Intellivative Payment Solutions without Borders

If you’re new to eCommerce, it might seem like a daunting task to figure out how to get your web site to process credit card and debit card payments electronically. Fortunately, there are a lot of companies that have already figured out  the hard parts–all you have to do is pick the right one for you. So, where to start?

Well, in order to accept credit cards and debit cards, you need a payment gateway like Intellivative (others include Authorize.net, LinkPoint, Verisign, Paypal, …). But there are a lot of other factors involved …

Where are you going to host your eCommerce web site?

You might already have part this figured out, but if you haven’t, you’ll need to choose and purchase a domain name for your web site (check its availability first!) and find a place to host it. Large businesses might host the site on their own web server, but smaller businesses probably want to hire an Internet Service Provider to do that part.

How big of an online store do you want?

Are you selling 2 different products, 100, or 1,000? The scale of your online store is going to make a big difference in your web store’s strategy.

If you have just a handful of products to sell, you’re not going to need a whole lot. A “Buy Now” button from PayPal or Google might be enough–or you may be able to sell your products on an auction site like eBay or Amazon.

But when you’re ready to move beyond selling a few products online, you’ll need an online shopping solution with more functionality. That’s where shopping carts come in. If you have more than 5 – 10 products, you’re going to need a shopping cart. 

Should you build your eCommerce store yourself, hire someone to build it, or buy a pre-made solution?

Nowadays, it’s not necessary to solve it all yourself (unless you just enjoy doing that kind of thing). A pre-built shopping cart can give you so many features it would be difficult to build yourself. You still might want to hire someone to help you, but most likely you can find a cart that will meet your needs. 

You can find shopping carts that will provide all kinds of bells and whistles–the question becomes which bells and whistles are important for your store’s success?

Here are some of the features you might find offered:

 The lists of features alone can be overwhelming, but really, it’s best not to have too many, at least to start with. Think about making your store simple for the user to find what they want, add it to the cart, and purchase it. Some of the “features” can sometimes get in the way of that one primary goal. Keep yourself focused on the goal, and don’t let yourself get too bogged down in features.

What’s really important on an eCommerce site is:

• a straightforward user shopping experience–this is your number one goal. Make sure you shop some of the stores that use the cart you’re considering. Notice how easy or hard it is to select an item and make a purchase.
• pleasant, uncluttered design–does the cart allow you to create a design layout that makes sense, without overwhelming the user, yet still allow them to easily find what they’re looking for?
• sufficient information–people need enough info about your products/services to make a decision. What types of tools do you need to give shoppers enough information about your products? Does the cart allow drill-down to product details? Multiple product images? Product comparisons? Test out each tool you’re thinking about using to see how straightforward and helpful they are.
• secure online transactions–even experienced shoppers have reservations about handing over their credit card numbers. Make sure all the software you employ on your site is PCI compliant.
• search engine optimization–your store has to be found first, and search engines are critical to making that happen. What does the cart do to support that?
• support after the sale–shipping integration, email notification and order tracking are customer touchpoints that can make a big difference in customer retention. Does the cart offer sufficient tools to allow you to do that?

Make sure the cart supports these essentials, but also think to the future. What are your long-term goals for this site? Will the shopping cart you’ve selected be able to grow as your business grows or will you have to switch solutions? Switching solutions later can be expensive and timeconsuming. 

What comes after the cart?

Once you’ve figured out the shopping cart problem, you still need a payment gateway to integrate with your cart and a merchant account where proceeds from your sales will be deposited.

A payment gateway connects your online store to the payment processing networks and banks. The payment transactions are handled electronically, via a secured Internet connection. Some carts will partner with a payment provider; others will allow you more flexibility. It’s always better to choose a cart that allows you the flexibility to choose your gateway, so if you want to switch down the line, you don’t have to change your entire store around.

Similarly, it’s beneficial to choose a gateway that allows you to change your merchant account. Gateways that connect to more than one merchant account provider help because it allows you to shop around and get the best deal as your business changes. A merchant account provider that suits your business today may get expensive in terms of merchant account fees when you grow past a certain size.

