e-Commerce Software
Online shopping seems to be growing inexorably and the UK is the leading online shopping nation in Europe. Sales to UK shoppers have now hit £100 billion according to IMRG. Revenues grew by 50% in 2006 over the previous year and that trend appears to be continuing.
If you are a traditional retailer, it should be very easy to move your business online. It's like opening another store without the additional costs that would be incurred doing that in the real world. Plus your virtual staff work 24 hours a day with no holidays - not even a tea break! So what do you need to set up an online shop?
Shopping Carts
A shopping cart system or e-commerce software, is simply a web based application that allows you the merchant to set up and maintain the inventory of your store. Usually you can set up sales or special offers and highlight your bestselling items or show people who bought this also purchased....
On the other side, your customers can add products to their basket and proceed to checkout where they can pay for their purchases, by credit card
We use a range of e-commerce software, depending on what is most appropriate for your needs. One product that we often recommend is Zen Cart, a user-friendly, open source cart system. The software is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently.
Because it is open source, there is no licence fee. Because it is easy to install and set up, our development costs are kept to a minimum. Because it is being developed by a team of programmers around the world, security vulnerabilities are patched more quickly and efficiently than some large corporations manage!
Payment Processing
Online card payments are processed by an online Payment Service Provider through a secure gateway, protected by 128-bit encryption for the highest levels of security. The funds will then be transferred to your internet merchant account. You can set up your payment processing with the same supplier as your merchant account or you can use different suppliers for each. Your bank can help you with information about this, but you should shop around as your normal bank might not offer the best terms.
Internet Merchant Accounts
An internet merchant account will probably cost you over £200 to set up plus a small percentage of sales. This is typically around 2% but will vary according to your volume of sales, length of time trading and other factors. Some accounts will charge you a small fee per transaction and others will have a flat monthly fee. They will often hang onto your money for a some time as well (anything from a day to a couple of weeks). Because of the varying costs and different fee structures, it is definitely worth shopping around.
With our experience we can customise the basic product to make your shop work the way you want and we will stay on top of updates and manage your backups.
