E commerce Website

[chrbb]

Happy new year all!

 

I've been asked to produce a website for a friend who sells soft furnishings, I've started to investigate free shopping cart software, plugins etc. The website itself will be no problem but I need to get my head round the security for paypal, visa etc.

 

Any advice gratefully accepted.

[glennda]

I have a guy here who does this kind of thing as he sells helicopter flights (as you do).

 

Is the content going to be changed reguarly? As all his site does it have static links to Paypal items which ask for you to pay. I'll PM you the web address.

 

Toby

[mats]

OSCommerce was fairly mature and well supported a few years ago when I used it. Paypal & CCard stuff worked too.

[DT2]

+1 for OScommerce, I maintain 2 sites running it, nice and easy, plenty of add-ons and community support.

[mossj88]

If he's not technical minded Magento Go looks okay... Small Business eCommerce Solutions & Hosting | Magento Go they offer a fully hosted solution with what seems like everything you could want.

[Marci]

Read up on PCI DSS Compliance. The site and hosting will have to comply with this if you do any credit card handling on the site itself / if their card details land in a hosted database on the site at any point.

[DavidIrwin]

Read up on PCI DSS Compliance. The site and hosting will have to comply with this if you do any credit card handling on the site itself / if their card details land in a hosted database on the site at any point.

 

PCI DSS is a very high bar in terms of security - I would highly recommend using a payment offloading service (Worldpay and PayPal are two examples) or a hoster who offers to process payments as part of the hosting service to ensure that you do not need to get your own system past these standards.

 

Simple rule to avoid requiring PCI DSS: Do not ask for or store main credit card number.

 

Dave

[webman]

Depending on the complexity of the site - if it's relatively simple, I would recommend using OpenCart. Magento is large and complicated, and probably overkill for their needs.

 

In terms of electronic online payment, you probably have two main options. Use a third-party payment gateway (such as PayPal) to handle it for you, or do it yourself. Doing it yourself involves a lot of complications, big costs, risks and red tape (PCI DSS as mentioned above). You really don't want to be handling people's financial details.

 

Payment gateways will usually charge a small percentage (and rates will differ depending on what service you get from them) on each transaction. Most ecommerce packages have modules or plugins for popular payment gateways that are easy to set up and use.

[shadowx]

I have only setup one ecommerce site but my advice is to 100% go through paypal. 90% of the good, free shopping cart systems have paypal integration, you register for a paypal merchant account (free) get your token, enter that token ID into the shopping cart and that's pretty much it. Security is handled by paypal (although be sensible about general website security of course).

 

Paypal do take a cut depending on your earnings but it's a lot cheaper than paying out refunds or court costs...

[samuelthan]

Hm.. you can also consider the WordPress platform .. WooCommerce is gaining momentum it it's ease of setup and all the different payment method available

[kili]

Happy new year all!

 

I've been asked to produce a website for a friend who sells soft furnishings, I've started to investigate free shopping cart software, plugins etc. The website itself will be no problem but I need to get my head round the security for paypal, visa etc.

 

Any advice gratefully accepted.

 

I had exactly the same thing for a family member who came to me for advice.

 

My advice! Dont bother with a website. Get your self an ebay and paypal account and use that. Millions of visitors every day and no website to worry about, no seo or website maintanace.

 

Keep it simple would be my advice