Check-out

[hassen1]

When the shopping session is complete, the customer clicks on a hyperlink which takes him or her to the checkout page.
At this stage the customer is presented with a list of the goods marked for purchase, the total cost, shipping, handling, tax, etc. The customer can then add shipping instructions, name, address and so on.
The customer is normally given a range of payment options, and some of the more common are discussed in more detail below. The most common is to use a credit card, and the customer enters the card number, name on the card and expiry date.
At this stage the Web site should switch to secure mode. The technology normally used is called SSL (Secure Socket Layer). This means that all communication with the server is encrypted in such a way that eavesdroppers cannot (without disproportionate difficulty) steal the credit card information. We shall discuss this further later, but it is important for customer confidence that the site switches to secure mode as soon as credit card information is requested.
The customer will get visual warning from his or her Web browser that they are in secure mode, a blue key and blue line in Netscape or a padlock symbol in Internet Explorer. There are some older browsers that don’t support SSL but most do.
This technology is widely used and quite well understood by Internet users. Most articles on e-commerce rightly emphasise the need for customers only to give up confidential information in a secure session, and users will look out for it. We believe that it is essential.
It is worth mentioning at this stage that a secure server is not absolutely necessary for bank-approved (and indeed very secure) e-commerce. There is a new British e-commerce product that uses its own Java-based encryption, and therefore does not need a secure server environment

[humpty]

but why not use the secured version?

won't it be better and safer too???

[astros99]

So, when the website is in secure mode, how would you know in Firefox? Does Firefox support it, or is there a certain way to know? Also, does the website switch into secure mode only for credit card information, or do they switch into secure mode for Paypal, bank information, or other forms of payment. I think websites should switch to secure mode even for PayPal and bank information if they already don't. One can mess you up financially with your bank information just as bad as they can with your credit card number. If your PayPal is linked to an account or credit card, then they can use that to drain you financially as well.

[mini_0]

There is one tip that i found sometime ago about how you can avoid dupllicate transactions and that included something about the checkout also .Most online companies, warn their shoppers against clicking the "Submit" button twice on their checkout page, at the risk of being double charged. This technique, in my opinion, not only makes the customer scared, but it'll also make the company look unprofessional. What you should do is to create a JavaScript that will disable the "Submit" or "Checkout" button once clicked. Additionally, you should have a server side script to process only the first transaction in this case. You can easily know that a transaction is a duplicate one if it occurs at a very short interval from another transaction that is from the same client and for the same product.