E-commerce sites

[Jubba]

Ok, well I have been doing some research into making e-commerce sites and I need a little more information. Making the scripts and everything doesn't seem that difficult but how do I charge the persons card, recieve the funds, etc... I'm not clear on that end of the transaction....

Anybody know how this is done?

[ahmed]

we've had to do a research on e-commerce a few weeks ago for school....I think you need to be hooked up with certrain credit card companies (i.e. visa, mastercard, etc) to be able to handle the transactions.. you need a security certificate and some SSL knowledge :)

[abzoid]

First step, the owner of the site must have or obtain a credit card merchant account, this is where all the funds will be deposited after processing. To process the individual transactions you'll need to connect the payment end of your shopping cart to a processing gateway service provider. CyberCash is one that has been around for ages, there are others that are more price competitve. The specifics of making that connection will vary slightly from one gateway provider to the next, but the most important thing is to make sure that your shopping cart software is compatible with the selected gateway provider. It can be as simple as passing a few parameters to a secure server via a form, or as complex as sending encrypted data between your host server and the gateway using a small program that resides on your host server. The best solution depends on the specifics of the particular application.

[DariusMonsef]

abzoid pretty much got it, but I've sumamrize.

SSL Certificate - Makes the Site Secure. Puts the little yellow lock in the bottom corner.

Merchant Account - Processes the credit card transactions.

Gateway - Processes online transactions and sends them to your merchant account.

You can get good SSL's from www.geotrust.com
You can get good Merchant @ wellsfargo.com, they take care of merchant and gateway.

Good Luck,

If you decide you don't like writing code, let me know. I love it!

[Jubba]

Thanks for the offer but its the coding that I love. I hate the design aspect of creating websites. I wish I could just code the backend programs. Thanks for the info guys. I wasn't clear on how it all worked out. :)

[lava]

Well, are there any websites that deal with e-commerce? I have a client that wants to be able to sell his band's cds online.. I don't even know how to go about it..
Raf

[Kitiara]

I work in the Churchill eCommerce department, anything I can help with guys? :)

[lava]

sweet... well, basically, can you tell me how to do it? Are there any good tutorials online, etc?

I might have to build a shopping cart in flash - However, I'm not sure how to do SSH, or how to do the transaction altogether.

[Kitiara]

I'm building a cart in ColdFusion... and I know we've got some JS ones knocking about round here somewhere... I'll try and find them. :)

Haven't seen much in the way of a tutorial site though. Macromedia is probably the best bet.

[lava]

probably wont be able to do coldfusion... expensive hosting.

[DariusMonsef]

Kitiara, Whohoo CF people!
P.S. I'm not sure how much you know about CF, but if you need any help with anything let me know.


Lavaboy, what is expensive hosting? You can get about $40 a month for CF hosting. If this is for a client, then they should understand it's a professional hosting service.

[Kitiara]

I'm not too bad with CF... Teaching myself though. :)

[Jubba]

Well i would be using PHP and mySQL on a secure server. How would I go about getting a merchant account with a credit card company?

[DariusMonsef]

Jubba:

I just signed up with them, so I can't yet verify the service, but Wells Fargo offers merchant service for only $39 a month. That includes PayFlow Pro from verisign. You can get the details at http://www.wellsfargosecure.com/onlinepayment.htm

Regards,

[Jubba]

awesome. Thanks for the link. :)

[Jubba]

Hey PHILBERTO! How ya doing?