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eCommerce

Having an on line shop is something that many people would like to have but it may appear too daunting or they simply do not know where to begin.

These days there are lots of ways to get a shop but it does take a lot of effort to set up (especially if you have a lot of products) and it does involve learning the administration environment well enough to maintain your catalogue and how to process orders correctly. Therefore it is worth getting the right solution from the start.

Many ISPs offer eShops or eCommerce Packages. These are generally not bad but they often charge between £10 to £40 a month depending on the number of bells and whistles in a particular configuration. But ISPs are usually using an off-the-shelf shopping cart program to provide their service. It is possible to avoid those monthly charges by installing a shopping cart program in your own web space.

Regardless of how your on line shop is hosted, you will also have charges associated with processing credit cards. You have to choose a payment gateway.

Most banks will have some form of internet payment gateway and there are many other independant gateways. However to use most of these you will need to have an internet merchant account (IMA) with your bank. Charges and rates and commissions for the IMA and the payment gateway will vary from business to business.

One way to avoid the need for an IMA is to use PayPal which has been designed to make it quick and easy for individuals and small companies to take credit card payments. Unfortunately, many of your customers will infer that you are a small company or an individual if you use PayPal which may not be the image you are trying to project. You will also pay a higher percentage on each transaction for the privilege of being able to accept credit cards.

If you are expecting to sell a fair amount on line, then it really does pay to follow the IMA route. Using ProTX as your payment gateway you only pay a flat monthly fee of £20 for up to 1000 transactions and then 10p per transaction over 1000.

There are lots of options in this area and we can work with you to find the ones that will best suit your needs, implement them and help you learn how to use it on a daily basis.

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