Services :: On-line Commerce
Page Mine develops basic ecommerce websites to sell products online.
There are many expensive solutions for selling products online.
We offer much cheaper solutions using PayPal.
We recommend their shopping cart for selling digital products like eBooks.
However, there are no cheap solutions for selling physical products in real time.
It is expensive to ensure that you only offer products that are in stock and to calculate shipping charges. Nobody wants to explain to their customer that they have just run out of a product after that customer has already paid for their order. And you cannot afford to absorb the air-freight charges every time you discover that you have only charged for ground-service shipping to a place that is only accessible by air during certain times of the year.
Instead, we recommend a very simple secure 24-hour solution for selling physical products. You provide a printable Order Form on your site and your customer faxes their order. You send them an email with the invoice attached - after you have determined what is in stock and calculated the shipping charges and taxes. They go to your website and pay for their invoice using PayPal or they snailmail you a certified cheque or money order. You ship their order after you have their money.
It is easy to set up an account with PayPal that lets you accept credit cards and you cannot inadvertently disclose credit card numbers because you never see them. Unless your customer is in your store, we recommend that you do not use a payment mechanism that lets you see their credit card number. Your bank will charge you a higher discount rate if they let you take credit cards without a signature - they know that this is risky. It is also risky to store credit card numbers on a secure online server or in your filing cabinet. PayPal is much bigger than any of the Canadian banks and they can afford to hire the best hackers to protect your clients' information.