What do you need - How Does It Work - What Does It Cost

E-Commerce, selling something on the Internet can be a very confusing process that seems to require a never ending list of expenses before you ever make a sale!

Here are the three basic things you will have to have:

1. Your website should reflect the nature of your business, be well organized and easy to navigate and display all information and products in an attractive and clear format. The website will contain the products, usually by categories and then as individual products with expanded descriptions and larger images. The products will be linked into the shopping cart which is the next stage of the e-commerce process. (unless you have an all-in-one online estore in which the website itself is integrated into the shopping cart)

2. The shopping cart contains all of the product information: product name, description, sku #, price, options, shipping weight shipping method(s). The shopping cart keeps track of all items entered in the cart by your customers and calculates totals, taxes and shipping. It also gathers the customer billing and shipping information including credit card information and sends it securely to the internet merchant account.

3. The internet merchant account collects all of the information from the shopping cart, authorizes the credit card transaction transfers the funds from the customer's credit card account into your business bank account.

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Typically you will pay around $20 a month for hosting your website, $30 a month for a shopping cart and $50 for an internet merchant account. This is a simplified explanation and there can be many variations of this as far as cost, what kind of shopping cart is used and also the option of using an online estore in which the website and shopping cart are integrated and so there is just one fee for the website and shopping cart. So, in round figures it's usually around $100 a month to run your e-commerce business. If you are on a tight budget this can be reduced to the least expensive hosting option and using Paypal for the shopping cart which eliminates the cost of a shopping cart and a merchant account.

Site-Maker can help make your E-Commerce experience a simple, clear and cost-effective one. We are affiliated with USAePay (Internet Merchant Account and Authorized Gateway) and have done business with them for almost 10 years. We also work with Authorize.net and other merchant account companies and you are free to choose any company you would like. One important thing to keep in mind however is that the merchant account company has to be able to integrate with the specific shopping cart solution you choose and vice-versa. We often work with Securenetshop.com and Cartmanager for shopping carts and here again we have had a long and successful relationship with them but you are free to choose any company you would like.