Part III: Point of Sale

Making your site a point of sale site -- meaning a place where the transaction can occur, and hence where you can establish a true working relationship with your visitors -- is naturally the ultimate purpose of your site. As a result, spending some time carefully crafting how you will get your users from the first page they land on to the confirmation page of your shopping cart is a something you will want to pay great attention to.

First, Identify What You Need

In order to pick the credit card processing solution that is best for you, you must first identify what exactly you need it to conduct. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you need recurring billing functionality? Meaning are you selling any subscription services that you will need to bill the user for repeatedly on a monthly basis until cancellation?
• Do you plan on running an affiliate marketing campaign? Affiliate marketing is a tactic in which other web sites are compensated for visitors they refer only if a transaction is made (or another goal that you specify is accomplished). One of the technical requirements of virtually every affiliate marketing technology available is the ability to place snippets of code on to the confirmation page of the shopping cart. As a result, you may want to check if you can modify the confirmation page of your shopping cart in order to do so.
• Can the program send a confirmation email to the user? This can serve as a digital receipt, and is extremely useful in confirming the transaction with the user -- a small but valuable tool in your quest to deepen your relationship with your customers so that you can earn more trust and sell them more products/services.

Next, Consider Your Options

Once you know what you need out of your checkout process, the next step is to find a solution that can execute your needs. Here are a few great options:

Paypal: Paypal is used by many small businesses simply because it is (1) simple and quick to set up and inexpensive as well. For many businesses, Paypal is a perfectly fine alternative. One issue to consider, though, is credibility; Paypal, by its very own choosing, as a perception of being a tool used by individuals, not professional businesses. For many businesses -- such as artists, freelancers, and individual craftsmen -- this is not a problem, and is perfectly fine. Ultimately, what type of public perception you are trying to create will determine if Paypal is a good solution for your business.

Yahoo: Yahoo's small business solution is a popular offering simply because of the company's well developed brand image and its 24 hour customer support. The solution is also comprehensive in the sense that it can help manage inventory, taxes, and can help the user get started with affiliate marketing and search engine advertising. Still, though, it is a bit pricier in the long run, as the monthly fee is coupled with a percentage of each transaction. In addition, it does not allow for subscription billing.

OSCommerce: OSCommerce is a completely free, open source offering. This is its biggest advantage. In addition, it is very powerful and contains all the basic functionality you need. Unfortunately, it is a bit more involved to setup for those who are not technically-oriented, and hence you may need to spend some resources on hiring a professional OSCommerce specialist.

X-Cart: X-Cart is a shopping cart based on OSCommerce, but is much simplified and better organized, and hence easier to use. While it still can be a bit more work to setup, it will save you money in the long run, and will allow for all the functionality you need to run a complex or simple web site. Because of this, X-Cart is the the solution that Web Disease recommends.

NOTE: Remember to consider your hosting provider as well if you are going with a shopping cart that runs off a local database. Out of the ones noted above, X-Cart and OSCommerce use databases that need to be installed on your server to operate. As a result, your hosting provider must allow for PHP processing and MySQL database hosting.