Printer Friendly Version                                    Back to Capsules    Building an E-Commerce Site The infrastructure for an e-commerce site requires bringing together various people, companies, and technologies. One of the first steps will be to decide whether you wish to orchestrate that yourself or whether you will rely on a consultant. The process will take a few months, generally. It begins with somebody to design your site. This individual may only take on the design function or may also be a full-blown e-commerce consultant, capable of overseeing the whole project. The person should have experience in building other e-commerce sites. Your site needs to be hosted on a computer server, generally at an Internet Service Provider or a hosting specialist. If you don't already have a Web address, you will now want to get one. The Online Store A main task will be to build the online store -- the area where clients will do their shopping. There are templates available for building these stores yourself or with the help of a tech-savvy friend or relative, often from major companies that will serve as hosts. But such generic sites tend to be more inflexible, less eye pleasing, and slower loading than custom sites. From a commerce perspective, the centrepiece of the store is the shopping cart, which people use to load up on their prospective purchases and pay for them. There are several good varieties of software around for the cart, which you can license, so weigh that against suggestions from designers to build your own. Make sure, however, that the shopping cart can handle the different tax rates of the Canadian marketplace. Processing Transactions You will need a merchant account – generally from a bank -- for handling credit card transactions on your site. The merchant account will probably be different from any existing one you have and will cost more unless you are already handling a large number of off-site purchases. Beyond the bank's merchant account, you will need a company to process and authorize the actual credit card transactions for you on the site in real time. Your customers will be transported to that processor's secure server, where the transaction will take place, with notification sent to you and the customer. Some of the payment processors will allow your business to use their merchant account as well, although perhaps at a higher rate than the bank. If you expect the number of transactions will be small, you may choose to handle the processing yourself. Customers could simply be advised it takes 24 hours to handle a transaction and your regular staff could carry out the function manually. Fulfillment & Security Issues Finally, you must fulfill orders, which requires setting up a system for handling the packing and shipping – and the issues of exporting, if you are selling beyond Canada. And you must pay attention to security and privacy for your e-commerce store, since trust is a crucial ingredient in online transactions. If you would like more information or assistance with building an e-commerce site for your organization, please contact us.