What is eCommerce?

eCommerce is a way to accept credit card payments online for your goods or services.

Having an eCommerce website is more expensive and involved than other online payment solutions like PayPal, but it functions more like a traditional retail physical store and allows complex tax and shipping calculations on your customers' purchses. If you need to charge different taxes and shipping rates, then an eCommerce store is probably what you need to sell your goods and services online.

There are two steps involved in building an eCommerce solution:

1. You must set up an eCommerce store. I recommend osCommerce, an Open Source (no charges or fees), php-based store that can handle just about any shipping and taxation options. It also has several modules to interract with lots of different payment gateways, including PayPal. osCommerce can be modified to look just like your website, or it can be set up to be your entire site — this is the route you'll probably want if you are planning on setting up an online store.
2. You will need a third party to handle your credit card transactions. In Canada, Moneris Solutions offers an osCommerce e-Select Plus online credit card transaction solution. There is a monthly fee and a per-sale charge, just like retailers and other businesses pay to have credit card machines in their stores. With Moneris, all your transactions are secured by SSL encryption, just like banks and credit card companies. Moneris has strick guidelines before they will allow you to sell online using their services. And I should know, I had to meet those guidelines to build the online sale module of Spectrum Digital Imaging, an osCommerce-based online store.