What You Need to do Business Online - Dave Summits

Are you ready to do business online? There are many things that you need to make sure you have, to ensure flexibility and security for your online store. In this article, we will outline the basics of bringing your business online.

Shopping Cart Software
There are several different solutions that you should consider for your shopping cart software that we will go over here. First off, you can open a Yahoo Store. This is a good solution for people without much technical knowledge, and doesn't take too much to set up. However, you need a lot of flexibility, you should probably consider another solution. My personal favorite is osCommerce. This is an open source (so its free!) shopping cart solution with a big, very active community to help you out along the way. Your host will need to have PHP and MySQL for osCommerce to function. It is very simple to run an unmodified version of osCommerce. You just download it, upload it to your server, and run the web-based install, or if you have Fantastico, you can automatically install it from there. There is a web-based administration backend allowing you to add products to your store and edit configuration settings. There are many contributions that you can install to customize your store, but minimal knowledge of PHP is needed. I think that osCommerce is a great solution for many people. Another popular shopping cart is Miva Merchant Pro. Unlike osCommerce, this one isn't free, but there are hosts who can license it to you at a monthly rate. This can be a very costly solution, but they do have many very happy users of the program. There is a clean GUI (graphical user interface) and a nice administrative backend. Both osCommerce and Miva Merchant Pro require you to find a web host, but with Yahoo Stores you are hosted directly by Yahoo.

Merchant Account
This is a necessity of any ecommerce business, because you need to be able to take payment in your store. There are several different ways you can go here. You can either go with a 3rd party processor, or a true merchant account which is built into your shopping cart. The most well-known 3rd party processors are Paypal and 2CheckOut. If you are going with Paypal, I would strongly recommend you have another payment processor as well. There are many users who won't buy from someone who only accepts Paypal, but then again there are users who would only go with someone who accepted Paypal. Personally, I'd recommend using Paypal and a merchant account. A merchant account makes your store a lot more professional, and gives you more flexibility. There is a unique company that you can get a merchant account from called ProPay. You get a "virtual credit card terminal" and there are no monthly fees, just a low annual fee.

Web Host
If you have a website, you need a web host! For most shopping carts, you will need PHP and MySQL, so make sure that you look for hosts that support the technology that you need. If you go with a Yahoo Store, your hosting is taken care of by Yahoo. If you choose osCommerce, Miva Merchant Pro, or another shopping cart program, you will need to find a web host. If you plan on collecting credit cart numbers directly on your website, you will need a SSL certificate. To have a SSL certificate, you need a dedicated IP address. Most hosts will offer you a dedicated IP address for an extra monthly price. You can get a SSL certificate for $29.99 at GoDaddy (http://godaddy.com).

About the Author

Dave Summits is very knowledgable in the field of web hosting. He writes articles for Web Hosting Insider - News and Resources.