To establish an eCommerce website, the following services
are normally required: shopping cart capabilities, merchant account
support, credit card support and a security feature called SSL.
A shopping cart program allows you to implement your own
on-line storefront. The shopping cart keeps track of what visitors have
ordered and allows them to add or remove items from a 'virtual shopping cart'.
When a visitor decides to check-out, the order information including the
buyer's name, address and billing instruction is recorded and a receipt is
sent to the shopper.
A merchant account is "bank account" established with a
payment processor for the settlement of credit card transactions. Any merchant
who wants to take credit card orders must establish a merchant account.
Internet merchants need a "Card Not Present Merchant Account."
To learn more about setting up a merchant account and how
to take credit card transactions online, click
here. The following table provides a comparison of shared web hosting
packages that provide eCommerce capabilities. The list is sorted in
ascending sequence by monthly web hosting cost.
