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What is Ecommerce?
E-Commerce allows you to sell your goods on the
internet. First you get website
hosting with a domain name. Then you build a website
with a shopping cart to take payments through a Paypal or a Merchant
account for your goods or services. You then ship
the goods, or provide the service to your customer.
How do I get a shopping Cart?
If you get a hosting provider who has Fantastico included
in their hosting packages you can easily install and use OSCommerce as your
shopping cart. It’s an easy to use shopping cart for
beginners and easy to install with a few clicks. And with Fantastico there is no need to upload files or install the
database. You should remember to write down the admin
username and password that you use when you install the
cart as your hosting provider will not be able to
retrieve this later for you if you lose it.
Credit Cards or Paypal?
If you want to take Paypal you can go to Paypal.com
and setup an account there and add this to your
E-commerce store settings. If you would like to process
credit cards then you would get an SSL, static IP address and
Merchant account. For new stores it may be cheaper to
try Paypal for 6 months and as your sales increase
switch over to a Merchant account. You can get a
Merchant account for just about any type of content but Paypal is more convenient for most users starting an
E-Commerce business.
How do I get an SSL?
An SSL (secure socket layer) encrypts the data and
pages being used to process orders on your site. In
order to use an SSL you need a static IP address from your
hosting Provider. To use an SSL for your store located
at 123.com in the folder store you would use https://www.123.com/store. For all your other pages, that don’t need security,
you would just use http://www.123.com/. Only
use the https when you need data encrypted. Data
encryption can slow down your pages. When you order the SSL the provider will ask you to specify whether you
want the www.domainname.com or
just domainname.com so be
sure to order the right one, because your links have to
reflect which SSL you purchased.
Which SSL is right for me?
Self Signed SSL
A Self Signed SSL is a free SSL that your hosting
company can generate for you. This is not as secure and
some customers may not want to process orders on your
site using this as anyone can generate one. This will
have a pop-up warning your customer that it is self
signed and does not provide a lock in the browser.
Starter SSL
You pay an anual fee for a starter SSL and it comes in many forms
depending on the vendor. Your hosting provider can
usually provide you one for a lower cost since they buy
them in bulk. An example of such an SSL is a
GeoTrust QuickSSL. This SSL does not produce a
pop-up to the consumer and has a lock in the browser
bar. Most consumers are use to seeing this type of
SSL.
There are other SSLs that provide higher encryption
and also fraud protection and security. Geotrust.com
provides the most SSL’s to websites today.
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