OK OK OK I know that i've just about exhausted my question asking prevliges... maybe spelling as well... lol... but please someone give me a blueprint to this ecommerce stuff...

how did you get started, from set-up to developer... there are so many avenues to go and so little people willing to help you out from teh companies... i've called Nova and I've called Authorize.net and both support teams serisouly blew left me on the phone with dead silence...

I just need to know the steps to go about doing this...

steps 1: you get an idea
" " 2: form a DBA?

someone help... please... :peace:

Wow, you are asking an entire novel of questions here. If you have a legitimate Idea, product, etc.. that you are trying to sell, in your position the first thing I would do is go speak to a lawyer, how the company will be formed, taxes, etc needs to be taken care of.

After that how are you going to sell it?

What payment methods will you take?

Does it need to be shipped?

How will you handle customer support?

Do you need other staff?

Where will I host it?

How much do I need?

How will I market it?

Can I actually sell it?


Hope this helps. Its hard to try and answer all your questions, research needs to be done on your part. Start deciding how you want to do things,

It is a long road.

Good Luck!

i already have an LLC, and i'm thinking of doing a DBA but i'm looking to hear from others that are already set... in a sense of the steps they took... all those questions i have answered... i am thinking of going with Mal's ecommerce and optioncart, hosting is no problem but merchant accounts are becoming a problem as no one is willing to explain things to you. I asked Authorizenet a few questions and they were silent as a bat and my bank uses Nova and that support person was of no help and the final decision and reason as to why i don't want to go through Nova... she wasn't interested in my questions she was trying to sign me up right off the back...

what steps have peolple taken to get setup and working...

steps 1: product
steps 2: plan
steps 3: design
steps 4: formed a DBA, LLC, ect.
steps 5: Obtained a merchant account and so on

basically how did you get setup and running?

thanks for the response Jimerson

Well essentially if you have the product you want to sell the next major step is figuring out how you want to sell it online. A lot of the e-commerce systems that you can buy off the shelf are catered to selling widgets with a limited set of parameters. Examples include a t-shirt. A t-shirt will have really two parameters, the size and the color...and maybe the 'brand' of t-shirt. Most e-commerce carts can allow you to post things as simple as this...however say you want to sell books online where there are multiple parameters (number of pages, author, description, title, publisher, etc) then you either need to customize your off the shelf product or invest in having a custom e-commerce cart developed.

So, what exactly are you looking to sell online? Answering this question will either lead you to a fairly inexpensive off the shelf product or a more expensive, but easily customized, custom application.

Once you've decided on what you're going to sell then you'll have a better idea of what software you're going to use.

The next step is deciding how many products you want to sell on the site when you go live. If you start out with 10, it will be easier to just manually enter them into the database or content management system. If say over 500, you'll want to develope a way of easily importing this data into your database (or hire a data entry person to help you out!)

After selecting the software the next step is to enter in the product data into the database. Based upon the e-commerce application chosen this can either be easy or difficult...most of the off the shelf applications are fairly strait forward these days.

At this stage you'll also want to take your Merchant Gateway username/password you've received and specify it at the e-commerce setup level. Most e-commerce systems will walk you through the setup process and prompt you to select which Merchant Gateway you'll be using. In most cases if you select either to go with Authorize.net or a Verisign product (we recommend Authorize.net) you should be safe.


In choosing to accept credit cards online you've really got to have two parties involved:

1. Merchant Account Processor (who you're bank works with to process credit cards)
2. Merchant Gateways (examples are Authorize.net, Payflow Pro, etc.)

Essentially whatever e-commerce package you select will in most cases be compatible with the top Merchant Gateways (i.e. OsCommerce, etc.) but it's always good to find out first before making the purchase!

We've personally used Authorize.net for many years (as well as sent many clients over to them) and they've been great. Remember if you do select to go with Authorize.net that after you're confirmed and your account made live that you then login, OK all of your contact information, and set your account on TEST mode. By default Authorize.net will have you account in this mode. After the tests have been successfully placed go ahead and switch your Authorize.net account over to LIVE mode and you'll be ready to start taking in those orders :)

Hope this info helps. Without knowing exactly what you're selling it's hard to come up with specific recommendations on what software to go with. If the product you're selling has a high degree of fraud associated with it (think of people selling online pharmaceuticals, viagra type drugs, basically anything that sounds questionnable) you're chances of getting OK'ed by Authorize.net (and the other US based merchant gateways) are slim.

Thanks,
Rick

quick response and then i have to come back...

i'm selling through dropshipping i have a few manufacturers lined up and ready to go so (selling furniture)

Well generally for large price items like that you will need additional functionality that most of the off the shelf packages dont offer..mainly:

1. Multiple images for a particular product (for furniture if you look at a high end site like www.hermanmiller.com you'll notice the product is displayed in an assortment of different environments, which is important for the end user.)

2. Multiple shipping options (I know UPS currently has a weight limit of 150 lbs (I think) per package...so you'll need to either use a drop shipper or use something like LTL shipping or another large shipping outfit)

3. custom reports for each manufacturer (if you're going to be drop shipping a product (are you?) directly from the manufacturer you may want to see what sort of EDI systems they're using to handle the transaction)

Hope this helps!
-Rick

yeah dropshipping... I have all the info from the manufacturers, images, ect. I am using Mal's ecommerce... did you create a DBA for your merchant account or is that not necessary?

That is not quicky to describe it here

Try to use professional services.
http://osCommerce4you.com It is rather professional and cost-effective. Try it.

yeah dropshipping... I have all the info from the manufacturers, images, ect. I am using Mal's ecommerce... did you create a DBA for your merchant account or is that not necessary?

You seem to keep coming back to the "dba" question. If I'm reading your question/comments correctly, "dba" just stands for "Doing Business As..." and has nothing to do with merchant accounts. It really only has to do with how you want to organize your business.

You've said you already have an LLC established. If you want to do business under that name, or have that be the name people see on their credit card receipts/statements, then you don't need to set up a DBA. If your business license is set up as "Jones Family LLC", but you want to be known as "Fantastic Furniture Guys", then you'll need to file the appropriate paperwork with your state/city/municipality/whatever to get a license to "do business as" the other business name. That's the only place a DBA really comes into play.

Your merchant service provider will want all these names (corporate and your dba, if applicable) when it comes time to fill out the paperwork.

When you apply for a merchant account, you'll need to know at a minimum these things...

Average dollar amount per transaction
Average monthly sales
Your gateway solution (the company that hooks between your shopping cart and the merchant services folks, ie authorize.net)

...and sometimes they'll want to know...

Your return policy
Your potential customers
Any marketing information/brochures/etc

Your best bet now is to go and find a good banker and talk to them face to face. The folks at the merchant service providers are talking way over your head at this point and you need to get up to speed on their lingo and how the whole process works. Hopefully you can find a nice personal banker (that understands ecommerce?... eeeek!) that will take some time with you and explain the ins and outs.

-kurt