GUIDE

CREATING AN E-COMMERCE WEB SITE:

A DO-IT-YOURSELF GUIDE
GUIDE

Creating an E-commerce Web Site: A Do-It-Yourself Guide

Introduction
Over the past 10 years, e-commerce has been one of the fastest growing segments of the
retail industry. That may seem obvious to anyone who has ever shopped online, but the size
and speed of the boom has been truly astounding. There are already hundreds of thousands
of online stores around the world wide web, and according to some estimates, merchants Before You Start Creating
Your Site
open 20,000 new e-commerce storefronts every week.1
Step 1: Create Your E-Commerce
The popularity of the online marketplace shows no signs of slowing, so now may be the Business Plan. What are you selling?
perfect time to start selling on the web. There are more options for creating an e-commerce Who is your target market? How
much money will you need to
site than ever before. You can work with an e-commerce platform provider to set up an
invest to get your e-commerce
online store, or you may want to let web professionals handle the design and development
business off the ground? Do you
of your site from start to finish.
want to incorporate or operate as a
sole proprietorship? These
Working with services like these offer some convenience, but if you want additional flexibility
questions may seem like
and control, your best bet may be to create your site on your own. With a little know-how
no-brainers, but it’s worth taking
and some easy-to-use tools, you can develop an e-commerce site that looks and functions
some time to sit down and map
exactly the way you want, helping you meet the needs of your customers and your business
out a strategy.
more effectively.
Depending on the size and
In this guide, you’ll learn about what goes into creating your own do-it-yourself (DIY) complexity of your business, this
e-commerce web site, from picking the right tools and services you’ll need to create your could take anywhere from a day or
web pages, to selecting the best hosting provider and payment solution to fit your business, two to several months.

to figuring out the best security for your site.

Choosing Your Web Design Tools

After you have your business plan in place and are ready to focus on your new online
venture, it’s time to start creating your e-commerce web site. The first step is selecting the
tools you want to use to design and code your site. Learn the language(s) of the web
HTML, PHP, ASP, SQL, CSS, AJAX —
You can start from scratch and code everything by hand, but this requires solid knowledge today’s internet encompasses an
of HTML, PHP, MySQL, and other programming languages. To shorten the learning curve, you alphabet soup of different
might want to invest in web design software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft programming codes and tools.
Expression Web. Depending on what version you buy, these programs can run anywhere While you don’t need to be an
from $50 to $300. If you don’t have the budget to spend on software, there are also several expert in any of them to create a
free open source options to choose from, including KompoZer and BlueGriffon (formerly web site on your own, you should
Nvu). While they may not offer all of the sophisticated features that paid software does, these at least familiarize yourself with
open source programs are still powerful and easy to use. these technologies. There are a
wide range of resources available at
Everyone likes different web tools for different reasons, so it’s hard to say which will be your local library, bookstore, and of
the best program for you. However, there are some key elements you should look for in course online. The World Wide Web
any software. Consortium is a great place to start.

An easy-to-use interface is important, especially if you’re less familiar with HTML and would
prefer to work with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) application. WYSIWYG HTML
editors allow you to design your site by clicking and dragging elements and inserting text
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and links like you would in a word processing program. While you design your site, the
WYSIWYG editor will generate the HTML code for you. Many of these editors will allow you to
toggle between the visual layout and the site code, giving you flexibility to tweak the HTML
to see how it affects the page layout, and vice versa.

