The key to a successful business is to allow customers to make proper purchases online without any restrictions or hassles. The ecommerce shopping cart solution is the best possible way for companies to achieve this so the customers can choose their products through a flexible check out system. Lots of professional services offer their own versions of ecommerce shopping cart solution written in various languages. Thus, you can select the software based on your preferences and the requirements of your site. However, you should always create a checklist of certain factors before you sign up with any particular service to provide an ecommerce shopping cart for your site.

The first and most important thing on your mind should be the stability of the software. During the design of the ecommerce shopping cart, you should see that it does not crash upon frequent use or provide incorrect results or calculations during checkout. The customers should be completely at ease with the ecommerce shopping cart without running into problems from time to time. Depending on the server hosting, you might choose to prepare the ecommerce shopping cart software under a certain language. You need to perform lots of extensive checking before implementing the code.

The primary feature list comes next on the checklist. Your ecommerce shopping cart software should include all the standard customer requirements as well as additional features like tax calculation and discount processing. Depending on the data inventory possible, the ecommerce shopping cart software should allow the customers to choose as many products as they want without imposing any limits. Instead of adding an item to a list for checkout, the software must allow you to fully manage the online store as an administrator and access the products section as a user. Companies that design online shopping cart have their own feature list which you should check before the selection.

You should always make sure that the entire process is fast and efficient to make sure that the customer has a positive experience with purchases made through online shopping cart. If the entire checkout process is slow and buggy, it might turn away customers from the site. The final product design and performance of the shopping cart solution should meet the standards and allow the customer to process the transactions quickly. This is the precise reason why you should hire a professional and experienced service to work on a shopping cart solution for your business.

Customers can be extremely cautious about the mode of payment that is implemented in the module of your online shopping cart solution. You should always allow for secure payment procedures including link redirects to their online transaction channels. There should be no extra charges levied and the storefront and checkout modules should integrate properly with each other to make the overall product a success. Depending on the usability of your online shopping cart solution, customers could recommend or reject your site altogether. In order to achieve the best customer feedback as well as increased sales, your ecommerce shopping cart solution needs to be feature rich and stable so the checkout process takes minimal time for shoppers.

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This is the age of convenient shopping. Gone are the days when one had to carry large packets stuffed with commodities which made it impossible to make huge purchases in one go. These days, however, retailers are too eager to attract the customers’ attention by doling out practically everything under one roof and also at a price that fits every pocket. This is advantageous both for the customers who can save time and also for the retailers who can rake in profits at the same time earning a goodwill for themselves.

With the concept of supermarkets now in vogue, the mode of shopping too has undergone a sea change. To make things convenient for the customer, nowadays there are shopping carts which come fitted with swivel wheels that allow the cart to be rolled in any given direction with ease thus facilitating the buying process.

However, with the passage of time, the design of shopping carts has changed immensely. Now, available in multiple colors, they range from folding grocery carts, wholesale folding shopping carts and easy wheels shopping cart to folding metal shopping cart, shopping trolley, small shopping cart…..so on and so forth. Each serves its own purpose. As the very name suggests, folding grocery carts are ideal for carrying groceries and laundry. Grocery is a part and parcel of our daily lives. So the easier you make it, the better it is. They serve many other purposes which include carrying a child even. These carts normally look like a car or van equipped with a steering wheel and sometimes a horn where a child can sit. This is a huge stress reliever for the parents as they neither have to leave the child at home in somebody else’s care nor carry the baby in their hands throughout the entire purchase process.

Recent studies have indicated that stores which have not resorted to shopping carts have suffered poor sales in the recent years. But ones who opted for the same have already registered booming sales. The shopping carts have revolutionized the buying experience of the elderly shoppers too who tend to get tired very easily due to old age. But with these carts, shopping has now become a mere cakewalk even for the oldies. They can also use the carts to transport their purchased goods to the cars and then leave them at the parking lot to be picked up by the store personnel and returned to the storage area later on.

