E-Business sites fall into several categories. Basically any company owned website is an E-business site. The company owned sites that market a product and collect monies over the web is considered to be an E-Commerce website. Business websites are for any number of purposes. Most business sites are simply to gain exposure over the web Others are used to communicate ideas and knowledge among employees of the company. Some use the site to advertise a service that can't be sold over the web but has a global market. Many business websites are used to allow their customers a place to find out more about the company, the products and services. Companies like Ford and General Electric have websites, but do not sell over the web.
Secure sites
If a website is going to collect credit card information or banking information, it must be a secure site. Secure sites do not necessarily process the credit card information but they do collect it and notify the merchant that they have a sale waiting. The merchant than accesses the secure site and processes the purchase as they would any other credit card sale. If you wish to have credit cards processed in real time then you will need to use a Payment Gateway such as Authorizenet, Cybercash, Signio, Secpay or Worldpay.
Catalogs and databases
You will need some method to display your merchandise. Visitors will not buy items over the web without at least a detailed description of the purchase. If you do not have a large selection of items, you can probably just have a catalog page with pictures or descriptions and pricing information. Large catalogs are unwieldy to handle in a simple HTML page. Large collections of data require a database file to aid in collecting the information and presenting the information in a webpage format. Once the database is defined it is placed on a server and given a Data Source Name that allows you to connect to it. Your HTML code cannot access the database directly and must use a program written in Java or ASP (Active Server Pages) to connect and query your data.
Shopping carts
Shopping carts are the mechanism by which the customer selects the merchandise they wish to purchase, the payment is calculated and the order is placed with the merchant. There are commercial shopping cart services that will manage your catalog database and provide shopping cart services to you. Most e-commerce providers offer shopping carts as part of their hosting packages.
