what do i really need to set up an online store?
Posted on September 14th, 2009 by admin
I would like to start up an online store.
I’m not familiar with what’s what, like… ecommerce site vs. shopping cart vs merchant acct. vs. payment gateway? I would like to offer buyers the option to use credit cards. What is a merchant account? Do I need that first, before I look for an ecommerce site? What is the difference between an ecommerce site and a shopping cart site? I thought they were the same? Can anyone tell me or point me in the right direction? Maybe a good resource link so I can research myself?
thanks in advance.
I set one up for my ex about three years ago. And here’s the answer as far as I can remember:
A merchant account is what you set up with a bank or an ISP. There’s usually a set-up fee, a monthly fee and a 3% per transaction fee. Banks sometimes provides you with a credit card machine, so if your customers provide you with their credit card info online, you can either manually punch that into the credit card machine or sent that info to your bank to charge your customer, ISPs don’t offer you a physical credit card machine but their fees are usually lower. You will need a merchant account if you want to accept credit card payment. Alternatively, just go with Paypal.
A e-commerce site is just any site that allows visitors of the site and the owner of the site to do business electronically. It can be Business-to-Business or Business-to-Consumer. A shopping cart is a web program that "remembers" what a visitor to a website wants to buy and stores the merchandise in a virtual "cart" until the visitor decides to check out. The program also handles the credit card transaction.
I think back then we went with GoDaddy, cuz they have everything in one package — domain name, hosting, merchant account, shopping cart. And you don’t have to be very tech-savvy to set up a site with them. Personally, I think the eBay-Paypal combination is just as good, but of course, it seems more cool when you point people to www.yourname.com instead of eBay.