Processing

E-Commerce FAQ

What can Electronic Commerce do for me?

Having a storefront on the web allows you to offer your products to anyone, anywhere, anytime. The Internet has revolutionized the whole concept of marketing and sales by eliminating the geographic and time-related barriers between the merchant and consumer. Now, without hiring a single new employee, you can receive and process orders from all over the world 24 hours a day.


What is a Web store or eStore?

A Web store or eStore is a site on the World Wide Web to pitch for orders, accept orders, process payment and sometimes ship orders.


Isn't my business too small for E-Commerce?

Absolutely not! Businesses of every size can and are taking advantage of E-Commerce. E-Commerce is entirely scalable from just a few products to tens of thousands.


How do I accept orders?

Although most E-Commerce sites are probably set up with the expectation that the majority of orders will be received through the web, the reality is that many customers prefer to use the web to aid in the selection of a product and then to order by more traditional methods. You therefore need to ensure you are able to accept orders in as many different ways as possible:

  • Secure Order Form
  • E-Mail
  • Fax
  • Telephone
  • Regular Mail

What is a Payment Gateway?

A payment gateway essentially performs the same function as your POS terminal, automatically. The gateway software system takes the online payment information from your ordering form and sends this information to the financial processor using your merchant account, and finally reports back whether the transaction was approved. Online processing or transaction providers offer this gateway.


Do I have to have an online processing company to do my credit card ordering?

No. There are two options for processing credit cards. You can choose to have the server automatically send you the credit card information for you to process yourself on your credit card machine. This is known as "Simple credit card validation". The other option is to use PayPal Payment Services and payQuake so you can process the charge online, automatically, in a much more secure and quick manner.


What is a shopping cart?

A shopping cart is a program in a web site that allows a customer to view products and add them to a "basket" as they would in a physical retail store. The shopping cart is usually connected to a database of products, and helps the merchant with shipping, pricing and inventory calculations.


Can I take orders with a shopping cart and not use credit cards?

Yes! You can have people place orders and process them after receiving payment by any other means you desire, such as by check, money order, etc.


Do I need to know HTML or programming to manage my storefront?

Probably not. Most shopping carts today use a browser based administration interface that provides access to an array of tools to maintain your cart site.


What is a digital certificate?

Digital certificates provide the basis for secure electronic transactions as they enable all participants in a transaction to quickly and easily verify the identity of the other participants. They are digitally signed and issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) which verifies that the public key attached to the certificate belongs to the party stated. Postrock uses Equifax Secure Inc. for its CA.


What is SSL?

Secure Socket Layers or SSL allows safe business transactions between the client and merchant. Before a customer orders online, they want to be sure that their personal and ordering details will only be seen by you. They want to be certain their payment information cannot be intercepted by outside sources. In order for you to accept and process credit cards and other private information over the Internet with full assurance of customer privacy, customer data can be encrypted and scrambled online via SSL. Before you set up your e-commerce system, make sure your web server has the SSL option. You need a digital certificate combined with SSL to do secure transactions.


I have bad credit. Can I still qualify for a Merchant Account?

Yes. payPal has a high approval rate. Your rates will be higher, but you will be approved.
Home |  Hosting |  Domains |  Support |  Log In |  Create Account |  Terms
Protecting Mailboxes From Spam
05-14-2012
To protect your mailbox from undesirable correspondence, do not publish your e-mail address on Internet forums and switch on the server-side spam filter in your control panel provided by the SpamAssassin software. When you need to publish your e-mail address, create a disposable e-mail address - e-mail alias - for your primary e-mail address, and publish it instead. All messages sent to the e-mail alias will come into your mailbox. Once you start getting spam, remove that alias and create another one. If you have a mailbox at another domain or mail server, you may want to set up a disposable e-mail forwarder. We would advise that you do not read spam e-mails when you receive them, just delete them at once. Even if you have read them, do not respond to them and do not click the "click here to unsubscribe" URLs: spammers will then know that your e-mail address is valid and you will get even more spam.

Organizing Your Site Structure
05-07-2012
If you have an Advanced Plan, you may organize your site structure with subdomains. Subdomains are additional domain names that enable you to: 1) Organize logically the structure of your web site 2) Host additional web sites or parts of your web site on the same server without the need to pay for registration of additional domain names. An example of using subdomains: You have a web site your-product.com dedicated to promoting your software product. For publishing user's guides, tutorials and list of frequently asked questions, you can organize the subdomain 'userdocs' so that your users will be able to access online user documentation directly by visiting the domain name userdocs.your-product.com. To set up a subdomain click on the subdomains icon in your control panel.