Ecommerce Sustainable Sources is happy to announce that we can help you get your ecommerce site off the ground. A number of options are open to you on each of these steps, depending upon your needs and the number of sales you expect. Generating the Order We currently recommend a free, open source package that runs on MySQL (a database program) and PHP (a programming language that allows you to make connections between a web page and a database), both of which are available on our site. It's highly customizable, very flexible, and contains built in solutions for most of the common payment and shipping options worldwide. A recent example of this catalog solution is the jewelry and bodycare store we built for Nila Bindu. Your store doesn't have to look anything like this, of course. You or we can customize it to fit your needs. If you have more complex needs, we can build an appropriate system using NetCloak and/or WebSiphon, a powerful and flexible database front-end. A recent project that demonstrates this is the store section of The Last Straw, the quarterly journal of straw bale construction. This store sells both back issues in paper and electronic subscriptions to newer issues, and will probably add other items in the near future. It includes anti-copy protection of the electronic versions. Let us know if you need our assistance. Taking Payment There are a number of choices available for collecting payments online. For small volume sites - those that are just starting out, or those that only offer a few items on the side - you may do best using a person-to-person credit card payment system like PayPal. The PayPal system does require both sides to be members, but they pay $5 referral fees to you for anyone you send to them, AND they pay new members $5 just to join up. So you can give people as much as $10 off their first order! Once they're members, it's a quick and secure way to send and receive payments. Sites that will be moving more substantial amounts of money will probably want to use a secure payment page to run credit card payments through a Merchant Bank Account, just like a brick & mortar store does. There are a number of third-party sites that will verify credit cards, collect payments, and deposit the money in your bank, such as Authorize.net, Verisign.com, Cardservice.com, Cybercash.com, and Linkpoint.net. Basically, you do all the calculations on your site. Once the customer is ready to pay, you can A) send them to a page at the third-party site of your choice where they enter their credit card info to complete the order, or B) take the credit card info on a secure page on our site or yours, which then passes that info in encoded form to the third party for you. The big advantage of the second choice is that the customer never leaves your site. Costs The cost of building your site will vary according to your needs and involvment. Call or email to discuss the specifics. The cost of taking payments also varys according to your needs: PayPal - very low cost, but some customers may be put off by the need to become a member. Merchant Account - fees vary depending upon your Merchant Bank and your Credit Card Gateway. Generally you can expect fees to be in the following ranges: Setup/application fees range from $0 to $400 Cost of service ranges from 2.0% to 3.5% of purchases PLUS $0.30 per transaction (usually with a $20-$25 minimum) PLUS monthly fees of $20-$30.