Building an e-commerce website? Read this first!

If you’re looking to build an e-commerce website, and you want to accept credit card payments online, there are a few 'fundamentals' your website should include.

Some of these are formal banking and security criteria, while others are expected as best practise standard by today's savvy Internet shoppers. As e-commerce website specialists, we’re well-versed in developing online stores that tick all these boxes.

e-Commerce Website Fundamentals

• You should always include a complete description of the goods/services you offer.

• You should definitely have (and clearly display) a refund/return, cancellation and/or disputes resolution policy. There are some great examples on the Ministry of Consumer Affairs website, click here.

• You should also have and display a delivery policy – stating your delivery prices, within how many day the customer can expect delivery, the type of postal/courier service used, etc.

• You should include contact details for customer service and enquiries – these should include a physical address, telephone and an email address (not a Gmail or Hotmail address, however).

• Assuming your business is based here in New Zealand, your prices should always displayed in New Zealand dollars, and you shuld make it clear to customers that this is the case. 

• If you have a Currency Converter, you should clearly show a disclaimer with it. The wording should be something to this effect: “the price advertised may not be the same price charged to the credit card account, due to exchange rate fluctuations. Because we are based in New Zealand we have to convert your purchase to New Zealand dollars at the exchange rate on the day it is processed.”

• You should display any applicable, known export restrictions.

• You really must have Terms and Conditions, and shown these to the cardholder during the purchase/order process. The cardholder ideally needs to be able to select some kind of acknowledgement button to show that they understand and accept your Terms and Conditions.

• If you add a Surcharge fee to your normal prices when a cardholder chooses to pay with a Visa or MasterCard, you should to make this very clear to the cardholder.  

....Easy! There is not one item on this list that we cannot simply help you to do, or do for you.

If you’d like a quote and proposal for a new e-commerce website, or an audit of your current e-commerce website, get in touch with our team today.
 

15th of December, 2011, By Arron Edwards.