Of the many innovations the Internet has brought us, one of the most visible is online shopping. The advantages for merchants are clear lower overheads in both staff and shop space, provision of greater convenience for their customers, 24/7 and international availability of the store, and the ability to compete on a far more level playing field with larger companies. The spread of internet shopping sites is a testament to all of these.

However, the implementation of an online store has often been difficult, especially for the individual user. A catalogue needs to be presented allowing customers to select products to buy, these product choices must be tracked (usually in the form of the common shopping cart), and all-importantly, a secure way of processing the customer’s payment details is vital.

As is often the case, a demand for services rapidly begets solutions, and there are now numerous companies that offer these services for integration into a website. PayPal, Verisign, and Authorize.Net are well- known companies who provide secure credit card processing services. Many companies who provide shopping carts link with these (and other) credit card processors.

One of the better of the shopping carts is Mal’s e-commerce (http://www.mals-e.com) which provides two packages: a free service offering integration with PayPal, NoChex and Paymate, and a premium service offering integration with VeriSign, Authorize.Net and a wide variety of other credit card processors.

And now, using the power of Freeway’s Actions technology, you can take advantage of Mal’s shopping cart to quickly create your own online store. With Freeway 4.2 and above, a brand new suite of Actions is included to provide easy configuration and seamless integration. Simply design your store pages in Freeway as you would for the rest of your website, apply the Actions in the appropriate places, specify the required settings, publish and upload your site— and a highly functional online store is now yours!
This document will provide you with a tutorial and reference for these Actions and the fundamentals of setting up and using Mal’s e-commerce. Happy online trading!

Download pdf Getting Started with Freeway Shop in a Box