Hey everybody, Mike Linville here from Black Dog Education with this week's
installment of Office Hours where we answer your questions about web design web development
and online marketing this week's question comes from Todd. Todd writes I have a consulting
business and I want to be able to accept payments online what are my options so anytime we talk
about e-commerce or accepting payments online it really boils down to two main questions
we really need to focus on. The first question is do you need a shopping cart because adding
a shopping cart and be able to accept payments online, those are like two separate things
you can absolutely accept payments without a shopping cart. Let me give you an example
if you've ever made a payment online for a utility bill or a phone bill or something
like that, they don't ask you a bunch of questions after the fact. They don't ask you if you
want to add additional stuff to your cart. You're in, you're out, you're good to go,
that's an example of a cart-less payment. Now on the other end of the spectrum with
shopping carts, if you've ever gone to something like this zappos.com or Amazon.com you know
as soon as you click on something and you say add this to my cart the next thing that
happens is they ask you like six different questions they ask you do you want to know
what other people have bought this, or do you want to continue browsing? Or here are
somethings else you might be interested and they're like complimentary pieces whatever
the case may be. That's an example of a full-blown shopping cart. Why do we want to know this?
Here's the thing, as small-business owners smart development isn't overdevelopment smart
development is actually just giving you the right tool for the right job so in this case
shopping carts add another layer of complexity to your website they take longer time to develop
they take additional graphical design time and ongoing maintenance. So if you don't need
a shopping cart don't do it. It's just going to end up costing you more money. Question
number two is one of budget right like most things in life we always have options so let's
say for example you do not need a shopping cart, no shopping cart needed you really have
a couple options. One is to go with just an online service like PayPal, that's the one
most people are comfortable with now with PayPal you've got no setup fees, you've got
no or very limited monthly fees depending upon which service you choose the big problem
with PayPal is that you have to take people away from your website in order to transact
the business right. There's no branding and is kind of a little bit of a hiccup in the
process you want to be nice and smooth when you're asking people for money the second
option is a little more expensive it's what I consider a professional payment processor.
Things like Authorize.Net where you can completely automate the payment process into your website
completely branded people don't have to leave your website in order to transact the problem
with that is there are set-up fees and there's monthly fees and you're going to have those
fees until you stop using the service anymore so you know there is that fee, the cost of
doing business with something like that now let's take a look at if you want to have a
shopping cart would you offer more to products and you want to try and get people to buy
multiple things at one time you again have two options here. The first option is with
what we would consider a self hosted shopping a card things like magento, or X-Cart. It's
a software application kind of WordPress where you just load it on to your web server and
you can go ahead and customize it. Now the cool thing is you can completely brand it,
you can do the design work, but you've got to be able to be able to maintain it. You've
got a one-time fee to purchase the software, but you're going to have to get it integrated
and configured, you've got to pay to have the design work done, so it integrates well
with your cart, and then you've got to do the ongoing maintenance to make sure you're
PCI compliant and all that other stuff. The second option if you're looking for a shopping
cart system is you can go with a third party shopping cart. These would be things like
oneshoppingcart.com infusion soft something like that now with these guys they're going
to be a little less branded right. And linking somebody over to another website to take care
of your business but what's really good about these things is there's developers that are
working on it since all the time you don't have to worry about the maintenance they usually
have a more functionality they've got like mailing and that kind of stuff kind of integrated.
It's really more of a rounded solution. So let's get back to Todd's questions. So Todd
is a consultant so my guess is Todd probably doesn't need a shopping cart so without a
shopping cart that gives us two options you can either go something like PayPal's relatively
inexpensive easy to get started or you go something like Authorize.Net. Personally I
tell my clients if you can afford it, go with Authorize.Net because it's just a more branded
solution it makes comes customers feel more comfortable you can take care of them on your
website it just looks more professional if you can't afford it use PayPal, at least you're
getting a payment but for me I like to go with Authorize.Net. I personally use Authorize.Net
myself. So that's my two cents worth on the topic. I hope this video serves you if you
like this video make sure that you like it, pass it around to your friends, tell me what
you think by adding a comment below, and if you have any questions that you'd like answered
in this type of a format just go to our Facebook wall at Facebook.com/BlackDogEducation write
your question and and we'll go ahead and answer it in this type of a format. Again, this is
Mike Linville of Black Dog Education thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time.