There are different types of shopping carts available at various specialty stores. So if you need some for your own outlet, pick them up from the concerned stores. Some of the most popular ones include transit carts, market mate, two wheeled folding cart with extra shelf, hook and go urban shopping cart, super deluxe swiveler cart etc. They have some of the best features which make them a raging craze among retailers who want to woo customers by introducing the concept of easy and convenient shopping.

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As EVP at MerchantAdvantage, one of my responsibilities is to analyze multiple shopping cart technologies before integrating storefront data into our Channel Management system.

This is an essential process as it ensures that an online merchant’s data is compliant with our data transport system from which we easily distribute data into various marketing channels, such as shopping comparison sites, comparison shopping engines, marketplaces, such as Amazon, Shop.com and Underbid, and other unique marketing channels such as m-commerce sites, such as iSave.com, mPoria.com, mShopper.com, and review and coupon sites, such as PowerReviews.com and MyCoupons.com.

As I do this, I have established 3 points of analysis to make the process as reliable as possible. As technology changes, and new marketing outlets emerge, I think it is important for each merchant to look at their shopping cart infrastructure and analyze the ease of portability of their data into other systems in order to keep ongoing marketing integration “surprise-less”.

Merchants should perform this type of analysis in between the busy season; let’s say before or after March – ergo after the holiday season and before the summer rush. My suggestion is that a technical person should compile a list of questions to ask their shopping cart vendor, in order to ensure that the online merchant fully understands the “power” and “limitations” of their shopping cart technology and how it allows the online merchant to utilize many other software technologies to help the online merchant grow their business.

To begin, here are some definitions to consider – just so we understand each other.

Portability: A shopping cart’s capacity to integrate into a totally disparate system without losing product data impact.

Data Impact: The scale of impact that product data has functioning independently within an online merchant’s or marketed outside of an online merchant’s website. Product data contained within a an individual shopping cart, and website, may have “high impact” on marketing — as product descriptions, manufacturing names, pictures, pricing, and general marketing is robust and current.

However, if incorrectly formatted and mapped to an outside “software system”, the robust product data will have a “low impact” if it is taken out of its current shopping cart technology infrastructure and put on/within a marketing. In order to maintain product data’s “high impact” it is essential to ensure that the original data is mapped to correspond to the required elements of a marketing channel. This might include updating and creating: varied coding requirements, dropping/eliminating symbols, dropping/eliminating line breaks, adding varied prices and inventories levels, changing pictures and product names, and updating marketing descriptions.

An example of something that can cause “low impact” data on marketing channels is a shopping cart’s capacity to output a “new” product file on a scheduled basis, without encoding or symbols. This type of “new and daily export” yields usable data and not blank columns, or duplicate columns, in a data feed to marketing feed, that then will be rejected.

Marketing Outlet or Channel: A separate system used to market product data and drive sales into an online merchant’s site or on another site on behalf of the online merchant.

Marketplace: A marketing channel where the purchase is made outside of the cart and orders are fulfilled by the merchant. The order may be processed by the marketplace or the merchant, but the merchant is somewhat invisible during the view and ordering process. Examples would be Amazon.com, Shop.com, and Underbid.com.

CSE: Comparison Shopping Engine, a.k.a. Comparison Shopping site. This is a marketing channel where the goal is to drive a consumer back to your shopping cart to complete the purchase there. CSEs may charge the merchant a pay-per-click pay-per-lead or commission from all sales referred by the CSE to the online merchant, such as couparison shopping sites do.

Parent /Child Relationship, Options: Many products have options associate with the product before a final purchase is made, i.e., size, color, etc. This is especially true with clothing. These options show up on web pages and the website directs the consumer to select certain options related to a product before the consumer proceeds to checkout. This is great when the purchase happens on the merchant’s website, but how does an online merchant handle all of these options when exporting data to marketing channels and having to deal with a myriad of taxonomy and mapping issues as they relate to each marketing channel?

