Hey guys, I have just finished studying web design at uni and am wondering what you guys would say would be the easiest way to create a e-commerce website for your client? I would like to create one in PHP but there seems there's all different ways of achieving the same sort of thing.

 

What would you guys suggest?

I've found this cart called jcart, but it only processes payments through paypal, is there a way i could adapt it to accept normal card payments? and if so how would i go about this?

Everytime I speak to a client who want's an e-commerce system I plead the case for PayPal, MoneyBookers, Nochex, GoogleCheckout etc. etc.

The thing is when you say "normal" card payments, I assume you want to accept all the usual cards but you want to do it directly through the website not using a third party system (e.g. PayPal) and instead use a merchant account/gateway set up. The trouble is, it opens up a whole can of worms. IF you use PayPal or any of the well known services listed above, you don't need to worry about security (much - apart from the setup of the website it's self) and you don't need to have the responsibility of ensuring credit card details are safe and secure. By using for instance PayPal, it's a well recognised name, so people will associate security and safety with it - more likely to purchase from you, you don't need to get PCI DSS Compliance (a very long, complicated, expensive and drawn out affair where you have to ensure you are handling confidential data responsibly and safely) and it is much easier, quicker and smoother to set up.

 

Clients often have this thing about "processing their own" so it makes them look more professional. I find this creates the exact opposite effect. What happens if a site you build with this kind of setup get's hacked and X number of customers credit card details are stolen? The client will be quick to blame you in court and you'll find yourself with numerous fines and prosecutions against you. If you want my advice go for a PayPal like system, it's less of a burden in the long run!

 

So in answer to your question, stick with PayPal! It doesn't really matter and the end user doesn't really care!

What happens if a site you build with this kind of setup get's hacked and X number of customers credit card details are stolen? The client will be quick to blame you in court and you'll find yourself with numerous fines and prosecutions against you.

 

In my short experience working for agencies, how it usually goes down is the client buries all evidence and denies they were ever hacked in the first place (no real way to track a fraud use back to their website directly anyway), the agency backs them up, and blames the hack on a very obscure security flaw and doesn't mention that they forgot to sanitise a mysql variable. That was an eye opener for me really, so thought I'd share.

 

Anyway, back to the question at hand, I'm sorry to say that in e-commerce it actually does make a difference. While offering paypal as an option is a really good idea, I've found that conversion rates improve drastically with a decent custom checkout process, I assume because it increases confidence. That and client likes it as transactions are cheaper than PP!

Sagepay offer various levels of integration which allow you to make it look like the site handles all credit card information, while they take care of most of the PCI compliance burden. There are also other gateways you can use. Most require some knowledge of back-end code though.

 

If you don't know how to code PHP or something similar, another option would be to use a big old e-commerce system like magento (can take a while to learn in itself) for which you can get plugins which give sagepay integration straight away. Or team up with a developer.