Speaking of that, Intellivative is currently integrating with three new bank networks, which will greatly increase your choices for merchant accounts, without having to change your eCommerce store setup.

Give us a chance to show you how much you can gain (and save!) with Intellivative. Contact us for a free, no-obligation quote today.

If you’re new to eCommerce, it might seem like a daunting task to figure out how to get your web site to process credit card and debit card payments electronically. Fortunately, there are a lot of companies that have already figured out  the hard parts–all you have to do is pick the right one for you. So, where to start?

Well, in order to accept credit cards and debit cards, you need a payment gateway like Intellivative (others include Authorize.net, LinkPoint, Verisign, Paypal, …). But there are a lot of other factors involved …

Where are you going to host your eCommerce web site?

You might already have part this figured out, but if you haven’t, you’ll need to choose and purchase a domain name for your web site (check its availability first!) and find a place to host it. Large businesses might host the site on their own web server, but smaller businesses probably want to hire an Internet Service Provider to do that part.

How big of an online store do you want?

Are you selling 2 different products, 100, or 1,000? The scale of your online store is going to make a big difference in your web store’s strategy.

If you have just a handful of products to sell, you’re not going to need a whole lot. A “Buy Now” button from PayPal or Google might be enough–or you may be able to sell your products on an auction site like eBay or Amazon.

But when you’re ready to move beyond selling a few products online, you’ll need an online shopping solution with more functionality. That’s where shopping carts come in. If you have more than 5 – 10 products, you’re going to need a shopping cart. 

Should you build your eCommerce store yourself, hire someone to build it, or buy a pre-made solution?

Nowadays, it’s not necessary to solve it all yourself (unless you just enjoy doing that kind of thing). A pre-built shopping cart can give you so many features it would be difficult to build yourself. You still might want to hire someone to help you, but most likely you can find a cart that will meet your needs. 

You can find shopping carts that will provide all kinds of bells and whistles–the question becomes which bells and whistles are important for your store’s success?

Here are some of the features you might find offered:

 The lists of features alone can be overwhelming, but really, it’s best not to have too many, at least to start with. Think about making your store simple for the user to find what they want, add it to the cart, and purchase it. Some of the “features” can sometimes get in the way of that one primary goal. Keep yourself focused on the goal, and don’t let yourself get too bogged down in features.

What’s really important on an eCommerce site is:

• a straightforward user shopping experience–this is your number one goal. Make sure you shop some of the stores that use the cart you’re considering. Notice how easy or hard it is to select an item and make a purchase.
• pleasant, uncluttered design–does the cart allow you to create a design layout that makes sense, without overwhelming the user, yet still allow them to easily find what they’re looking for?
• sufficient information–people need enough info about your products/services to make a decision. What types of tools do you need to give shoppers enough information about your products? Does the cart allow drill-down to product details? Multiple product images? Product comparisons? Test out each tool you’re thinking about using to see how straightforward and helpful they are.
• secure online transactions–even experienced shoppers have reservations about handing over their credit card numbers. Make sure all the software you employ on your site is PCI compliant.
• search engine optimization–your store has to be found first, and search engines are critical to making that happen. What does the cart do to support that?
• support after the sale–shipping integration, email notification and order tracking are customer touchpoints that can make a big difference in customer retention. Does the cart offer sufficient tools to allow you to do that?

Make sure the cart supports these essentials, but also think to the future. What are your long-term goals for this site? Will the shopping cart you’ve selected be able to grow as your business grows or will you have to switch solutions? Switching solutions later can be expensive and timeconsuming. 

What comes after the cart?

Once you’ve figured out the shopping cart problem, you still need a payment gateway to integrate with your cart and a merchant account where proceeds from your sales will be deposited.

