Creating Accounts on website

Hello,

My girlfriend is starting a candle company and she has asked me about having accounts that store people's information, such as Name, Phone #, Address and CC info so that when they log back in, they do not have to enter the information again.

I have looked into this for a few days now, and am coming up empty. From what I have found, it seems like SQL will be required for this. I am using DW CS3 and Yahoo! E-Commerce solution will be hosting the website, as well as providing the shopping cart and checkout solutions.

Does anyone know if Yahoo's e-commerce solutions gives you the ability to have users create accounts that store information on websites, or do I have to do this manually using some kind of programming in SQL or something similiar? If so, can anyone provide assistance or a link as to where I can find information/tutorial on adding this functionality to the website.

 

One of my best friends is a programmer on the database side and frequently uses Access. Is it possible to create this custom database using Access?

 

It's possible. The server will need to have the appropriate drivers to support MS Access, either natively or via ODBC. Better chance on a Windows server as opposed to Linux. I would have thought you would need to have quite a bit of control over the server? ...If you have your own server you can potentially do anything.

 

I use PHP with self-modifying scripts for most of the stuff I do (to avoid databases which aren't available), but the most sensitive information it handles is the password. I don't know how secure it would be for credit card #s, etc. It does encrypt the password, but it can't retrieve it, even if you look right at where it's stored. It would have to be able to retrieve the card # to use it. I know many people that prefer sites that don't remember their credit card or other sensitive info.

If you go with a program or service, be sure it is safe from injection techniques that could run database commands or something from a simple form field on the page.

 

I am the same way; I prefer that a site does not remember my information. Nonetheless, my girlfriend wants that for the site. I am trying to talk her out of it.

Do you have any resources out there about PHP scripts? I have very little experience with this.

 

I would have thought you would have to give the user the option - there are probably other users that don't want their information held either. There may also be legal implications regarding holding personal information as well, depending on where you are located (ie. only if the user explicitly ticks the 'terms and conditions' box)?

 

All,

Problem solved! Google has this handy little tool called Google Checkout. It takes about 5 minutes to register, and 3 - 4 minutes to set up each page on the website. Very, very handy! The best part, no monthly fee like Yahoo and PayPal charges. Transaction fee is .20 per transaction + 2.0%, which is very reasonable actually.

They have to have a Google Checkout account, but if they have a gmail, google, etc account, then the sign up process takes a minute or so. If they do not have a google account, it may take two minutes MAX. The good thing though, which was what we are looking for, is that they can, if they choose, have their CC shipping and billing info stored. We also have a detailed order history of each.

So needless to say, problem solved!

Thanks to all who have helped.

 

paypal will do the same thing too.

 

PayPal is 1.9% - 2.9% + .30 per transaction
Google is 2.0% + .20 per transaction so the price is better in the long run.

Just so I am making sure that I am using the right company, what does PayPal offer that Google does not?

Thanks!

 

Google does sounds like a good thing, however, you might be best to offer both? (Although you say Paypal is a monthly fee?) Paypal is still more well known (over this way at least), so more people are likely to have used Paypal before (or even have balances in their Paypal acc) and I think people would prefer to go with something they know. It's just about offering choice to the consumer. Perhaps push Google checkout as your preferred method?

 

w3d, good points. We just do not want the page to get too cluttered. Our big thing is that if we are pulling in $5k + business a month on about 333 transactions, the transaction fees will be $166 with google. Per year, tht is $1992.

With PayPal, it is scaled (not sure how) between 1.9% - 2.9% + .30 per transaction, so we'll say 2.5%. Using the same scenario, that is $225 per month, or $2700 a year. It might not seem like a lot, but that is only making $60k per year. So imagine getting $100k in sales per year, that transaction fee gap quickly increases.

We are looking at all options though so this will be considered. We do not want to lose business by people not wanting to use Google Checkout, but who prefer PayPal and go elsewhere. The candle market is huge, and we are trying to go the online route to start off. She has some boutiques in Hollywood, Dupont Circle in DC, NY and Philly who want to carry her product. We them must deal with the store mark up at at that point...so many decisions.

Her brother went to Harvard Business, so his friends who deal with this are helping us as well.

Thanks for all the info so far. I will bring this point up to him next time we chat, so we will strongly consider using both PayPal and Google Checkout

 

you may also want to look into yahoo's small business site, they offer using their checkout service as well

 

We looked into that. They charge $39.95 per month, plus 1.5% on transactions. The transaction part was cheap, but our big thing was how the cart would be integrated with the website. We wanted it to show real time how many items are in the cart, as well as how much you have spent. Yahoo did not have that feature, which google did. That was the big thing that put us over the edge. Also, according to tech support on yahoo, their database does not remember the users info since it is basically buy here one time and then go on with no order information being retained for the customer. google offered that as well.

 

How much do you have to be pulling in / #transactions before you are better off using a fixed monthly subscription service (rather than a pay per transaction)?

 

I haven't figured that out yet. I've only ran some numbers. She wants the website up before Christmas, so right now we haven't figured that out yet.

Do you know of any fixed price services that do not charge per transaction?

I am about to get CartWeaver fairly soon and learn that program. I have to learn PHP I think, so it might take a bit.

The big thing is that my experience level is not that great as of yet, so if I find a company that has a fixed monthly price but with no transaction fees, it has to be simple to integrate it into the website. Also, google does not charge for the shopping cart like some e-commerce companies do.