There are plenty of ways to sell online, from adding a store to your current website to using a hosted store platform. The right choice depends on what you sell and how you run your business. Answer these questions first.
Payment processing fees vary by provider. Check current rates directly with each one.
Sales tax rules depend on where you sell and what you sell. Ask your accountant what you need to collect, then check that the platform can handle it.
Think about your accounting software, inventory system, email marketing, CRM, and point of sale. Connections that are built in are usually easier than custom ones.
See Joomla vs WordPress: Which Is Right for Your Business? if you're deciding on a website platform too.
Beyond the build, list the ongoing costs: platform or add-on fees, payment fees, hosting, security, updates, and support. See What Affects the Cost and Timeline of a Website Project.
Online stores need SSL, regular updates, and secure payment handling. Most sites use a payment provider that handles card details, which keeps card data off your server. See Website Security Basics for Small Business Owners.
We'll help you weigh the options and build the store that fits how you work. Learn about our website development work.
Ready to talk about your website? Start a project or reach us at 678-379-9321 or
When you start the journey of selecting an eCommerce platform, the options can be daunting (and expensive). In order to choose the right option, it is important to know what features you really require for eCommerce. Here is our starter list of some of the top questions you should be able to answer:
1) How many products (skus) do you have?
2) How many categories of products do you have?
3) What type of payment do you expect to take?
4) Does your pricing account for handling and fees from transaction processing companies (PayPal, Authorize.net)?
5) How will you ship?
6) How will you charge for shipping (actual, flat fee, free)?
7) If actual, do you have dimensions and weights for all products (including packaging)?
8) How many people are involved in order processing and shipping?
9) Do you expect to implement drop shipping (from 3rd-party suppliers or manufacturers)?
10) Explain what types of sales you will have; or your expected discount, coupon, or bundling strategy.
11) Do you have product images, descriptions, and dimensions available from the manufacturer, will you provide them, or will you need help gathering those?
12) Do you want end users to be able to see past and current orders?
13) Do you require deposits/pre-pays?
14) What is your current accounting/POS system?
15) Is your current purchase/inventory information downloadable to a CSV or spreadsheet?
16) Do you have a significant amount of other content that will need to co-exist with your store, such as a blog, support FAQs, or ancillary information?
Answers to these questions will give you a good start on selecting an eCommerce solution that will meet your needs.
Yes, PayPal has thorough instructions for setting up an account at www.PayPal.com, but it can take some time to get through the process. Since almost any web product that allows you to sell something takes PayPal as a payment gateway, it's a slam dunk for generating revenue dollars.
1) The username for PayPal is an e-mail address, and we recommend that we set up something generic that is either a shared email account or a mail list, like
2) You set up an account using the e-mail above, tie to a personal social security number or company EIN, and enter your checking account information.
3) PayPal will make 2 small deposits into the checking account.
4) You must check your account electronically or contact your bank for the details of these two transactions.
5) Log back into PayPal and enter the information about the deposits.
6) Enter your EIN or a credit card to verify (and lift the $500 withdrawl limit).
**Note: If you a re a non-profit, you can get reduced transaction fees, but you have to submit some additional paperwork that is actually reviewed by human beings. Add extra time if you're an official ".org".
To refund a PayPal payment:
You should note when looking at the orders that you can print a shipping label from PayPal, which simplifies things and is a nice way to track the process!
If your business handles credit card payments, you need to be concerned about the rules and regulations of safeguarding the sensitive cardholder data. I was reminded of this the other day when a charge for $9.95 showed up on my debit card from a website I've never visited. Since 2007 any business that accepts credit card payment--this probably means you--has been subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). If you're a huge business that processes a million or more credit card transactions per year, you have to hire an outside professional to audit your processes. If you're smaller than that, you can do it yourself by means of the Self-Assessment Questionnaire, or SAQ. The SAQ comes in four flavors, depending upon...
...how you take credit card payments.
If you just have a website that sells things and sends people to PayPal for payment, you get the easy version (A). If you take credit card payments over the Internet on your site, you have to do the longest version (D). What's the difference? Version A has about a dozen controls you have to have in place, Version D has around 225. Why do you need to fill this out and keep it on file? Because if you're ever investigated by your merchant bank for improperly handling credit card information, you could be subject to $50,000 penalty. If you have the SAQ filled out and ready to show the investigator, you're declared a 'safe harbor' and aren't penalized.
