There are many layers to the development of an eCommerce website. With WordPress, 360WD‘s main development application, there are a number of choices for commerce plugins and gateways. It is my intention to educate, not to sell. We receive no benefit other than ease of use when we recommend one over the other. What pay system will you need? It depends on a number of factors, including your monthly sales, ease of use, features needed, and how well they work with WordPress. If you’d like more help, we can set up an appointment to go over your options.

Terminology

First I want to give some terminology:

Hosted – This is an eCommerce  system that will take the customer out of the company website to a separate website for sales. This is the most secure way to sell because the company won’t have to worry about information security. The draw back is that it doesn’t look very professional. Shopify and Volusion are two main hosted commerce systems.

Self Hosted– The customer stays nice and cozy within the site for product sales. This is the suggestion I give to most of our clients. With WordPress, there are some great applications that are simple and clean. Of them all, we like WooCommerce.

Gateway – A credit card processing service that businesses use for online and brick and mortar sales. PayPal, Braintree, Stripe and Square are the main online gateways used. This article from Hubspot explains it much better than I can. What is a payment gateway and what is its role in ecommerce?

Direct Method – Gateways that work from within a website as opposed to the Redirect method of clicking out to a separate site for the transaction.

PayPal Pro, Braintree, Stripe, and Authorize

Today we are looking at four gateway services that work extremely well within WordPress and WooCommerce. Prices shown today (Dec. 2017) are subject to change. PayPal Pro, Braintree, Stripe, and Authorize are all Direct Method online sales services, each with slightly different features.

PayPal Pro

• No recurring payments
• $35 per month
• 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
• $79 one year subscription for WooCommerce extension

Braintree

• a PayPal company
• Recurring payments available
• No monthly fees
• 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
• $0 subscription for WooCommerce extension
• Can save payment details
• accepts all major cards plus Apple Pay & Android Pay

Stripe

• Can do Subscriptions
• Handles refunds automatically
• Recurring payments available
• No monthly fees
• 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
• $0 subscription for WooCommerce extension
• Can save payment details
• accepts all major cards plus Apple Pay
• if  a charge is disputed, you get charged $15, but if you win, you get that back

Authorize

• Can do Pre-orders
• Can do Subscriptions
• Handles refunds automatically
• Recurring payments available
• $49 set up fee, & $25 per month
• 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
• $79 subscription for WooCommerce extension
• Can save payment details
• accepts all major cards plus Apple Pay
• if  a charge is disputed, you get charged $15, but if you win, you get that back

Source: WooCommerce Gateways article by Kista.com

Security

Who wants headaches when you just want your eCommerce to run smoothly? With all the problems with hacking, it is important to feel a sense of security when taking payments. That is why every site that takes sensitive information from customers MUST have a SSL Security Certificate. This is the “s” on the end of the http in a URL. The “s” stands for secure.

360 WEB DESIGNS can help you design and develop your eCommerce site. Give us a call or drop us a note.