Four steps to setting up ecommerce websites

I often write about ecommerce website setups, because it's often oversimplified or blown up to be too big of a project. If you follow the four steps in my outline, you'll know how to set up an ecommerce site thoroughly and with fewer headaches.

1. Find a shopping cart solution. The shopping cart is software pre-designed or pre-written to help you maintain your products for sale. Most host companies offer a shopping cart upgrade or free install with their hosting package. My favorite shopping cart, Magento, is actually open source and one of the best on the market right now, even amongst paid shopping carts. It has just about everything you need on the backend -- flexible product set up, tax classes, integrated shipping methods, customer email setups. It's fairly easy-to-use, but I recommend finding a Magento expert to design your site. You can go to "www.magentocommerce.com" for more information and for training videos or "www.magentoshoppingcartvideos.com" for just the tutorials. And here's a sample website we built using Magento: "www.shop4magazines.com". They plan to have over 1,100 products, so Magneto was a great solution for them.

2. Find your merchant account provider. This allows you to take credit cards online. Always check with your bank to get a list of their fees for their merchant account. Next, check online for any good deals. First Data and Charge.com appear to be popular and affordable solutions. I've also recently noticed that Costco Business members can get really affordable rates on merchant account services. Paypal is always an option, but I rarely recommend it. Paypal is expensive and they're not reliable. I've heard too many times about Paypal tying up an account and the account owner not being able to get access to that money...it's a sham if you ask me.

3. Get your payment gateway information. The payment gateway allows your website's shopping cart to interact with your merchant account. The payment gateway information comes from your merchant account provider. Usually you have to login to setup the payment gateway as well as enter your gateway information into the appropriate settings within your shopping cart. Magento has a simple solution in place for users who have Authorize.net gateways and Paypal. Paypal, by the way, is an automatic merchant account and payment gateway in one, so, in that regard, they're simpler to work with. Still, they're expensive.

4. Purchase and install an SSL certicate. SSL certificates are Secure Socket Layer certificates, which means that they provide secure online transactions for your customers so that their private data and/or credit card information cannot be retrieved by hackers. You know when you're on a secure site with an SSL certificate when you see the "https" in the URL. The "s" in "https" ensures security. You do not want to have a shopping cart site up without an SSL certificate; it would be a liability to you and your customers. Personally, I would never buy anything from a site that did not redirect to "https" during my checkout process. I recommend going to "www.rapidsslonline.com" for affordable SSL certificates and installation. From experience, I'd hire an expert to install the certificate. I tried to do it on my own; it gets tricky. Or if your hosting company has good customer support , ask if they can do it. 

With these four steps, you'll know exactly what you're getting into when setting up an ecommerce site. Don't let anyone try to convince you that you need tons more or any less.

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