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A
typical ecommerce solution includes the following components:
An
online catalog that lists the products/services you are selling
and their prices.
A
shopping cart that collects the items a customer wants to buy.
An
order form that gathers their payment information, applies shipping/tax,
and summarizes the pending order.
Transaction
Processing that subtracts payment from the customers account
and applies it to your own.
Real-time
transaction processing is provided via a vendor. Offline-transaction
processing can be done by a merchant using a credit card machine.
Of course, order fulfillment is also an important element of ecommerce.
An HTML form posts all of the information needed to process a
transaction to your vendor's transaction server. Once the transaction
server gets all of the transaction information, the transaction
is processed. After the transaction is processed, it communicates
the result back to your website, which communicates with the customer,
and makes appropriate changes to your database (if inventory control
is used).
How
Much is it going to cost?
There
can be a lot of hidden costs to ecommerce -- and a lot of people
try to take advantage of people's lack of knowledge. Here are
some general tips:
Setup
fees. Most merchant account providers will charge a setup fee.
This could cost $150 or more.
Transaction
fees. This is typically a percentage of each transaction that
is paid to the merchant account provider/credit card companies.
Fees vary. A fee of 2.59% is good for online transactions. PayPal
charges 2.2%. and no set-up fee. This has made it a popular
choice for small businesses or those with only a small number
of products to offer.
Monthly
fees. There is usually some "gateway fee" associated with online
transactions. $25 or less is in the ball park.
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