If you have a trading requirement, the E-Spot offers an off-the-shelf, tried and trusted solution from Miva Merchant.

If you wish to explore the impressive features of this system, please click here. 

The E-Spot simply bills you the Miva licence fee - currently £250+vat per annum; and integrates the system with either an existing or new site.

This system is a professional e-commerce on-line store with a host of options.

About e-commerce

On-line trading enables users to order and purchase goods or services via the Internet
The Interent now attracts a much wider range of users – not just computer nerds anymore.
This has created new business opportunities as far more products or services can be successfully sold on-line.

Options for setting up an on-line shopping facility:

Simplest and cheapest method is simply a catalogue of products or services with prices.
The customer orders via post, fax, telephone and/or email using a printable Order Form on the site.
The Order and payment is processed manually by the business.
Payment methods can be posted cheque or credit cards details taken over the ‘phone.

Commercial e-store solution linked to the site.
This displays the products and their options for quantity, colours, price etc. and generates the order and payment details. These are accessed at a secure server via the browser.

Most businesses process the orders and payment manually. The payment details are stored on a secure server, but visable to the retailer.

Commercial or customised shopping solution with Payment processing facility.
For maximum security, you can pay a third party Payment Processing company to check and process the payment on their secure servers. The sale is made in real time on the Internet. The retailer does not see the payment information and the money usually takes a number of days to reach their account. This is the most secure and expensive method of  on-line trading.

As for which method to use? 
What you expect to sell, what staff you may need to deal with the sales and the time and costs involved in maintaining the on-line store are things to consider.

Look at other sites – especially competitors. Decide what you do and don’t like about them and make notes.

Ask for advice and learn from the experiences others have gone through. It could save you a lot of time and cost.

Whichever you choose, the minimum you need is a registered domain name; hosted domain space on a secure server, a web site and, normally, a merchant account.

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