Online Shop

[coxdabd]

Hi there,

I'm currently in the process of setting up an online clothing retail shop. I'm very advanced with webdesign and work full time as a graphic designer. But I have never had experience of online shops.

I' taking the Shopify route of doing things but I have no idea what I need to get things moving am I right in presuming the following:

Shopify
Business Bank Account (HSBC)
And a merchant account (I'm hoping with HSBC or SagePay)

And that's it to get going?

Best wishes,

Kriss.

[gemd89]

HSBC are very good for business banking

I do exactly the same thing at the minute and have done since april

http://www.fantasywardrobe.co.uk

The thing to mainly pay attention to is traffic and customers

Gemma

[That Guy]

Im not familier with Shopify but I would think that is all you need.

I would also consider offering paypal as a secondary payment method as you will find people sometimes have a spare few £ lying around in their paypal account which can often influence a purchase :)

[coxdabd]

Hi guys,

Thank you all so much indeed, it's been a huge help.

I wish you both all the very best for the future.

Best wishes,

Kristopher.

[Michelle_HLD]

Please use Sagepay. There is no way a bank can offer you the excellent rates Sagepay do.

I have used Sagepay for 18months as a payment gateway and it costs £25.00 a month.

When I was doing my research no bank could get near to this.

I would heartily recommend them!

[coxdabd]

Hi Michelle,

I have heard many positive things about them...yet to hear any complaints which is always good. Do they charge £25 a month and that's all? I'm presuming you're given an allowance of 200 or something transaction which would be included.

Best wishes,

Kriss.

[Michelle_HLD]

Kris,

I actually think it's more like 2000. I would definitely call them and check it out. Thats 2000 per month! I sell high ticket items so I could only ever dream about breaking that threshold. :redface:

The banks tend to charge you per transaction which is just a joke really.

They are very good to deal with and the security checks they provide on card transactions and card holder not present transactions are fantastic.

Thankfully we have get to be stung by fraud *touch wood* :)

[cmcp]

I would recommend using a UK provider if this is where you;re based; better still, if well conversed in the ways of web and graphic design download and customise an open source distro and be up and running on your own webspace with no restrictions.

[deadgoodundies]

With sagepay it's £20 per month for up to 1000 transactions per quarter and then if you are doing more than 1000 per quarter it's 10p per transaction

Their forum is worth a read https://support.sagepay.com/forum/ as although things rarely go wrong, when they do they spectacularly go wrong (last time I think the whole system went down for nearly 2 days) so I would most definitely suggest a backup payment system like paypal to run concurrently (about 1/3 of all our customers pay with paypal)

[TotalWebSolutions]

For lower monthly transaction volume EcomMerchant could be a better option for you:

If you are processing less than 50 transactions per month then you will simply pay £10 per month (subject to VAT) for each EcomMerchant account. Should you exceed 50 transactions then the following rates would apply. The more transactions you process the cheaper the price.

Between 51 and 99 transactions per month 20 pence per transaction


Between 100 and 249 transactions per month 15 pence per transaction

Between 250 and 999 transactions per month 10 pence per transaction

1000 and above transactions per month 8 pence per transaction

This is based on an Ecom or MOTO account. If you want both then it is only an extra £1 per month. 3D Secure transactions are an extra 2p each.

If you want further information on this you can private message me and I will send you full details.

Regards,

Simon

[alanc]

I have no idea what I need to get things moving am I right in presuming the following:

Shopify
Business Bank Account (HSBC)
And a merchant account (I'm hoping with HSBC or SagePay)

And that's it to get going?

Kriss,

No-one seems to have mentioned that you need two things to take payments online (excluding the bank account)
1. A Payment Service Provider (PSP) to process the card details online - SagePay is one of many and I use them. SagePay's costs have been outlined by other posters.
2. A Merchant Account (to receive credit card payments) HSBC, Barclays and others all provide this. They take about 3.5% of the transaction as a fee.

Alternatively, PayPal does both of these jobs in one package; however, they charge a slightly higher percentage (around 4%)

[JMCDesigner]

I highly recommend www.cartweaver.com.(if you have dreamweaver) It's extremely easy to set up, its a one time license fee (you can use it on any number of websites) and the customer service is a1.

[eprint]

Having a mental block at minute

But do want to wish you every success with the website!

:)

[imageonline]

Hi Kriss

I would start off with just paypal, it costs a little more per transaction but there is no contract like merchant accounts. When the business has proved itself, move over to sage pay and a merchant account. Don't forget that you still have to pay the taxman ontop of your graphics job if you are working for someone else. You have 3 months from start of business to register.