Increase Sales with Payment Solutions Written by David Bell
Take a second and imagine your shopping on a website, find product you've been looking for, and as you go to order form to purchase it, you find out that company doesn't accept payment online. Instead, you must mail a check. If you were like me, you would probably click off site and search for another company that offers same products and *does* accept payment online, whether it is by credit card or online check. It doesn't take a super, intelligent person to realize that it is inconvenient, time consuming, and adds on lag time till you get your purchase when you must sit down, write out a check, and mail it. That is why it is extremely important that you offer some type of online payment solution for your e-business. Accepting credit cards is most well known way to accept payment on Internet. Almost everyone has a credit card and by accepting his or hers, it makes customers' ordering process much more convenient and time saving, not to mention it encourages them to purchase from you. Accepting credit cards has become a necessity to survival of e-businesses. In order to accept credit cards, you're going to need a merchant account. To obtain one, just do a search on your favorite search engine. You will be provided with a list of many different merchant account providers to choose from. Merchant services contract with several merchant-processing banks that will actually accept and process your business transactions. For each transaction bank processes, you will be charged a discount rate, or percentage, of face value of amount charged, along with a per transaction fee (usually ranging from $0.20 to $0.30). When you perform your transaction, and receive an authorization number, charged amount is immediately wire-transferred out of your customers' credit card account into your merchant account. The merchant bank will then discount, or deduct, percentage rate and per transaction fee, and wire-transfer balance of charge into business checking account of your choice. At end of month, you will receive a statement, for your records, so that you can balance your account. There are three ways to perform transactions: 1. Terminals/Hardware 2. Point of Sale Software 3. Real-Time (Automatic Online Transactions)
| | Shopping Cart UsabilityWritten by Lee Roberts
Shopping Cart UsabilityUsable Shopping Carts Increase Sales E-commerce has been around since 1993 under many different names, but one thing remains constant; shoppers want usable web sites. Without a usable shopping cart sites typically fail from poor performance. To succeed in world of e-commerce and on Internet web sites must be developed to be usable by patrons as well as search engines. The most successful sites have been turning to web analytic software to tell them how people use their site. When they notice a break in their site they go in to determine problem. Marketers tend to think words on site are breaking points; while this may, in part be true, it is more often how site operates and makes shopping easier for customer. Elements of a Usable Shopping Cart Before a usable shopping cart can be developed several elements must be realized and controlled. Not all things can be overcome, but all things can be controlled. Understanding human nature and how people use new tools can help in controlling most challenging situations. Site Navigation Site navigation must be as easy as possible. Without making navigation as easy as possible customers will become confused and frustrated which encourages them to leave without purchasing. Breadcrumbs Breadcrumbs are links found in web sites that show hierarchical path of page. Not everyone enters a site through front page and breadcrumbs make it much easier to reach related products without having to dig around site. Adding Items to Cart Shoppers want to see some visual confirmation that action they take works. Sites that fail to provide visual cues lose customers due to confusion and thought that site doesn't work. JavaScript JavaScript requires browser to support JavaScript. Without ability to support JavaScript or with JavaScript turned off, functions that require JavaScript can't work. Vital shopping cart functions should not be developed in such a way that JavaScript is required.
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