The buzz on the web today seems to be all about video and everything that video is going to do for online businesses this year. Predictions are that video overlays with embedded “click to buy” links will allow consumers to spontaneously purchase songs, movies, games, software, and just about any product you could think of.
Here’s some of the buzz that’s going about:
- YouTube announces “click-to-buy” — links for buying songs, games and movies on the watch pages of the related YouTube videos. They’ll be expanding this over time to include more than just songs and movies.
- eMarketer says video sells:
“Among the benefits of videos touted by Web retailers are a lower number of abandoned shopping carts, reduced return rates and higher sales,” says Jeffrey Grau …
- Slideshare also now allows you to embed YouTube videos in your presentations. Here’s a how-to-embed-YouTube tutorial from slideshare. You can take your presentation and add a screencast or product video–or you can string together a series of related product videos into one presentation. Could you embed some click-to-buy links too? Hmmmmmm…
What does this mean for online retailers?
While it can be expensive and time-consuming to produce video, it can really add to a consumer’s understanding of the product. Video can also be entertaining, funny or instructional. ”How-to” videos are great for retailers who sell tools or software. Why not take it an extra step and allow the how-to video watcher to go ahead and purchase the things they need for their big project?
What payments solutions would work with Click-to-Buy videos?
So far, YouTube has been adding links to Amazon or iTunes, but the link in the video is just that–a link, so any flexible payment solution (like the Intellivative Payments API, for example) would work for video click-to-buy. The great thing about videos is they can show off your product better than static images–they can show it in action or as it’s being used in real life, so they can help reduce purchase anxiety and move the consumer closer to becoming your customer.
Since we’re a new blog, I get the joy of attempting to figure out which key words we should use to get more search engines to send us some traffic. As a payments solutions company that offers an ecommerce solution, of course e-commerce is one of the key words that would apply. And e commerce appears to be a pretty good search term. Lots of people search for ecommerce; there is competition for it, but not as much as say, for the term “credit cards”.
So I’ve downloaded a tool to help me decide which words are best for our customers called WebCEO. It is a pretty good tool – I can type in words and see how often they’re searched for and weed out some that I thought were pretty good ideas (like “accept credit cards” — apparently there are less than 10 searches each day for that!)
The thing that gets me is, as a writer, I want to standardize on one term for ecommerce, one way to spell it. You should decide how your company is going to spell it and use that, right? (That’s what I was taught, anyway.)
I’ve been using “e-commerce” forever, convinced that this is the “right” way to say electronic commerce in its shortened form. Dictionary.com says it should be “e-commerce”, but that’s not what my little key word tool is telling me.
So which term gets used most often by real people in real searches?
According to WebCEO (today), there are:
- 21,635 daily searches for “ecommerce” (no space, no dash)
- 5,366 for “ecommerce account” (no space, no dash in the “ecommerce”)
- 4,395 for “e-commerce”
- 3,222 for “e commerce”
(The actual numbers of search change each time I look up the terms, so you have to look at it relatively, rather than as an absolute.) But the general gist of it is this: if I care about search engine traffic, I should really spell it “ecommerce”, but that sort of jars my writer’s sensibilities.
I wonder if it matters to our readers which way we spell ecommerce? As a professional payments company with years of experience in the e-commerce industry, should we set an example and spell e-commerce the right way? Or should we spell ecommerce the more common, search-friendly way?
Which “ecommerce” do YOU think we should use?
How do YOU spell it when you search for an e-commerce article?
If you’ve ever looked into using a virtual terminal to handle the payments for your retail, mail or telephone order business, you might be wondering whether it’s better to use a standard credit card machine (a.k.a, point of sale or POS terminal) or a virtual POS terminal. As with anything, there are advantages and disadvantages of each, and you need to consider the pluses and minuses in the context of your own business objectives–then figure out which payment option fits your situation best.
First of all: what’s a virtual terminal?
