Online businesses have their own special concerns when
they are looking for good web hosting. For an online store
you will most likely need a product catalog connected to a
shopping cart, and some kind of payment processing.
Product Catalogs
An efficient and easy to update product catalog is driven
by a database, so a good ecommerce web hosting account
includes database access. Common databases are MySQL,
Microsoft Access and MS SQL. Besides database access, you
need a scripting language to communicate with the database.
All common scripting languages, like PHP, ASP and JSP, can
do this job just fine.
Shopping Carts
Any good online store has a shopping cart, so you need
one too. There are plenty of free shopping cart solutions
available, and most ecommerce web hosting accounts come with
one or more shopping carts available. And consider the
integration between shopping carts and product catalogs.
Payment Processing
Unlike other ecommerce necessities, this is normally not
included with ecommerce web hosting. There are 2 main
options. Get a merchant account and charge your customers
credit cards yourself, or leave it to a 3rd party payment
processor company. This is most often done without any
involment from the web host, but they may help you by
recommending merchant accounts/payment processors.
If you are planning on getting a merchant account and to
the CC processing yourself, you need access to a secure
server. A dedicated server is also an advantage, specially
if you want to store your customers CC numbers. Dedicated
servers are just far more secure than a shared server, and
you don't want to be responsible for what happens if someone
hacks into your server and steals the CC numbers you have
stored.
3rd party payment processing is easier, and you have less
to worry about. It is easy to set up, and the CC processing
company does all the hard work. On the downside, it is more
expensive, and it looks less professional if some other
company's name shows up on your customers CC bills. Make
sure you tell your customers what is going to show up on
their CC bills to avoid any chargebacks and confused
customers.
