  If you are selling only one or two products, and you are not planning on selling more than that, you can get away without a cart, otherwise it is a must. I prefer to work with 2 specific cart softwares, one is open source (free), the other is not, you will have to purchase it.They are as good as each other, the features vary only a little, the open source cart is slightly more difficult to use, but not by much and it has features already built in that you would have to purchase as add-ons in the commercial cart. I prefer to put folks into the open source cart, but like many things that decision has a great deal to do with the big picture, your ultimate goal, and the amount of hands on or off you want. There is also the alternative of an on-line cart service, I have used this type of service in the past, long term it is the most expensive and you are locking your ability to sell your products to a comapny that may not be there a year from now. Deciding what to use something I am happy to help you with as part of the site design process. You may or may not need the SSL certificate and the dedicated IP address mentioned below, it depends 100% on how your e-commerce is set up. If you use paypal or something similar on the back end, you need neither, if you are using your own merchant accounts and processing through your own bank, you will need both. In order to work properly a shopping cart needs:An SSL Secure Certificate: An SSL is purchased from an outside agency it costs $50.00 per year approximately. You can spend much more but encryption is encryption, there is really no such thing as "Better" when it comes to this. Any company trying to sell the more expensive versions, of an SSL is not selling you better security! What they are selling has NOTHING to do with the encryption, its all about marketing hype and the average net merchant absolutely does not need it. Big Caution Here, some companies will mark up certificates to obscene amounts, using this to supplement their income after getting you with cheap hosting. Buying an SSL is one area where you can easily get ripped off for hundreds of dollars a year!
Certificates have to be renewed annually and/or can be purchased for multiple years at a time, they are specific to your server, and if you move hosting you may need a new one. Some hosting companies offer shared certificates on their servers. I do not recommend using a shared certificate. Dedicated IP Address:  Every computer on the Internet has a unique identifying number, called an IP Address. A dedicated IP address is an IP address that is reserved just for you. In other words it is dedicated to you.Think of an IP as a phone number in a large office, some people share a phone number and the calls get to their desk by the caller using an extention number. A dedicated IP address would be the equivalent of a direct line with no extention, secure certificates require a dedicated IP to work. Hosting companies usually charge for a dedicated IP addresses, cost will be a few dollars per month per IP, if you are planning your expenses $50.00 per year is a fairly safe guess. Next: The Book is Dead |
An SSL Certificate is a digital certificate verifying your identity. Without an SSL certificate your visitors will get a warning message in their web browser when they check out.Yellow Page books are going the way of the buggy whip!