E-Commerce

Electronic commerce, commonly known as (electronic marketing) e-commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over the internet. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread internet usage. A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

It’s all great if you have something you want to sell from your website.

At Matrix Digital Media, we can help you with the core elements of setting up and managing an e-commerce website:

Integration with Internal Inventory and Point of Sale (POS) Systems

When setting up an e-commerce site, many websites must communicate in real-time or batch processing with an enterprise system or computer network residing inside the business or organization. Current prices must be calculated and available inventory must be checked before orders are confirmed online.

Shopping Cart Systems

Having a flexible and yet sound shopping cart system is critical for e-commerce success. Our custom shopping cart system allows for multi-tier pricing and quantity discounts. Items can be classified in multiple tiered categories for quicker browsing and searching. Additionally, items can have complex selectable attributes such as color options dependent on selected size.

Calculating Shipping Costs

Part of processing the order frequently involves the accurate calculation of shipping costs, based on the items selected for each order. Matrix has experience designing systems that pull from weight and volume factors for each item; calculate the number of packages needed for the shipment; and query FedEx, UPS or the USPS in real-time for rates based the location of the customer – all in real-time as the order is placed.

There’s no need to guess and over- or under-charge a customer when it comes to the calculation of shipping costs online.

Credit Card Processing, Security and Order Confirmation

Once the order has been assembled and the costs calculated, it’s time to process the credit card and email confirmations. We have experience helping customers get set up to collect payment via online providers such as Authorize.net, and integrating the collection system into the website. We program the website in such a way that the purchasing process is halted and error messages are displayed if there is a problem processing the credit card (declined). We manage the purchase of the SSL Key (required for credit card processing security) and thoroughly test the process with our clients before we go live.

We also establish automatic email messages that are sent to the customer (and administrative staff) confirming that the order has been placed.