Merchants set up a website to display their products or services for consumers to access by using a web browser. Websites present the consumer with various options for searching and selecting products and services, which offer speed and convenience of shopping at home. Although the consumer lacks sensory perception of the product, they gain benefits of shopping 24 hours a day with the absence of live high pressure salesmen. Nonlive high pressure sales applets, ads, banners, scripts, and so on are less easily evaded.
Some merchants attract customers to their website by advertising through web banners or email. Other merchants may drive customers to their website through more traditional methods such as print media, radio or television.
Payment is handled in a variety of ways: online credit card payment, mailed cheque or via phone order. For credit card payments, the merchant typically employs a 'secure payment method' using cryptographically based technology such as SSL or TLS. This protects the customer's sensitive information from interception by encrypting all data transferred between the customer's computer and the website's server. The account withdrawal may be conducted by the merchant or through a 3rd party payment service such as PayPal.