fax gateway and e-commerce

[chfletch]

Hi. A friend of mine who owns a pizza shop wants me to develop a web site for him with an on-line menu where his customers can submit a food order over the web, and pay by credit cards. But he doesn't have a computer in his shop (and I doubt he would be able to use one anyway), but he does have a fax machine. Are there any good fax gateway services that I should consider? Would it make sense for him to get a computer and use it as a fax gateway server?

Also, I don't know the first clue about how to integrate e-commerce into a web site. I have done a few web sites in Front Page, but nothing involving credit card transactions. Can anyone give me some advise as to how I should do this in Front Page.

Many thanks.
Chris Fletcher
chris.fletcher@highfallsfunding.com
http://www.highfallsfunding.com

[shopzone]

Chris

Fax Gateway - http://www.faxaway.com . You can setup an account so it faxes emails to a specific fax machine. The emails themselves would be sent by one specific email address from within your ecommerce system. (NOTE: the email must be from a real email address and not from an alias)

For the ecommerce itself I'd suggest using either oscommerce or x-cart:

Oscommerce - (avail from the Control Panel - but sometimes it doesn't self-install correctly so if you have a problem just contact me). This is free and works well.

http://www.x-cart.com - more sophisticated, easy to setup and great support.

EXAMPLE
I setup http://www.expressionsflorist.co.nz webpages as standard and then linked all the products to the relevant products within the x-cart database.

With both oscommerce and x-cart you can configure payment so it works thru various credit card processors and also configure priced extras (such as different pizza toppings). x-cart is probably better with its ability to recommend upsell products (eg: automatically suggest someone also buys Pepsi with their pizza)

If you need any assistance just contact me at jmdabb@paradise.net.nz

Regards
Martin Dabb