Types of Stores
We design complete on-line stores and transaction centers around either:
- Dedicated shopping cart web applications,
- Shopping cart add-ins that are completely integrated into our content management system, or
- Dedicated shopping carts that appear to be part of the content management system.
Dedicated Shopping Carts
Our own BWAMShop.com formerly used CubeCart, which is a full-fledged store application. We recommend it for large-scale projects with a multitude of products, where the listed products or services are in the thousands.
CMS Shopping Cart Addins
For smaller ventures, we recommend simple applications that can be managed from within the content management system; so, there is only one application to learn and one “dashboard” to which to connect. These types of shopping carts are quite simple and easy-to-use, but work perfectly well. (See our very small BWAMShop.com or the payment system at the St. Alphonsus Athletic Association and RecruitOurHighSchoolAthletes.com for examples.)
We have a very basic, sample, on-line store here.
Separate Shopping Carts Embedded in CMS Sites
For a visitor’s perspective, dedicated shopping carts can be seamlessly integrated into the (look of the) content management system. That seamless design integration is quite beneficial for certain types of Flash-based stores that generally aren’t very good at search-engine optimization, especially Flash-based stores for photography sites or any site where the owner wants to showcase products through photos and slideshows, etc. (See our slideshows page.)
We developed that type of site at Raspberry Photo. The store actually appears as a private “client proofing” area, so if you visit, you won’t be able to see much, but it is a fully-functioning store that looks just like the rest of the site.
The advantage of embedding a dedicated shopping cart into a content management system is that the site operator get the best of both worlds: ease-of-use for most site tasks and search-engine optimization via the CMS, and security and transaction-based interactivity in the shopping cart application.
However, the downside is that such installations require separate back-offices (control panels). So, although the front is perfectly integrated, the back-office isn’t. There is one control panel for the content management system and one for the on-line store, e.g., two passwords, two different menu structures, etc.
Financial Transactions
The actual financial transactions at stores can be hosted on the site or diverted to a processor like PayPal or Google Check-out.
- On-line store with diverted transactions: you can have complete, on-line stores but divert transactions to payment processors like PayPal. For example, to minimize monthly costs, the St. Alphonsus Athletic Association uses a popular shopping cart addin but diverts users to PayPal to complete the transaction. There is no monthly charge for that type of PayPal account (Web Sites Standard).
- On-line store with hosted transactions: if transactions are completed on your site, then your server account needs to meet minimum security requirements and must have a static IP address and a SSL certificate. In addition, your organization needs to have the proper type of “merchant” account from the payment processor, e.g., PayPal or a bank.
Those types of merchant accounts have a fixed charge per month–usually around $30. Depending upon the details and the price, the SSL certificate verifies that customers are transacting with either a: (1) certain organization that owns a domain name or (2) certain domain name. (Most customers don’t know the difference.) The former are more expensive than the latter and require that certificate-seekers send official business documents to the certificate provider, e.g. Verisign, Thawte, Geotrust, Komodo, etc.
- No store and diverted transactions: Other sites use PayPal’s shopping cart or pay buttons that are built on the payment processor’s site. That’s usually the cheapest solution as it doesn’t require a hosting account or an expensive merchant account.
All credit card processing services charge a fee that is a percentage of revenue, usually about 3% or so. Our view is that 97% of something is better than 100% of nothing. So, we strongly encourage all businesses and organizations to open at least the simplest type of account.
