Set Up An Account As An e-Commerce Merchant In 3 Steps
Set Up An Account As An e-Commerce Merchant In 3 Steps
Soon after the advent of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, the e-commerce wave hit and hit big. E-commerce opened up an entirely new sales channel for small and large businesses alike: the World Wide Web. Today, about $4 trillion worth of B2C and B2B sales are facilitated by e-commerce transactions in the U.S. alone. E-commerce transactions account for about 16% of the total value of annual U.S. transactions.
For any primarily brick-and-mortar business owner who has been considering building an e-commerce website - or who wants to add this functionality to their existing website - this is the time to do it. Just getting for yourself a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars changing hands online each year could mean thousands of dollars or more in additional annual revenues for you.
Setting up an e-commerce website or modifying your existing site to handle e-commerce transactions is not difficult. Here is how to set up an account as an e-commerce merchant in 3 steps:
1. Select an e-commerce shopping cart:
You will need to add what is commonly called a shopping cart feature to your website. This is a software application that allows you to display your available products and services on your site at a given price. Customers can add the products to the shopping cart and, when ready, they can pay for them via credit card during the "checkout" phase.
2. Choose a payment gateway:
Your shopping cart will be connected to a payment gateway service that takes care of the actual processing of your customers' credit cards and handles the transfer of monies from their account to yours. Make sure that the payment gateway provider you choose offers services that are compatible with your shopping cart of choice (in #1 above).
3. Find a merchant account provider:
The merchant account provider works to handle the administrative side of handling the transactions. While the payment gateway handles the actual logistics of the payment process, the merchant account provider is the one who is actually responsible for the transactions until the monies are deposited into your account. In some cases, the merchant account provider you choose will automatically be linked with a certain payment gateway. The fees and discount rates that merchant account providers charge vary, so compare the fee structure of at least 3 providers before selecting one.
Consider these 3 elements as you set up an account as an e-commerce merchant on your website - and let the extra revenues start rolling in.