If you want to sell online three main components are required to accept payments - a merchant account, a shopping cart solution and a secure payment gateway.

Online sales are increasing in popularity, no question about it. And e-tailers are now rewarding the Internet shoppers with online-only deals and bargain basement prices. It’s largely thanks to the security systems and excellent marketing practices that are now in place that consumers have warmed up to the online buying shopping experience.

So you want to get in on this action? Well first you’ll have to get familiar with some of the jargon. Stick with us it’s painless.

If you want to sell online three main components are required to accept payments - a merchant account, a shopping cart solution and a secure payment gateway. These components can be implemented separately by different providers or they can be implemented in combination by Web developers, hosting companies, merchant account providers, Internet service providers or eCommerce companies.

The merchant account allows you to manually accept credit card payments and process them and is issued by a bank or financial service provider. It may take up to a month to obtain and also bear in mind that you’ll most likely have to upgrade to an Internet account. Also, Card Not Present transactions must be handled by the account, so be sure to look into that aspect during the processing.

Now it’s decision time. You now have to think carefully about how many visitors (traffic) are expected and also how many transactions you expect on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. How many products/services do you plan on selling on your website? How big will my site be in the next 12 to 24-months? What images, video, audio, downloads, flash presentations will be used and to what extent?

This will determine your needs and the type of providers you’ll have to employ.

Many Web hosts have extensive experience in the eCommerce arena and have put turnkey solutions in place. Often this is the quickest, most efficient and easiest method to get your store on the Web. When you look into Web hosting providers, shopping cart solutions often (not always though) include the following components:

Catalog: Displays your products and services on a user-friendly interface.

Storefront with Shopping Cart: Provides customers with a method to select products and services for purchase.

Payment System Processing: Used to calculate taxes and shipping costs while enabling secure and real-time transactions through your site.

SSL Certificate: Secure Sockets Layer which refers to the type of encryption to make Internet transactions hack-free, and secure.

There are even providers out there that supply you with an “out of the box” solution which includes all your system and service needs from hosting a website, and developing a storefront and catalog system, to providing a merchant account, building a payment gateway, and executing payment processing. Cost will be the factor you’ll have to weigh but time to market and convenience are the big takeaways.

Depending on your business needs, you can build your own solution, developing each component separately. Or, you can buy or lease a product, or join a service that incorporates some or all of these components. In any case it important to consider where you will host your website.

Here is a summary of the options for consideration:

* Buy the software and install it on your own server.
* Buy the software and outsource it to your ISP or Web hosting company’s server.
* Sign up with a Web hosting company, ISP or eCommerce provider that has shopping cart software available for lease.
* Sign up with a service where the software runs off its server.