New Business [Advice please]

[Fusionhost Group]

Hello,

I have just started up a new company which offer motorcycle parts. Now I have been selling products locally for a while via word of mouth, but my main market is going to be online.

I have bought my domain, and I am looking around at shopping software and it all seems good, but expensive.

I just want a nice system that runs smoothly that is not going to cost me an arm and a leg to setup.

I also want to be able to accept payment online, but a few of my potential customers have suggested to me that I could get a credit/debit card machine.

Now i've read a bit about them, but not how much they cost to setup, my business account is with Lloyds.

Any information that will help me setup my online shop with intergrated payment system would be great and very useful.

Thank you
Jon [XS Performance]

[Anonymous]

www.paypal.com does online transaction processing and a customisable shopping cart ;)

[DuaneJackson]

For a merchant account, roughly speaking there is a set-up cost of £1-200
Then a monthly fee of around £20
Plus a % of all transactions

Plus £20 a month or thereabouts to a payment processor like www.protx.com if you want to take payments online.

Then the set up costs of the website, anything from £200 to £6000

You can usually only get the merchant account if you have been trading for atleast 4 months. You 'd get this from your bank.

Other options are Paypal, which I'd not reccomend or Worldpay, which is OK if you do the integration and take payments on your site IMO. Although it's cheaper to set up you end up worse off in the long run.

Hope that helps. If you want further info on any of it, just ask away!

Duane.

[Fusionhost Group]

Hmm ok, well I can do the website myself as i've designed a lot of sites before.

Also dads offered that I can use his world pay account, or share it with him so might do that.

Seems quite expensive for everything though :(

[MinuWeb]

You can use OSCommerce or cubecart as a shopping cart solution, they are both free.

http://solstore.net/ is using cubecart and selling car parts, so not a million miles away from what you are doing.

[Ozzy]

Do Not use your Dad's Worldpay account. It will lead to no end of problems with chargebacks and so on when people do not recognise the name on their credit card statements! I made this mistake 5ish years ago and it cost me thousands (tens of thousands) of pounds in chargebacks. It almost sent a previous business of mine under.

I would strongly recommend that you do the following;

First talk to your bank and see if they will give you an Internet merchant account. If they do gear if they don't never mind.
Speak to either Protx, NoChex and Worldpay to get an idea of what they offer for online credit card clearing. If you don't get a merchant account from your bank then I would suggest Worldpay, but if you do then any of them 3 would be fine.

If you are doing your website yourself and if your technical skills are "just ok" then I would recommend looking at osCommerce with Worldpay. It just runs out of the box! if you are getting a "professional" in or your skills are "well 'ot" then you can use whatever shopping cart software you want and whatever payment provider you wish :)

osCommerce is free, and very good. I use it at http://www.quickcompanyshop.com/ as a basic out of the box installation, but Gary on there forums has done some more modifications to osCommerce so you can see what he has done at http://www.tiewarehouse.com. Its very flexible if you know what you are doing.

Once you have your website and running don't expect the orders to just start flowing in. You will have to spend some proper money marketing your website online otherwise nothing will happen. Put together a sensible budget (I mean at least a couple or three grand to get started) and speak to someone like top-click on these forums.

I hope this helps :)

[MichaelG]

I also want to be able to accept payment online, but a few of my potential customers have suggested to me that I could get a credit/debit card machine. ... Jon [XS Performance]

Hi Jon,

If a few of your potential customers suggest you get a credit/debit card - then listen to them!.

I have bought a few car parts online and I have never paid online, because there is always a question - so I always call to have a chat and if I do want the part, I give the merchant my CC details and in some cases send a chq.

To start, I suggest you build yourself a simple online catalogue (a categorised list of the parts - incl. image/description/condition/price etc - using just tables). - Allow customers to browse, find what they want and have them call you - you might also end up selling them more.

When the business gets going and you can't cope with telephone orders - than and only than consider online payment.

So there is nothing stopping you from getting your website online ;)

[DarrenH]

Hi

I heard from another forum that Paypal will now elt you take credit card details offline and process them through your Paypal account. Might be a good way to experiment.

