Colorado Ecommerce Solution Provider
If you want to sell products over the Internet, your web site will need a shopping cart. You will also need a merchant account and a payment gateway if you want to accept real-time transactions. But it's not terribly complicated - Red Kite has 10 years of e-commerce experience and can walk you through the process, and even provide step-by-step instructions for obtaining reputable accounts and services. Our e-commerce services include website design and hosting.
There are a lot of options when it comes to shopping carts - we tend to favor open-source platforms that allow for modification and customization, tend to be less expensive, and are supported by professional staff as well as active community-based forums.
Shopping Carts
Red Kite offers three levels of shopping cart:
Basic E-commerce Package, $400 (added to the price of any website package or integrated into your existing site)
Our basic cart solution for a small number of items through our long-time cart provider Mal's E-commerce. This hard-coded cart is very inexpensive to set up and maintain. In addition, this cart is a partner site with Authorize.net and Paypal, already optimized for use with them and with many other payment gateways.
Includes cart setup and payment setup, but does not include additional fees charged by payment gateways or transaction processors. Includes up to 25 catalog items; if you plan to have more than 25 we'd advise you to consider Apricart Pro. Adding new items or making changes will require minimal knowledge of HTML, but we can show you how to do it easily.
Apricart Pro E-commerce Package, $750 (added to the price of any website package or integrated into your existing site)
Our PHP/MySQL database-driven package specifically designed for small businesses. This inexpensive yet very robust catalog solution ties in neatly with Mal's E-commerce for easy online sales. With Apricart Pro, you'll have the ability to make changes to your inventory through an easy-to-use password-protected administration area: it allows you to add unlimited products; incorporate keyword and category searches; create sales and set out of stock or inactive item status and much more.
We can integrate the catalog seamlessly into any web layout we design for you, and it's also a great choice for adding ecommerce to an existing web site.
View the demo administration interface: the password is 'admindemo.'
Includes cart setup and payment setup, but does not include additional fees charged by payment gateways or transaction processors. Includes up to 25 products added for you. We'll show you how to easily add your own products, or add them to the catalog for you at the hourly rate of $75.00.
CMS for E-commerce, starts at $3000
A complete CMS solution integrated with a user-administered e-commerce catalog suite. The choice of platform depends on your business requirements but includes X-Cart, CubeCart, SiteBuilder Deluxe and ZenCart. View one of our custom X-Cart designs here (note - this is a live site, please no testing!).
You'll have the ability to make changes to your inventory through an easy-to-use password-protected administration area: it allows you to add unlimited products; incorporate keyword and category searches; create sales and set out of stock or inactive item status and much more. Plus user registration, wish lists, gift certificates, discounts, the ability to add static pages as you like and much more.
This is a web design package that incorporates your entire site - no other package is needed, and since the site is template-driven, it's relatively easy to redesign later. Pricing includes setup of catalog (the first 25 items) and up to 10 pages of static content. Additional static pages can be added at the hourly rate of $75.00.
Payment Gateways
We have several payment gateways we regularly recommend - both integrate completely with our shopping cart, which is provided by Mal's E-commerce.
The first is Authorize.net. We have been using their services for years; they are very reliable, well-established and one of the major providers of this service in the industry. In addition, they offer an easy-to-use online dashboard for capturing sales, issuing refunds and downloading data for recordkeeping. Using Authorize.net requires a third-party merchant account through your bank.
Red Kite is an Associate Reseller for Authorize.net and as such can provide a guided experience in setting up your account in a timely manner (plus discounted monthly rates), with or without an associated merchant account. Contact us for more information.
Another option is Paypal's Website Payments Pro. Paypal offers a merchant account, payment gateway and transaction processer all-in-one with a competitive fee schedule and reasonable monthly fee. Website Payments Pro is fully integrated into our shopping cart system.
We can also recommend CDGCommerce from experience - this company offers a combination transaction processor and merchant account at a great price, which means that you don't have to obtain a merchant account at your bank.
There are many other payment gateway options, including those from local banks - you just need to make sure that the gateway you choose is compatible with the shopping cart platform you use.
Merchant Accounts
A merchant account is not a business checking account; it is a special arrangement with a credit card-clearing bank that allows you to process card transactions through their facilities. In many cases, you will also have to pay somewhat higher rates than offline businesses such as restaurants that obtain a signature from their customers.
In general, the best place to start searching for a merchant account is at your own bank or on the web sites of the payment gateways, for example, Authorize.net in the United States. However, keep in mind that a payment gateway is not required unless you intend to process credit card transactions real-time (but real-time transactions are such a time-saver for you that we always recommend going that route).
Red Kite's other web development services include content management systems that will enable you to edit your own website content from any computer and applications to make your site more interactive for visitors. Or contact us if you're ready to take the next step and get more information about our ecommerce website hosting and design services.
