Click on one of our navigation links on the menubar on the left to take you to the type of coffee you're looking for.

Type in the number of pounds you want in the box next to each coffee, choose "Whole Bean" or the type of grind you want, and click the "Order" button.

A screen will pop up briefly telling you your selection has been added to your cart.

Keep adding coffee choices until you're broke.

At any time you can click the button to see what you've ordered.

At the "View Cart/Checkout" page you may check out and purchase your coffee. When you click the "Purchase" button you'll go to a page where you fill out your "ship to / bill to" information. There's also a message box where you can write a message to SuperBeans about your order or if your order is a gift for someone, you can write a message to the lucky person who's going to be getting some SuperBeans.

After you click the "Enter" button you'll be at the page on our secure server where you type in your credit info. How can you tell it's secure? In the URL address box you'll see "https://". If you use Netscape 3 (Wow. Time to upgrade eh?), you'll see an unbroken key in the bottom left corner of the browser, in Netscape 4 (and above) or Internet Explorer, a padlock.

After you fill in your credit info you'll click on the "Authorize Payment" button.

Does this mean that your card is immediately dinged?

Nope.

I purposefully selected the "dumb" shopping cart option that wouldn't automatically ding anyone's card account. All the cart does is break the order into 3 chunks. It sends you a copy of what you ordered. It sends me a copy of your order and in a separate encrypted email your credit and billing info. A real human being runs the credit card through and when it clears I send out this confirmation:

Aloha, Thank you for ordering from SuperBeans. We process, roast, and ship orders within 48 hours. Shipping usually takes 2-4 days. If your order does not arrive please e-mail me for your order status. Thanks again,

I never did like the idea that the entire transaction would happen on the web because in case of a foul-up it would take a day or two (or more) to unravel the problem and solve it.

There's another option when you order. You can pick the "Credit Card Transaction via Telephone." I get the order, the ship to / bill to info, and call the customer for the credit card number.

A lot of customers just call me up and order because that way they don't have to type anything into little boxes.

Sometime this year I'll upgrade the cart to do a lot of things that will make my life easier in terms of database management but I'll always make sure that a human being is involved in the money part. I'm just old enough to still view computers and the crummy software they use with a certain amount of apprehension.

When I was a kid if there was a computer in a movie it was just a matter of time before it blew its wheels and tried to kill everybody or take over the world. I understand intellectually that human error is the case eleven out of ten times but ... I was in the front row in the Cinerama theater when HAL went bananas in 2001.

And that, coffee-lovers, is what they call e-commerce.