The Complete E-Commerce Book, Second Edition: Design, Build & Maintain a Successful Web-based Business

You’ve chosen your e-commerce model and found the perfect products/services to offer on your e-commerce site. You’ve also thoughtfully planned your website. Using your blueprint and storyboards you’ve completed the design of your website. It is now time to extend everything to the Web.

The basic e-commerce website should:

• Store any number of products that have been selected by the customer prior to the actual processing of the purchase. This system is normally referred to as a “shopping cart,” processing is usually referred to as “check out.”
• Provide a secure server with SSL encryption for transactions, email transmission, and storage.
• Accept credit cards and offer automatic, real-time processing. But offline processing via an encrypted email form is also a viable option if you choose to forego the following options.
  • Allow the customer to leave the site, return at a later time, and still find past items in their shopping cart.
  • Allow cross selling, i.e.; offers a similar product to the one that the customer is interested in, if the chosen product is unavailable.
  • Provide processing status though a numbered tracking system.

Add to this list: acquiring a domain name, a merchant account, and a digital certificate, and you are in the e-commerce business.