How E-Commerce Works

Consumer

Catalog

This portion of the website describes your products and services. Often known as the web design, it includes the use of graphics and text.

Websites come is a variety of packages and programming languages. When negotiating the development of your site, hosting, bandwidth options, and search engine optimization are important to determine.

It is also important to have your Terms and Conditions page available here. The details of your refund and warranty policy should be clearly stated.

Costs

Web catalogs run from free to thousands of dollars. They are often billed for development and also a monthly maintenance fee.

Cart Program

Shopping Cart

The shopping cart is the brain of your website. It controls the programming that identifies how much each item costs, the tax rate to assess and what shipping charges to apply.

Shopping carts come with various options, and programming languages.

The shopping cart is often initiated by a “buy now” button and sends its information to the Gateway.

Costs

Shopping carts run from free to thousandsof dollars. They can be billed monthly or by the product.

Gateway

Gateway

The gateway manages the check out process. The most important aspect of the gateway is security of the credit card number. The correct use of encryption and certificates is vital to maintain the privacy and integrity required by Visa, MasterCard and Discover.

There are several companies offering gateways. Two of the more popular ones are Authorize.Net and VeriSign.

The Gateway is often initiated by a “Check Out Now” button.

Costs

Gateway companies bill a set up fee and a monthly gateway access fee.

Typical set up fees run $79 to $949, with monthly fees from $20 to $79

Total Merchant Concepts

Processor

Total Merchant Concepts receives the payment request from the gateway. We then contact the cardholder’s bank to authorize the card (determine if it is a good card with the available credit).

We issue a response (approved or declined) back to the gateway and capture the sale for settlement.

This entire process takes between 4 and 8 seconds.

Costs

Contact Our Team for pricing tailored for your business.