E-commerce
Online Virtual Stores selling products or services online and delivering them to customer doorstep.
To do online transactions virtual storefronts with the capability of doing the online transactions using payment gateways like Paypal, Net Banking, Credit Card or Debit is required.
E-Commerce Hosting Features
- Hosting provider provides software and space to run such virtual stores. Online Business vendor adds products, manages and delivers them to customers after the sale.
- Features of E-Commerce Hosting
- Storage – High data storage is required to manage files, images, and data. With requirement, hosting plan up gradation is done at ease.
- Bandwidth: Monthly visitors on the website, with increase hosting provider, should allow up gradation of a plan.
- Domain Name: Catchy, short and easy domain name should be selected, which customer can remember easily.
- E-mail: Secure and Robust email services can lead to the right sales.
- Uptime: 100%, a customer can come anytime.
- Website Speed: Fast Server for better performance
The success of E-Commerce Store depends on Hosting Services.
- Choose the right eCommerce provider offering maximum customization to enhance Appearance, Professionalism, & Overall Look.
- Ease of use for adding items and customizing sales options
- Plenty of available professionally designed free templates
- Allows Social sharing, media management and SEO for adding meta tags and friendly URL.
- Store builder should serve general purpose website building and blog.
- eCommerce provider must provide SSL certificate (software security protocol).
- POS should integrate with offline business also.
- Excellent customer support
- Set your goals with your eCommerce portal
- Options Available: Shopify, GoDaddy
Hosting services to cater the needs of electronic commerce website. The companies offering E-commerce hosting can be categorized as:
- Pre-installed
- Self-Hosted
Pre-installed: Hosting company provides pre-installed software.
Self-Hosted: You install and manage e-commerce software on the hosting platform.
PCI Compliant Web Host for E-Commerce Store
Always choose PCI Compliant hosting plan, E-commerce application or Shopping cart.
You can consult PCI Council for List of Validated Payment Applications for shopping carts and E-commerce applications.
PCI (Payment Card Industry) Compliance
Download PC Data Security Standards (DSS) & Supporting documents from PCI Council's website.
It is at your peril if you ignore PCI Compliance, a huge penalty laid if you don't comply with standards.
Suggestions for E-Commerce Hosting Providers and E-Commerce Enterprises
- Encryption and protection of the Card data – To avoid it, don't store any Cardholder data in digital or written form. Use payment processors, POS or card readers that don't retain information on your system. In case or re-occurring bills or plans, where you need to store data, never store sensitive authentication info like PIN and security code
- Don't let your payment process system to reside in a shared environment, choose dedicated or a virtual private server that is PCI compliant and secures it from malware, unauthorized use, theft, and hacking.
- Choose a hosted payment gateway solution like Paypal Standard, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, where a client can be forwarded to make payments.