This site currently uses a PayPal shopping cart. You do not need a Paypal Account, but you do need a credit card, and you can use the shopping cart to place your order online.
When you proceed to checkout, just select the option, "No. I do not have a Paypal account" and you will then be allowed to enter your credit card information and complete the purchase.
You do not have to purchase anything in your shopping cart, and you can remove any item at any time or change the quantity. There is no trick here that makes you purchase an item, because tricking you into making a purchase is the very last thing that I would want to do.
It is only when you are ready to make a purchase that you actually click on the purchase button, and you may be asked for more information. You still do not have to commit to a purchase until you are warned that you have reached the end of the shopping cart process, and it asks you, "Are you Sure?"
If you do not wish to use a credit card, please contact me to make other arrangements at:
webmaster@orchidwebservices.com
If you want to sell anything on the internet, you absolutely must have a shopping cart on your web site to make it easy for potential buyers to purchase your products. Countless orders on the web are lost because visitors are not willing to send in emails or to mail in personal checks, so customers leave the site before the sale is made.
If you already accept credit cards in your business, it is easy to set up a shopping cart to feed information to your credit card service provider. Most providers offer "virtual terminals" where you can go on line and enter credit card information that you have collected during shows, or from sales at your store front. Any shopping cart can be set up to feed data to those providers.
If you don't already accept credit cards, you can set up a "merchant account" with one of the credit card providers. But your sales have to be large enough to offset the monthly fees that the providers charge. You can generally expect to pay a minimum rate of around $20.00 per month, whether you sell anything or not, and there are often set-up fees to start the account.
If you are just starting out, and expect it to take some time before your sales will justify the cost of a merchant account, you can set up an account with a service called PayPal. They are the preferred method of payment for eBay users, and have a large, established user base. Like all the service providers, they take a percentage of each sale, but there are no setup fees and no monthly minimum charges, so you only pay them when you actually sell something.
The downside used to be that users also had to set up an account with PayPal, but it was no more difficult or annoying than filling in your credit card information each time you made a purchase. Actually, it was much easier, since you only had to do that once when you first set up the account. From then on, it was a simple matter to purchase something from a vendor who accepted PayPal.
In fact, any web site that accepts credit cards through a regular merchant account should also have their shopping cart accept PayPal payments. If you start with just PayPal, you can later add the option to accept credit cards through a merchant account so your customers have both options when they decide to pay. Either way, you are assured that your customers have the ability to make a purchase right then and there.
Once you decide to add a shopping cart to your site: Keep it simple! Some shopping carts are so complex and irritating that customers become frustrated and leave, when they are right in the middle of making a purchase. And don't hide the costs for shipping in fine print on a page that Sherlock Holmes couldn't find. Let your customers know exactly what the costs for shipping will be so they are not surprised at the check out page and change their mind about the purchase.
If you would like to discuss merchant accounts, please contact me, and I will let you know what provider currently offers the best rates. If you need more information about PayPal, please click on the logo below:
|