E-Commerce Tutorial

The processing of purchases from a website requires specific components added to your website to provide the functionality to transact the sale. These components are a method of Product Presentation, an Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate, an Online Transaction Processor (or Gateway) and a Merchant Bank Account.

The basic ecommerce process works like this:

1. The web visitor finds your website on the search engine rankings.
2. The visitor shops and selects a product from your shopping cart and clicks to purchase.
3. The customer is moved to the Online Transaction Processor where a secure transaction takes place.
4. The transaction is sent through your Merchant Bank Account to either approve or deny the transaction.
5. If approved, the Merchant Bank account processes the transaction.

Product Presentation

The most popular and most effective method of presenting products on a website is with the use of shopping cart software. Shopping carts enable your potential customers to browse through your product lines and review pictures and descriptions. A shopping cart also provides the software needed to initiate a sales transaction. It is possible to avoid a shopping cart and use simple product pages that describe the product information, but only if there are only a few products as it would be too large to manage.

Secure Socket Layer encryption

An SSL Certificate ensures that your customers credit card information will be securely processed. Providers such as Thawte, GeoTrust and VeriSign offer this protection for approximately $150. This Certificate is sent to your host to apply to your website account. This is a very crucial component as your customers would be submitting their personal information over an insecure connection putting them at extreme risk that credit card information could be exposed to dishonest people.
** This feature is managed by CyberMark and IS included in our shopping cart package**

Online Transaction Processors (Payment Gateways)

One major question to consider before you decide on a provider is how many transactions do you anticipate processing in a month. Each Gateway offer a variety of packages that usually require a setup fee and then a monthly fee based on the amount of transactions processed.
** The account MUST be set up by the website owner. Once the account is created CyberMark will handle the implementation into the ecommerce system **

Availability is subject to shopping cart selection:
Authorize.Net - Sells only through resellers whose setup, monthly and/or transaction fees vary.
http://www.authorizenet.com/reseller/directory.php
PayFlowPro (VeriSign) - $250 setup - $60 monthly (based upon up to 1000 transactions per month)
http://www.verisign.com/products/payment.html?sl=060304
IonGate - www.iongate.com
SkipJack - www.skipjack.com
TrustCommerce - www.trustcommerce.com

Merchant Bank Account

To accept credit cards over the Internet, you must be set up with an Internet Merchant Bank account. This will handle the task of accepting or rejecting credit card transactions and then processing the accepted sales. We recommend that you set up your Internet Merchant account with your normal business bank such as Chase, Bank of America, Bank One etc. Many Merchant Account brokers advertise online that they can find you the best deals, but it is always safer to go with a bank that you have an established relationship with.

Some Additional Considerations:

• If you are interested in taking your business internationally you must consult with your Internet Merchant Bank as many Online Transaction Providers are restricted in their access with banks outside of their own country.
• Even if you already have a bank account for offline business, you still must set up an account for Internet purposes. This should be initiated as soon as you are certain that are taking your business online as it can take up to a month to complete.
• Your Merchant Bank must be able to process "Card Not Present" transactions.

All prices current as of September 2003.