There are ways of selling goods and services on line without the visitor having to make a telephone call. Many people, these days, are perfectly happy to give their credit card details on line, providing a secure server is utilised to gather sensitive information.
In its basic form a shopping cart could be just a button or a hyperlinked piece of text that takes the visitor to an order page. The page will usually allow additional items to be added.
There are many commercial shopping carts that use templates and they can look very professional, but be sure to compare all the facilities offered before you make a decision. These solutions are ideal for a trader that has many similar items for sale and allow frequent updating and price changes. They also permit a high level of customisation to incorporate the house style of your website with logos and images etc.
You will need to have a bank merchant account in order to accept credit cards and they have very strict entry conditions which sometimes preclude smaller operators. In these cases why not consider using Paypal? This gives you a credit card facility without a bank merchant account and can be very cost effective as it is charged on a transaction basis rather than with a monthly fee.
Some firms offer the complete e-commerce solution including the banking side, but make sure that it can interface with your own business bank account. These solutions are quite tempting for someone who operates from home as some banks refuse to provide merchant facilities for home workers.
One word of caution regarding charge-backs. In these days of increasing card fraud it is the retailer that loses the money if a customer uses false details or challenges a transaction. You must do all you can to check the details a customer has supplied before accepting a transaction and with the power of the internet this is much easier to do than it used to be. There are websites which allow you to check phone numbers and addresses against official databases for a small fee and I would recommend you always do this with a new customer until a trading relationship has been established.
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