Ecommerce Overview
Learn more about ecommerce and how to use it.

1. What is ecommerce and why do I need it?
2. How do I know when I have orders?
3. How do I accept credit cards?
4. How are shipping charges computed?

What is ecommerce and why do I need it?

Use ecommerce capabilities to take orders for your products and services through your web site. Customers view your product catalog to see what can be purchased on your site. Customers use the integrated shopping cart to hold items that they intend to purchase. The secure checkout process saves the customers order and collects payment information via a secure SSL connection.

When orders are made at your site you receive a notification email with details of each order. Login to your site to view orders, process your orders, and communicate with customers.

How do I know when I have orders?

Each time an order is made through your site, you will receive a notification email with the complete order details.

How do I accept credit cards?

To accept payments via credit cards you will need to have a merchant account. Merchant accounts allow you to process and collect funds for customers that are paying via credit card.

Payment gateways

To process credit cards in real time you will need to setup and configure an internet processing gateway for your merchant account. When you have the gateway setup, transactions will be submitted to your gateway before orders are accepted to authorize the customer's credit card. To complete the order and have funds transferred to your bank account, login and click the complete order button to close out the transaction and collect the funds.

Contact your merchant account provider to learn more about getting a payment gateway (virtual terminal) for credit card processing.

If you would like to apply for a merchant account, click the "store" tab and then click the "accept credit cards on your site" link

How are shipping charges computed?

The shopping cart can be configured to automatically compute shipping charges for orders made on your site. You can choose to use the online shipping calculators from UPS or USPS. You also have the option to setup flat rate or table shipping based on several criteria (weight, order total, number of items).

learn more about setting up shipping