An eCommerce, or Electronic Commerce, website allows you to conduct transactions online letting your customers order and pay for products or services through your website.

An eCommerce website can bring you a host of benefits including access to a global market, greater customer satisfaction, reduced marketing and sales costs, better customer information, and streamlined business processes.

Absolutely - one of the key benefits is that an eCommerce website gives you access to new markets and customers with only a small investment. It's an excellent way for businesses to grow without having to employ sales staff or negotiate distribution deals.

That depends on how complicated the site will be. It's possible to have one up and running in two to three weeks. You can also work with one of our eCommerce Custom Build Designers to help you set up and initially stock your store.

The most common methods are using a simple online order form, or a shopping cart system with an order form. Once your customer completes your online order form the order can be delivered to you via e-mail, saved to a text file or saved to a database file on your web site for you to retrieve. Upon receipt of your customer's order you can submit their credit card and payment information to your merchant account provider and deliver your product or service.

• If you have a small number of items available to purchase (less than one or two dozen unique products or services).
• If are looking for an inexpensive solution or have a limited budget
• If you are a novice or immediate web designer and want to start with a simple, easy to build order system

Simply put, it's the ability to sell products or services online from your website. The shopping cart is a common metaphor (from the original grocery store shopping cart) where a visitor can browse your products and make selections to purchase. Typically, the visitor checks off any products or services that wish to purchase and then simply "Checks Out" by proceeding to a page where information such as billing, shipping and payment method is collected and the order is placed and confirmed.

The technical answer is pre-packaged programming that provides a website with the ability to build a catalog of products, build its associated database of characteristics such as size, color, price, weight, product code, technical components, etc. The shopping cart integrates these features into pages on the website to provide a visitor with the ability to browse and purchase – this is known as shopping cart software.

A primary consideration when choosing shopping cart software is ease of use, cost considerations and scalability (whether it will continue to serve a website's needs as its catalog and volume of products and orders grow). The shopping cart software options we offer support an unlimited number of products and growth potential.

• If you have a larger number of items available for sale (more than a dozen)
• If you wish to automatically total a customer's order including shipping, tax

These basic elements are the foundation of accepting online orders via credit card

• A credit card merchant account with a bank
• Payment processing software by which orders and credit card information are collected (order forms or shopping cart system)
• Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Encryption - to provide your customers a secure method to transmit their credit card and ordering information to you

A credit card merchant account allows your business to accept credit cards for payment of goods and services. A customer provides his or her credit card number when you make a sale. You submit the credit card number, expiration date and amount of the sale to your merchant account provider (typically a bank). Within 3-5 days the funds are electronically deposited into your business bank account.

Most banks and financial institutions offer merchant account services. Check with your current bank and ask for an application. There are also companies that specialize in providing merchant account services in addition to the lease and sale of credit card terminals, processing software, etc. These companies are listed in abundance in the phone book or via a search on the web for "merchant account providers". Fees can vary greatly amongst merchant account providers, so you will want to do some comparison shopping before choosing a merchant account provider.

• Social Security Number
• Direct Deposit Account and Routing Number (your bank should have this info)
• Tax Identification Number
• Average Ticket (Cost of your Most Expensive Product)
• Estimate Average Monthly Volume

Real-time credit card processing allows your web order pages to immediately submit your customer's credit card information via the Internet to your merchant account bank for authorization. Real-time authorization is useful if you anticipate a large volume of online transactions or wish to provide your customer with immediate access to your product or service.

Example: Selling a piece of software that a customer can download immediately after their credit card has been authorized in 'Real time'. Real-time credit card processing functionality can involve additional costs beyond standard processing which include: additional service fees from your merchant account provider bank, additional software requirements for real-time processing, customized ordering pages created for your web site and/or web server payment gateway software configuration and setup. Some careful research and planning is recommended before launching a real-time payment system on your web site to determine the total costs and your expected return on investment.

Just like in the "brick and mortar" world, doing business on the Internet requires giving some thought to the security of your shoppers' personal and credit card information. The most common and effective way to keep their information secure during online transactions is to equip your store with a Secure Certificate or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate. This encrypts the information that the shopper's computer sends to your server, and displays a small padlock in their browser's status bar, to assure them that your site is secure.