E-commerce

[ryanhellyer]

I'm considering adding an online store to a website I own. However I have no experience with this whatsoever and am wondering what the best route to this is. I don't need anything complicated. I'll literally have about 10 products, no more than that.

Are there off the shelf software for this? Any requirements for these? I'm assuming they usually work via PayPal?

Any advice greatly appreciated

[ryanhellyer]

I've had a hunt around and PayPal has some advice on setting up basic E-Commerce websites ... https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/we...erview-outside

[BigAlReturns]

I've heard of a few different solutions to processing payments without doing it all yourself, the prominent ones being, Paypal, as you mentioned, WorldPay, and 2Checkout. Of these, I think WorldPay is the most expensive, with a high setup fee ($299 I think), and a monthly rate to pay. 2CheckOut and Paypal compare differently depending on the volume of transactions you make, and how much they're worth. Obviously with PayPal you get a great reputation - as a consumer I've never even heard of 2CheckOut!
I'd make some projections and check out how much the different options would cost you. If you're going to be seriously high volume you might even think about getting a true merchant account and hiring someone to do the programming for you.

[Ducani]

Paypal is a good starting point for any small e-commerce biz. One thing to note is that there have been times when people purchase things via PayPal (digital items) and then later on they dispute the purchase saying they didnt purchase it and someone else may have accessed their account and done so. In this case paypal will investigate the scenario and unless you can provide them with SUFFICIENT proof of that person purchasing the item they will reverse the charge and further charge you a "reversal" fee. In this case the person would have already recieved your digital product and would have gotten it for free :-(. So my advice is if you are using paypal to get as much information from your customers as reasonably possible, including ip address, date/time stamp etc...

[ryanhellyer]

Thanks for the advice

That hit about IP's etc. is particularly useful Ducani as it isn't a digital item I'm intending to sell, but physical tiems! So I'd be losing quite a bit if a transaction did get reversed on me.


At this stage I haven't sold anything so I'm not ready to look into a full on merchant account, but the PayPal route definitely looks doable.