If your web site is small and simple, HTML/CSS is fine. On the other hand, if the content or Jumpstarting Your Site Design
structure of your e-commerce site is going to change frequently, you may want to consider with Free Templates
an open source content management system (CMS) such as Joomla and Drupal. A CMS is Even if you decide to create a DIY
software that allows users to add new web pages—or change content on existing pages— web site, you don’t need to start with
a blank slate. There are a wide variety
quick and easily. With a CMS in place, you won’t need to worry about coding new content in
of free HTML templates that you can
HTML because the system will do it for you.
tweak to meet your needs available
When you’re considering which web site building tools to use, you should make sure that at sites such as 4templates.com or
freewebtemplates.com. Before you
the applications you choose support all of the functionalities that you want in your web site.
start re-coding, however, be sure that
For example, if you plan to use a MySQL database to power your product catalog, be sure
the designer really has given
that you can integrate it into your site using the program you decide to go with. If you’re not
permission for others to use and
completely sure about the functionalities you may need, spend some time exploring web
change the look of the template.
sites that you like and pay special attention to the features that appeal to you the most.
Aside from product catalogs, many e-commerce sites offer newsletter registration forms,
customer support widgets, and other elements that make a site more interactive. After you
have a list of features you want on your site, do a little research to learn more about the
technologies behind them.

Selecting Your Web Host for E-commerce

Now that you’ve got an idea about how you’re going to build your web site, you need to
think about where to host it. There are hundreds of different web hosting providers to
choose from, so how can you be sure you’re making the best decision? Is Free Web Hosting Right
for You?
Even though it may seem like a daunting choice, picking the provider that’s right for you can It’s often said that the best things
be an easy decision if you pay attention to a few key issues. The first is price, and while it’s in life are free, but when it comes
easy to do a quick price comparison on the web, the cheapest host you can find may not to web hosting, this may not be
always be the best. Providers that have lower prices sometimes skimp in other areas, like the case. If you’re running an
customer service or technical support. You should also be on the lookout for providers that e-commerce site, a free hosting
may offer low prices up front, but then run up charges with hidden fees. provider may not give you the
reliability or features you need to
In addition to price, you should also consider the type of features offered by a hosting keep your customers happy. Before
provider. Since PHP and MySQL currently play an integral role in creating dynamic, you decide on a host, be sure it
interactive e-commerce web sites, picking a host that offers compatibility with these offers the bandwidth to support all
languages should be at the top of your list. If you’re interested in having email addresses that of the traffic to your site and meets
match your domain name—an important factor when considering how you will your needs for guaranteed uptime.
communicate with your customers and any employees you may have—access to an email
server is critical. Host-based security services, like firewalls and virus detection, are also
must-haves.

It’s also a good idea to check how much uptime a hosting provider guarantees. A high
uptime percentage helps to ensure that your web site will be available when a visitor types
your web address into a browser or finds your site via a search engine. Choosing a host that
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offers frequent backups is also a safe bet just in case your site goes down and you need to
recover your files. Last but not least, if you’re new to building web sites, then finding a
hosting provider that offers solid customer and technical support should also be a top
priority. A good hosting provider will be able to answer any questions you may have during
your site launch and should be able to help you quickly address any day-to-day problems
that may arise. Don’t Forget to Register Your
Domain Name
Before you can host your web site
Picking a Payment Solution
anywhere, you’ll need a domain
After deciding where you’ll set up shop on the web, the next step is choosing a method to name. Pick something that your
accept payments on your site. The payment process is what puts the “commerce” in customers will find easy to
“e-commerce.” There are two kinds of payment systems that you should consider for your remember, but try to avoid plays
site: a payment processor and a payment gateway. on words and other phrases that
are not search engine-friendly. For
Payment processors, like PayPal Website Payments Standard and Google Checkout, will send example, if you have a business
a customer to a checkout page that is hosted by the processing company. After customers selling cat toys, CatToyOutlet.com
submit their credit card information, they will be sent back to your web site. In contrast, is better than PurrfectlyPerfect
payment gateways—such as Authorize.net—integrate directly with your shopping cart and Toys.com.
the transaction is essentially invisible to your customer. Also, remember to complete your
metadata fields with relevant
There are pros and cons for payment processors and payment gateways that you should content and to submit your site to
weigh. For some web site owners, payment processors can be easier to use because they do the Open Directory Project ,
not require any backend integration with web sites. When you use a payment processor, you Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other
also don’t have to worry about securing financial transactions because the processing web popular search engines so your
site will take care of it for you. However, a payment processor will also take your customers customers can find you.
away from your site during checkout, a process that may cause confusion and may give
them second thoughts about completing their transaction. Payment gateways require more
technical know-how, and you will have to obtain an SSL certificate to protect credit card
transactions on your site (learn more about SSL security below). Even with these additional
considerations, a payment gateway will keep customers at your web site during the
transaction, making the user experience smoother and more professional.

