Starting an online business

[Xtro]

Friend of mine is going into business selling body jewellery and the like.

Her and her partner are used to selling at trade fairs, expo's and the like so already have a clue but where they are stumped is the online side of things which is what they want to do full time.

They are presently using worldpay and paypal (if they are the same forgive me) but I suggested they implement their own secure payment system so they can be paid direct. They reckon they won't get many users using this (!?) as "they will feel safer using worldpay as they might think we are ripping them off so worldpay will cover any monies paid".

I think thats barmy.

Anyway ranting aside - they asked me to help. So of course I'm asking you guys Any ideas? Which service, is it easy to put in the site, etc etc.

Me has no clue.

Also neither of them are coders so they'll have to pay for someone to do the site. I have no idea of costs here either, it will be an online catalogue - any idea (roughly) how much we are talking?

thanks in advance

 

[Padwah]

If they are set up as a registered business they can set up an ePDQ with Barclays which looks good, is automatic, completely secure and has better rates than both Worldpay and Paypal. The only downside is that you have to have a Barclays business account. SHould be more info Here

 

[Xtro]

Thanks a lot mate, thats a very useful post and link, I shall pass it on!

 

[SheepCow]

I've only had experience with Worldpay and they seemed quite nice. You can customise everything, they accept a very wide range of cards (Switch, Visa, Solo, Mastercard, etc.) and currencies. They had a £50 non-refundable startup fee last time I looked though.

 

[[UKLans]Khan]

Xtro, I've used a e-commerce package that interacted with worldpay, they will already have some sort of Internet ready bank account or ITA (Internet Trading Account), this is a secure account that money can be transfered into and from for on-line transactions.

If you wanted to do it all via their site and not WorldPay they will have to create the link from the Internet to the Bank account. So the best thing to do is to ask what bank they have thier ITA from and see what they offer first!

Secure web-carts are avaible all over the net but you will need to buy/build one that interacts with the standards (or recommended/supported software) that the bank provides.

As for an asking price, thats a fairly open ended question beacuse it all depends what needs to be done. But you can expect to pay top dollar if you need a e-commerce package that needs creating from scratch, but the cost would go down a lot if you use a pre-built package.

If you find out what bank it is, post it here (just the bank name, nothing else) and I'll take a look at what they have to say.

Regards,

Khan

 

[Xtro]

Most helpful indeed lads!

I would think it would be HSBC Khan, cheers.

 

[Padwah]

Worldpay is great because you get some guarantee of the transactions as they deal with all of the payments, the problem though is that the charges that you incur per transaction are greater than those from doing it yourself.

If their business is going to be quite low volume then I'd recommend that they stick to Worldpay. But if they are going to be doing a large volume of transactions then they should lok at getting their own card machine or using something like Barclays ePDQ as whilst you get a monthly fee for the service the charges per transaction are lower so works out better in the long run.

If they use their own card machine though they've then got to worry alot more about fraudulent transactions which is where Barclays ePDQ becomes more attractive as they are part of the verified by visa program that means there's some sort of guarantee for the seller. The other problem of using their own card machine is protecting the card data for hackers and other bastards.

I can't really recommend anything without speaking to your mates but I'd either stick with Worldpay, scrap paypal for a more proffesional look in my opinion, go with Barclays ePDQ, or speak to your bank about whatever they can offer in the same vein.

Hope that helps

 

[Padwah]

I'm a dick who can't stop pressing buttons

 

[wyrd_fish]

don't forget, your going to need a https host for this site, unless you pay someone to look after all of the site for you...