eCommerce Hosting

eCommerce and eCommerce Hosting Knowledge

What Is eCommerce?

ECommerce (also known as e-commerce) is short of Electronic Commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over Internet. It allows visitors to view and select merchandise or services, place an order, and submit payment from your website.

What Does An eCommerce Website Need?

Merchant Account:
A merchant account allows you to accept credit cards through an online payment gateway. If your business needs to accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express to boost sales and income, a merchant account is necessary.

Some ecommerce sites like to use simpler ecommerce solution such as PayPal to accept credit card and bank transfers. With PayPal, there is no merchant account required and no monthly, set-up, or cancellation fees. You can start accepting payments right away. But, there are transaction fees. PayPal account holders can also pay you through PayPal. Read more about PayPal

Shopping Cart System:
Shopping cart software allows ecommerce webmasters to setup, run, and maintain online stores easily. The shopping cart system offers the easiest way for your customers to shop. There are many types of software that you can use, such as osCommerce Shopping Cart, Agora Shopping Cart, Zen Cart Shopping Cart, etc. Shopping carts are basic plug-in for most ecommerce hosting solutions.

SSL Certificate:
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate, also known as digital certificates, is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser.
When customers visit a website to make an online purchase, more and more people are looking for the padlock icon and “https” prefix in their browser address bar. They want to make sure that their credit card numbers are encrypted and cannot be intercepted. If your web site doesn’t have an SSL Certificate, visitors may leave before making a purchase. They don’t want to take any risk of unsafe online purchase.

Many web hosts offers shared SSL certificate for their ecommerce hosting plans. If shared SSL certificated is not good enough for you, you can buy a private SSL certificate.
Check dedicated SSL certificate information:

What eCommerce Hosting Services Do You Need?

ECommerce business doesn’t mean that you need an expensive ecommerce hosting plan. Actually, more and more cheap hosting providers offer quality ecommerce hosting services. “Cheap” or “expensive” is not the criteria for selecting an ecommerce website host. For small to medium sized e-business, a reliable cheap ecommerce hosting plan might be the best choice. When we understand what an ecommerce website needs, choosing a host is an easy thing.

Some ecommerce web hosts are partners with merchant account providers. They may have better deals for you if you really need a merchant account. Before you set up a merchant account with your web host’s partner, we suggestion is, shopping around to find a merchant account service that most fit in with your e-business need. If you just need to accept PayPal payments for your website, most ecommerce hosting providers have integrating PayPal into your site solution.

Different shopping cart software has different functions. Check various shopping carts information and select one you want to use for your website; then check if this shopping cart software offered by the web host. Don’t buy any shopping cart software before you check it with your web host. Most popular carts have been already installed with the ecommerce hosting package.

SSL - Secure Sockets Layer certificate is necessary for your ecommerce business. Using a Free Shared SSL that the web host offered or using a Dedicated SSL that you have to buy, it all depends on what images you want to show to your clients. Dedicated SSL gives you a more professional image because your secure site's URL will be the same as your domain name. If your website is http://www.yourdomain.com, your secure URL will be https://www.yourdomain.com/. The Shared SSL secure address of your site would be https://something.domainofyourhost.com.

Password Protected Directories and Open PGP/GPG Encryption are necessary ecommerce hosting features your websites need. Write down all your questions and talk with the web host you are going to choose. Make sure you have all answers and are satisfied with the answers before you sign up the hosting plan.

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What’s The Easy Way To Do eCommerce?

There are some ecommerce solution providers that offer merchant services, such as customizable online store design, shopping cart, order processing, payment processing, marketing, reports and statistics, website hosting, etc. To use such services will make ecommerce much easier. After making some simple set up, you can start to sell your products or services right away. But, the cost of using merchant solution may be more than “Do It Yourself”.

“Yahoo Merchant Solutions” offers reliable and affordable ecommerce services. If you like to sell on ebay, Ebay Stores would be the best choice.