There are several ways to sell your products online. The following are a few:
An online catalogue lists products for sale on your website with detailed descriptions, prices and pictures.
Unlike a printed catalogue, you can update your online catalogue at any time. For example, you can add new products, change the price of products and advertise specials.
A Shopping Cart is an extension of the online catalogue.
With a Shopping Cart, customers select items they wish to buy and add them to their “virtual cart”, just like at the supermarket!
When they finish shopping they checkout by entering their name, contact information and delivery information. This information, including the items selected for purchase, is then emailed to you to fulfil the order.
There are a number of payment methods available for Shopping Carts. These include COD, cheque, direct deposit and real time credit card payments.
To accept credit card payments over the Internet you will need:
- A Merchant Account - a specialised bank approved and issued account to process credit card transactions.
- A Payment Gateway - technology that allows subscribers to perform electronic transactions. Examples of payment gateway providers are Eway and PayPal. Many banks also offer their own payment gateways.
- SSL Certificate - "Secure Sockets Layer" – an encryption designed to provide secure transmission of data on the Internet. When SSL is employed to secure a transaction, the information contained in the transaction is encoded as it is sent between the user’s computer and the website’s computer.
