Creating a Merchant Website

Planning to build a merchant or store website to sell your products or services on-line? The first thing you'll need is a payment processor or "gateway" to allow for credit card and echeck purchases. Many payment processing companies are available, some are more popular than others and some can be very expensive to setup. Some options are:

Paypal

The most widely used payment gateway in the world, Paypal has no setup or monthly fees. There is a per purchase fee around 3.00% (international fees may be slightly higher, see current Paypal merchant rates). The shopping cart application is included with your account and order forms for your website are generated in your login. Paypal is a long standing and trusted merchant solution. On-line payments can be made by credit card, echeck, or your customers can optionally setup a Paypal account. One of the easiest to setup full feature merchant solutions to use when starting a new website.

2Checkout

Another easy to use on-line merchant solution is 2Checkout. 2Checkout (or 2CO), like Paypal, features a complete shopping cart system. Once logged into your account you can generate "copy and paste" add to cart buttons for your website. There are no monthly or setup fees. As well as credit card and echeck payments, 2CO also includes the option for clients to make payments through Paypal. View 2CO pricing structure.

Local Bank

Check with your local bank, or search on line for a bank you use to see what merchant solutions they offer for on-line payments.

Building the Site
The following are the steps used to build a store website, with tips and more info targeted for new users setting up a shopping cart website.

Select a Domain Name
A domain name is used so users and search engines can locate your website. If possible select a domain name that includes some keywords related to your business or geographical location. This will help boost your search engine listing somewhat. Go to Allwebco hosting to check for domain name availability and to reserve your choice.

Order Everything In One Step
Order a domain, hosting and template all at once. Browse our shopping cart web template selection and once you locate a template design that you like you can click the "order" button, choose "order with hosting" and follow the steps. You can reserve your domain name and select hosting package options during the process.

Allwebco offers hundreds of website templates that include the Paypal shopping cart built right into the design. We also have a small selection of website templates that include a 2CO cart. Instructions are included.

Choose Web Hosting
Hosting is the space on the Internet where your webpages are uploaded to. The Paypal and 2CO shopping carts will work with any type of hosting. To order, see Allwebco web hosting packages. Free search engine submission is included with every account.

Creating the Webpages
There are many programs available for creating a website, Expression Web, Dreamweaver, and many more. Although they may include templates with the software, none include a payment processor shopping cart built into the designs. In most cases you would need to spend considerable time setting up the merchant code and "css" styles of the HTML to properly match your website and integrate the "order" and "view cart" buttons.

Starting your site using a website template is a cost & time effective option. Web templates are pre-made sites that allow you to easily add your image and text content to the formatted pages.

Shopping Cart Web Templates
We offer many website designs that include a built-in shopping cart with step by step setup instructions. The Paypal and 2CO programs we use allow you to easily generate your cart forms in your login area to add your products for sale to your webpages. See our available merchant websites or you can do a search at the top of this page for "shopping cart" for some cart website solutions. Setup support is included.

Mobile Friendliness

Because of the popularity of mobile and tablet devices, testing for mobile compliance is important. All Allwebco websites are designed to be fully compatible with popular mobile devices. HTML, CSS, layout styles, and dynamic animation areas are all configured for browser flexibility. See responsive store templates.

Creating the Merchant Site
For your website setup you will need to open a Paypal merchant account. Once setup you will login to your account to generate forms, setup shipping fees and configure tax rates. Options can be included in the forms for colors, sizes, etc. See setting up your shopping cart forms in support.

Website pages are plain text. With any website you will need to use either a text editor like Notepad on PC (or TextEdit on Mac) or some wysiwyg html editing software. Once your webpage editing is completed you can use FTP software to upload your site to your hosting area.

Allwebco Paypal shopping cart website templates are downloaded stand alone HTML designs. The compressed zip folder includes a complete website with all source files, stock images, scripts and cart files. This allows any user to setup the website on their local computer hard drive before uploading. You will then have a backup of your website on your computer. Each web template download includes comprehensive step-by-step instructions as well as support and access to our searchable support area.

"Allwebco web templates with built-in shopping carts have been designed for compatibility on PC & Mac, desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphones & mobile devices."

Options / Features
No other web site template company offers as many included features as an Allwebco website. We offer the only "complete" websites available for both novice and professional webmasters alike. To view some of the many built-in options check out our comprehensive features list, or do a search at the top of this page for any item you require for your web building project.

Popular available features:

Features Details

All webpages, features and options that are built into our designs are configured for, and fully tested on all computer and device types. Elements must work across all platforms in any web browser software, must be W3C standards compliant and are updated regularly as web standards are continually evolving. See our features list for more details.

Paypal Cart: Included in many of our designs, this is one of the most cost effective and easiest ways to sell items on-line.
2CO Cart: This shopping cart is also an easy setup and is included in only a limited number of our sites.
Other Shopping Carts While any cart system can be setup in any of our web templates, we offer support only for Paypal and 2CO carts.

Search Engine Promotion and Optimizing
For your website to be successful you will need to have it listed in all popular search engines. To make sure all your webpages are listed you should include a site map page on your website. The site map should be either an HTML page or an XML file.

Check the following support pages for more SEO information:

Free search engine submission is included with all of our hosting accounts.

Testing
Once you have completed editing and have uploaded your website or web template, you will want to test your pages, forms and other dynamic elements on all types of computers and devices that you have available. Some website elements and styles may be rendered differently in the vast number of different devices and web browsers available today.

PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows phone, Android phone & tablet, and Blackberry are just a few of the different device types that can be used for testing your site.

Start Building Your Website

Paypal Cart Details
The Paypal cart is the simplest and most cost effective shopping cart to use. It is free to create an account and no database setup is required. Data for all your products, prices, descriptions, are all setup in your account login. You can add new, and update your product details right in your Paypal account login in the included database on their website.

Your account keeps track of all transactions and you are sent an email notice with all transaction details after every sale. You can link your Paypal account to a checking account to transfer funds. The Payapl cart is integrated into Allwebco templates using basic HTML forms that you simply update with code generated in your account login to edit the website with your product details. Comprehensive instructions are included with the website template download, plus Paypal has instructional videos and form generators in your account login. For more details on Paypal please see the following links:

Available Cart Designs
The following lists just a few of the many HTML website templates we offer that include a Paypal shopping cart integrated into the design. Instructions included.

Paypal Cross-Device Compatibility
The Paypal shopping cart application is mobile friendly and orders can be placed on your website not only using a PC or Mac computer, but also with any one of the many popular mobile device, smartphones and tablet computers.

All of our shopping cart template designs are tested on, and optimized for mobile friendliness. We also offer "tablet optimized" Paypal website designs.

HTML Web Template Details
HTML or HyperText Markup Language is the standard language code used for rendering webpages on the Internet. Working in concert with CSS and Javascript, these are the three elements used for all website setups. HTML pages, CSS style files and Javascript are all are plain text files. The website code is interpreted by the viewing web browser to properly display a formatted website and allow for an interactive user experience.

Webpage templates are used by professional web developers as well as novice webmasters so they can simply "plug in" text and image content into the pre-made set of webpages. Created for the highest browser and device compatibility, all of our designs are complete sites that can be used for either a business or personal website setup. See also what are website templates.

If you are new to website development see our getting started page at hosting.