Archive for the 'Ecommerce' Category

A big question for businesses entering the realm of ecommerce is how should they approach creating their ecommerce system. Should you use an out of the box package like Yahoo Stores or Shopify? Or should set up everything yourself (hosting, merchant account, shopping cart, etc.)?

Well, let’s look at the pros and cons to each:

Fully Hosted Solution

• Quicker set up

  Using an out of the box solution means everything is set up for you before you even start using the solution. All of the programming and integrating that needs to be done has already been done for you. You only need to customize the solution for your store and add your products.

• Technical issues handled by the solution provider

  Browser compatibility, gateway integration, database connectivity: all handled for you. Knowledge in web programming or other technical skills are not required as this is all handled by the solutions provider.

• Less overall maintenance

  Since the hardware and software that powers the solution is all managed by the solutions provider, all you need to do is manage your products and your orders.

• Possibly better security

  Naturally the security of the data each merchant stores on the provider’s servers is very valuable not only to the merchant but to hackers as well. Normally the security of this information requires constant checking and upgrading to make sure no new security vulnerabilities arise that may allow this data to be compromised. Fortunately the provider handles all of this.

• Higher costs

  Naturally the provider is not going to offer their services for free. Not coincidentally they will not offer it at cost either. You will have the same costs as you would if you attempted to establish the service yourself plus the mark up of the provider.

• Less control

  Since you do not own or control the software offered by the provider you are limited to whatever the provider will allow you to do. This means you cannot customize the software to fit your needs. You can only do what they decide their software will allow you to do. Additionally, this solutions typically do not allow you full customization of the appearance of your store. This means your store either won’t match the rest of your website or, even worse, will look just like every other store hosted by the provider.

“Self Serve” Solution

• Lower costs

  Because you are free to shop around for the software your store will use it is likely that you will find a solution that is well-priced. In fact, there are many free offerings for ecommerce solutions available. You also will be able to sign up for a merchant account that costs less to use then what most third party processors offer.

• More control

  Because you control every aspect of your solution you can be sure it meets your exacting specifications. Your storefront and checkout will seamlessly integrate into your website and provide your customers with a professional shopping experience. You will have all of the features you want and none of the ones you don’t want. You can expand and alter your storefront whenever your business demands it.

• You are now a security expert

  Without a dedicated team minding the security of your storefront you take on the responsibility of ensuring your storefront and your data is safe and secure. You have to keep up with security updates for your software otherwise you risk exposing sensitive data. One occurrence of this can mean the end of your business.

What a smart business will do is make a lit of their priorities and then compare them to this list. One is no better then the other straight up. But one may be better then the other to your specific business based on your needs and wants.

Technorati Tags: yahoo stores, shopify, merchant account, ssl certificate

A company called Iovation has created a service that identifies computers that have been used to make purchases with stolen credit cards and then add them to a blacklist. Doing so prevents a user from using the same computer for more then one fraudulent transaction. They can constantly change their username or IP address but as long as they use the same computer they won’t be able to get back into a Iovation-protected site.

Because Iovation shares its blacklist with all of its merchants as its list grows every merchant benefits. Currently online poker sites have been taking advantage of the service and Iovation plans to expand into gaming as well.

The technology works by using two methods to identify a fraudulent computer. The first step is when a user opens an account on a website that uses Iovations service a small bit of code is installed on the user’s computer. The company then monitors their patterns of behavior. If the user engages in suspicious activity, such as having dozens or hundreds of accounts from a single website, the code installed onto their computer becomes a black mark.

The only way for a malicious user to overcome this is to buy new hardware. Which, although very possible, can also become expensive and tedious.

A common question asked by merchants looking to enter the world of online transactions is what shopping cart should they use for their new store. A common answer to this common question is to use os Commerce. osCommerce describes themselves as:

osCommerce is an Open Source based online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.

osCommerce’s popularity is undeniable. Their website lists over 9,000 live stores running their software. You can assume this only represents a fraction of the stores actually using their software.

But is osCommerce the best shopping cart available? It does have a lot to offer an online store including:

• Robust functionality out -of-the-box
• A powerful administrative control panel
• Developers have contributed 3,500 add-ons that may be used free of charge
• Built in support for major gateways
• It’s free

Those points alone make it a solid choice for many merchants. But it does have strikes against it including:

• It is extremely difficult to customize its appearance. It is not template driven and thus you must must edit individual pages (which contain code) to achieve a unique and custom look and feel.
• It contains everything but the kitchen sink. Although many merchants will want some of the features that come standard in osCommerce, few will actually want all of them. For merchant who want only basic shopping cart functionality, osCommerce is overkill
• Although thousands of add ons have been created for it, you still need to edit individual files to add new functionality to the shopping cart.
• It requires PHP global variables to be turned on to work. Although this isn’t a security risk in and of itself, it does require the server it runs on to now have that feature turned on. This opens the potential for other scripts to have security issues thanks to osCommerce requiring this feature.
• It is rarely updated. Development is slow and updates are far between and minor in scope.

Is osCommerce right for you? Good question. It does fill the need for many online merchants. But there are a lot of alternatives out there that are worth considering. Look around and see which shopping cart offers the features you need without the hassles or extra features you don’t need.

A common question asked of new online merchants is whether they have to have an SSL certificate on their website. The answer is, it depends.

If you want a transparent checkout where your customers never leave your website then you will need an SSL certificate to make sure your checkout page is secure. Besides the fact that is a best practice, most processing banks won’t establish a merchant account for a website without one.

If you don’t want/need a transparent checkout, then you do not need an SSL certificate. All of the major gateways offer merchants the ability to send merchants to the gateway’s website where they provide their own secure order page. The downside to this is the limited amount of customization you have with that order page (little to none). It will be obvious to your customers that they have left your website.