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Cashing in on the E-commerce Phenomenon

A few years ago, credibility and fear were major roadblocks for companies and entrepreneurs looking to establish themselves online.  Times have changed for the best as more consumers feel comfortable conducting business over the internet and the e-commerce revolution is in full swing.  That does not give you any room to coast.  You must still take all the necessary steps to ensure that your website appeals to potential customers through professionalism and credibility.

The tips in this article will help you capitalize on this surging market and avoid the mistakes made by so may others.

Creating a Credible Presence

There are many ways to establish credibility and trust within your audience.  You can start by making your contact information easily accessible as this lets customers know they can get in touch with you if need be.  Testimonials can be effective, but you should be careful when using them.  A testimonial could end up working to your disadvantage by prompting skepticism in the visitor, especially if these references appear too obscure with no contact info or other form of validation.  The overall look of your site will determine its credibility so do not hesitate to check out some of the major e-commerce players and even the competition to find a good working model.

E-commerce Tools

Before starting your e-commerce venture, you should know that in order to accept credit cards, which is the preferred method of payment among consumers, your site will require a few specific elements.  This includes a shopping cart program, payment gateway, and possiby a merchant account.  All-in-one solutions do exist on the market, but these systems are often far too complex and geared more towards businesses that do not generate a lot of monthly sales.  While there is nothing wrong starting out with a popular service such as Payal or AlertPay, you should not view them as long-term options.  If your site becomes a success fast, you will definitely need to upgrade your e-commerce system in a jiffy.

Stay on the Grind

Even if you have never seen the movie, you are probably familiar with Kevin Costner’s famous quote from the motion picture Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.”  While very inspiring, this simply is not the case when it comes to obtaining success with an e-commerce site.  In fact, if you build it, your site will just sit there lonely unless you actively market it to the right audience.  Therefore, perhaps the correct saying for the online business world would be: “If you promote it, they will come.”  Evaluate all the available options to find out what methods are most effective for drawing potential customers to your site.

There is no guarantee that you will become a millionaire by selling items online.  You could actually end up losing money in the beginning and find yourself forced to ride a bumpy learning curve.  On the other hand, you will never know how much money you could make if you do not invest the effort in turning your e-commerce site into a success.

Chargeback Defense Strategies

As annoying as they may be, chargebacks are something that many online business owners just have to deal with.  They have simply become another common element of e-commerce.  It may not be fair, but in many cases, customers can back their way out of a purchase and leave you stuck to bear the financial burden.  Adding to the problem is the aspect of less scrupulous characters looking to commit fraud with someone else’s credit card.  It can be a frustrating ordeal, but this article will provide some strategic tips to help you combat the dreaded chargeback.

Common Chargeback Claims

Most chargebacks originate from fraudulent transactions and customers who make the claim of never receiving the items they purchased or even making a purchase at all.  Because many of the credit card policies today are designed in favor of the consumer, as the merchant, you are generally required to pay the costs of the merchandise along with a penalty fee for the chargeback.  This may occur whether the claim is legitimate or not.  Merchant account providers having varying fees on chargebacks, typically factoring in the percentage of total monthly sales as well as your history of incurring such claims.  So what is an online merchant to do in this seemingly no-win situation?  Fortunately, there are several proven methods for minimizing the frequency of these claims and dramatically reducing their overall impact on your bottom line.

Obtain Your Merchant Account from a Reputable Provider

Chargeback defense starts by selecting a reputable merchant account provider for your business needs.  Sadly, a large number of companies have blemished the market by delivering less than stellar support and pouring salt into the wound with hefty penalties and astronomical fees.  Therefore, when choosing your merchant account provider, it is imperative that you learn more about their policies in regard to chargebacks.  Keep in mind that not all providers are the same but the more reputable ones will be willingly to help you resolve matters and only charge moderate fees.

Select a Dependable Payment Processing Solution

When choosing your payment processing solution, put strong emphasis on a service that provides efficient, state of the art security mechanisms.  Though a solution equipped with SSL encryption would be a good start, you also need to have something in place that ensures the legitimacy of credit card purchases to protect your business from fraudulent transactions.  AVS (address verification) and CCV (credit card verification) are two viable anti-fraud features that should be applied to authorize all purchases on your site.

Stay on Alert

The best way to fight chargebacks is to remain proactive and look for signs of suspicious activity.  Keep an eye out for inconsistency in the usual ordering logic and customer behavior.  If you start to suspect that something is not right, further investigate the matter to determine if fraudulent activity is occurring.  Whether it is something fishy with a home address, email address, IP address or phone number, whenever in doubt, take the necessary actions to find out what is going on.  Like most offensives, one of the most effective ways to deal with chargebacks is prevention.

Do You Need a Merchant Account?

