Online Store Basics

The ability for customers to be able to make purchases online come in various degrees of functionality and user experience, a site such as http://www.oo.com.au is more expensive to set up but once running provides a host of features that allow customers to shop quickly, and for the shop owner to administer their site with ease.

More basic systems such as the shopping cart that is provided via our Power Web technology are geared towards smaller or home based business but is a much cheaper alternative to the larger online stores and can allow prospective online store owners to get their “feet wet” and become comfortable with the idea of selling online.

http://www.cranewines.com.au/pages/cellar.php is an example of a basic shopping cart that is provided with our Power Web CMS, this particular example has been modified to allow credit card details to be sent to the owner for use via their own credit card facilities.
Examples of major shopping cart implementations that we have created or maintain are www.noosashoes.com.au, www.mcas.com.au
 

Accepting Payments
There are a number of options for taking payments from customers.

PayPal (and similar intermediaries) – most shopping carts accept PayPal, the benefit being that the processing is handled by them and most people are familiar and comfortable with it.

Direct Bank Interface – Most banks such as ANZ offer an interface from your store to the bank to accept payment direct to your account. Most large organisations use this method and customers are usually the most comfortable with this processing. The problem is that approval to use this facility can be quite difficult to obtain unless you have been in business for a while.
 

Credit Card (Manual Processing)– Customers should NEVER EVER supply credit cards via email. There is a risk that the emails can be intercepted and utilised illegally. It is common for credit cards to be faxed or provided over the phone for manual processing and while more secure, the business owner must still make sure of the security of the card details that are either written down from a phone conversation or that arrive via fax.

Likewise if shopping carts record these details they must be stored securely. We can offer a system with Power Web that will provide credit card details for manual processing. The credit card number is split in two and half is sent via email while the other half is stored on the web server. When the order is received with half the cards details the store owner just needs to match the other half of the cards details by retrieving it from the web server.
While manual processing is viable, large volumes ofr orders become cumbersome and security is always an issue, therefore, Pay Pal or Bank Processing is preferred.
 

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