Darren

[MinuWeb]

worldpay also offer this

[bikersbits]

I use worldpay and I've been very happy with it, I do think that if you want to set up a good site that can be trusted from the word go, you should invest now and have it ready to cope with business later.
We had worldpay from the first day and now that we are busy we don't have to change or improve any of the basics yet because they are in place, we know and we can cope with them.
I know people who make a fortune selling spare parts just by setting up an e-bay shop, once that was going very well they created a "posh" site and brought all their business there.
If you do live shows (race meetings, autojumbles etc) you might consider join the market trader's federation, once you are a member you can get very good deals on mobile chip and pin solutions, which you can use to take payments over the phone too.
Roberta

[Fusionhost Group]

Hmm I was also thinking of the over the phone orders but if I did not have a credit/debit card machine how could I accept payment.

Is BACs a good way to accept payment?

Worldpay seems very expensive and if I go down these routes I might apply for a business grant.

I went on the MTF and the websites not much but what they offer sounds good. I shall do some more digging in this area.

My main problem at the moment is sorting out payment options.

[MichaelG]

Try http://www.secpay.com - I think you would need a merchant account from your bank.

[Fusionhost Group]

Thankyou, all the companies meantion the bank charges that are ontop of using their service, what charges do they mean?

The merchant account ones or?

Thank you :)

[TWD-Tony]

Be wary of Worldpay - they hold onto your money for a long time (over 5 weeks I believe), a client of mine has just switched to protx because of the holding delay - it was hurting her businesses cash flow to the tune of thousands!

I would suggest the following...

Use Oscommerce or Zen-cart (very similar software) and create an online store... the beauty of these systems is that they are modular, i.e. they have modules written for them that can be easily installed to add extra functionality - payment processing is just one of the areas that these modules are used. You could start off with Paypal and then when you are ready you could upgrade to Worldpay / Protx or another payment processor and just add that module to your software - easy as that.

Paypal get's a lot of stick on the internet for one reason or another, but I personally cannot find a fault with it - it allows credit / debit card payments from customers, it integrates will with a lot of software (so the software keeps track of who has paid for what) and you get your money into your bank in approx 5 days! :D

i can show you several shopping carts built with zen if you are interested?

[Fusionhost Group]

yes please :)

[TWD-Tony]

www.whoowhoos.com - This client set off selling toys in her spare time, she now works at it fulltime and loves the zen software - she likes the way she can edit the bits she needs to without any help from me.

www.blpsuppliesandservices.co.uk - selling electronic components, this is a new business and has yet to get established.

www.trainsandbeyond.com - USA based company selling toys (the Florida state tax and shipping options was a total nightmare to sort out - but zen coped with it :wink: )

www.cavalierscollectables.com - antiques and collectables.

All these site's have been built with different versions of the software - with blpsuppliesandservices using the most recent. All use paypal as standard, with some offering their customers the choice of different payment processing (Worldpay, protx etc).

The best thing about zen (and NO I don't work for them!) is that the new version is totally search engine friendly - it uses mod_rewrite to change all those horrible php page names (that end in .php?product_id=xxx etc) into "normal" links that search engines can follow and index better - it also creates description META tags and keyword META tags on the fly for every product!

[Fusionhost Group]

Thank you..

A question to all about oscommerce and Zen, do they have an added option to accept BACs, postal orders, cheques etc?

I believe I have made my mind up to go with paypal to start with :)

[Rob Holmes]

Thank you..

A question to all about oscommerce and Zen, do they have an added option to accept BACs, postal orders, cheques etc?

I believe I have made my mind up to go with paypal to start with :)

I'm sure oscommerce has and am unsure about zencart but I suspect it would have the function.

Rob

[Fusionhost Group]

Ok thank you too all for helping me and giving me advice, I decided paypal because of the low startup costs meaning I should break even faster.

[SillyJokes]

TWD Tony,

You can negoiate those WorldPay settlement periods down i the same way you can negotiate the transaction charges.

They would easily match a competitor if your business is working and you asked them.