To answer this, the online merchant must assess:

1. the origination point of the data within their shopping cart technology

2. the options available to access the date therein

3. portability issues (i.e. ease of output and export)

…ultimately forcing the online merchant to analyze how the data is stored in its rawest form in the original database.

Just because a shopping cart technology can export data does not mean that that data is exported in the “form” that you need it exported. For instance, some shopping cart technologies export feature creates new line items for each option; some may create a field with every possible color/size possibility, while others do not.

Essentially shopping cart technologies, while trying to “play well with other,” simply do not and export features inherent in many shopping cart technologies are not designed to sync easily with the many requirements that are essential to working with marketing channels.

This lack of syncing of data is why we created MerchantAdvantage – to make the communication between systems seamless – and is the NUMBER ONE BREAKING POINT for online merchants to work with, and integrate with, systems and marketing channels out side of the their shopping cart technology.

So what should an online merchant be asking themselves to work effectively and efficiently with marketing channels and other systems out side of their shopping cart technology?

Remembering the definitions I outlined above, here are the questions I ask of online merchants about their shopping cart technology before transporting their data to ensure that we have the same “highest impact” data on/within marketing channels. I would be glad to do it with any online merchant, just give us a call at MerchantAdvantage, or you can do it on your own.

5 Questions to ask about your company data & company to see if your shopping cart is portable:

1. Where will this data be used to market? Marketplaces, CSEs, other marketing channels?

2. Is there a unique identifier for each product that stays the same all of the time?

a. Is that unique number for joined products (options) referenced in all joined products (i.e., do child products reference parent – see definition above)?

3. Are there Product URLs and Image URLs? And do they work?

4. Are there encoded characters, ASCII Characters, Line-breaks, or data anomalies?

5. Can any product data export process be automated?

a. Is the location to where exports are updated and pushed to always available on the internet

b. Is the location updated on a scheduled basis that parallels your shopping cart technology cart updates and changes?

5 Questions to ask to see if your portability is optimized:

1. Is each piece of necessary data stored in separate fields or columns, i.e., manufacturer, manufacturer part number, or availability, and not all clumped together in one general description.

Special Note: Some marketing channels require this data in different orders and formatting unique to their marketing channel.

2. Are the marketing descriptions sensible and concise, containing all important data at the front of the description (within first 100 characters)?

Special Note: descriptions can be indexed/searchable and are usually trimmed to the first set of 100 characters.

3. Is the “Cost Field” present in the export?

Special Note: Adjustments to the “Pricing” and “Marketing” fields may be made at any time of the product data dispersion process.

4. Do the unique identifiers match competitors’ unique identifiers?

Special Note: Consumers will and can see your items when viewing competitors’ products on CSEs.

5. Does my data meet all of the requirements of each requested marking channel that I am trying to get/feed to?

Special Note: Each marketing channel requires different types and formats of data delivery.

Okay, now what?

My suggestions:

1. after each question has been answered and each possible point-of-failure has been addressed then you can move onto the planning and process of into which marketing channels you want to work with and feed your product catalog data.

2. You have taken the most important step of data feed integration and marketing, namely understanding what your shopping cart technology allows you to do and not to do and, most important, understanding what you need to do to make sure that you create and market the “highest impact” data to your marketing channels.

3. Integration is ready to be achieved.

Good luck and if you would like to make your life a lot simpler, give us a shout at MerchantAdvantage, we would be glad to work with you, and start feeding and having fun with over 100 marketing channels, cost effectively, with the most uptime, least surprises and zero technician’s heart attacks!!

Happy Holidays!

– Chip Arndt

chip@eTaildTail.com

chip@merchantadvantage.com

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Online Marketing is the new established form of marketing these days. To sell your products online and accept credit cards you need to hire the services of a credit card processing company. They will provide you with a merchant account which will be your gateway to reach out to the potential consumers from your website and collect money from them when they buy your products.

A merchant account is the wise investment plan for any business owner or retailer who accept credit card payments on their website, process debit cards, accept e-checks, orders over the phone. It generally make the process of ordering products a persuasive experience for the customer.

