e-commerce is any kind of transaction done partly or completely over a network. But, just as every cook has his or her own recipe for spaghetti and tomato sauce, every e-commerce expert has his or her own definition of e-commerce.

Online sales in the coming year are expected to total at least Ј12 billion, and that's a conservative estimate; as more people world-wide gain access to the Internet, ecommerce and online shopping will become second nature to consumers and businesses alike. Can you afford to open an online store? With our Ecommerce plans, you can launch your online store and take your business into the information age for as little as Ј9.99 per month ( Can you afford not to open an online store? ).

With DVS's Ecommerce packages, all you need to set up your online store is the browser you are using to view this page. If you know how to point and click, you're ready to start. or you can use our SA ecommerce package and we will do all the work for you all you need to do is up load you products with our upload software.

No, you don't. most of our ecommerce packages do not require you to know HTML code.

This would depend on what package you have bought it will range from 250 to UNLIMITED on most of our ecommerce packages.

This will depend on the package you have bought, os Commerce and our SA Commerce packages support this.

Ecommerce plans may range anywhere from Ј9.95 a month, depending upon the number of products you want to sell, the traffic you anticipate and the features and functionalities you want to provide to your customers.

Once you place your order online with a credit card, you can start building your store straight away if you have bought a domain name or are moving a domain name this can take up to 48 hours to spread information around the world about the physical location of your site on the Internet.

Once you start building the site, it doesn't take long. Sites with just a few products can be set up in less than an hour. For most stores, however, it takes from a few hours to several days. One day is about average for our customers.

Yes. DVS makes it easy for you to add ecommerce to your site. You can order a plan that includes ecommerce or, if you are already a DVS customer, you can add ecommerce directly from your Control Panel. For more information, contact DVS support at support@dvshosting.com.

Once you have built your online store, you can easily integrate it into your existing site by either providing a link to your new store front or incorporating your products into your existing site’s pages.

You have a number of options for handling transactions. The most basic approach is to handle all of your transactions with PayPal (www.paypal.com)or NoChex. (www.nochex.com) Theise are easily setup and you can be up and running in minutes, or set up a full credit card muerchant account with your bank or worldpay (www.worldpay.com) or also collect your customers’ credit card information via email or phone and then process the credit card transactions offline using your retail merchant account.This is probably not the best approaches, though, because one the main reasons customers shop at an online store is for the speed and convenience it provides.

To increase the chances that customers will want to shop at your online store, it should be able to accept and process credit card transactions online and in “real time.” You can handle your own online transactions or outsource them to a third-party credit card processor.

If you want to be able to accept credit cards but do not want to handle these yourself, you can use a third-party online credit card processor. When your customers want to purchase a product, they click a link that takes them to the third-party’s Web site. There, they will submit their order and credit card information, which is then processed by the third-party processor. Essentially, these processors act as resellers. They may charge you a variety of fees for this service, including an initial set up fee, monthly fees and/or per-transaction fees.

While outsourcing your online transactions may seem appealing, you should consider the fact that it will be obvious to your customers that their transactions are being handled not by your company but by a third-party.

If you want to handle online credit card transactions yourself, you will need an Internet-ready merchant account, a payment gateway service and an SSL certificate.

A merchant account enables you to accept credit cards as payment for the purchase of goods and services. There are different types of merchant accounts. For example, if you have a traditional “brick and mortar” store, you can get a retail merchant account. If you want to accept credit cards on your Web site, however, you need a specialise type of merchant account known as an “Internet-ready” merchant account.

Internet-ready merchant accounts enable you to handle Internet transactions in "real time" without any human intervention. Because the risk of credit card fraud is greater when you are accepting credit cards over the Internet, these specialised merchant accounts also provide additional checks that can significantly reduce the chance of credit card fraud. Once the transactions are processed, the merchant account provider transfers the funds received from the credit card transactions from your merchant account to your bank account.

A number of companies offer Internet-ready merchant accounts. You are free to choose any merchant account provider, as long as they support one of the following payment methods: • CyberSource
• Authorize.Net
• LinkPoint/Cardservice
• VeriSign (PaymentNet)

Yes all our ecommerce packages support most payment gateways.

A payment gateway is a service that connects your online store with your merchant account provider. This service reads the information from the order forms and translates that information for the merchant account. The payment gateway also verifies that the customer’s credit card account has the necessary credit available for the purchase.

You can obtain a payment gateway separately from your merchant account, however you may find it simpler to choose a merchant account provider that also offers a payment gateway.

Obviously, if your customers will be submitting their credit card information to you online they will want to know that this information is safe. If they are not comfortable with the security your site offers, they will probably not buy products from you.

The best way to alleviate your customers’ concerns is to secure your site using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). When a site is secured with SSL—the standard form of encryption currently used on the Web—visitors will see a special symbol in their browser window that indicates the site is secure. Visitors can also tell that a page is secured by looking at the URL. A secure page’s URL begins with the letters “HTTPS” instead of the standard “HTTP.”

(pronounced as separate letters) Short for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting private documents via the Internet. SSL works by using a private key to encrypt data that's transferred over the SSL connection. Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer support SSL, and many Web sites use the protocol to obtain confidential user information, such as credit card numbers. By convention, URLs that require an SSL connection start with https: instead of http:.
Another protocol for transmitting data securely over the World Wide Web is Secure HTTP (S-HTTP). Whereas SSL creates a secure connection between a client and a server, over which any amount of data can be sent securely, S-HTTP is designed to transmit individual messages securely. SSL and S-HTTP, therefore, can be seen as complementary rather than competing technologies. Both protocols have been approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a standard.

An SSL Certificate, or a digital certificate, is an electronic document that contains the information necessary to establish a secure SSL connection. When used in credit card transactions, the Web site collecting the credit card information and the site to which the information is being transmitted must both have an SSL Certificate.

DVS can provide both the secure server and secure server certificate needed to support SSL. Shared SSL certificates, for a small cost.