How to build a successful e-commerce website?
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- Put the pieces together with a payment gateway! -
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So, let's take a look where you are now. You have a domain name, a website launched, a digital certificate, a shopping cart installed and a merchant account in place. But how do you make them talk to each other? They're useless to you unless they all communicate! It's a bit like having the United Nations in one room with no translators! This is what payment gateway is for.
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Payment gateway is the foundation that all other components rely on!
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It connects them all together, verifies the information gathered by your shopping cart and checks if the funds are available. Once the transaction is verified and approved, the gateway sends a response to the shopping cart and the appropriate information to your merchant account provider to begin the process of transferring funds. If the transaction is not approved, the gateway will send a "declined" response to your shopping cart, which will then display a "credit denied" error page with the reasons why the transaction was not approved (e.g. invalid card, insufficient funds, etc.)
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Important!
Important! When you get a shopping cart, merchant account and payment gateway together, you need to make sure they are compatible with each other. Don't assume they'll all work together just because they all fall under the eCommerce umbrella. For example, due to code construction not every merchant account will work with every shopping cart.
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Some gateways process transactions on their own server and your customers will be directed to their secure order form. PayPal is a prime example of this. The advantage of this type of gateway is that you don't need to open an internet merchant account. All you have to do is open an account with PayPal and the funds will then be directly posted to your bank checking account. The downside of this process is that your customers will have to be directed to PayPal's website to complete their shopping process. So you're completely dependent on PayPal's performance to collect money. This will also cause tremendous discomfort for your customers. And, most importantly, fees are HIGH!
I normally suggest to my clients that they choose a gateway that processes transactions on their own server so that customers can stay on site all of the time. Verisign is the biggest player in the payment gateway processing industry. It offers 2 different gateways: Paylink, which is similar to PayPal, and Payflow, which allows customers stay on your own site for the duration of their transaction.
However big names cost big bucks. I started to locate alternative solutions a year ago and found the USAEPAY payment processing service. It works seamlessly with the shopping cart and the merchant account I mentioned earlier and provides great product features. I really can vouch for it personally. And, it's a whole lot cheaper than Verisign! I specially like the interface design of its online processing center. Take a look at some of the features it offers:
- You run your sales, credits, voids as well as pre- and post- authorization through its merchant online control panel. This means you can process credit card transactions anywhere with an internet connection. All approved online transactions are automatically stored in the batch waiting to be posted to your bank account.
- The quick sales form within the terminal allows you to process transactions with more detail such as description of sale, both the billing & shipping addresses, multiple email receipts and much more. All of this transaction information is stored in the database of the virtual terminal so you can retrieve it any time you like.
- Recurring billing allows you to easily add or remove customers to and from the billing database on a daily, weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or annual basis. The virtual terminal processes the charges automatically and the reports and statistics section will also reflect these transactions. N.B. If you know Verisign, you'll know that they offer this service too. Did you know they'll charge you for it? It's completely FREE with USAEPAY!
- USAEPAY offers the greatest levels of security and the toughest fraud control in the market today. All of their toolkits come with the highest encryption SSL IDs - this means that all transactions run through the secure socket layer in real-time to ensure the most reliable way of securing an authorization. In addition, the USAEPAY "Fraud Stopper" allow merchants to block out suspicious transactions and customers through an advanced, easy-to-use control panel. Some of the features you can use include blocking by county, amount, AVS and CVV2 response and IP/Host blocking.
- USAEPAY's Virtual Terminal Console has the most complete reporting capabilities for merchants I've seen. The Batch Manager allows merchants to backtrack charges and easily void or credit charges with just a click of the mouse. It also allows merchant to view the complete details of their eCommerce sales including source web site, complete customer information (e.g. billing, shipping & email address) and even which sales person ran the transaction through in cases of orders being put through the console manually rather than via the web site. The reports and statistics section of the console allows you to view simple to understand charts and graphs of your transactions based on month, day or hour. All of these reports are emailable directly from the console window and downloadable in multiple formats such as tab and comma delimitation, Excel and Access databases and Quicken/QuickBooks.
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Here at Online Image we've been so impressed with USAEPAY and its services that we are now proud to be a reseller for them. This not only allows us to introduce our clients to an outstanding solution, but also lets us help them save money. We ONLY charge:
- $69.99 for set up
- $12.50 per monthly fee
- $5c per transaction fee
- Unlimited transactions.
Online Image provides "NO-RISK" integrated merchant account and payment gateway solution for your online payment processing. Contact us for a even greater fee structure.
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"How to build a successful e-commerce website" Course Index:
- Preface
- Course overview
- Find your domain name before it's too late!
- You need a web site that sells itself!
- A secured hosting server gives you confidence!
- Guard your privacy with a SSL Certificate!
- Find a shopping cart that works for you!
- Manage your online funds with an internet merchant account!
- Put the pieces together with a payment gateway! (You are almost there!)
- Last Few Words
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Online Course written by Maggie Pearce
About the Author: Maggie Pearce is the founder of Online Image, a web development firm specializing in high quality innovative web site production that takes your business further on the internet! At online image, we deliver more than top quality online presence; we develop online infrastructure that makes your website sell itself!
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