FredsUsedWebsites.com
E-Commerce
Fred's Used Websites has several solutions for small to medium e-commerce websites. A small e-commerce website is one that offers at least one unique product for sale and upwards to as many as a several hundred products. We detail below the solutions below
Cart & Payment Solution in our CMS
Our recommended solution is the shopping cart and payment solution built into our content management system (CMS). This solution automatically calculates sales tax and shipping and allows you to use a regular merchant account and payment gateway or to use your PayPal account to accept the payment. You can also start with PayPal at the beginning when your volumes are low and switch to a regular merchant account later.
Shipping calculations are made directly by interfacing directly with the shipper's web service. If you use FedEx for example, when a customer enters an order the shipping amount they see is a direct quote from FedEx based on your shipping location and the customers destination address. Whether you are shipping this to a local address or overseas to an international destination, the appropriate amount of shipping is computed.
With this solution you can create individual product purchase widgets anywhere on any page (as with the PayPal solution), or you can utilize our Gallery feature to quickly and easily create dozens or hundreds of product pages. Each Gallery entry can represent an individual product for sale.
This payment system can be used for sales of things other than physical products for sale. It can be used to collect for the registration of an event, a service performed, etc. We can create custom widgets that collect whatever information you want along with a payment. A live example of this can be seen on the Town of Berthoud's website where custom widgets are used for utility, court fines, and other payments; and on the Parks & Rec pages for online registration of activities.
We have an initial $500 charge to configure your site (tax tables, shipping plugin, and payment gateway), and training. You can setup your first product in your training. Any setup fees for your merchant account and gateway, commercial shipping account, or PayPal fees are not included in this. We are happy to help you get started with your shipping, merchant, and gateway accounts at an additional charge. We will discount this amount up to $125 if you are planning to use an existing PayPal account for payment and are familiar with using PayPal.
PayPal Buy Now
At the very low end of this offering is a simple PayPal "Add to Cart" and/or "Buy Now" button. Your site is configured for your existing PayPal account and the editor in our content management system allows you to easily insert a PayPal widget anywhere on any page of your site. The widget configures all the information about the product (name, price, description) and whether you want a Buy Now button, Add to Cart button, or both.
You can either include tax/shipping as a flat rate into the cost of the product, or use the tools in your PayPal account to add tax/shipping. The shipping tools allow you to create a series of Zones
We suggest this if you are cost conscious, have only a few products, don't ever plan to do regular credit card processing, and don't mind doing all the configuration in your PayPal account. There is no charge to configure your site for this, but any consulting help with your PayPal account configuration would be charged at an hourly rate.
Zen Cart or Other Storefront Solutions
There are many total store-front solutions that are designed to provide your website with your product display and the backend to do order fulfillment. These solutions are designed to be installed on your own website and though intended to be stand-alone, can co-exist with your existing website. They tend to be template based, in that you can choose a template that defines the look of your site.
We would be happy to help you investigate, install, and configure one of these solutions. We do not have standard prices for these solutions - the cost will be determined by the chosen solution, customizations, etc.
External Shopping Carts
External shopping carts are independant websites that allow you to create accounts and sell products via that website. Most have a setup charge, some have a built in way to collect money, others require that you also have your merchant account and payment gateway in place. All will likely have either a monthly charge, a per-transaction charge, or both. Many provide additional tools to advertise and followup with previous customers. Some only provide the back-end (cart, payment, order fullfillment) but not the store-front.
We are happy to work with you to integrate your website with one of these solutions. As with the solutions installed directly on your website, our costs would be determined by the specific solution and desired customizations.
The PayPal solution above is really an example of this. It is the one exception where we do have fixed price options for a external cart.