Chapter 7 [ 193 ] On-site payment method The on-site payment method is the most professional way to allow online payments. Advantages Disadvantages Keeps the customer on-site If we store the payment details, there are a number of security considerations, and PCI-DSS audit may be required Generally, recurring billing can be done with this method Requires an SSL certicate to be installed on the server, which in turn requires some additional development, and a static IP address for the website Confirmation At some point, we must go from a collection of products in a customer's basket, to an order stored in our database. This should be done at this stage, after the customer has conrmed the contents of their basket, and the other options (which can be changed later if required), the basket contents should be transferred into an order. Once the customer has reviewed their order, a simple link or button should be presented, which once clicked, converts the basket contents into a new order in the system. Payment details As the customer has now conrmed their order and the order details, they should be presented with payment details: For ofine payments this may be a postal address, a reference number, a name to make checks payable to, and instructions. For off-site online payment methods, this will be a link or a button to the off-site payment gateway, such as PayPal. For on-site online payment methods, the page must be securely encrypted, and contain relevant text boxes for the customer to enter their card details. This may also require a separate address eld, for their billing address, unless we implement that elsewhere. • • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 The Checkout and Order Process [ 194 ] Payment made The payment should then be made for the order; this should either be the customer posting a check, entering their card details, or paying through a service such as PayPal. Order processed Once payment has been made, the order should be marked as "pending dispatch"; this would either be done automatically when card details are veried or when an off-site gateway returns a successful notication, or manually when the administrator receives a check and marks it as pending dispatch. Generally, we would want to automatically e-mail the customer to conrm the payment was successful and the order is being fullled; the administrator should also be informed allowing them to fulll the order. Once posted, the order should be updated to reect this and the customer informed, potentially with a custom message (perhaps with a tracking number for the shipping provider). Other points of note In addition to the order process we have established in this chapter so far, there are some other considerations we must keep in mind while implementing the order process; these include: We should make the ability to move back and forth between stages in the process seamless for customers. This means that if the customer wishes to go back and make a change to their order information, or conrm some information, they can do so easily, without having to start at the beginning of the order process. Authentication should be seamless—either the login form should also be the rst section of a registration process for new customers, or the page shown to the customer should contain both a form for logging in and a form for registering to use the site. This reduces potential barriers between the customer and them placing an order successfully. • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 7 [ 195 ] Summary In this chapter, we have looked in detail at the order process on a number of popular, successful e-commerce websites, and discussed their methods. We have used these observations to detail a process of our own, which we will use for our framework. This now gives us a clear plan of what we have left to do: Implement shipping and tax handling Implement payment processing Implement delivery address handling Implement order processing, fulllment, and administration Implement voucher code discount provisions We can now continue developing our store, with a better understanding of what we are going to do, and why. • • • • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Shipping and Tax After discussing the checkout and order process in detail in the previous chapter, we now need to start building the functionality for this. In this chapter you will learn: How to calculate shipping costs based on: Product Weight Location "Shipping rules" About third-party shipping APIs How to integrate shipping and tracking notications on orders How to integrate tax costs into our system Shipping Shipping is a very important aspect of an e-commerce system; without it customers will not accurately know the cost of their order. The only situation where we wouldn't want to include shipping costs is where we always offer free shipping. However, in that situation, we could either add provisions to ignore shipping costs, or we could set all values to zero, and remove references to shipping costs from the user interface. Shipping methodsmethods The rst requirement to calculate shipping costs is a shipping method. We may wish to offer a number of different shipping methods to our customers such as standard shipping, next-day shipping, International shipping, and so on. • ° ° ° ° • • • This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 . 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Chapter 7 [ 1 95 ] Summary In this chapter, we have looked in detail at the order process on a number of popular, successful e-commerce websites,. tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 Shipping. material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by jackie tracey on 23rd February 2010 953 Quincy Drive, , Brick, , 08724 The Checkout and Order Process [ 194 ] Payment made The payment