I'm in the web design biz. I design websites for clients who already have domains and hosting, and for those who don't - I can get both. However, I have little experience dealing with full-fledged e-commerce sites. Here's the thing...

A canadian rural small business, who sells products to decorate the home with has asked me to get them established on the web, so that they can sell their products that way. They have zero computer knowledge, as they do not even own one. What do I need to do to get them setup on the web, accepting credit cards and shipping products in an extremely orderly and organized fashion?

Thanks.

Honestly, as someone who has purchased services from people who turned out not to really know what they're doing, I'd say that if you have no experience and don't know how to approach the job the best thing you could do is not to do it. Subcontract the job to someone else. You'll still make money, you won't spend a bunch of time, and your client will be happy with the result.

But... are they going to get a computer? Someone will have to make product changes, respond to your client's customers when they have problems, etc. You can't sell products on the web without someone managing the process. If they aren't going to that themselves, someone will have to be paid to do it.

Well, when I don't know how to do something, I ask, research, ask some more, try to find someone who has done it before, bug them a bit, and get a better idea of what is involved.

While I wouldn't suggest going into it not knowing what you are doing, if you simply outsource it, then next time you might be in the same boat. Outsourcing could be good for this, but I get the feeling this isn't a big client exactly, and they might be a bit more open to the learning curve (both you and them), so this might be the best opportunity for you to take the clam by the shell and go for it.

I'm not suggesting you learn perl or php if there's a need for some custom scripting, that you probably should outsource to save time. If they don't have a computer, are they planning on getting one? Can you supply this as well? Sre they willing to pay for a complete solution or are they looking more for a $200 site?

I don't think this is beyond you, but if you do, take JayC's advice and treat it more as a referral, or align yourself with someone if you think you'd like to handle other parts (like just concentrate on sales).

It seems that a lot of web hosting places now offer e-commerce packages that come with super simple shopping cart programs like miva merchant. A lot of them also have partnerships with merchant account providers and can help you get set up to accept credit cards.

I wouldn't normally recommend Interland, but they are one company that offers such services:

http://www.interland.com/products300.asp

It would be a lot easier if your client was already accepting credit card orders.

Originally posted by Chicken
While I wouldn't suggest going into it not knowing what you are doing, if you simply outsource it, then next time you might be in the same boat. Outsourcing could be good for this, but I get the feeling this isn't a big client exactly, and they might be a bit more open to the learning curve (both you and them), so this might be the best opportunity for you to take the clam by the shell and go for it.Yeah, I was going to go into that option, but cut it short. Of course it could be an opportunity to learn, but the client should know that it's not currently your area of expertise. Price the job, and build its timeline, accordingly.

And if you do outsource, it still could be a learning opportunity if you keep your hands in it and even do parts of the project yourself. By letting someone else do the actual work while being "in the loop" by being the intermediary between them and the client, you'd learn something about all of the necessary elements.

I'm planning on offering e-commerce services as well and would be interested in any more details involved in the process.

I definitely agree that you shouldn't mislead a customer but, even if you plan on outsourcing the solution, you usually recieve better service the more informed you are.

From what I've found, here is what I think is needed:

1) The customer must have a merchant account to accept online credit card orders. You'll see many posts around here about obtaining one of these. You can go with either a third party provider (not a true account but easier to obtain and lower initial costs) or a direct merchant account (your name appears on the bill). Many of these providers offer referral fees so you can pick up a little extra income by recommending one of them.
Extra note:Merchant account providers all use different payment gateways (the part where the credit card info is sent to the bank) and depending on what gateway they use you will have varying choices of shopping cart software that you can use. Authorize.net seems to be the most common payment gateway.

2) The customer will need a shopping cart. I don't know too much about this and this is where a little clarification would help. Miva Merchant seems to be the most popular but is also extremely expensive. I'm assuming that these more expensive solutions take care of all the database and programming details so that you can setup e-commerce with little or no programming knowledge. I believe their role is to handle all of the inventory and pricing but I'm not sure about this.

3) Bringing it all together. Again, I am not too clear on this step. I believe that the shopping cart software sends all of the order details to an order page when the customer chooses to "checkout" or buy the items. This brings the customer directly to the order page which I believe is linked directly to the payment gateway so when the credit card details are entered and submitted all of the information goes off to the bank. The following should also occur: the corresponding items are deducted out of inventory, the people involved in the order (i.e. accounting and shipping) recieve an order notifcation.

That should be about all the customer needs to get setup with basic e-commerce. Of course, there is the website which lists the items and the customer service and all of the other details that go along with running a business but most of these details are no different than a non-ecommerce site.

Any additional clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.