online site help/advice please

[buddysmom]

I currently have a website done up in bluevoda, and it is more of an informational site about my shop( I have a retail shop as well).

I now want to sell some products online (this is a flower shop by the way). Since i have a credit card terminal at the shop, I want to be able to gather customer's credit card information without processing it online (like via pay pal). I want to key in the card info at the store.

Is there a way to use bluevoda to do this? Is there a button I can put on a form that will notify me when a customer places an order? Is there a database somewhere that catches this info?

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

-C.

[Vasili]

Re: online site help/advice please

Actually, PayPal would be the easiest way for you to credibly process orders (seeing as how they will only establish an account with you -a business- once verified) without having to go to all the trouble of changing your Merchant Account setup and learning how to convert things to a cart foundation like osCommerce or Magento or wrap your brain around using API scripts (which most Card Processors do not allow, preferring to see a real cart with SSL and Dedicated IP account).

But, if you want to do things the old-fashioned manual way, simply use the "Email-Commerce" method, and create an Email Form for each item detailed for customers to purchase. Each Email "Order Form" will thus be sent to you to process offline manually. This is, however, a method fraught with incredible consumer resistance and tons of preparation on your part ...... no one in their right mind would be willing to furnish sensitive personal information (card numbers, security codes, address, etc.) if the site was not secure (visibly, with an SSL cert) when the plethora of alternative sites do! Additionally, you would have to contrive some lengthy Privacy and Transaction Policy to explain the measures you implement to protect whatever info you need to process, which (IMO) would never be acceptable but to a very miniscule ignorant minority of online consumers.

To do the Email-Commerce "Order Form" thing, you can either link every button to a unique Email Order Form (so the specific item description and price is displayed), or merely have a 'generic' Order Form being linked to that the consumer is responsible to fill out with whatever price and item number you require. As you can tell, this is a lot of work that will not pan out for you in the end: you are better off simplifying the whole thing by defaulting to PayPal and letting their consumer credibility carry you through the day, as it allows you to keep you Blue Voda web design and still be as functional as any business needs to be.
OR .... capitulate and go a full-borne cart and evolve your existing Merchant Account relationship.......

The last thing to really consider is how long you can deal with deceiving your Card Processor: you need to characterize all these manual orders as MOTO (Mail Order/Telephone Order) and the different discount rate to be legal, and the first time you get a chargeback that they see originated online rather than in-store or MOTO, they will not only refuse any defense on your part, but will undoubtedly cancel your account entirely.

[buddysmom]

Re: online site help/advice please

thank you so much for your detailed response.

-C