Web Diner's Guide to E-Commerce for Small Businesses
Using a Simple Order Form
The simplest solution is to provide a printable order form on your web site that will be faxed to you or mailed to you. We have several form templates that you can view, download, and customize.
This solution requires is that you:
- Have a fax machine
- Are willing to handle checks
If you already have the ability to handle credit card transactions, you can also take credit card payments. This is a flexible way to start selling your products and services over the web.
If you're a small business without a lot of capital, and you're not sure if selling over the web will work for you, we strongly suggest trying this as a starting point.
If your business takes off, it would be relatively easy to scale up from this solution. You could easily change your printable order form to any one of the other solutions we discuss.
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PRO
- Easy to set up, by using our templates it should only take you 1-2 hours to create a custom order form and link it to your existing web site.
- Doesn't require a secure socket layer (SSL) since credit card numbers will not be transmitted over the web.
- Doesn't require the ability to process credit card transactions if you decide to only accept checks and money orders.
- No monthly fees or minimum sales requirements.
- Doesn't require a domain name, you can use an order form on any web server that allows business customers (ie: you could use this with an AOL web site, but not GeoCities unless you're signed up for a level that allows commercial usage).
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CON
- Requires a fax machine
- May not seem as professional looking as a site that processes transactions
- If your web site doesn't get much traffic, you won't see many sales
If you are accepting payments via check:
- checks can bounce, costing you money in returned check fees
- Customers paying via check will have to wait for processing, handling and delivery of the order via mail.
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