How do you guys handle ecommerce?

**autumn whispers2me** · 10-19-2005, 08:51 AM

For those of you who sell their designs, services, etc... what do you use for your customers? Paypal email or shopping cart, other??

I have my designs site pretty much figured out now, but the designs extend beyond anything 'web' wise. I want folks to be able to look at the pages I created and order, instead of having to use someone else's storefront design.

Any clues, suggestions, ideas??

**SpawnDemon** · 10-19-2005, 09:34 AM

Use paypal or have them transfer directly to your bank or something. What I do is.. Once their money is in MY bank account.. Then I give them the stuff...

**autumn whispers2me** · 10-19-2005, 10:13 AM

Most people, though, won't go for that I wouldn't think. Most want their transactions secured. I'd thought about the paypal email payment, but I think I have to physically send them an invoice, etc. And since I'm actually selling stuff, not just services, then I have to be able to make it easy for them to order and pay.

PP has a few storefront options, but most of them send people back and forth from my site to paypal. Not sure if most would see that as a total hassle or not.

**SpawnDemon** · 10-19-2005, 11:12 AM

Works for me.. Most of my clients know me personaly or have gotten to know me.

**Sean** · 10-19-2005, 11:24 AM

I use paypal or my clients deposit the money directly into my business acccount.

I charge 50% before i start a project and then get the remaining 50% of the client when the design is complete.

Because i have a community and alot of sites behind me trust has never been a factor, because if i tried to screw a client they would just come here and post about it

**SpawnDemon** · 10-19-2005, 11:32 AM

Or you could do that..

**Kate** · 10-19-2005, 05:37 PM

If you have a high customer volume it is probably worth it to set up a shopping cart - i think you can have automatic receipts/invoices sent to the purchaser with those, but I'm not sure.
If you have a low to medium customer volume, or just can't be bothered with the fuss of a shopping cart, you should get a good invoicing software that you can also keep business/customer records in and do it Sean's way. It makes it so much easier if you use something like invoice2go or myob because you only really need to enter client/customer information once and it takes 2 seconds to set up an invoice and email it out - also good for when you have to do your business tax every year.

**Fragalot** · 10-20-2005, 12:18 AM

or you just take their money, and run off ^^
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lol, no, i do it trough paypal, or in cash like most things i've done.

(easy when they live in an 1mile radius of your house)
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else, follow kate's steps, cuz i seem to like them

they sound really practical.

**autumn whispers2me** · 10-20-2005, 04:29 AM

Hmmnn. Well, I'm not real keen on using one of those canned storefronts that seem to come with most carts. I'll be selling "items," some artistic stuff, etc., so I don't know how easy it'll be with paypal.

No client base built yet, though, so maybe I could just use the PP email payment option until I figure out how much business will grow, or not grow, etc. I was also thinking of selling some items on ebay and using the 'business' site as another option to buy... though that's tricky too because you're not supposed to do that with ebay.

**Sean** · 10-21-2005, 08:30 PM

e-commerce is the best shoppingcart software