osCommerce & Ecommerce Setup

If this is your first osCommerce store or you have a large company, are expecting to get bigger in the near future? you should start here - whether you are new at this, or have used many other ecommerce programs. Do you plan to sell high-priced items through your site? Do you want your entire transaction to be done through seamlessly on your website? Then we recommend the following eCommerce Setup.

There are three major elements to setting up your ecommerce website; a payment gateway, a merchant account and a shopping cart. When building your website you need to ask the following questions.

1. Will you use an existing software package to handle your shopping cart or will you develop your own shopping cart application?
2. Do you need real time credit card processing?
3. Do you have a merchant account set up?
4. Do you need to have secure web pages in order to accept credit card information from your customers; and will this be via a host website or will you create it on your own website?

1) Internet Merchant Account:
Check with your current bank. They may offer Merchant Accounts and can work with you to get your site set up to accept credit cards online. Make sure to read to fine print, however. Some places charge pretty hefty fees for their accounts. If your current bank doesn't work out for you, then check out Wells Fargo . They offer several different types of Internet Merchant accounts and even have an online application.

2) Payment Gateway Account:
Authorize.net has been providing Gateway services since 1996. In the Internet world, this is a long time! They offer many features for customer transaction management and boast "Experienced technical support 7 days a week 363 days a year." Their system is flexible and can be used with just about any merchant account and shopping cart combination. (Wells Fargo is an authorized reseller of Authorize.net)

3) Shopping Cart Program:
We install shopping cart software with templates and configure osCommerce - a powerful open source shopping cart. osCommerce provides the features most businesses require to sell online. If you require more functionality we can customize it to your requirements.

4) Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate:
SSL certificates ideal for lite ecommerce. SSL Certificates enable you to activate the security capabilities of your web server, mail server or SSL VPN. Once activated the server will secure transactions or data communication over the web, ensuring your customers gain the highest level of confidence in your site and organization.

Requirements for Shopping Cart Setup:-

• Apache / IIS Webserver.
• PHP
• Mysql

Detailed look at the osCommerce platform

Administration / Backend Functionality

• Supports unlimited products and categories.
• Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews.
• Support for physical shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products.
• Administration area secured with a username and password defined during installation (MS3).
• Contact customers directly via email or newsletters.
• Easily backup and restore the database.
• Print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen.
• Statistics for products and customers.
• Multilingual support.
• Multicurrency support (Automatically update currency exchange rates).
• Select what to display, and in what order, in the product listing page.
• Support for static and dynamic banners with full statistics.

Customer / Frontend Functionality

• All orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval.
• Customers can view their order history and order statuses.
• Customers can maintain their accounts (address book for multiple shipping and billing addresses).
• Temporary shopping cart for guests and permanent shopping cart for customers.
• Fast and friendly quick search and advanced search features.
• Product reviews for an interactive shopping experience.
• Forseen checkout procedure.
• Secure transactions with SSL.
• Number of products in each category can be shown or hidden.
• Global and per-category bestseller lists.
• Display what other customers have ordered with the current product shown.
• Breadcrumb trail for easy site navigation.

Product Functionality

• Dynamic product attributes relationship.
• HTML based product descriptions.
• Automated display of specials.
• Control if out of stock products can still be shown and are available for purchase.
• Customers can subscribe to products to receive related emails/newsletters.

Payment Functionality

• Accept numerous offline payment processing (cheque, money orders, offline credit card processing, ..).
• Accept numerous online payment processing (2CheckOut, PayPal, Authorize.net, iPayment, ..).
• Disable certain payment services based on a zone basis.

Shipping Functionality

• Weight, price, and destination based shipping modules.
• Real-time quotes available (UPS, USPS, FedEx, ..).
• Free shipping based on amount and destination.
• Disable certain shipping services based on a zone basis.

Tax Functionality

• Flexible tax implementation on a state and country basis.
• Set different tax rates for different products.
• Charge tax on shipping on a per shipping service basis.

Payment Gateways

• PayPal.
• 2checkout.com.
• authorize.net.
• ipayment.
• PSiGate.
• SECPay.
• Trust Commerce.

For more about osCommerce shopping cart software. visit osCommerce.com