If you're wanting to sell your products via your website but don't want to spend enormous amounts of money, then I have the perfect solution for your needs. Using the ZenCart software, written in PHP and using a MySQL database, you can sell virtually anything from your website

Not only is it easy to manage your shop but there is no need for you to know any HTML, programming or anything complicated in order to maintain your ecommerce website.

Why Do I Need a Shopping Cart?

Can't I Just Use an Email Form?

In those areas of the world where just about everybody has Internet access, even if only through their local library, more and more of your existing and potential customers expect you to have a website, and a large number of them expect to be able to purchase products online from you.The great majority of Internet shoppers are looking for the easiest way to get what they want from the store to their home and have becvome accustomed to the classic shopping cart system. They have come to regard the "Add To Cart" button as the standard of ease and reliability - much simpler, and definitely more professional, than the use of e-mail forms.

Designed for Online Shoppers, Merchants, Developers, the ZenCart shopping cart solution provides a great online shopping experience to your customers. They will be able to navigate through your merchandise with ease, view different size images (with multiple views if required) and detailed descriptions and, once a product is added to their shopping cart, securely purchase in 3-simple steps.

A wide number of payment methods are supported, making it easy for your customers to buy your goods.

Key Features

• Everything you need to maintain a professional, robust shopping cart web site for an unlimited number of products
• Sell real or virtual products - your customers can have instant downloads after payment
• Easily add/maintain your products, pricing, shipping, etc. from within a comprehensive admin panel
• Take full control of your website without HTML knowledge!
• Add any set of attributes to each product like colour, size, weight, length, etc.
• Search feature
• Run sales or promotions across your site as and when you want
• Gift vouchers for customers to buy and use
• Show special offers with ease
• Cross sell "Customers who bought this product also bought this one too"
• Integration with multiple payment options - everything from COD to Credit Card acceptance
• Layout Settings - ZenCart uses templates; this allows you to have a unique look for your store to reflect your real life business image
• WYSIWYG editor for entering product descriptions and editing content pages
• Shipping (P&P) charges calculated
• Products displayed with multiple images, detailed description and attributes
• Prices displayed in any currency, selectable by viewer, with ‘one-click’ updating of exchange rates
• Customer registration (build your client list)
• Newsletter management (keep in touch with your customers)
• Automatic e-mail notification to you of orders, customer and newsletter registrants
• Automatic e-mail confirmation to customer of order placement, and semi-automatic notification of order dispatch
• Simple back-up of your information
• Easy and secure store management
• Complete site installation
• Full tuition on the use of the Administration panel
• E-mail and telephone support

What Are My Payment Processing Options?

How Do I Accept Credit Cards?

If you already have a credit card merchant account and currently process cards manually, you can do so for Internet transactions as well. However, it is more convenient to get real time credit card processing. The most cost effective method is to get an Internet merchant account and a separate payment gateway service. The payment gateway service validates the credit card information and sends it to the Internet merchant account provider to be processed. All payments would then be electronically deposited into your bank account. Make sure you carefully compare all of the fees for both of these services. You will need to check with your own bank for their fees and transaction charges, but here is a comparison of some gateways, provided by a client who was looking for a UK payment gateway - in his case, he has decided to stick with Paypal/cheques until the business starts to build, and then he intends to sign up for SecureTrading (which seems eminently sensible to me!).

Prices include VAT and the sample transaction charges estimate (TCE) is based on £6000 of sales. They were correct when initially posted, but you must check the individual companies for current charges.

Worldpay
Setup Fee: £235
Initial Fee: £211.50 for 6 months
Monthly Fee: £35.25
Transaction Charge: 4.5%
TCE@4.5% on £6k sales: £270

SecureTrading
Setup Fee: £0
Initial Fee: £229.13 yearly
Monthly Fee: £11.75
Transaction Charge: 1.5% (*from)
TCE@1.5%* on £6k sales: £90

FastHosts
Setup Fee: £176.25
Initial Fee: £0
Monthly Fee: £23.50
Transaction Charge: 3.5%
TCE@3.5% on £6k sales: £210

As you can see Worldpay is incredibly expensive and is surely only considered by bigger businesses or those wishing to pay for that brand for reputation purposes. The overall winner is SecureTrading as although FastHosts provide the cheaper basic service, SecureTrading provides the best priced service when taking into consideration basic costs + transaction charge on volume of sales.

SecureTrading also give you a "virtual terminal" - this allows you to take cc's over the phone or in person.

There are others, but I don't have complete details (SecPay is one which on the face of it seems to be cheaper, but I have been advised that they are not as reliable in terms of server downtime as others and that the overall service is of a lower quality.)

What About Using PayPal?

PayPal is used by millions worldwide, especially after being bought by eBay. They have several different ways for accepting payment and an interface to your shopping cart is already built in. You can accept any major credit card and electronic checks securely and a shopper is no longer required to register with Paypal.

You can sign up for your own Paypal Account by clicking here or on the banner below. (Did I mention that it's free to join? Well it is.)

How about Cheques (or Checks in American English!)?

If you wish, payment by cheque can be included as an option - but it is recommended that you do not dispatch any products until cheques have cleared. I see no reason not to include it, and indeed, to some shoppers, the fact that they have a geographical address to deal with can add confidence.

What else?

You can choose to have the options activated for COD or In-Store Collection - just about every method of helping the customer part with their money is available.

Sounds Perfect. How Much Is This Going To Cost Me?

You've probably heard rumours that an e-Commerce store will cost at least £2000. Well, if you approach a web-design studio with fancy offices and a sales force to support, then that's probably true. However, I work from home, I work for myself and therefore I can provide a first-rate eCommerce solution from as little as £950 including 12 months hosting* by the UK's Certified ZenCart Host and a domain name registration! (International customers click here for currency converter)

This price assumes that either you will be entering all product data, or that all your product information is supplied to me in database format, with all product images also provided in digital format and correlated with the written data. I will undertake data entry and product photography if required, but this will be charged per hour and will really push the price up.

* The price does NOT include any fees incurred from setting up Merchant Accounts through a bank or Payment Gateway, nor does it include annual hosting fees after the first year or the cost of domain name registration renewal.

The nature of graphic design and the fact that every job has different requirements means that it is not possible to give hard and fast quotes without a detailed discussion of the task to be completed. However, as a guide, a simple, single page, website (like this one), including 12 months hosting and registration of your chosen domain name (assuming it's available) in .co.uk form can be purchased for as little as £150 with additional pages available from £50 each.

Why not contact me to discuss your requirements?

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