A virtual POS terminal is generally a secure web site you log into to process credit card and/or electronic check payments. It works a lot like your traditional credit card terminal, except it uses your computer and a secure Internet connection rather than a separate piece of hardware and a phone line to process the payment.
Advantages of a virtual POS terminal
There are quite a few benefits:
- Virtual terminals are available from any computer with an internet connection–if you’re at a trade show or travelling, you don’t have to carry extra equipment.
- There’s no extra hardware to clutter up your counter (or desk). Your computer is your credit card terminal.
- With a virtual terminal, updates are usually automatic. Credit card associations update their rules regularly, usually requiring credit card terminal owners to update their software and/or hardware. Virtual terminals eliminate that hassle because the software processing the payment is on the company’s server–not yours. That means when a change comes down the pipes, they take care of it for you and you never have to worry about it.
- Some virtual terminals allow you to plug in a card-swipe device or keyboard, so you can swipe credit cards or key them in.
- Several people can use it at once. This is really great for catalog call centers, where everyone on the floor usually has a computer anyway, so each of your call center workers can log into the virtual terminal right on their computer. It cuts costs tremendously because you don’t have to pay for each person to have their own POS terminal.
- Payment reports for humans–no paper required. While a traditional credit card terminal does typically have reporting built in, it’s a paper report that may not be the easiest thing to read. Usually with virtual terminals there is a reports module included that has visual reports designed for people to read online. Much easier to read and interpret, available anywhere (from a computer with internet access), and it saves paper because you can read it online.
- Some payment providers even let you download the report data right into a database or into Excel (or your favorite spreadsheet) so you can massage the data to your heart’s content.
The Down Side of Virtual Credit Card Terminals
Virtual credit card terminals are not all roses; they have their drawbacks too.
- If you don’t have a computer where you’re processing payments, it can be a hassle to put one there to run your payments. It only works to your benefit when you have a computer there anyway.
- Some virtual credit card terminals are cumbersome to use–not something you really want when you’re in a hurry trying to check out a long line of customers. Others are more efficient. Shop around and pick the one that works best for the people at your business who process the payments.
- Virtual terminals time out after a period of inactivity. (Or at least they should. If your employee walks away and leaves it for 20 minutes, you don’t want any old schmuck walking up and processing payments or worse yet, viewing your reports.) But when they do time out, it can be a hassle to log back in before you can check someone out, especially if you’re in a hurry. So if you have a long time between checkouts, the timeout could get in your way. Traditional credit card terminals don’t time out.
Intellivative offers both types of solutions so no matter which you option you decide on, we’d appreciate it if you would consider the Intellivative Merchant Portal (which includes a virtual terminal), one of our credit card terminals, or if you already have credit card terminals you’d like to keep using, consider using Intellivative as your payment processor.
Whichever solution you choose, best of luck to you in your business!
It seems that credit cards still rule the market for online commerce. eMarketer reports the following:
Data from a January 2009 Javelin Strategy and Research study reveals that credit card purchase volume will continue to grow online and command the largest market share among payment types, reaching $107 billion by 2013, up from $81 billion in 2008.
There is a slight increase in market share for debit cards, prepaid and private label cards. Says eMarketer:
… prepaid and debit cards may be viewed as ways to avoid interest charges, and private-label cards frequently have loyalty or rewards programs that give users cash or products back.
What I don’t see on this chart is an increase in alternative payment types like Bill Me Later, Google Checkout or PayPal, and that’s interesting considering what Get Elastic reported in their ECommerce Checkout Study in May 2007:
36% of Top 100 retailers offer alternative payment options such as PayPal, Bill Me Later, or Google Checkout, but conversion rates were convincingly higher at retailers who did not offer alternative payment types – more than double at retailers selling high ticket value items.
So if your payments provider supports credit and debit cards, you’re pretty well covered according to these studies (since prepaid Visa and Mastercard cards work just like a credit card on an e-commerce web site).
Incidentally, the Intellivative API supports the top payment categories in this chart (94% of market share), and it is compatible with most shopping carts.
