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E-Commerce, Shopping Cart and Online Subscription Programs

So you want to sell something online? Or allow customers to make payments or reservations online? We can handle that!

Compass Point Media offers e-commerce programs that allow you to sell products online, sell services online, make reservations online and even sell e-books online. If you are new to Ecommerce, this page will serve as a primer. We encourage you to review this before you contact us for any Ecommerce solutions.

We provide Ecommerce using totally in-house programming and security. We do not outsource any part of your Ecommerce site. Many other companies use third party software and "house" your e-commerce solution. The problem in this is that they may or may not be able to set up your shopping cart or checkout system exactly to your liking. We can design your e-commerce solution EXACTLY to your specifications, reflecting your unique innovation and style.

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 Coding

A shopping cart is simply the brains that allow the viewer to keep track of their 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). We can design this to your exact specifications.

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

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

You 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 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 either an approval and an authorization number or 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?

Prices will run as low as 15.00/month! These prices are the best we have been able to find so far; I recommend Co-Card Merchant Solutions run by Chuck Moerbe, with a good support staff and a very reliable network access. They have the best pricing options we have been able to find so far. They will walk merchants through the entire process and will be there in the future for you as well. There are NO LONG TERM CONTRACTS and merchants can elect to go with a traditional multi-tiered fee schedule (Qualified, Mid-Qualified and Non-Qualified) or Interchange Plus. To avoid any down-time with processing sales they have teamed up with some of the best and well respected companies in the industry.

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 and reliable.

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