With a merchant account payment gateway hired, the process of accepting and processing credit cards, debit card is like on autopilot. You are free from any responsibility involved in processing. Once a transaction is completed the information gathered is operated by the account gateway and the funds are deposited into the merchants account. In addition, if in case there persist a problem with the transaction, or for some reasons, the customer wants a refund, the merchant account gateway perform the same thing again in the converse order.

The merchant account information gateway makes use of a virtual terminal and comprises of a shopping cart placed on the merchant’s website. The system along with your dextrous website provides a secure and reliable environment for the online shoppers. There are various companies that provide credit card processing systems for online based storefronts. However, always read the fine prints while shopping for a merchant account, in order to make sure that the company provides what you require.

You need to keep a regular check on the fees charged by the credit card processing company. The transaction fee comprises of two main components; one is a percentage of the price of the product sold while the other is a flat rate fee usually for a few cents tagged on every sale you made. Make sure that such kind of fees is not in a high proportion and you are comfortable with the interest rate too so that you do not see your profits evaporate.

Such kind of online e-commerce system assures a rise in profits. Also it exhibit a more professional storefront experience for your online shoppers. You can also go for setting up an free merchant account with many companies, so your transactions are handled securely for small fees taken from each sale. Therefore, it is important to keep a track of events with your bank for this system or on the other online offers of a payment gateway.

Credit cards have a ubiquitous presence in the world, with people getting accustomed to their use for shopping. And possessing online presence establishes your business apart. Without getting a merchant account, a business cannot use the advantage of this powerful payment gateway.

To get more information Please visit www.paynetsystems.com

Commissioning a new eCommerce Website is a process that demands answer after answer to questions that before you begin you may not be prepared for. One of the most fundamental choices that you must make is in selecting the payment method for your site. As part of the process of creating a new website careful thought and research should be put into the best payment solution for your online store, certainly at Advansys we make sure that our clients are fully aware of the pros and cons of each choice.

Broadly these Payment options come in two types:

Credit Card Payment Gateway such as that found on many internet shopping sites like Amazon or Play.com.
Independent Payment Facility such as Paypal.

Either can be in-line or hosted, so either launched directly within the website or opened in a new window that is hosted by the payment provider.

There are many reasons to choose either method, most of which come down to your judgement on the assurance you believe each method gives to your customers. For many a hosted credit card payment seems to lack assurance as the customer is transported away from your site and then their credit card details are requested. An in-line gateway does give a sense of authority to a site and many go for the extra security that 3D secure can give to such gateways, however be careful with this as some customers are put off by the hosted nature of 3D secure and the extra steps it adds to the ordering process.

Paypal and its fellows have the advantage of global acceptance by customers but to use it as a sole gateway can make your site seem amateurish. Again customer assurance is important and ironically it seems that Paypal fans prefer their access to payments to be hosted by Paypal. This may be evidence of a feeling that typing a secure password into a third party site is a security risk.

Paypal in particular of these independent payment facilities has a great advantage for etailers as it opens your site up for simple international transactions and many resources needed by an ecommerce solution are provided within Paypal’s system, delivery costs, recurring payment set up, special instructions and simple messages can all be created and sent through Paypal.

So how to choose? Well, for many of Advansys’ clients that is a clear decision; Go for both!

Choosing to integrate two payment methods give you the flexibility to cater for a wider range of customers, those who are assured by the professionalism of having your own on site credit card facility, and those who use the convenience and security provided by their preferred payment facility. As well as granting access to a wider audience, multichannel payments gives your site an even greater level of assurance to customers as they can see that your site is known and probably monitored by more than one independent company.

Of course there is some extra complication to integrating both, after all Paypal is designed to operate as a stand alone solution while your payment gateway is just one part of the ecommerce CMS, a complete management tool for your ecommerce website, but this is something that your ecommerce company should resolve for you to make using the system easy. Here at Advansys, we have a great deal of experience at this and we are finding that this is more and more common for both new and redeveloped ecommerce solutions.

