lite-code | design / develop / educate | grand rapids, michigan

I have recently worked on a website that needed to accept payments on their site. They were under the impression t

hat they must have a secure connection on the entire site, which is not entirely true. Where any personal, credit card or bank information is being asked for is where the secure connection must be utilized. Most banks offer merchant accounts at a decent rate, but that will only allow you to accept credit cards, and the bank does not offer you a secure site connection. Some banks may offer assistance at a staggering rate for their “IT/Web” guy to integrate a payment system on your site, but you are much better off hiring a local fr

eelancer to save some money. Secure connections through a reputable company can run from $99 – $150 per year for the connection, but most Hosting companies offer these now at a much lower cost.

If you are on a strict budget with your site, consider using Paypal or Google Checkout, it is very easy for a web designer to integrate

into your site without taking too much time, thus costing you less. The main draw back to this is the 3% transaction fee, this may be fine for starting companies and for products that are not very expensive, but the 3% does add up quickly if you are selling a lot. The benefit to working with these offered checkout systems is the invoicing. Most shopping carts require an invoicing module of some sort, and most of these cost money. Paypal and Google will send you a purchase order and the customer and invoice right away without you having to do anything besides, ship the products. If you are considering building a shopping cart site, I recommend Joomla with the VirtueMart module hands down. Most advanced developers might not agree, but unless you are selling a t

remendous amount of products and need unlikely features, it will do everything for you. It is OpenSource which means it’s FREE and supported by a large community, and also has a staggering amount of modules, plug-ins and templates.

I have used Joomla a lot in my days of coding, and would recommend it to anyone to power a shopping cart. If you need help or advice feel free to send me a message and I will help you any way possible.