I am going to be launching a site with just one product and focusing on just one product. I am hoping to keep the buying process extra simple for the customer so that they don't drop out during the process. I want to set up a solution where the customer clicks "buy" and is able to fill out a page with just basic information (billing address, shipping address, card info). I hope to keep it simple and want the customer to only have one page to deal with, not multiple pages or multiple sites. Also, if possible, that I would be able to run the credit cards "manually." Is there a cart system/merchant service/virtual terminal combination that would allow me to do this? Or does anyone have any suggestions for the best approach to get this set up? All recommendations are welcome.
You'll want to get a true merchant account with a payment gateway (like Authorize.net). This will allow you to achieve both of your goals: 1) You can have a simple checkout by using the API of the gateway. You can capture all of the transaction information on one page and then send it off to the gateway. They will return a response and then you can take your customers to a thank you page. 2) You can manually enter transactions into the virtual terminal that is included with your gateway. No extra cost or software required to use it.
It depends where you are in the world. If you are in the UK, I would say Worldpay is your best option
You might check out LinkPoint with LinkShield if you are in the United States. We were able to implement this and it has helped us on a lot of fraudulent orders