A payment gateway connects your online store to the payment processing networks and banks. The payment transactions are handled electronically, via a secured Internet connection. Some carts will partner with a payment provider; others will allow you more flexibility. It’s always better to choose a cart that allows you the flexibility to choose your gateway, so if you want to switch down the line, you don’t have to change your entire store around.

Similarly, it’s beneficial to choose a gateway that allows you to change your merchant account. Gateways that connect to more than one merchant account provider help because it allows you to shop around and get the best deal as your business changes. A merchant account provider that suits your business today may get expensive in terms of merchant account fees when you grow past a certain size.

Speaking of that, Intellivative is currently integrating with three new bank networks, which will greatly increase your choices for merchant accounts, without having to change your eCommerce store setup.

Give us a chance to show you how much you can gain (and save!) with Intellivative. Contact us for a free, no-obligation quote today.

I was talking with Tyler from Sitebrand a while back and he gave an interesting anecdote that really put personalization for eCommerce web sites into perspective.

Imagine you have a retail store and three different visitors come into your store:

• The first is a businessman in an expensive suit, carrying some luggage. He clearly just got off a plane or is about to get on one.
• The second is a mother with a 2-year-old on her hip
• The third visitor is a young woman (around 20 – 22) who heads straight for the bargain racks

How would you approach each visitor? What would you say to each one? Your approach would be very different, would it not?

Now imagine those three same visitors go to your online store. Would you want to approach them with the very same messaging and products? Probably not. That’s where web site personalization comes in. There are companies (like Sitebrand or Kefta) that specialize in helping you segment your site visitors and speak to their needs with messaging, sales, offers, and products that are targeted specifically to them.

So you can help the businessman find what he needs for his trip, the mom find what she is looking for before her two-year-old needs his nap and the best deal for the young bargain-hunter.  

Does Personalization really work?

I did a quick search and lo and behold I found a (very dated) 2003 report from Jupiter Research that says that web site personalization does not always provide positive results. To quote Jupiter:

“To drive key business metrics, most sites are better off focusing on the basics, like usability, information architecture and making key tasks easy for users to accomplish,” said David Schatsky, Senior Vice President at Jupiter Research.

What this says to me is NOT ”personalization doesn’t work”, but that if you haven’t first done your due diligence and optimized the usability of your web site, you’d get more bang for your buck by tackling usability first.

Also of note, personalization companies have taken advantage of the big strides that have been made in web analytics software in the past few years–which means they can measure and show exactly how the personalization is impacting sales. Then you can tweak your personalizing strategies until they do provide measurable positive results. Using a tool like Google Analytics (which is free), you can easily measure your return on investment for each tool you employ on your eCommerce web site.

What is usability and how does it work?

The most popular and well-known usability methodology is usability testing: a fast, inexpensive way to determine how well your site works for real online shoppers. It involves finding a few of your target web site visitors, sitting down with them, giving them a few tasks, then just watching and observing what they have trouble with. You don’t even need any specialized equipment (although I find it helps me to record the sessions with a webcam and some usability software like Morae or Silverback). It uncovers the obvious mistakes that most users would have trouble with very quickly and helps you uncover small things you can fix that would mean big improvements in your e-store’s navigation and user-friendliness.

So does personalization help?

Logically, it seems like it SHOULD help–after all, you wouldn’t speak to the businessman the same as you would the mom or the bargain-hunter, but in the end, I think it depends on a lot of things. It depends on how usable your web site is, how well you segment your traffic, whether your targeted messaging is effective, etc. If you test all these elements as you implement your personalization, I don’t see how it could NOT help increase your sales. We all like to be spoken to as individuals and we like it when companies can tell what we need when we need it and deliver it quickly. If you can do that, you’re bound to succeed.

Don’t forget to include reliable payments!

No matter what you choose to use to optimize your online sales, make sure you choose a quality payment solutions provider. Intellivative offers a quality XML-based payments API that integrates with just about any shopping cart, content management system, or personalization software.

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.
  • Commentary (via video, of course) from VideoRetailer on YouTube and commerce
• 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.