Payment Processor Payment Gateway

e.g., PayPal, Google Checkout e.g., Authorize.net

Direct Integration

Your Shopping Cart

Your Shopping Cart
Certificate

Certificate

Their Payment Site

User Name:
Password:
Payment processor’s
website
Certificate

Diagram 1. E-commerce Web Site Payment Processing Flowchart

Before you decide on a payment processor or gateway, you should also research the
transaction, set up, and service fees that each provider charges. Average charges vary widely
across the industry, with some processors charging a cash fee plus a percentage of each
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transaction (for example, PayPal charges 30 cents plus 2.9 percent of every transaction for
merchants who receive $3,000 or less per month in payments). Setup fees for gateways can
cost anywhere from $99 to $299, and fees typically range from 10 to 50 cents per transaction.
Merchants with high sales volumes can often find providers that offer a fixed monthly rate
for transactions. It is often best to start with your own bank to see what merchant solutions
for credit card processing they recommend.

While set up costs and fees and important, there are a few more features that you should
think about before making a decision. Check to see whether the payment services
provider you’re interested in offers automatic tax calculations. This will make it much easier
to figure out how much sales tax you should be collecting and will cut down on
accounting headaches during tax season. Also be sure to find out if the processor or
gateway you want to use can automatically calculate shipping charges. With this kind of
service, you’ll know exactly how much to charge your customers so shipping costs won’t
eat into your bottom line.

Choosing a Shopping Cart—or Creating Your Own

At brick-and-mortar stores, shoppers pick items from shelves, put them in a cart or basket,
and usually bring them to a cashier when they’re finished shopping. You’ll need to set up a
similar system—commonly called a shopping cart solution—for your online store. Typically,
shopping cart software allows people to select items from web pages, add them to their
“cart,” and walk them through the purchase process when they are ready to check out. Most
shopping carts will also include taxes and shipping charges to give customers a total for
their order.

When choosing a shopping cart to go with your payment processing solution, make sure it’s
supported by your hosting provider and look to see if the cart offers the payment and
shipping options you need. There are a number of open source carts with active
communities like osCommerce and Zen Cart, as well as GeoTrust Partner solutions like
3dcart.com. You can also create your own shopping cart using web page authoring
programs like Dreamweaver or programming it from scratch using PHP, MySQL, and other
web programs and languages.

SSL Security: An Absolute Must-Have for Your Site

A nice site design and seamless integration with a payment system are great, but they won’t
mean a thing if you and your customers aren’t protected from fraud and theft. Security is one
of the biggest concerns that shoppers have when it comes to buying online. In fact, a recent
survey found that 45 percent of consumers are worried about identity theft when they buy
on the web.2 Even more troubling for e-commerce business owners, security concerns like
these have a serious impact on consumer behavior. The National Cyber Security Alliance
recently found that a majority of Americans—64 percent—have abandoned an online
purchase because they were not certain that a web site was secure.3

Given these fears, SSL security is critical to your web site. With an SSL certificate, you’ll be able
to prevent cybercriminals from intercepting financial data as it’s transmitted over the
internet. Not only that, but you’ll also be able to show your customers that your business is
legitimate and can be trusted.
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What is an SSL Certificate?

SSL certificates are bits of code that you install on your site that will encrypt logins,
passwords, credit card numbers and other information so that hackers can’t intercept the
data and decode it. After an SSL certificate is installed on a site, it uses an extensive system of
security checks to establish a domain and server as trustworthy. To encrypt logins,
registration forms, credit card transactions and other situations where sensitive information
needs to be sent between web browsers and servers, an SSL certificate uses a private
“key”—essentially a long string of complex code—that is unique to the individual server that
hosts the web site and a public key that is sent to web browsers. The private key can only be
“unlocked” by the public key, and vice versa, helping to ensure that the data remains secure.

