I just purchased the eCommerce hosting plan. What are my next steps to sell products online?

Answer by: Stuart Pierce, Aplus.Net Knowledge Base Support

In order to sell products online if you have an eCommerce Unix or eCommerce Windows plan, you need to set up the following:

A merchant account
A payment gateway
Your online shopping cart or storefront

I. Merchant account:

A Merchant Account is a bank account established with a Merchant Account Provider to enable you to process credit card transactions online. All merchants need a Merchant account to be able to accept and process credit card transactions. Your bank or Merchant Account Provider will process the credit cards through their credit card processor and deposit the money into your merchant account. There are fees associated with processing credit cards. First, there are Merchant Account setup fees, and there are also Discount Rates and per Transaction fees. Please contact your Merchant Account Provider for more information on their rates and fees.

Aplus.Net is in direct contact with CardService International, a Merchant Account Provider. The setup of your Merchant Account through CardService International is included in your eCommerce Unix or eCommerce Windows hosting plan and you can sign up by visiting: http://hosting.aplus.net/epro_merchjump.html.

NOTE: If you want to be able to process American Express and/or Discover cards as well as Visa and MasterCard, you will need to set up your Merchant Account accordingly.

II. Payment Gateway:

The Payment Gateway will pick up your transactions online over a secure Internet connection and will process the transactions. Aplus.Net is proud to operate its own payment gateway, called RPG (Rodopi Payment Gateway). It is certified by Miva as well as by 95% of the US Banks. Gateway service prices vary depending on the number of transactions per month and Aplus.Net is one of the most competitive vendors in the market. Please ask your account representative about RPG - Rodopi Payment Gateway by Aplus.Net by calling (858) 410-6929 or toll free (877) APLUS-NET.

If you have already set up your Merchant Account, all you need to do is provide Aplus.Net with your Merchant account information, and we will set up the Rodopi Payment Gateway for you. The set up of the RPG is included in the eCommerce Unix hosting plan. To provide us with your Merchant Account information, please fill out the RPG Setup Information Sheet.

NOTE: if you want to be able to process American Express and/or Discover cards as well as Visa and MasterCard, you will need to contact support at (888) 301-2516 to provide us with your American Express and/or Discover account number(s) so that we can set up the Payment Gateway accordingly. You will need to provide Aplus.Net with this information whether you have established a Merchant Account through your bank or with CardService International through our website.

III. Online storefront:

To configure your Miva store you should first login to your Miva administration page by going to:

eCommerce Unix plans opened before December 7^th, 2005 using MIVA 4:

To set-up your MIVA Merchant storefront, you will need to use the following URL: http://www.yourdomain.com/Merchant2/admin.mvc. Please note the capital M and replace "yourdomain.com" with your actual domain name.

eCommerce Unix plans opened after December 7^th, 2005 using MIVA 5:

To set-up your MIVA Merchant storefront, you will need to use the following URL: http://www.yourdomain.com/mm5/admin.mvc. Please replace "yourdomain.com" with your actual domain name.

eCommerce Windows plans:

To set-up your MIVA Merchant storefront, you will need to use the following URL: http://mivasecure.abac.com/ftpusername/admin.mvc. Please replace "ftpusername" with your Main FTP Username.

There are two different modes that can be used when configuring a Miva store: Simple Administration Mode or Advanced Administration Mode.

The first time you log into your Miva Merchant administration interface you will be in Simple Administration Mode.
The Simple Administration Mode is meant to help new users quickly begin to build their online store by following an easy-to-use, multi-step wizard. Just select Create Store Wizard from the menu on the left and follow all the steps. This wizard will create the store and will invoke all the wizards needed to configure your store.

Usually the Simple Administration mode is powerful enough to create a store and maintain it. If you need more flexibility, though, you can use the Advanced Administration Mode, by clicking on the Switch to Advanced Administration link on the top right side of the page. In this mode, you still have access to the wizards present in the Simple Administration Mode. Select Wizards from the menu on the left and you will find the Create Store Wizard there. Once your store is created you can reach the configuration wizards under "Stores" > "YourStoreName" from the menu.

Please visit http://www.miva.com/docs/merchant/howto41.html for MIVA 4 documentation and user guides to assist you in creating and administering your online store.

The online documentation for Miva 5 is available here: http://smallbusiness.miva.com/products/merchant/supp_mm5.html.