The elements of an ecommerce site are:

Product Display and Ordering Pages
These web pages will display information about and images of your products or services, along with an easy-to-use interface allowing the customer to add them to their order.

Shopping Cart
A shopping cart holds a record of the products that the site visitor wishes to purchase, until they are ready to "check out" and complete their online purchase.

Collection of Customer Details
The customer's name, contact and delivery details are usually necessary to facilitate the sale. These may be collected and stored by asking visitors to 'join' the site and log in each time they wish to make a purchase, or they can be collected from the customer as they complete each purchase.

Payment
Credit card payment is the most popular method for consumer purchases on the internet.

Manual Processing
The customer's credit card information is gathered, encrypted, and stored securely for retrieval and manual processing, after which the details are deleted. The disadvantage of manual processing is that the customer is not immediately notified if their payment is declined.

Real-Time Processing
Uses a direct electronic connection with the credit card companies allowing instant verification and processing. This may be by:

Third Party Payment Services
The customer is transferred to a trusted third-party payment service to handle the gathering of credit card details and verification with the credit companies. After the payment has been processed the customer is transferred back to your website. Fees for such services are quite high, and we lose control over the look and feel of the payment process.

Direct Payment Service (recommended)
Your website's shopping system links directly with the bank via a payment agent such as DPS. We retain control of the payment page design and overall look and feel of the payment process.

Security
Credit card details should always be protected using encryption and authentication to prevent electronic eavesdropping. We use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt all information passed between the customer's web browser and the web server hosting your ecommerce site. Certificate Authorities issued by companies such as Verisign or Thawte provide further assurance that the website is owned by a legitimate company.

We can help you to purchase your own dedicated secure certificate, or to access a shared certificate provided by preferred hosting companies. Using a shared certificate will increase development costs a little, and necessitate an altered URL on your secure pages. Otherwise the transition is seamless and goes undetected by most customers, while providing significant cost savings.

Database Integration
If you have several products a database should be used to store information about your products or services, sales and customers. A database will store information such as product descriptions, images, stock levels and prices. This facilitates site updates when products or prices change. We can provide an easy-to-use web interface for updating your products in the database. A database also provides valuable data for analysing your sales patterns.