E-Commerce

A web store opens your access to customers nationwide, and accepts orders 24X7. There are multiple versions of hosted secure-socket "carts" offering security protected pages that collect on-line payment information. Some carts can be run in manual mode, which means that if you have a standard merchant account for processing charge cards, the cost of the cart may be under $350 a year.

In manual, the cart collects the order and credit information, sends you a notification e-mail, and sends your customer an e-mail order acknowledgement. You retrieve the order, run the credit slip through your usual business merchant account, and mail the merchandise.

For a slightly larger fee, you can have a complete package with streamlined online merchant gateway application, real-time processing, and the ability to "broadcast" html e-mail to your customer database.

There are also a wide range of "do it yourself" javascript carts. While the low initial cost of these programs may be attractive to shoestring budgets, sites that use them invite security risks. We do not install do it yourself carts.

Responsible ecommerce requires that you protect your client's personal data. Servers that service credit data should be behind a firewall, and offer around the clock monitoring, intruder detection, data validation, and other security measures. That kind of security is beyond the capabilities of inexpensive javascript carts. When you have selected a hosted cart, we can customize the look and feel (to the extent allowed by the cart), set up products, and integrate the links into your pages.

If you are interested in adding ecommerce to your web site, please contact us at commerce@jbelldesigns.com with details of your business, your products, and projected volume.