A little work now can head off a lot of grief in the future. We'll be contacting all our clients who do any online selling, even via PayPal in the near future to make sure you're covered.
As a first step in setting up a new PayPal account, you have to list the business name contact under which the account will be known to PayPal (and posted on a lot ofyour client-facing PayPal correspondence). Before you fill out this field, think carefully...think strategically...because once done, it is a colossal pain to change. Want to guess how we know this? You got it...recently had to review for one of our clients.
We would recommend that you make this your business name, since you never know if you will retire to the tropics, lose your CPA, etc.
Just so you're informed, here is the process:
Changing Your Business Contact Name in PayPal
To process your name change request, you need to fax in additional information. Please provide a current photo identification and one of the other following documents:
Please include a letter on company stationery indicating the primary email address, current name, address, and telephone number on the PayPal account, the reason for the name change, and the new business contact name.
To process your request efficiently, please ensure that your documents are valid and legible.
As always, any personally identifying information that you submit to PayPal remains secure and is never transmitted to any third party. If you are not able to upload or fax your documentation, you can mail the documents to their pubished address.
I'm going to let the cat of the bag here. One of my favorite websites for information on e-commerce is PracticalEcommerce.com. It consistently has relevant, practical articles and tips. Here's an example...
their 10 Great E-commerce Ideas for June 2010. One of them rang especially true. We're getting more and more interest from our clients about live chat for their websites. It's a great way for prospective customers to ask a quick question and get an immediate answer, rather than writing an email. (yes, the day is here when e-mail is actually too slow in some cases). We've experimented with several live chat components and have some winners we can recommend. Contact us if you're interested in learning more.
What is affiliate marketing and is it right for you? In its basic form, internet affiliate marketing is one site advertising another site's goods or services for sale. When someone follows the link and buys the item, the selling site gives the refering site a comission. One of the most successful sites doing this is Amazon.com. Consider our friend Steve's page selling ipod speakers. About a quarter way down the page, you'll see a box that says 'purchase from Amazon'. You click the button and it takes you to Amazon and puts the ipod speaker in your shopping basket. If you complete the purchase, Amazon gives Steve part of the purchase price.
There are pros and cons of being an affiliate an offering your wares through affiliates...
For those interested in being affiliates, the pros are that you don't have to stock merchandise, ship it or deal with customers. On the down side, you don't get the customers names for followup, and the comissions tend to be low: in the 6-15% range for Amazon, for instance.
For those of you interested in selling things through affiliates: the pros are more exposure of your products through potentially high-quality related sites. You also get to set the bar on how agressive your affiliates are: the more commission you pay, the more affiliates you'll get signing up and the more heavily they'll market your offerings. On the downside is the initial setup of the affiliate program and the ongoing work of paying your affiliates and maintaing a good relationship with them.
There are a number of third-party brokers one can use to manage affiliate programs, such as Comission Junction or ClickBank. The problems with them are that they also take a cut of the transaction and are either expensive or difficult to set up.
For those of our clients using Virtuemart, there is an extension that allows you to run your own affiliate program. If you'd like to learn more, please contact us and we'll help you decide if becoming an affiliate or offering your products through affiliates is viable for you.
WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress site into an online store. Here's a plain tour of the main pieces so you know where things live. These steps are for WordPress 6.x and later with a current WooCommerce version. Screen names can shift a bit between WooCommerce releases.
Still deciding on a platform? See Choosing an E-commerce Platform: Questions to Answer First.
WooCommerce > Settings has tabs for General, Products, Tax, Shipping, Payments, Accounts & Privacy, Emails, Integration, and Advanced. Recent versions may show a few more tabs.
If you only sell digital products or services, mark products as Virtual or Downloadable and you can skip shipping.
Turn on taxes in WooCommerce > Settings > General (Enable tax rates and calculations), then set them up on the Tax tab. Sales tax rules are tricky. Talk to your accountant about what you need to collect.
To refund, open the order, click Refund, and enter the amount. Depending on the payment method, the refund may go back automatically or you may need to process it with the payment provider.
If you'd rather spend your time running your business, our boutique hosting, available to our clients, including sites moved over from another host, takes a proactive approach to security and monitoring, with nightly backups, 24/7 outage monitoring, and ongoing core CMS updates.