The problem

Creating a website to take online payments is never as straight forward as you might think. There are a few issues that can crop up. Over the past 6 six years we’ve had quite a bit of experience in trouble shooting these so we can give you a few tips in getting it right first time.

The idea is simple. Take your website, drop on a product catalogue and shopping cart and then start taking payments straight away. But here are a few issues that can throw a spanner into the works.

Can your client’s bank account take online payments?
In order to take payments online your client will need to have a ‘Merchant Account’ setup with their bank. Also you’ll need to check which currencies your client wants to accept payments in. Some banks will allow for multiple currencies to be taken through one ‘Merchant Account’ others will want to setup one account per currency. There are a couple of options for clients who don’t have a merchant account or don’t want the hassle of setting one up. The first is to use ‘Paypal’ to take online payments, the second is to use a company called ‘Worldpay’ who will setup a merchant account for the client and provide a secure environment to take online payments from. This will come at a cost though so check with Worldpay to find out their latest costs.

Are credit card details being taken securely?
The easiest way to do this is to integrate your website with a Payment Service Provider. These are third party companies who provide a secure online service from which payments can be taken. These payments are then passed to your customers bank account.
There are a number of companies that offer this service. The main difference being the amount they will charge your customer to a)setup the service b) per transaction and the amount of time they will take to pass online payments to the customers bank account. We have worked with many of these services so we will be happy to give you pointers on which one to use based on your clients needs.

Can you apply any design to your eCommerce system?
Many eCommerce systems use pre built templates that you have to use regardless of any design ideas you may have. This is fine as long as you don’t mind having an identikit website. We’ve found that clients want to maintain a very specific look and feel across the whole purchasing process from product browsing to branded confirmation emails, this is where our experience can really help.

The solution

Typically we have found that each customer has their own unique requirements, so it’s important to offer them a solution that can be customised and tweaked to meet their needs. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating a host of modules that can be bolted onto any website to give the customer the fully functional website they require.

The modules include :

• Integration with Payment Service Provider
• Online Discounts/Offers and Tokens.
• Product/Site Search Engines
• Customer Accounts
• Order tracking
• Customer tracking
• Product spreadsheet import and export facility

Our eCommerce systems have been developed to meet our clients exact needs. We don’t take an off the self solution and resell it, we design every part of our eCommerce solutions from the ground up. This means that you can be sure that your clients needs are being met 100%.

So why not get in touch, call us in and let us take a look at the projects you’re dealing with. We’ll come back with some realistic costs and approaches for you to consider. What have you got to lose?

To find out more you can call me on 0117 9444430 or email me at jean-paul@firecast.co.uk