Selling Online - How To Go About It

barling

Hi All,
I've recently started out on my own and have been developing web sites/applications for the last number of years. However, I have never been required to set up an online shop (as it wasn't part of the last job). I am just wondering what the best way to go about this is.. I have installed CubeCart/OSCommerece on a test server and have no problem with this part. Is it possible for me/my customer to just contact the Bank and get their merchant account connected directly to i.e. (CubeCart), or do you have to go through a 3rd party like Realex. Also, I want customers on the sites to be able to use their own Visa/Mastercard without having to sign up for PayPal etc.. Any advice would be much appreciated!
Cheers

Eoin

You can actually use paypal and not require people to sign-up, but I don't know how obvious they make this.

I think you will need to sort out an account with realex, or someone similar. The good news is that realex supply a plug-in module for OSCommerce and some other carts that takes very little configuration. I find their support people very helpful as well. I also did a very basic integration using classic ASP, and it was pretty handy.

There is also 2checkout.com, I've never used them, but they seem to get good reports.

Personally, my preference would be to let someone else handle credit card information and just process the response back from them.

dhayz2000

With Realex, they handle the credit card payments on their site, but you can send them a template of your site, so that the credit card payment page looks like it is integrated into your site, which looks good.

Paypal doesn't integrate well with sites in terms of design.

On the other hand, Paypal is cheaper to implement than Realex AFAIK.

mneylon

I posted this a couple of years ago. It's not 100% up to date, but it's still valid:
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2005/12/19/e-commerce-cheat-sheet-part-1/

David Behan posted a slightly different take:
http://www.davidbehan.com/blog/guide-to-selling-online/

none

dhayz2000 wrote: »

With Realex, they handle the credit card payments on their site, but you can send them a template of your site, so that the credit card payment page looks like it is integrated into your site, which looks good.

Paypal doesn't integrate well with sites in terms of design.

On the other hand, Paypal is cheaper to implement than Realex AFAIK.

I actually heard that PayPal is more expensive. Realex Redirect will be enough for basic stuff but it doesn't offer much configuration/customisation. Realex Remote must be more powerful but I didn't use it. Their customer service was rather poor from my experience.

Eoin

Paypal does not require a merchant credit card account, which can cost a bit per month. Not all businesses take credit cards, and just paying the fees for potentially low online sales may not be worth their while.

Edit - how do you mean realex is enough for basic stuff only?

none

eoin_s wrote: »

Paypal does not require a merchant credit card account, which can cost a bit per month. Not all businesses take credit cards, and just paying the fees for potentially low online sales may not be worth their while.

Edit - how do you mean realex is enough for basic stuff only?

I said Realex Redirect which means that you will have to use their servers and all you can customise is parts of their payment page. This is what I used. And you could not create a normal, full-featured HTML page, you could only insert your header and a few lines of text if I remember correctly. Realex Remote probably allows full customisation but I can't comment on it.

Eoin

The actual payment page is quite limited alright - no JavaScript, and obviously it is hard-coded content, which the content of most eCommerce sites would not be.

However, as you can pass in all the form fields you want and get them back after the payment, it still gives you the opportunity to provide quite a feature rich site.

none

eoin_s wrote: »

The actual payment page is quite limited alright - no JavaScript, and obviously it is hard-coded content, which the content of most eCommerce sites would not be.

However, as you can pass in all the form fields you want and get them back after the payment, it still gives you the opportunity to provide quite a feature rich site.

Well, I don't know what you mean by "a feature rich site" but all I'm saying that their payment page is very limited. First, you can't modify all sections of the HTML template itself and secondly, you have only two custom messages (COMMENT1 and COMMENT2) to send some additional information to the page.

Eoin

The template is fully editable from what I remember, you just have to include a HTML comment where you would like their table.

All I mean by "feature rich" is that because you can send in as many form fields as you want, you have a lot of control of what happens when you are returned to the site. I.e. instead of just going to a confirmation page on your site, you can get the order number, name, address - all the fields you have already collected and use that information in any way you want.

none

eoin_s wrote: »

The template is fully editable from what I remember, you just have to include a HTML comment where you would like their table.

All I mean by "feature rich" is that because you can send in as many form fields as you want, you have a lot of control of what happens when you are returned to the site. I.e. instead of just going to a confirmation page on your site, you can get the order number, name, address - all the fields you have already collected and use that information in any way you want.

Ok, I don't know when you worked with it but 6 months ago their HTML template was not fully editable and they confirmed it. The fields (order number, name, address) you refer to are actually sent from your site so you don't need to wait for them back as you already have this information. What you can wait for is the response code (failure/success). If you want to send some hidden fields, you can but what's the point? They will not be processed in any way and they will not show on the page. My point was that the page is fully functional but its look is not fully customisable. It will do the authorisation but it may look ugly - that's all I wanted to say

Eoin

I did a site in the last couple of weeks, and I just needed to put a comment in where I wanted the card details box. Still not the prettiest, given that none of the dynamic content could be included, but for the sake of ease, it will do me!