If you sell products that you can identify on a per part number basis then a standard
shopping cart may be adequate. If you sell customizable types of products like say
a particular picture frame is requested and it contains a specific picture then you must
generate the custom order on the fly. You may need a custom cart design in that case. See the
eStreet Arts, Inc. web site as an example. Other cases
may be where you run a registration service for seminars that you offer. There is no product
but you want to capture all the user information at your site. The back end database looks more
like an address book in this case. See some of the sites in our web site portfolio
for examples of eCommerce sites that implement these types of shopping carts.
Credit Card and Payment Processing
Designing your site to accept payments online can be a very confusing process given the
plethora of payment services. We have found that the best choice of
how one accepts online payments is determined by the following incomplete check list. Implicit in
these items is the decision to use a commercial shopping cart site that has built in payment processing
or design your own because you need better control of your check out process and information
capture.
number and quantity of products you are selling determines whether you require an
online database to manage order entry
how automated you want the process to be will place requirements on the amount of information
returned to you automatically from the payment process system
if you require accurate shiping information then you may require an interface to an
address verification system like the US Postal Service...and if you do this then the design
of your check out system may preclude using a shopping cart service - shipping to a bad address
will cost you
Accepting payments online requires an interface to a Payment Processor which is
a company that connects to the banking system. But the interface from your site may first need
to go through a gateway service that provides the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connectivity and
the connection to the banking system. One service we use is Authorize.net. In this case,
Authorize.net only provides the gateway and not the payment processing.
A couple of the more well known Payment Processors include First Data Corporation, and
Nova Systems. Some Payment Processors also run their own gateways. Communicating to any gateway
system can be as simple as installing an HTML form within your web page or writing complete
XML communication scripts for handling data transfers between your database and their server.
To complicate issues further, the Payment Processor may or may not be affiliated
with the bank that holds your internet merchant account. And the bank holding the internet
merchant account may or may not be the agent that bills you for the service. On top of that
there is a difference between a regular merchant account and an internet merchant
account.
An example of a system that was designed by EnQue is the
www.cooksadvantage.com web site. This site uses
Authorize.net for the secure gateway and credit card payment service with PayNet Services as
the managing agent for the internet merchant account. This particular design shields Cook's
Advantage from any internal operations dealing with the actual Payment Processor.
Have EnQue design your custom eCommerce Site
If you need a custom solution designed for an eCommerce site,
call us at EnQue and we will discuss your
requirements.
Custom Shopping Cart Design and Development
Credit Card and Payment Processing