ILIAS 4.0 has been integrated with ePay payment gateway and e-conomic accóunting system. This feature makes it possible to use ILIAS as an realtime e-learning shop. If you need integration to other payment gateways or accounting systems please contact me. Thanks to www.danosongs.com for the free music.

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The virtual market has arrived and with the growing number of online stores, it seems like the trend is here to stay. Unlike real time stores, one does not need to invest heavily in virtual stores, and so even small business owners find the deal lucrative. Virtual stores are easy to create and manage, which has added immensely to their popularity. Depending upon the investment that a business owner would like to make, both in terms of time and money, one can create a virtual store for the business.

The convenience that these virtual stores offer to the online shopper cannot be matched by real time stores. The ease of begin able to compare several different manufacturers of a product and then purchase it online, along with having it delivered to your door step is indeed  magnetic. While initially buyers were skeptical of products that they saw online and not in reality, over the years, online dealers have established a gold reputation for themselves, which has added to an increase in online shoppers. Most online stores offer money back guarantees, much like real time stores, which takes away the fear of being cheated from the prospects mind. Almost all commercial ventures today understand the growing importance of E commerce, and virtual stores are the gateway of commercial activities on the internet.

Though having concluded that virtual stores are convenient to both the seller and the buyer, it is a know fact that simply setting up a virtual store is not the answer to increasing online sales. In fact, despite adopting extremely sophisticated advertising and quality products, it is a fact that for every online transaction that is completed, almost four times as many are deserted. Apparently putting up several payment gateways and adopting highly developed shopping cart software does not seem to seal the deal either. These techniques work at only drawing the prospects attention and moving towards a possible sale. However, despite these efforts, it has been estimated that on an average 75% of shopping carts are abandoned before the deal can be closed. It is no wonder then that abandoned shopping carts are considered the biggest ‘bane of ecommerce’. 

An abandoned shopping cart is an incomplete transaction, which the prospect deserts before the final deal is sealed. Since the ultimate goal of all E commerce activity is sales, of course a conversion left half way is extremely damaging to the business. Businesses that operate online spend huge sums of money to setup a commercially viable virtual stores and are then aghast at the large number of abandoned shopping carts. Therefore, one can safely conclude that as important as setting up a virtual store, is decreasing abandoned shopping carts so that the sales maybe increased.

The solution comes in a two phase package. First is, understanding the reason why the percentage of abandoned shopping carts is so high, and the second phase is ensuring that these hurdles and problems are done away with.

Reasons for shopping cart abandonment:-

1) Shipping cost – Over 72% of prospects who leave the deal half way through, do so due to the high shipping cost that the site charges. The advantage of shopping in the convenience of ones home is definitely attractive to the customer, but is marred by high cost of delivery. Also since shipping charges are as a rule not refundable, prospects are deterred from closing the deal.

2) Competition comparisons – One of the major attractions of online shopping is begin able to easily compare several manufacturers of similar products, so as to choose the most feasible deal. It has been observed that 61% prospects move on to greener pastures and abandon their shopping carts midway, when they find that the competition has more to offer.

3) Second thoughts- While initially taken in by the product and its cost, at the time of final payment, 51% of online shoppers abandon the shopping cart due to second thoughts. Wanting to think over the deal a little more, these prospects are likely to simply abandon the shopping cart and maybe come back later for the purchase. It is also a fact that 96% of browsers never return to a site even if they did buy something from that site.

4) Decide otherwise- While second thoughts do leave some room for a comeback, there are 56% prospects that choose items but give up the idea of buying them completely while going through the process of the ultimate purchase. They may decide that the item is not required or not as attractive that they had thought before.

5) Collective cost of products – While shopping, prospects tend to pick up several products and dump them in their shopping carts. On finally viewing the total cost of these products, 43% find them too high and therefore completely abandon the shopping cart that they had selected rather than go through the items again.

