In order to maximise your sales a Web store should therefore be capable of accepting orders and payments in as many ways as possible. Available ordering methods include online, fax, telephone, and snail mail whilst payment methods include credit and debit cards, paper and electronic checks and digital cash. And whilst most smaller merchants will choose to process their credit card payments offline, it is worth checking that the software is also able to easily handle on line processing. This gives flexibility to cope with future growth. It is also important to select a solution that automates as much of the order management process as possible, for example the ability to automatically send an e-mail order acknowledgement to the customer along with a unique number for order tracking.
Security is another major concern.
Although SSL capability is included with most e-commerce solutions today, some solutions still have major security weaknesses. For example, although they transfer the customer's credit card details from their browser to the merchant's server using SSL, they may leave it in an unsecured area of the server where unauthorised parties could access it. Even worse, some send the customers details to the merchant using unencrypted e-mail. There are some other features that are also worth looking out for. For example, discount clubs allow you to automatically give discounts to repeat or high-volume customers.