The vast majority of businesses obtain SSL certificates from third-party providers called
Certificate Authorities (CAs). In addition to providing the SSL certificate, a CA will also
authenticate a business to help ensure that the company represented by the web site
actually exists. For example, GeoTrust will check domain registration information and request
business registration documents to verify a web site owner’s identity and location.

SSL is now considered a standard internet security technology, but that doesn’t mean that all
SSL certificates and providers are the same. Just like picking your design tools and your web
host, there are several important factors you should think about before you select a CA and
an SSL certificate.

Choosing the Right SSL Provider

Before you worry about any technical specifications, finding a credible SSL provider that has
a strong reputation for online security should be a top concern. Why is this so important?
With SSL security from a well-known CA like GeoTrust, your visitors will know that your
company has been verified by an objective third party recognized for its strong security
practices. People will be more likely to buy when they know that their information is
protected and your business is safe, helping you turn that 64 percent of shoppers who have
abandoned an online purchase into paying customers.

Without legitimate SSL security, you run the risk of losing business because customers won’t
recognize that your site is safe. Even worse, it can take just one fraudulent incident to
damage your business reputation, even if it wasn’t your fault. Customers may still blame you
and tell everyone they know—from family, to coworkers, to a potential audience of millions
on popular social media sites like Facebook, Yelp, and Twitter—that your site can’t be trusted.

Along with the reputation of your SSL provider, you also need to research what type of SSL
certificate will be best for your site. Fortunately, this shouldn’t take too much of your time
since there are only three types of SSL certificate that you need to learn about: Extended
Validation, organization validation, and domain validation.

Types of SSL Certificates

Domain validated SSL is a basic certificate that provides encryption and only verifies that the
person applying for the certificate has the right to use a specific domain name. These
certificates are ideal for business owners who want to get a certificate as quickly as possible,
however, they represent the lowest level of SSL security. Organization validated SSL, on the
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other hand, also confirms that a company is a confirmed legal entity and establishes a
physical location for that organization, giving customers more assurance that the business is
legitimate. When people click an on organization validated certificate, it will display your
company name, and trust marks provided by CAs may also display your business name.
GeoTrust offers a domain validated SSL product—QuickSSL Premium—as well as an
More Bits Mean More Protection
organization validated certificate called True BusinessID SSL.
When you begin to research SSL
For sites that handle financial transactions, Extended Validation (EV) is your best bet. In certificates, you’ll notice that
addition to the encryption and authentication that organization validation provides, EV SSL different certificates may offer
different levels of encryption
also offers a clear sign that your web site is safe: the address bar in high-security browsers will
measured in bits. Usually,
turn green and show the name of your company as well as the name of your SSL provider.
certificates range from 40-bit to
EV SSL requires a more thorough authentication process, but many businesses experience
256-bit encryption. As you might
increased conversions and higher sales thanks to the green address bar and recent research
have guessed, 256-bit encryption
shows that top performing sites are more likely to use EV SSL.4 If you’re looking for an EV SSL is the strongest, but just how
certificate, GeoTrust True BusinessID with EV is an ideal choice. strong is it? To give you some idea,
128-bit encryption can calculate
Conclusion and Resources 288 times as many combinations as
40-bit encryption, making it over a
E-commerce has made it possible for entrepreneurs to extend their reach farther than they
trillion times a trillion times
could have ever imagined. You’ve just read about all of the different components that go
stronger. That means it would
into creating an e-commerce web site, but here’s a quick recap that will help you put
take a hacker a trillion years to
everything into place: break into a session protected by a
128-bit SSL certificate, and even
1. Choose your web design tools — Determine what tools you’re going to use to design
longer to hack into a session
and your site.
secured with 256-bit encryption.