6) Length of check out process- 41% buyers abandon shopping carts because they find that the time required for the final check out is too lengthy. Irritated by the time that the check out process is taking, these buyers despite being committed to the deal simply abandon the shopping cart and move on.

7) Personal information for check out process- There are several website that seem to go on and on asking the prospect to give their personal information for the final deal to go through. Irritated by this, 35 % buyers tend to leave the cart and move away from the final transaction.

Registration process- There are several sites who have a pre requisite to register before the final buying process can be undertaken. 34% buyers decide that they would rather abandon the shopping cart than register for the site. 

9) Complicated check out process- Confused by complicated check out process 27% buyers decide to give up buying the product(s) online rather than try and figure out how the system works.

10) Reliability of the site- Cautious about the site’s authenticity and reliability, 31% buyers decide to not go through with the deal despite having started it. The fear of begin cheated online is much more than being cheated in the real world, since it is much easier to disappear in the virtual world.

Having nailed most of the reasons for abandoned shopping carts, the next phase involves finding solutions for these problems.

Solutions for shopping cart abandonment:-

1) Quick downloads- It is crucial for the sale to meet its final transaction that the web page does not take too long to download. On an average the shopper will not give your site more than 10 seconds to download. It is therefore important that the web page is not filled with images and that the graphics if any, are compressed for easy downloads.

2) Easy navigation – If the buyer wanted to solve a jig saw puzzle, a games site is what he/she would be visiting. Keep navigation and links of the website clear and simple. Golden rules like a right hand index, links to the buy tab and home page on all sub pages and pastels backgrounds should never be overlooked. Over decades people have come to expect certain tabs at certain spots on a website and not finding them there, tends to make the prospect move on.

3) Short sale routine – There are many sites that go on forcing a sales pitch on the prospect despite the customer already begin sold to the idea. Allow the client to buy the product as soon as he/she is convinced. Close the deal quickly, so as to not allow time to the prospect to rethink. For this it is important that the journey between the sales pitch and the payment gateway be as short as possible.

4) Lay down facts – Do not allow grey area to creep into your sales pitch. State the facts about the product in clear black and white terms. The price, the shipping cost, the availability and other such facts must be laid down in simple and clear terms to the prospect, so that it does not come as a shock later.

5) Offer attractions – If you find that the customer is leaving the site without purchasing what was placed in the shopping cart, step in with an attractive offer, which may be introduced via a pop up window. This works very well in cases where the prospect is half sold to the idea and just needs a bit more cajoling to undertake the final transaction.

6) Avoid distractions – Do not place banner ads or other similar distractions on your shopping cart. While the prospect is having a look at the product(s) you do not want to distract him/her. It is therefore very important that you do not fall into the trap of allowing other sites to take your prospect away by letting a small blinking advertisement break the shopper’s concentration.

While there are several other tips that help increase conversion rates for commercial websites, the basic essence of each trick is to add to the shopping experience of the customer. It is imperative that problems and solutions both be figured out from the client’s point of view. Be it a real time store or a virtual one, the customer is the final and most crucial link of the sales process and therefore must be kept happy at all given times.

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Payment gateways allow online merchants to accept credit card payments  over the internet. They authorize the cardholder’s credit. Payment Gateways make sure that the customer has enough money on their credit card to cover the purchases. A hold is then placed on the amount so the buyer can’t turn around and spend that same money elsewhere before it gets transferred to the retailer’s merchant account. Banks describes this as “the technology…necessary to consummate a payment transaction.”

Choosing a payment gateway to use can be a frustrating, confusing task, but it doesn’t have to be. I know, I’ve been there.  As your business starts to grow, so do your credit card processing options.  What should you know when choosing a payment gateway?

