ecommerce
If you are thinking of starting up in ecommerce then this page might save you a lot of pain. If any questions arise from reading this then please feel free to contact us for clarification or help.
I will cover several different aspects of trading online here. I will assume that you do not have a merchant ID or even an existing credit card processing facility.
product
The product that you sell must be suitable for retailing online. There isn't much that you can not buy online but that's not the point. What are you going to sell and why are you going to be successful? Do you have a product that fills a niche in the market, is it repeat business or one off sales?
delivery
How easy is it to deliver, is it light enough to be sent by Royal Mail (under 2kg) or will you need to use a courier to get the goods out to the customer. Weight is all important here "Make the World your shop window" should read "Make the World your shop window (as long as it's under 2kg)". A 2kg package to Zone 2 is approx. £20 with Royal Mail, a 2.1kg package with a courier will cost £40 and upwards. That makes a considerable difference to your customer in terms of perceived value.
service
You can not remain faceless, you need to have as many channels of communication open to you as possible. Make sure that the customer feels comfortable about dealing with you. Make sure that your Terms and Conditions are understandable and legal (you must comply with the Distance Selling Regulations).
payment
How do you receive payment? The easiest way of getting funds from your customers is to get a PayPal account. PayPal seems to be a lot better than it used to be but you have very little control over how the funds are taken. Life just isn't as simple as PayPal. If you want to do part shipment on a complex order PayPal will not allow you to take part payments. A proper Internet Merchant ID with a bank account attached to a really good Payment Service Provider is needed for anything other than the simplest order processing.
The three components above are all out there on the Internet. The shopping cart is part of the software that makes up your web site. The PSP (Payment Service Provider) provides a secure method of collecting and validating card details from the customer. If all checks out OK the transaction is authorized and payment passed over to your merchant ID at the bank. Such transactions should only take 2-3 days to clear.
risk assessment
When you apply to a bank (Acquirer) for an Internet Trading Account you can be left feeling a bit of a second class business - this is beginning to change but only slowly. You need to be very lucky to find a member of staff at any high street bank that understands Internet trading. Whatever else, the bank will want to do a risk assessment. What sort of goods are you selling online, performance car parts or comfy slippers? Which product do you think has the potential of being the riskier sale for the credit card companies and banks? When discussing your requirements with the banks do not underestimate your turn-over, the percentage charged is calculated on the figures you provide, the higher the projected turn-over the lower the charge per transaction.
payment service provider
If you have not been put off yet then great, call the banks and get them to tell you why you should use their service. The only part of their service I would recommend is the Internet Merchant ID, every bank will push their own PSP service at you but there are better PSP's out there that provide much better value for money, SecPay is a very good example of a PSP. There can be lots of hidden costs in setting up with a bank service and PSP combined and the people selling you the service are not even probably aware. How can this be? They all work in different departments, the person that visits you to fill in the forms just hands the paperwork over to the risks department, they in turn instruct their in-house PSP to set up an account - you get the picture. Check out SecPay and just see what you get for your money.
sixth sense
As an Internet Trader you are at a disadvantage when taking payments by credit card, you don't get a pin number. This makes you very vulnerable to fraud so be very careful and take precautions. The PSP will validate the credit card, owners address etc but have you received an unusually large order and the customer hasn't asked for a discount? Has the same customer placed several orders on the same day? These factors should arouse your suspicions and you need to take action to confirm these are genuine orders. Contact the customer and ask them to confirm some detail or other about the order and the address, you can usually tell if they are scamming you. The sad bit is neither the Police or card companies are really interested. We have one guy that regularly tries to obtain goods fraudulently - nobody is interested, that's the bit that really gets me! You can protect yourself to a degree by signing up for 3-D Secure™. This is the Internet equivalent of Chip and Pin.
summary
There is a lot to get right before you get anywhere near the web site but if you have got the ball rolling what sort of shopping cart do you need? Like everything else in this world - it's complicated. How many products do you need to sell online? Most carts can handle thousands of products so what's the problem? They are all different when it comes to updating the catalogue. How do you apply a 5% price increase to 3500 products? Most cart software expects you to do that manually! The cart should always be chosen for it's suitability to your business, the look and feel, whilst important, should be of secondary interest. Customers want the information on your site to be correct so it MUST be easy to maintain. I hope you have found this page useful, it is not intended to tell you everything you need to know but if you now have a better set of questions to ask then it's done it's job.