Checkout solutions for your E-commerce

Charge that credit card, get paid and have your e-commerce web site up and running at a decent cost so it can support itself and bring some green. The idea behind an e-shop is to have the conversion from visitor to buyer done fast and in the most secure way so that it happens over and over again.
There are literally thousands of solutions out there for building or hosting your e-commerce. Many of those solutions are free or come with your hosting subscription. If you are a programmer or can get a hold of such an individual you can download and customize code and have your own solution in very little time. It all ends up in the checkout process and here is where all the lines in the water lie.
Having a simple low-cost solution that provides state-of-the-art security and service is not impossible by any stretch of the imagination and many of the most respectable companies out there offer easy to set-up solutions for decent fees.
The things that make me think twice when I look for a service, though, is the nickel-and-dimes type of deal. And when you're dealing with credit cards and other type of payments, reading the fine-print is a prerequisite. And in that fine-print (that often stretches over several pages) you may find that the service provider can change the contract at any time, for any reason.
Do not build your e-commerce around a checkout solution before you make sure you can use it. I've heard a few disappointed voices in Canada that enthusiastically built their web sites to use Google Checkout or certain versions of PayPal just to find that they're not available in Canada .. yet. It's not obvious information since the focus on those sites (as it should be on yours) is conversion.
What payments would you need to Accept or Manage, and don't be afraid to think ahead:

• Credit Cards, Debit, Email Invoices, PayPal (when selling single or multiple items)
• Recurring payments (like a monthly fee.. subscription)
• Promotions (eg. 15 $ first 3 months and 99.99 $ after)
• Shipping and handling
• Bonus points and point partnerships (eg. Travel miles, Bank percentage rebates...)
• TAXES
• Contributions (donations)
• Gift certificates and Coupons

Major sites like Amazon have their own secure systems to store credit card numbers and shipping addresses, but this article is for the rest of us who need security and fraud protection while selling to buyers who are shy of leaving the credit card number all over the place. EBags' Peter Cobb said that “retail is about overcoming objections” as the point here is to enable that transaction and get the money. Big players spend big to lure customers their way. Google offered a fee waiver through the end of the year in their move to take some market off PayPal' hands. But we are not talking from the customer's perspective here, as much as it is a crucial factor in completing the sale and it should not be overlooked, are we?
In the end, if we need to spend hundreds of dollars to integrate some system and pay ridiculous fees on each sale, it's going to kill your infant business before it can build you the income you're doing it for.
So here is a list of the most interesting and capable players I stumbled upon (I urge you to comment on it and add to this list)

• Google Checkout - offers a decent platform for decent fees and comes backed by Google's name. It's not available everywhere though.
• PayPal - much more widely spread and used but I feel the fees are a bit to the upper side of the ladder. I simply don't like paying "one-time installation fees" I guess. Still, a solid and reputable name in the business.
• Amazon FPS - Flexible Payments Service is "designed from the ground up specifically for developers"... Or you can simply create a PayNow Widget and ... Amazon takes care of the rest.

There are others like Payjunction, Card Payment Solutions, Wells Fargo, VersaPlay, CollectivePos,  DriveIt and all have a twist that make them attractive for a certain market or the other. Personally I look at the reliability of the company and I simply hate two-hundred pages contracts you can't keep track of.
From my point of view, those services should empower my business not suck it dry when the "exceptional case you find on page two of the fine-print" happens.

AJAX makes business sense

I recently had to answer to the: “Should we go with AJAX” question and, for a developer, the answer to this question is not obvious. There are many benefits in using AJAX, both from the user or programmer’s perspective but this particular question is not technical. AJAX is not a programming language but a technique and this calls to a cost management conversation as well as the determination of ROI.

According to Wikipedia, AJAX is “shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a Web development technique for creating interactive Web applications. The intent is to make Web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability."

AJAX improves both performance and user experience (and often and desirably makes use of Service Oriented Architecture), makes a programmer life easier as it facilitates the development of wikis and the creation of dashboard applications which allows the user to become involved in building the final (tailored) user interface experience. The user actually controls an important part of the look and feel of the final product as well as determines the most important features (from those available) and arranges them to provide the most business value possible.

There are voices like John Crupi’s that say: “AJAX + SOA: The Next Killer App” and it is the direction on which Microsoft itself is moving. It is important as AJAX leads the “Web 2.0” revolution and brings desktop-like experiences inside the web browser.
To come back to the question that triggered this article, the Open Ajax Alliance website provides a great article on when AJAX Makes Business Sense. It’s a must-read as it provides the whitepaper to bring before the non-technical manager. As of why, a programmer can only say: “Let’s do it with AJAX”.

Exciting times folks, and the internet can only get closer to simplicity as web pages become richer and cleaner, but switching or even starting with AJAX involves thorough and honest internal evaluation and cost management.

Next Generation Applications have to be a part of this productivity improvement brought forth by those techniques as this platform-independent runtime technology is well-suited for next-generation SOA applications. What makes an answer to the above question, even though there is so much to say, is that AJAX enables a rich user experience with enhanced productivity at the cost of changing your optics and grasping the concept. I believe that those costs should be lower and development time should be reduced while the result is a rich user experience in a server-based application deployment that obviously provides lower maintenance costs as it replaces the desktop application.