When we design an e-commerce website for you, we do all the heavy lifting to build an excellent experience for you and the user. However, there are a few aspects that are your responsibility and must happen before we can launch your website. The sooner you take care of these items, the sooner we can launch your site so you can start reaping the rewards of selling online. Below I will discuss the items we need from you and provide some helpful information and links for each.
SSL Certificate
If you plan to receive credit card information on your website, we can handle purchasing your SSL. An SSL Certificate encrypts all data sent between site visitors’ computers and your website. It prevents hackers from stealing credit card information from your customers.
Drum makes it easy to purchase an SSL Certificate. We also auto renew your SSL so you don’t have to remember to do it each year, but feel free to contact us if you get stuck.
A Payment Gateway
In order to receive credit card payments on your website, you will need what is called a payment gateway that processes the credit card and sends the money to your bank account. Our preferred payment gateway is stripe.com, but authorize.net and PayPal Pro are comparable. We support dozens of payment gateways, so please contact us if you already have a payment gateway or are interested in knowing what other options are available.
Once you have set up an account with a payment gateway, the easiest way for us to incorporate that into your website is for you to give us the login information for that.
Shipping Options
You need to decide what shipping options you want to offer to customers and then you need to create accounts for each. Below are links to some information about setting up accounts for each of the major shipping options:
While We’re Talking About Shipping
There are other options available that you may be interested in adding to your website:
Table Rate Shipping
Table rate shipping gives you highly customizable shipping options. It allows you to define multiple shipping rates based on location, price, weight, or item count. Wildcards may be used to match multiple regions too.
- Create zones for target shipping destinations
- Add multiple tables of rates per zone
- Several types of table rate calculation: Per order, Calculated per item, Calculated per line, Calculated per class
- Add rules based on Weight, Number of items, Number of items by class and Price
- Add costs per row, per item cost, a percentage and per weight unit
Per Product Shipping
Per product shipping allows you to define different shipping costs for products, based on customer location. These costs can be added to other shipping methods, or used as a standalone shipping method.
Flat Rate Box Shipping
Flat rate box shipping makes it possible for you to create shipping rules for boxes. Boxes have a fixed size, and items are packed in volumetrically. You can define multiple rates based on the package destination, have multiple box sizes per zone, and add costs based on the box, box weight, and box contents cost.
Shipping to Multiple Addresses
Convenience for your customers should be a paramount priority for any e-commerce retailer. Being able to ship to multiple addresses will help avoid the frustration that can occur when a customer is shopping for multiple people at one time. Instead of forcing them to place multiple transactions, they can quickly and easily ship individual items to multiple different addresses with one order. This can be especially useful around the holidays when more and more people are doing their primary holiday shopping online.
