1. Web Site Creation & Hosting 
   At Traverse Web Hosting we offer a free personal consulting with every hosting account. Based on your individual needs and marketing strategy we will advise you on the best web hosting package for your needs. We will give you tips and tricks to help you create your website with search engine rankings and marketing ideas firmly in mind. We will discuss with you the various popular web design software or refer you to a list of qualified web designers to help create your site. You may use any web site creation software you like, everything is compatible with our service. For your convenience we have put together a list of recommended software packages that you can use to create and maintain your Web site. Finally, you can hire someone else to design your Web site. We have partnerships with some of the top web site designers and they all offer a 10-20% discount for Traverse Web Hosting customers.

2. Setup Your Shopping Cart
   A shopping cart is a pre-written program that enables you to just add your products and your storefront is ready. All of our hosting plans come with free shopping cart software. With the Linux Standard and Linux Premier plans you get That's an Order shop cart. With the Linux Premier hosting package you automatically receive Miva Order and with the Professional E-Commerce hosting plan we give you the option of Miva Order or Miva Merchant. While Miva Merchant is the most full featured, if you only have a few products to sell and don't need all the extras then it would be the right choice for you. 

All offer browser based administration, making it easy for you to setup your storefront anywhere you have access to the Web. Just add your products and the software will total your customer's order, calculate the tax & shipping, email you with a description of the order, email the customer with an invoice, and more! It will even process your customer's credit card and put the money directly in your checking account! (Miva products only) This is called 'Real Time credit card processing' and requires a merchant account & payment gateway described below.

3. Get a Merchant Account And A Payment Gateway
   In order to accept credit cards you need a merchant account. And, in order to input/manage your credit card transactions through the web you need a payment gateway. 
   
   With a payment gateway, customers can input their credit card information securely online at your Web site and the money will go directly into your merchant account! (This is called 'real time credit card processing).  To configure Miva Merchant & Miva order for 'real time credit card processing' just go to 'payment configuration' in the online administration and input your gateway number. That's all there is to it! And instantly your orders will be processed in real-time.

Payment gateway's are also used for online management of your merchant account. Just access your gateway through an address in your browser and you can input transactions manually, view transactions, void transactions, perform returns, and search your transactions based on date, amount, credit card number etc. 

Apply for your merchant account and payment gateway online. Just fill out the online order form. For more information click here.

4. Setup A Secure Environment (SSL)
   In order to take credit card information from your customer's you will need to have a secure certificate setup on your account. At Traverse Web Hosting we supply you with free use of our secure certificate! No need to purchase your own certificate just use ours. Then just put in your secure address in your shopping cart software where it asks for the secure address, and all your check out pages will be secure.
   
   If you decide you want to get your own secure certificate, we make that easy for you as well. Just click on the 'secure certificate' button in your control panel and you can easily generate the code to give to either Thawte, Geotrust, or Equifax to request your certificate. Then when you get your secure certificate code from them, just go back to your control panel and input that coding. It's that easy! As a premier web hosting company we often have special pricing for these and we'll pass the savings on to you. Please ask sales for today's best available personal SSL price. Normally we can provide one for $79.95/yr with no set up fee!

5. Generate Traffic
   With each of our E-commerce hosting plans you get a Search Engine Submission package. This powerful bonus feature will submit your site to multiple search engines with a click of a button! In addition, we have a wonderful tutorial on promoting your site to the search engines located  here.