Introduction to E-Commerce

Balancing needs and options

• Are you targeting the local market, international market or both? If you want to do business with international visitors, acceptance of credit cards is essential. Local customers may be satisfied with or even prefer paying by cheque or electronic transfers.
• What features do you require? Will a simple catalogue do or is an extensive online mall with a shopping basket an essential ingredient?

• There are a range of shopping cart programs available with price tags ranging from absolutely free to thousands of Dollars. Would paying more money for a more fully featured solution help reduce your daily workload? Will you be able to get the support you need if something goes wrong?
• Consider the payment processing options. Real-time payment processing has many advantages, but offline processing may be good enough.
• Do you require a secure SSL-enabled web server? If you use a third-party Commerce Service Provider (CSP) for payment processing, this may sometimes not even be necessary.