Website E-Commerce
Introduction
Each year sees the number of products purchased via the internet increasing. This is only going to increase as
people become more familiar and comfortable with buying goods over the internet. Also as web technologies improve
then websites become more sophisticated thus increasing the potential usage and turnover.
To enable your website to take orders online then you need the following:
- a secure website
- a database to store the products you are selling, order details, customer details
- a programming language (typically ASP or PHP) to enable the web site to interface with the database
- A payment gateway for handling the website payment transactions
- An admin facility also known as CMS for managing the site
Security
Many people are concerned about giving their credit card details over the internet and should only be done with secure
web sites. You will notice which websites are secure because the web address starts with HTTPS rather than HTTP.
HTTPS is the secure version of the standard HTTP communication channel and uses the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
for securely transmitting data. You should also notice a padlock in the status bar or address bar of your browser.
Some websites offer SSL for free by using a shared address e.g. http://200.100.200.120/~yourdomain. This is great in that it
is free but it doesn't look as professional as https://www.yourdomain.co.uk. To enable you to do this you need to purchase
your own security certificate which is available with our hosting packages.
Database / Programming Language
When choosing which database and programming language to use you are primarily constrained by two factors. What the
web hosting company offers and/or what the person developing your site has knowledge of. The two common options are
the open source MySQL/PHP platform or Microsoft's MSSQL/ASP platform. The MYSQL/PHP option is hugely popular as it is Open Source
therefore free thus making the hosting packages cheaper. We tend to find that larger companies favour the Microsoft
option especially when then already have Microsoft products in place and are thus able to host their own websites.
Our hosting packages include both options at the same price so the price does not come into the equation when
choosing which option if your website is to be hosted with us. We are very experienced in developing applications
for both platforms so are therefore happy to choose either option.
Payment Gateway
A payment gateway is the means of taking a payment from a credit card and transferring that payment into your account.
There are many available payment gateways e.g. PayPal, Google Checkout, World Pay, Protx etc. They are offer a similar
solution but have differing payment models.