What is a Shopping Cart and How Does it Work?
January 28, 2009
An e-commerce business needs several things in order to be successful: traffic, traffic and more traffic. In short, you need customers in order to start making money. And when you’re customers are shopping on your site, they want to be able to manage the purchases that they are willing to make – this done with the help of a shopping cart.
If you’ve ever shopped online (and who hasn’t?), you’ve dealt with a shopping cart at one point or another. In fact, you probably don’t even notice them anymore. You choose the items you want to buy; they’re gathered on a list until you’re ready to hand over your credit card information. The shopping cart also allows the customer to search for items that they would like to purchase on your website. The cart is an invaluable tool for helping your customers shop with you.
To understand how to set up a shopping cart, you should learn the basics of how it works. There are a number of different software versions that a shopping cart can use: ASP, Perl, CGI, or Cold Fusion. Each has its own merits and disadvantages. Some allow customers to save their shopping cart contents for extended periods of time, while others do not. Basically, these shopping carts will include three things:
• A place to store information – that is, a database of the order details (this can include Microsoft SQL, MySQL, or Microsoft Access and more).
• A storefront – what the customer sees in their shopping cart and as they shop
• Administration – this is where you manage your store’s website to process the orders that you receive before they go to a merchant provider or direct them to an authentication service like preCharge.
Setting up a shopping cart can be as simple as utilizing features that your merchant account provider can give you as a part of their services with you, or you can purchase shopping cart software that works independently of their process – it’s up to you. When you’re using a third party payment processor instead of a merchant account provider, you will generally have the shopping cart feature included, with the need to just add a link to your business website.
You want to make sure that you are choosing a shopping cart process that allows you to quickly and easily put in the HTML or details about your products so that they can be easily found and accessed by your customers. To do this, you will want to try out several shopping cart providers to see what works best for your needs. You will also want to look for a shopping cart that does not limit you to preformatted templates as this can limit the overall visual effect on your website – and the kind of look that you’re trying to achieve.
Merchant Accounts Exposed
January 21, 2009
There are several types of merchant accounts depending upon the type of business environment and products offered by the merchant. It’s important to be accurate and complete in filling out the merchant account application form so that the correct type of merchant account can be provided.
INTERNET MERCHANT ACCOUNT
The internet merchant account allows the ecommerce merchant to accept credit or debit cards over the internet. This is accomplished by use of a payment gateway which is the actual processing medium, and by a bank or service provider. Both the payment gateway or point of sale terminal and the merchant account provider are required to complete the transaction.
HIGH RISK MERCHANT ACCOUNT
Certain types of businesses are considered to place the bank or merchant account provider under a higher risk for bad publicity, excessive losses, or potential illegal activity among other factors. These merchant accounts are generally charged a higher rate because the merchant service provider is considered to be likely to incur greater risk for losses. Businesses which may fall under a high risk category might include adult entertainment, pharmacies, travel businesses and telemarketing companies.
OFFSHORE MERCHANT ACCOUNT
Often, a merchant who is considered a high risk merchant will apply for an offshore merchant account rather than to pay the excessively high fees which might be incurred as a high risk merchant. Offshore merchant accounts are provided through countries such as Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Offshore merchant accounts are often provided along with incorporation services in certain countries.
Certain types of industries commonly apply for offshore merchant service provider accounts since the controls and governmental regulations associated with the businesses may be less stringent offshore. For example, gaming industry accounts may no longer be able to operate in the United States due to governmental regulations. Pharmacy sites may be restricted by onshore companies but be able to operated as an offshore business. Adult sites are another industry commonly forced to use an offshore merchant account, due to the regulations and requirements by local jurisdictions.
RETAIL MERCHANT ACCOUNT
This is considered to be the standard merchant account. The customer walks into a place of business and purchase the item desired. The credit or debit card is swiped through a point of sale terminal or the information from the card is keyed into the terminal and the sale authorized on site. The purchase is paid for before the customer leaves the store. This type of merchant account generally requires some type of authorization terminal which is rented, leased, or purchased along with contractual obligations for the term of services.
HIGH VOLUME MERCHANT ACCOUNT
Sometimes merchants will purchase an offshore merchant account because the volume of their onshore transactions is too high for the merchant service provider to accept the risk. Many times the offshore jurisdictions will have more lenient licensing or control rules than the onshore merchant service provider companies can allow.
No matter which type of account is acquired, it’s important to be accurate and complete in describing the business on the application forms. Inaccurate or incomplete information can result in the loss of the merchant account and in other penalties.
What Is A Payment Gateway?
January 12, 2009
When you’re a business with a presence online, you need to be sure that you’re aware of how to keep your customers’ information secure. In this time of identity theft and missing records, you can not afford to be anything less. In order to assure your customers (and yourself) that your payment acceptance policies are secure, you need to learn more about what happens one the customer types in their credit card number.
Once your customer gives you their credit card information, it goes to the merchant account in order to be verified and then the funds will be transferred to your business account. However, to be sure that you are giving the merchant account the proper information, you will want to consider the idea of a payment gateway. A payment gateway is a separate service that acts as a ‘middleman’ between the customer and the merchant account provider. The gateway service will check the information that has been given to them to be sure that it is accurate before sending it to the merchant account provider. It will then encrypt the details of that transaction and send them along to the merchant account provider. Details are then unencrypted in order to show the customers the details of their purchase.
Customers will not even be aware of this process as they are making their purchases. If something goes wrong in the purchase, they will be alerted to the error and asked to resubmit their information or asked to call customers service to straighten out any problems in the transaction. The data from the customer’s transaction is forwarded to the payment gateway within a secure connection, in line with the chosen gateway’s format.
Just as with any other business tool, you will want to make sure that you are comparing various payment gateway options before settling on one for your particular business. There are a number of options that are readily available for you to use, but their methods and shopping cart infrastructures may be different and may not be immediately compatible with your shopping cart system. Speaking with the payment gateway provider will allow you to better match what you have with what the provider can do for you. Most are quite willing to help you setup any program that is desired by you, even helping at no additional charge.
You will want to make sure that the payment gateway provider is able to offer address verification services in order to reduce the possibility of fraudulent usage. These services will check the billing address and residential address for the credit card and match it with the given address in the transaction. If the two do not match, the transaction will be halted until they do – depending on your security needs.
A payment gateway is another way for you to make sure that you are getting paid for services or products that you are offering to your customers – and that peace of mind is priceless.