When it comes to e-commerce, businesses large and small require a method that allows them to collect and process credit card payments.  If this sounds like your business, then you need a payment gateway which is generally provided by a merchant account.  Finding a merchant account provider can be somewhat of a challenge yet anything can be overcome when doing a little research.

How Much Will it Cost?

For the most part, merchant account providers will charge you a fixed rate per month along with a certain percentage for each sale.  Keep in mind that there may be other fees as well.  When dealing with a reputable provider, these fees will be for maintaining your shopping cart, verifying customers, processing monthly statement, etc.   Having a merchant account is vital in the realm of e-commerce as most consumers today prefer to shop online with their credit cards.  If you can’t accept this form of payment, you may as well not even open up a storefront.

How Can I Get One?

When searching for a merchant account, you will find that most providers are pretty reasonably priced.  The catch is that you must qualify.  Some of the qualifications for a merchant account include background checks, credit checks and proof that you are actually running a legitimate business.  Additionally, some will require that you commit to their service for a certain amount of time and charge cancellation fees for breaching the contract.  Others do not have stipulations and will allow you to part ways at any given time without taxing on fees.  This is why it is very important to look into a particular merchant account provider before deciding on a service.   As with most web-related processes, it is best to find a company that is in good standings and has been in the industry for a while.  This gives you better assurance that the provider will be around and won’t cause you to miss out on crucial sales.

What Should I Look For?

When comparing merchant account providers, don’t hesitate to grill them with hard questions.  One thing you definitely want to known is the estimated time frame for depositing funds into your account following a sale.  Retail sales generally do not take long to process, therefore, there is no need to wait an ungodly amount of time for your money.  You should look over the merchant account contract with a fine-tooth comb because the sooner you get paid, the better.  Always keep your eyes peeled for all the standard charges such as monthly fees, setup fees and cancellation fees if they apply.  You also want to look for any hidden fees that might deduct from your bottom line.  After all the fees have been tallied, you should then calculate the overall cost of service to find out if this solution actually works for your business.

A merchant account is a vital tool in the world of e-commerce and when signing up with the right service, you will find that it can save you noteworthy fees in comparison to a service like PayPal.   The key is finding a reliable provider that is going to be around and won’t try to nickel and dime you to death.

The Essentials of E-commerce

You may have been proficient at getting customers to buy products from your store in town, but online business is an entirely different game.  Similar to the traditional business, you must literally build your store yet take a different approach towards drawing in customers and accepting payments.  The essentials of e-commerce should go a long way in helping you succeed with your online business endeavors.

Building the Site

Obviously, creating your website is the first essential step.  There are several tools available to help with this process from simple web building programs to dynamic programming languages.  While a piece of cake for the experienced webmaster, this could present a huge challenge for someone who lacks web design skills.  In this case, you should strongly consider hiring a qualified designer to build your site.  A costly investment?  Perhaps, but look at it from this perspective – it will cost far less than paying the architecture and construction company to build the facility for a traditional storefront.

Collecting Payments

Whether you’re dealing in goods or services, you need a way for customers to select items and take them to checkout.  To accomplish this your e-commerce site will need a shopping cart.  A quality program will allow you to add different products and categories, add taxes and shipping options, accept payment in various methods and more.  When it comes to shopping carts you generally have to options: you can purchase a commercial product or go with an open-source solution.

Open-source shopping carts like osCommerce are widely available and may be offered at no additional cost with your web hosting package.  Such a program will provide all the features you need to set up an online storefront.  The disadvantage of open-source shopping cart is that some are not easy to customize and don’t cater to inexperienced users.  Additionally, stores created with open-source software tend to look very similar to one another.

Commercial solutions are generally easier to customize and offer more features.  This type of shopping cart will provide the uniqueness that allows you to standout from all the other store owners on the web.  The downside here is that a program like Miva Merchant carries a high-end price tag that ranges from hundreds to thousands of dollars.  You also need to make sure that your web host supports the software so it can be easily incorporated into your e-commerce platform.

Selecting a Payment Gateway

In addition to the shopping cart, you will require a payment gateway that enables credit card payments to be transferred to your banking account.  To accomplish this task you can either sign up for a merchant account or use a third-party payment processor.  Merchant accounts have setup fees, transaction fees and strict qualifications.  However, the transaction fees are lower than using a service such as PayPal.  In either instance, the overall cost are typically less when your monthly sales are over $1,000.  Keep in mind that you will also need to secure the payment environment and protect your online transactions.  The best way to ensure this security is with an encryption protocol known as SSL.  You may have to purchase a certificate with a merchant account while PayPal takes care of securing your transactions.

Bringing in Customers

After creating the site and setting up the store, it’s time to generate some traffic and sell your items.  There are many ways to go about this including advertising, getting your visitors to sign up for a newsletter, pay-per-click campaigns and specially crafted landing pages.  Succeeding with e-commere is no easy task, but when laying a solid foundation, you can give yourself a much better chance of making continuous sales.