 First check if it is PCI-compliant?  PCI compliance is Payment Card Industry Standards. These standards regulate how you handle sensitive personal information. The goal is to protect the consumer.  When a company is PCI compliant- it means that the company’s security has been audited by a third party and found to pass credit card industry standards. Since a payment gateways store all of your customers’ credit card information, this means you can sleep better at night, knowing your customers’ valuable information is safe and sound. A PCI-compliant credit card processor is a must in today’s world. You could get fined if you are not PCI complaint.

 Great customer service-It’s important that you are able to reach your credit card processor in the event of an emergency. Do they respond after the sale?  You can do a search online to find other customer’s feedback. Consider asking online colleagues and small business owners for referrals.  You should ask what payment gateway they use, how much  it costs them, and if they are happy with their service? Also consider asking them what they would do differently knowing what they know now.

 It is very important that the payment gateway you choose integrate with third-party solutions you are planning to use. I use authorize.net and it integrates easily. Not much html knowledge is needed.

Payment gateways will not only allow you to collect the money from your website sales, but many also offer  a large variety of security features to help you avoid becoming a victim of fraudulent orders! It’s important to have address verification so you know the credit card matches up with the purchasers’ information. The system will flag if someone is trying to use a credit card 2,000 miles away. This gives you the option to contact your customer and verify their order.  Once the payment has been approved, you can expect your money to be deposited to your checking account within 1 to 5 business days.

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If you want to accept credit cards but you can’t get a merchant account, then a free merchant account is for you. What do you need to know about free merchant accounts? Here are the basics.

First off, a merchant account is an account with a bank that allows you to accept credit card payments. This means you can tell your customers to pay either in cash or use that little plastic card in their wallets. There are two kinds of merchant accounts for the two different kinds of transactions:

Card present transactions

Card present transactions means at the point of sale(POS), the credit card can be swiped on a physical terminal. Think Borders bookstore along El Paseo.

Card not present transactions

Card not present transactions means a credit card cannot be physically seen as well as swiped. Mail Order/Telephone(MOTO) merchants & Internet merchants fall under this category. There is no physical storefront or POS. Applicants of a free merchant account usually fall under Card not present transactions.

A free merchant account is obtained through a third party processor. The third party processor allows other merchants to share their own merchant account. Merchants who avail of a free merchant account are usually rejected first by banks or brokers, or are either start up businesses who don’t have enough money to get their own merchant account yet.

Requirements of a free merchant account

Applications can be quick, or drag on for days depending on your responsiveness to the requirements (& how quick your agent can arrange for a merchant account). Here are some items needed to apply for a free merchant account.

Accomplished Merchant Application & Agreement

A business checking account

Articles of Incorporation or Incorporation Documents

Valid Identification Papers ( e.g. Passport, Drivers License)

Business License

Voided Checks

Bank Letter with Beneficiary Name

Web site URL

Statement of your return policy

Fees of a free merchant account

Like banks & brokers, free merchant account providers charge merchant fees.

Discount rate (around 2-4% of transactions)

Transaction fees

Monthly processing fees

Other fees you might incur include one time application fee, AVS(address verification service fee), statement fees, return fees, reserve fees, & charge back fees.

Before you sign up, keep these things in mind

Make sure you’re getting a free merchant account from a reliable company. Scour the Internet for any good or bad reviews for that provider.
Review your options. If it means going through several providers & reading each & every offer sheet, then so be it. Look at the charges & always read the fine print.
Don’t give your go signal (in fact, your signature) if they can’t answer your questions. If they can’t answer your questions now, how can you expect them to answer your questions down the road?

Just like any decision you have to make in life, reviewing your options, doing your homework, & carefully reading the offer sheet of your free merchant account provider can very well be worth all the time spent making that decision.

Setting up a business on the World Wide Web necessitates the setting up of a merchant account to process payments. A merchant account is a special account with a bank or online website that is a member of organizations like Visa or MasterCard. A merchant account provider is a business or website that is authorized to provide merchant account services to online businesses. Setting up of a merchant account will enable your e-commerce site to receive payment online via credit cards for purchase of goods or services.

What happens is:

• A customer to your e-commerce site presents a credit card to make payment for purchase of goods or services.