2. Select your web host — Find a hosting provider that can accommodate all of the tools When you’re comparing CAs, also
you want to use and offers the features you need. check to see if they’re using
2048-bit roots that support up to
3. Pick a payment solution — Weigh your options to see if a payment processor or 256-bit encryption. This means that
gateway is right for you. the CA follows the latest
recommendations developed by
4. Choose or create a shopping cart — Your customers are going to need a way to select the Certificate Authority Browser
items and buy them, so find a shopping cart solution that meets your needs. Forum—an industry oversight
organization—to help ensure that
5. Obtain credible SSL security — Work with a provider like GeoTrust to get credible SSL SSL certificates are as strong as
protection for your site. they can be.

With the rise of identity theft and malware, item five is particularly important. If customers
don’t believe that a site is secure, they won’t choose to spend their hard-earned money
there. By using a reliable SSL certificate provider, you’ll be able to arm your site against online
threats and send your customers a clear message that your company can be trusted.

Not all SSL certificates are equal, however. Using the information in this guide, be sure to
invest in a solution from a credible provider like GeoTrust that will help you build confidence
in your site, communicate your commitment to online safety, and protect your business.
Taking the time to find the right SSL certificate for your site now will pay off in the future,
helping to ensure that your business is a success.
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For more information about how to build your own e-commerce web site, check out
these resources:

• Starting an Online Business All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies

by Shannon Belew and Joel Elad; For Dummies, 2009
• Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites
by Nelson Bates; BookSurge Publishing, 2008
• Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005: From Novice to Professional
by Cristian Darie, Karli Watson; Apress, 2005
• How To Pick A Shopping Cart That Makes You Money
by Daniel Hall and Tom Antion; CreateSpace, 2009
• Effortless E-Commerce with PHP and MySQL
by Larry Ullman; New Riders Press, 2010

SSL Products from GeoTrust

GeoTrust offers a range of reliable low-cost SSL certificates to meet your individual needs:

• GeoTrust® True BusinessID with EV — Get the credibility of a well-established SSL provider,
the green address bar and a dynamic trust seal from GeoTrust at an affordable price.
• GeoTrust® True BusinessID — Get name brand SSL that authenticates your business
identity along with a dynamic trust seal at an affordable price.
• GeoTrust® True BusinessID Wildcard — Protect unlimited subdomains with reliable SSL
from a certificate authority that maintains a reliable, military-grade data center.
• GeoTrust® QuickSSL® Premium — Get inexpensive basic SSL encryption from GeoTrust’s
fast and convenient issuing system.
• GeoTrust® Enterprise SSL — Purchase SSL certificates in bulk, issue them on-demand and
manage them all through a central management console.

Contact Us
www.GeoTrust.com
CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS EMEA SALES OFFICE APAC SALES OFFICE
GeoTrust, Inc. GeoTrust, Inc. GeoTrust, Inc.
350 Ellis Street, Bldg. J 8th Floor Aldwych House 134 Moray Street
Mountain View, CA 94043-2202, USA 71-91 Aldwych South Melbourne VIC 3205
Toll Free +1-866-511-4141 London, WC2B 4HN, United Kingdom Australia
Tel +1-650-426-5010 Tel +44.203.0240907 [email protected]
Fax +1-650-237-8871 Fax +44.203.0240958
[email protected] [email protected]

1. “E-commerce is Booming”: Danny Wong, Huffington Post, July 12, 2010

2. “Consumers need to take more precautions against online identity theft” by Linda Rosencrance, SecurityNewsDaily.com, January 17,
2011: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41123534/ns/technology_and_science-security/
3. “Majority of Americans Have Abandoned an Online Purchase Due to Security Concerns, Poll Finds”; National Cyber Security Alliance,
November 18, 2010
4. “Extended Validation SSL Server Certificates: Both End-Users and Site Owners Look Up to the Other ‘Green’ IT”; Aberdeen Group,
1/31/2011: http://www.aberdeen.com/Aberdeen-Library/7044/RA-secure-sockets-layer.aspx

Green extended validation bar is visible in high-security browsers. © 2011 GeoTrust, Inc. All rights reserved. GeoTrust, the GeoTrust logo,
the GeoTrust design, and other trademarks, service marks, and designs are registered or unregistered trademarks of GeoTrust, Inc. and its
subsidiaries in the United States and in foreign countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.