MIVA Merchant enables you to easily create and manage an online store, taking your products to a virtually unlimited market, with little initial investment, and low overhead.
In many ways, opening a MIVA Merchant online store is just like opening a new store in the "brick and mortar" world. You decide what kind of products to carry, stock and price your items, attract customers to your location, take orders, and ship merchandise.
There are a few new concepts to grasp, and some unfamiliar technologies to understand, but none are difficult, and we will go through them one-by-one in this guide.
We will cover all the basics of starting and running an online store, like handling orders and collecting money. You will learn how you can suggest products to shoppers, and offer discounts. There is even an easy way to bring your store data into QuickBooks Pro?.
Special financial and security services are needed for doing business on the Internet. We will discuss payment gateways, merchant account providers, and security certificates.
Relax. You'll be an e-commerce expert before you know it!
More Info Ahead!
Relax... You are not expected to know how to accomplish each of these action items at this point.
This checklist will just give you an overview of the entire process. We will cover each step in more detail in this guide.
Be sure to review the Glossary where you can learn the meanings of the new terms you will encounter here.
It can be a little overwhelming to start any business. Making use of an unfamiliar technology can make it even more daunting. Take heart ? thousands of entrepreneurs just like you are succeeding with MIVA Merchant. Let?s break the process down into simple steps and work through them one at a time.
Here is a quick to-do list for getting your first e-commerce site up and working for you. You may have accomplished some of these tasks already and there will undoubtedly be other tasks you'll need to accomplish as well.
This overview checklist will help you get started:
Establish Your Business:
Decide on a name for your business. Part of this decision may hinge on the availability of the domain name you want to use (www.yourbusinessname.com). Acquire the domain name and arrange for hosting. Secure any business licenses or fictitious name statements that are required in your area.
Start Working with MIVA Merchant:
Familiarize yourself with the features of MIVA Merchant. You'll find clear, complete online Help throughout the administration interface. From any screen simply click "Help" to find relevant details and examples.
Check out some existing MIVA Merchant online stores for ideas and inspiration. There is a large collection of great examples in the MIVA Galleria.
MIVA Script is the language that MIVA Merchant is written in. It offers development tools to third-party developers so they can create advanced, specialized modules. You may find that these after-market plug-ins provide exactly the features you'll need to customize your storefront just the way you'd like it. Browse through MIVA Central to find specialized modules that add new functionality to your store and training resources available from third-party developers.
Create and Stock Your Store:
Decide what products you will offer. You can enter them directly, using a wizard. If you currently have these products in a database you can import them including their pricing and inventory levels, into MIVA Merchant via a flat file.
Design the look of your store. Don't worry about getting it perfect on the first try. You can change it later. Store Morph Technology gives you total control and freedom to experiment. Arrange to accept payments. Most merchants take credit cards.
Open for Business:
Once you have your store designed and stocked to your satisfaction, you?re ready to invite shoppers in. Bring your store online and have a Grand Opening party!
In this Guide we assume...
... you are well versed in running your business. You have a good understanding of your own pricing, inventory, taxes, and shipping.
... you are skilled in using the Internet. You can navigate web sites, use search engines, and work with online forms.
... you are familiar with the basics of creating web sites and are comfortable doing simple design and screen layout.
Perhaps you have managed a local business for years, and you are ready to open a new branch ? on the Internet. You are an experienced user of e-mail, do your banking online and have purchased items from online sellers. Even so, you probably have a lot of questions ? most people do. Let?s go over some of the questions that most new online merchants ask:
Q: How Do I Learn to Use MIVA Merchant?
A: You'll quickly gain expertise as you go. Each administration feature of MIVA Merchant offers immediate, detailed Help at the click of a button.
Q: How Do I Set Up My Online Store?
A: MIVA Merchant provides a "Simple Administration" mode to get you started, with wizards to guide you through each basic step. Once you have the primary features configured, you can switch to "Advanced Administration" and fine-tune each area to work exactly the way you like. You can customize the look and incorporate your store into your current site, if you have one.
Most stores have photos or graphics to show their products. It's easy to transfer these to your online store individually as you enter each new product or upload a large collection of images at once. You simply reference them in the database fields when you import your product information all together.
You can always make changes to your store administration, add more products, or update your look store-wide, so don't worry about getting it exactly perfect on the first pass.
Key Points:
? You don't need to install any software on your own computer to create and manage your MIVA
? All the work you do in the MIVA Merchant administration interface is done right in your web browser, via the Internet, working directly with the software and your data on
? You can work with your MIVA Merchant store from any computer the local library, at your favorite coffeehouse, or from an Internet-enabled cruise ship anywhere the world. With MIVA Merchant, you are never tied to your office.
Q: How Do I Get My Existing Product Information Into My MIVA Merchant Store?
A: You can upload your entire existing product database via a plain-text flat file. See Importing Product Data Via Plain Text Flat Files.
Q: How Do I Know When a Shopper Orders Something?
A: If you expect to be getting lots of orders, you will probably want to check regularly ? daily or more often ? and download all the new orders. If you anticipate receiving orders infrequently, you can set up MIVA Merchant to notify you by e-mail when an order comes in.
Q: How Do I Collect Money from My Customers?
A: If you are already set up to accept credit cards, that's great. Accepting them via an Internet store is a natural next step. If you don't accept credit cards yet, it is easy to set that up. For more information, see ?Accepting Credit Cards?, in the box below.
You can also ship COD, hold orders for checks to arrive, or charge orders to a customer's credit card manually, via your terminal, just as you would if they came to your business in person.
Q: How Can I Transfer My Store Data Into My Business Accounting Software?
A: MIVA Synchro is a powerful product from MIVA Small Business that gives you a quick and automated way to transfer your accounting data from your MIVA Merchant online store into your QuickBooks? accounting system (2003/2004/2005, Pro and Premier).
If you use something other than QuickBooks Pro, you can export your store information to a flat file, and import it into almost any commercial accounting software.
Q: How Do I Provide Security for My Shoppers?
A: Just like in the "brick and mortar" world, doing business on the Internet requires giving some thought to the security of your shoppers' personal and credit card information. The most common and effective way to keep their information secure during online transactions is to equip your store with a Secure Certificate or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate. This encrypts the information that the shopper's computer sends to your server, and displays a small padlock in their browser's status bar, to assure them that your site is secure.
Q: How Do I Get a Secure Certificate?
A: All hosting accounts include a free shared SSL certificate. The shared SSL certificate that we use is just as secure as a privately owned SSL certificate; the only difference is that the shared SSL certificate address would not be branded to your website. If this is not important to you, using the shared SSL certificate is a very economical way to secure transmission of information on your website.
If you would prefer to have your own SSL certificate, we can help you purchase and install a GeoTrust or RapidSSL certificate automatically. Please our sales department for more details.
The MIVA Small Business Suite of Products & Services
The MIVA Small Business suite of products handles every aspect of e-commerce, from the tools to enable you to easily create a professional store, to the underlying technology your web host needs to make it all run.
Here is a brief overview of each of the MIVA Small Business products. In addition, the graphic below illustrates the relationships between many of these products and shows where each fits into the MIVA Merchant e-commerce environment.
MIVA Merchant?
A browser-based storefront development and management system that provides the tools for merchants to create and manage an e-commerce site on the Internet. MIVA Merchant makes it easy to create and run an online store.
MIVA Synchro?
A product that makes it possible for the online merchant using MIVA Merchant to easily transfer their store data into the third-party accounting applications, QuickBooks Pro? and Premier?, 2003/2004/2005.