• This electronic request will immediately go to the “processing network” of the merchant account provider. Here verification of credit card will take place. If funds are available and the credit card is verified the system will send an electronic response to your website. Known as the “authorization” code, this guarantees you funds as payment for goods or services. The authorization code is a six digit number. This transaction will then be stored in the system

• At the end of a business day you must submit a “final request” of the day’s business to the merchant account processing network. The processing network will then “settle your batch” or “capture the funds.” The settlement report is systematic and lists payments received by card type “Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover etc.” Any errors must be immediately corrected.

• After this the funds will be deposited electronically to your bank account after deduction of the discount rate you have agreed to pay the merchant account provider.

• At the end of thirty days or the month the merchant account provider will send you a consolidated statement listing your activities and the associated fees charged to you.

Setting up a merchant account is not difficult. All you need to do is select a reliable merchant account service online from a website that has done considerable background checks on your behalf.

Merchant account providers charge their customers for the service. The fees are: a discount rate, a transaction fee, and monthly fees.

• A discount rate can range from 2.5-5% depending on your business and other factors.

• The transaction fee is a flat sum of say 30-50 cents a transaction.

• Monthly fees are charged of the service the merchant account provider gives. This is normally decided before signing the merchant account agreement.

In order to set up a merchant account you will need to provide the merchant account provider with details such as:

• Your name and business nomenclature.

• Details of your business checking account.

• A copy of a voided check.

• Articles of incorporation.

• Details of online business.

• A copy of your return policy and business structure.

• References from the trade.

• Tax returns (the latest).

• Copy of driver’s license and social security details.

• Details of any e-commerce association memberships.

The relationship between any business and the merchant account provider needs to be based on trust so choose your merchant account provider with care.

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Once you have a product and a merchant account, you need some way to let your visitors visit your store, select products, add them to a cart and check out easily through a secure payment gateway. Typically, this is what a good ecommerce shopping cart interface does. The more intuitive your shopping cart software, the easier it is for customers to shop.

So, a shopping cart is nothing but an ecommerce solution that makes it easy for customers to shop with you. Right? Yes … and no.

Today, shopping cart solutions have grown much beyond their original scope. Time was when shopping carts only controlled inventory, accepted orders and processed payments. Today, all that is history. In order to combine a variety of useful features into one shopping cart solution, companies have been bundling quite a number of useful ‘extras’ to the original shopping cart. Ready to go front end designs, great administrative features, advanced security and supported payment gateways are some of these. With the help of these, it is possible for owners to get their internet store up and running within a few short minutes.

But, the question still remains – how do you bring customers to your store?

Search engines are the back bone of a web business. As business owners may be aware, the main job of a website is to woo search engine rankings. Search engines are very powerful; however, taming them is rather simple. A number of minute steps taken at the right time is all it takes to top the rankings at Google and Yahoo search engines.

Many companies are now offering what is called the SEO friendly shopping cart. In an effort to enhance marketing, SEO friendly shopping carts offer a number of neat features that make these shopping carts very valuable to an online trader. SEO friendly shopping carts take care of search engine optimization, so all you have to do is plug in the shopping cart solution and get ready to sell.

SEO friendly shopping carts have very powerful in-built SEO features that make it easy for you to optimize your website for search engines. They help you promote your website by generating search engine friendly web pages. Well-designed front ends make it easy for crawlers to pick up key words. Aptly titled pages are a favorite with search engines and SEO friendly shopping carts title each of your pages appropriately so they show up when customers search for your products. SEO friendly shopping carts also generate sufficient keyword density to help your pages rank high in internet searches. Search engine friendly product catalog, automatic generation of a well defined sitemap and search engine friendly URLs are other useful features. Of course, SEO friendly shopping carts also add the necessary meta, title and description tags to your web pages.

SEO friendly shopping carts take much of the hard work out of online marketing. With a robust solution, business owners have to do little more than stocking up on their inventory and getting ready for sales.

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