Guide to the Strategic Links of Turnkey eCommerce Hosting

eCommerce credit card processing is a natural value added service for Web hosting companies to offer.

Establishing an Internet E-commerce presence is quickly becoming a must for businesses worldwide. The practices that govern E-commerce — the infrastructures that support it, the institutions that manage it and the programs that run it — are still developing. Web hosts and ISP’s are the primary providers and managers of the hardware that link the threads of the Web together: They are at the heart of defining the direction E-commerce will take in the next century; and, they have discovered that they are perfectly positioned to provide a whole range of services beyond their central mission.

E-commerce credit card processing is a natural value added service for web hosting companies to offer. Until very recently, the process of managing the disparate elements of an Internet presence could be complex and frustrating. Creating an E-commerce web site and locating it on a server could take less time than arranging the various services needed to quickly and safely make a transaction; negotiating the creation of each could take many months and the functionality of the system could be impaired by lack of integration. To solve these problems many web hosting companies offer what are called ‘real-time’ Turnkey E-commerce packages, which boast fast credit card processing, end-to-end service and quick installation — sometimes within a few days!

Introduction to ‘Real Time’, Turnkey E-commerce Hosting
There are four basic links in any credit card E-commerce transaction: The web site ‘shopping cart’; the web host; the ‘Payment Gateway’ (or credit card processing agent) and the Merchant Account (the financial institution that credits the E-commerce vendor). There are many ways that these links can be joined and these services and products can be purchased as packages or individually. In order to achieve what is called ‘real-time’ credit card processing, each link must be able to successfully transmit information down the chain to the next, almost instantly. However it is done, the buzzword is integration.

When a web host offers a Turnkey E-commerce solution they are offering an off-the-shelf, meshed package of parts made to work with each other. When they say ‘real time,’ they mean that they can confirm or deny a credit card within a few minutes!

A Guide to Secure Turnkey E-commerce Links

Your Shopping Cart

Like most retailers, an E-merchant has a display window for their products. In E-commerce this is know as the ‘Shopping Cart’. It is the first link in an E-commerce transaction. In a Turnkey E-commerce package, the Shopping Cart is provided for you by the hosting company and is designed to smoothly integrate with their system.

The Shopping Cart is split into two parts, the ‘storefront’ and the ‘cash register’. A good shopping cart allows customers to select several items from the storefront and purchase them as a group when they reach the cash register. The cash register will present the purchaser with an order form that will collect all of the relevant credit card information for processing. This information is then transmitted through what is known as a Secured Socket Layer (SSL), a sophisticated encryption system, to the credit card processing agent (‘Payment Gateway’ in E-commerce terms).

Your web host: SSL, the key to securing consumer confidence!