When you are ready to start selling products on the internet, you'll need to select a hosting package which will allow you to use a shopping cart, which works like this: A customer will come to your site and "browse" through your store. They will then choose a product to purchase, add it to their cart, and proceed to checkout. Our Ecommerce Plans allow you to set up an advanced shopping cart / online store such as Magento, Zencart, or Miva Merchant 5. All three programs enable you to sell your products online with no knowledge of programming. With their easy to use, built-in wizards, you can upload your catalog and inventory, set up automated shipping, process payments online, track your online orders, and promote your web site through search engines.

More information about our Ecommerce Hosting Plans

Here's a brief overview of how processing credit cards online breaks down:

online store --> credit card processor --> merchant account --> bank account

Credit card processor: An example we recommend is Authorize.net. Magento, Zencart, and Miva have a built in module which hooks into Authorize.net (there are numerous others as well). When your customer goes through the "check out" process, their credit card information is passed to Authorize.net.

Merchant Account: This is pretty much a business bank account which works in conjunction with the credit card processor. When the credit card processor processes the credit card, the money is placed in your Merchant Account. After a few days when the money has cleared, the merchant account deposits the money into your bank account (such as your Wells Fargo account).

We have made it easy to get set up with a Merchant Account and Payment Processor by partnering with E-OnlineData. E-OnlineData offers access to high quality Credit Card Processing and Payment Solutions.

Sign up with E-OnlineData to take credit cards

When collecting personal and credit card information from your customers, you'll need to make sure that the transaction is secure. This is achieved with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology. SSL encrypts the connection so that a hacker cannot "listen" in on the connection and steal your customers' information. All of our eStore Hosting Plans already include the SSL techonogy. However, in addition to encrypting the connection, and SSL certificate is needed to tell your customer that you can be trusted. We offer several SSL certificates for you to choose from. All our certificates are high quality, and provide the security and peace of mind you expect for your business.

Purchase an SSL Certificate and make your site secure

Setting up an online store does not guarantee visitors and purchases. You have to let the internet know you're open for business. This is done mainly through Search Engines. There are different types of search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN. Some search engines offer "pay-per-click" as an option, meaning you can pay to have your site listed based on keywords which you choose. There are also services which will submit your site to different search engines for a nominal fee. We offer on such service. We have partnered with Bpath to bring you quality WebSite Promotion and Search Engines Submittal Tools, which will make your website "findable" in the top search engines (Yahoo, Google, Alta Vista, etc).

Sign up for our WebSite Promotion & Search Engine Submittal Packages