UNDERSTANDING E-COMMERCE COSTS

E-COMMERCE is made up of a sum of parts including A) Your own website B) A shopping cart or a program installed on your website that allows customer transaction. C) A way to process payment orders. The most used choice is credit card payment.

Step A: Website
WIN Publishing will establish & host your website for as little as $200 and $20 per month. This includes a 2 year registration of your domain name and design of 2 pages. Most clients select our $35 month plan which allows the addition or change of one page per month. Additional pages can be added at any time. WIN Publishing will add the page for a cost of $25 to $75 per page, depending on the complexity of the pages or the client can install pages at any time at no additional charge.

Step B: Shopping Cart
WIN Publishing will install the MCart shopping cart on your website for $100 and a monthly fee of $10. The client has complete control of the items and prices in the shopping and has full administrative responsibilty. Client has complete control of the items and prices in the shopping and has full administrative responsibilty.

Step C: Processing Payments
While process payments can be done without using credit cards, it is very inconvenient for you client. WIN Publishing recommends that you acept credit card payment as a way of processing online transactions. WIN Publishing offers 2 ways to handle credit card transactions..
Each process will allow the buyer to enter the items in the shopping cart and process the order the same. What happens next is the difference.

PGP Processing
Using PGP email encrypting software, the order will be encrypted, then emailed to you where it will be decrypted on your computer. You must purchase PGP software online and install this on your computer. Once you decrypt the order, you then process it through your established credit card merchant. Please contact you current merchant card for more information on processing these type of sales If you do have an established merchant card account WIN Publishing can direct you to several processors. Software cost is currentlty at $50. There is no additional monthly charge using PGP software.

Gateway Processing
Using a gateway, the order will be sent directly to the credit card merchant and processed. You will only received approved order. By using the gateway you are eliminating the time and expense it takes to process the order. Plus, since you only received approved orders, you won’t waste your time on bad accounts. The shopping carts currently installed by WIN Publishing only use Merchant Card and Payment Services (MCPS) for the gateway. No other gateway is compatible with this shopping cart. The intallation fee for this is currently $79 and their is a month charge of $29.95.

Information about Merchant Card Account
WIN Publishing is not in the Merchand Card Account business, but does have access and information to share with you. We will direct you to the Merchand Card services that we feel are the best at the time, but accept no responsibility beyond the referral.

This is general information about merchant accounts and may vary. Most companies have a $100 non-refundable application fee. It is a one time setup fee for your merchant account. The companies we have selected have very high approval rates. The discount rate is the rate or percentage that banks will keep from each transaction. The current discount rate for Visa & MasterCard is between 2.35% and 2.45%. The processor also takes a fee for every transaction. It is currently at .25¢.

It works like this. On a $100 sale, the discount rate of 2.35% would deduct $2.35 from the $100 sale. They would also deduct the .25$ and some banks also charge a 5-cent AVS (Address Verification Service) fee. Therefore, on the $100 sale, the processor would keep $2.65, giving you, the merchant a net of $97.35. Note, some banks deduct this fee at time of sale, while most deduct it as a total of charges at the end of each month. Most merchant card accounts have a minimum monthly, whether you have any sales or not. The current lowest we have found is $20, but will range as high as $30, plus additional fees from American Express and possibly Discover. In addition, you will also be charge $10 for a monthly statement from most banks.

Summary
The least expensive choice is to establish a website for $200 and a $100 shopping cart. Your would buy PGP software online for $50 and install it on you own. You have spent $350 to get your shopping cart established. If you choose the basic WIN Publishing package, would have $20 per month in web hosting, $10 for the shopping cart. If you already have a merchant card account, your cost would be only $30 per month. Most clients select our Support package at $35 per month which would bring your total to $45 per month.

The recommended choice is to establish a website for $200 and a $100 shopping cart. You would get the gateway installed for $79. You have spent $379 to get your shopping cart established. Choose the WIN Publishing support package at $35 per month to build your site, add $10 for the shopping cart and $29.95 for the gateway and your monthly costs are $74.95.

In both these cases, if you do not have a merchant account, you will add $100 for the application fee and minimum total of $30 per month for services.