Requirements for ecommerce
  • Registered domain name. Domain names can be registered with AUSWEB at http://www.auswebdomains.com
  • eCommerce Web hosting package
  • Website with an electronic shopping cart so you can display and sell your products or services online.
  • SSL certificate for secure online credit card transactions.
  • Mechant account with your bank and a payment gateway.
  • OR a 3rd party payment transaction facility like Worldpay
  • It is usually a good idea to give customers several payment options to choose from. Consider adding PayPal, Direct Deposit or C.O.D. to the payment options you offer.

Shopping Carts
Shopping Cart is a term that is associated with ecommerce. It is actually an online store that is intergrated into your website, it gives you the ability to display your products and sell them online. There are many different shopping cart solutions available, both opensource (free software) as well as commercial applications. All AUSWEB hosting packages come with Fantastico which allows you to easilly install many opensource applications, including three shopping carts – osCommerce, Zen Cart and Cube Cart.
The shopping carts come with an administration section, where you can
  • add or update products
  • have sale items
  • manage stock levels and pricing
  • process your sales
  • create invoices
  • view sales and stock reports plus many other features, depending on the particular shopping cart application.
What is SSL?
SSL provides endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet using cryptography. In typical use, only the server is authenticated (i.e. its identity is ensured) while the client remains unauthenticated; mutual authentication requires public key infrastructure (or PKI) deployment to clients. The protocols allow client/server applications to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery.
Basically this means that any credit card information the customer enters on your site is encrypted before being sent to the financial institution for processing. If you do not have an SSL installed on your website the information could be intercepted and read by someone who could then use the credit card information maliciously. See the diagram below.
Some hosting companies offer shared SSL, this is not a true SSL as it is shared between many websites. When you go to a website with a shared SSL, a popup appears warning that there is a problem with the security certificate, this is because the SSL is not registered for that particular website, it is shared between many websites. This does not inspire confidence with your customers, when it comes to entering their credit card details online.
If you are serious about your ecommerce site and want your clients to feel secure spending money online, you require a dedicated SSL that is setup for your website on a dedicated IP address. That way you can guatantee the security of the customers information that is sent accross the internet.
AUSWEB can supply your total eCommerce solution, or any part thereof -: