eCommerce Solutions

There are three major requirements for setting up a fully functional eCommerce website:

Selecting eCommerce solutions which fulfill each of these three items can be somewhat confusing. Maplegate Technologies has an established track record in this area, and can assist you in selecting and maintaining an eCommerce solution. When building your web site we will work with you to choose answers to the following design questions:

Decision 1: Use an existing software package to handle your shopping cart or storefront, or build a custom shopping cart application?

Before you start your e-commerce endeavor, you will want to choose whether you are going to use a canned shopping cart system, or build a custom developed application. A pre-built solution gives you many advantages:

However, a custom-developed shopping cart system has benefits of its own:

We have built custom applications in a variety of settings, and can help you make the "build or buy" decision.

Decision 2: Do you need real time credit card processing?

When setting up a website you need to know if you want to process credit cards online via a payment gateway, or off-line at a point-of-sale terminal. Both systems work basically the same: they verify the credit card number, check the expiration date, confirm the card has available credit, send the information to your merchant account, and send an approved or declined message to you or your shopping cart. Maplegate Technologies, though its hosting services company, supports many of the most popular payment gateways, and most can be accessed for use with your custom shopping cart.

Payment Gateway companies are services you must subscribe to, so there are fees involved with setting gateways up. These fees vary and may include a setup fee, a monthly fee, and per transaction fees (or any combination of all three). Gateways interact with your merchant account to charge a credit card (authorization) and collect the money to deposit into your bank account (settlement).

Decision 3: Do you have a merchant account set up?

So you have a shopping cart, and a payment gateway. Now you need a way to accept payments made for the products you sell. A merchant account is a type of relationship you have with a bank or other financial institution to accept and deposit credit card payments. Generally, your local bank will have a process or service in place that allows for online transactions. If not, or if they want to charge fees that are unacceptable to you, there are a myriad of other companies who specialize in merchant accounts.

As with payment gateways, a merchant account is a service, and there are fees associated with this service. Fees can range from application and/or setup fees, licensing fees, discount rates (a fee that goes to the bank and the processor to cover the costs of the transaction), monthly service fees, per transaction fees. Merchant accounts may have two other types of fees: a reserve fund, which may be required to cover charge backs, and charge back fees, which are similar to NSF fees a bank charges for returned checks.

Decision 4: Do you need to have "secure web pages" on your storefront

Do you need to have secure web pages in order to accept credit card information from your customers? If so, do you wish to use a shared secure web site, or obtain your own license for use on your web site?

When taking customers' Credit Card numbers, your customers want to be assured that data is being sent securely over the Internet. Technologies like SSL encryption are used to encrypt data as it is being sent, so that the information cannot be intercepted and read in transit. SSL encryption requires the use of a Certificate, which can be thought of as a key that locks the incoming data, and unlocks it when it arrives so the information can be used. Web addresses for secure pages begin with "https://"; the "s" is needed to display the web page in "secure" mode.

As you may have guessed, there is a cost to obtain these certificates. You have two options when hosting with Maplegate Technologies.

One option is to "borrow" an SSL certificate from the web site hosting company. Web pages on that require security are placed within a sub-directory of the host's SSL web site. This method is easy to set up and works seemlessly within your main website. The only evidence of this setup is found in the web address (URL) of the secure pages:

https://www.crystaltech.com/yourdomain/pagename.htm

If you would rather have your own certificate, then you will want to purchase it from a company like Thawte or Verisign. Maplegate Technologies will have the certificate "installed" on your website, allowing you to secure any page. Secure pages would remain within your domain's address space. For example:

https://www.yourdomain.com/cart.cfm

If you have any questions, please contact us. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Call us -- we can show you the path to a successful eCommerce-enabled web site!