthly fees whether or not you have sales. With PayPal, you will only pay fees when someone makes a purchase. All you need for your website is their standard account - you don't need the business account unless you want to have a way to go into their system to process payments (i.e., a direct web interface).

From what you're saying, it seems that you want people to stay on your website to run these transactions - correct? You can use the PayPal API and have that installed and integrated into your website with whatever shopping cart system you use.

If you do get a merchant account, you will need to sign up with a Gateway company which serves as an intermediary between your website and your merchant account. AuthorizeNet is one of the leaders in the industry so you would want to look to them for this service.

Oh, the information must be secure - you will need to get a secure certificate for your secure server. You can get them from GoDaddy but they don't work well with older browsers so I would look to VeriSign which is more expensive but more reliable. As they say - you can get them cheaper but you get what you paid for

Note that if the things I wrote (or Rodney wrote) about do not make much sense to you, then you should consider looking to a do it yourself system where all this back end work is already done for you and all you need to do is add your items. Otherwise, you need to look for a developer who can get all this stuff configured for you because you definitely do not want to make a mistake when it comes to peoples credit card information

Rodney · October 29th, 2009

Quote:


	Oh, the information must be secure - you will need to get a secure certificate for your secure server. You can get them from GoDaddy but they don't work well with older browsers so I would look to VeriSign which is more expensive but more reliable. As they say - you can get them cheaper but you get what you paid for

Actually, Secure Certificates can be both inexpensive and reliable

I buy them from rapidsslonline.com Their Rapid SSL certificate is less than $20 a year and works great.

tfalk · October 30th, 2009

Personally, I like the option where the credit card processing is handled by a different site. They are then responsible for the security of the card info, not you. If you don't have the card info, you don't have to worry about securing it... I use Paypal and a merchant account - all the card processing is handled by them. I take the info on the web page and send it to them via secure call. If you decide to use a cart that saves the card info, make sure you are following all the Visa/MC/Amex/Discover security rules...

hostingdiva · November 2nd, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rodney


	Actually, Secure Certificates can be both inexpensive and reliable I buy them from rapidsslonline.com Their Rapid SSL certificate is less than $20 a year and works great.

I think it's great that you've had such luck. When I bought a secure certificate from a pretty large company, it was not compatible with older browsers and my customer kept seeing notices about how there may be a problem with the security. So, I don't go that route any more

.

muneca · November 2nd, 2009

Wow, great post! Thanks ALL for the valuable info!

rimrattler6 · November 3rd, 2009

this is great information...i've been curious on a few different items, but prestashop is another option....I may not go that way because they don't support the paypal API in the u.s., but they offer the simple paypal module (takes you to paypal site)....it's a simple to install/use cart!!

pdpatch · November 4th, 2009

Certificates:
Generally there are two kinds that can cause security error messages in the browser. Self signed which are usually those $14 dollar or so a year, and those that use a new issuing authority cert. Some of the certificate saler's base cert id expired and they did not get the new's to the browser writers in time. So you get a certificate error. With self signed certs you can get some really bad looking error message, which will cause come customer to go away.

On the paypal issues, there are three API's one for Paypal IPN, Paypal Pro, and Pay flow.
Paypal IPN works on the paypal account for the buyer and saler's it's the oldest API they have. Paypal Pro is almost but not the same as gateway, only the saler is required to have a paypal account, and the buyer can use there credit card. But ther are two parts to Paypal Pro, one is that you must have a buy it now button on each product page that allows buy that one product and the regular paypament type.

Pay flow, paypal bought them a couple of years ago, this is a regular payment gateway the way authorize.net is.

Tom

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