If you are new to Ecommerce, this page will serve as a primer. We encourage you to read up before you contact us for any Ecommerce solutions.

We provide Ecommerce using totally in-house programming and security. We do not outsource any function of your Ecommerce site. Stated another way, your web pages are all on our server which gives us complete control over how your pages look and act.

There are basically two things you need to know about an Ecommerce site--the shopping cart, and the means of capturing credit card information. For credit card capture, there are basically two methods, automatic and manual capture.

Shopping Cart
A shopping cart is simply the programming that allows the viewer to keep tract of his or her selections. It is basically a "shopping list" with the quantity of an item desired. A good shopping cart should list the product name and quantity, as well as price extensions and subtotals. A really good shopping cart calculates shipping immediately and automatically. A shopping cart should be able to be modified by the user (add or delete items, or change amount). Finally, it should be eay for the user to figure out where the shopping cart page is located, and they should be able to view it from anywhere on the site.

After the user has added all the items to their cart, it is time to check out. The user must have a secure page to enter their credit card information. When they do that and click submit, this is when the capture of funds begins.

Credit Card Capture
As we said before, there are two ways to capture funds from the customer's credit card; automatically or manually. We can handle both methods for you, and we'll describe them here.

Manual Capture
We bring this up first because your company may already have credit card processing equipment at your office. In this case, we can allow you to retrieve your customers' orders from a secure database online, print out the orders from the Web, then process the orders just like for any other "brick and mortar" sale. The advantage of this is that there is no additional account to apply for, no additional bills to deal with, and no additional charges per month. There are two disadvantages: first, for a large volume of business running the card information by hand can be time consuming, and secondly, your customer doesn't know whether his/her card was approved until you process, and if the card is not approved, you have to call or email the customer for alternate payment. You may even lose the sale.

Automatic Capture
With Automatic Capture, the customer enters their credit card and other information on a secure page. When they click submit to complete the order, the encrypted information is sent to a PAYMENT GATEWAY account you set up, which basically contacts the credit card network (just like a machine at a restaurant or store), obtains funds authorization, and sends back a) an approval and an authorization number or b) a decline along with an explanation. Based on the results, the customer either sees a page thanking them for their order and giving them an authorization, or asking them to provide a different credit card number.

Additionally, an entry is made in your orders database on your site, complete with all of the order and credit card number -- just like a detailed paper invoice. When you log in, you may see your orders. Unlike manual capture, the funds have already been "captured" and are ready to go into your bank account. You simply print out the invoices and fill the orders.

For those of you familiar with this, you will still need to "close the batch" at the end of the day from your computer, which basically gathers all of the funds together and makes the actual bank deposit.

The bonus with automatic capture is that we can provide an online form that allows you to process physical card transactions from your place of business, using your own web-connected computer as a processing machine.

How Much Does Automatic Capture (a payment Gateway) Cost?
If your credit is good, these costs apply to you. These prices are the best we have been able to find so far. Also the provider, Network One Financial, has the best support staff and a very reliable network access. Down time means frustrated customers and lost sales. Here are the costs:

Contrary to prevailing opinions, Ecommerce is not extremely costly or difficult to set up. What is critical is making sure the site is friendly to navigate and shop in. If you'd like to reach us for a quotation on Ecommerce please contact us as below or submit request form.

Compass Point Media
Los Angeles, CA
310 701 3129
213 386 8829 Fax
help@compasspointmedia.com