Stop Annoying Your Visitors
It’s one thing to get traffic to your website. You do search engine optimization, create a nice design, form a bunch of link exchange partnerships or even do a marketing campaign. It is quite another feat altogether to KEEP your visitors. The internet is no longer a novelty. It is part of daily life for many, many people and today most consumers are willing to put up with even less annoyances from the sites they frequent. Leave it to today’s consumer to demand more and tolerate less. Its just a fact, though.
I recently came across a press release from Hostway, a Chicago-based hosting company. The title: Survey Says…Internet Pet Peeves: What Drives Consumers Away From Your E-Business. They commissioned this study to come up with those things that do the best job of driving people away from a website. Among the top contenders are pop-up ads (93% dislike them) , registration log-on pages (requiring registration and login in order to view content) and Flash introductions. 89% of consumers said they are put off by requiring extra software to be installed to use a website. A full 70% of consumers said they’re not likely to purchase from, or even return to, a website after encountering one of these pet peeves. Only 25% of consumers said they would bring it up to the company, so that means 75% of those who get annoyed will just leave and you’ll never know about it. As to how consumers react to these pet peeves: [MORE]
Publishing a Newsletter
Today, many websites offer a free newsletter. Newsletters, from the receiving end, can be a great source for information that is delivered to your in-box. You can simply save the newsletter for future reference, something many people do. From the publisher’s standpoint, though, a newsletter is a fantastic idea as it gives you a database of people who are interested in what you have to offer. Marketers know the value of this. But, aside from the potential financial benefit of such a mailing list, a newsletter is also a great way to keep in touch with users who may have only surfed across your website once. They may, on a whim, sign up for your newsletter and, thus, you have a way to keep in touch with them at a later date. You can also use your mailing list as a source for demographics information or opinions. Want to start a new feature on your site and want to know whether it will work or not? Survey the members of your mailing list. [MORE]
Introduction to Ecommerce
Many people new to websites and/or ecommerce are confused at the in and outs of ecommerce. Even many people who are fairly adept at scripting can set up a store using some popular package such as OSCommerce and then are left stumped by the idea of making it work with a payment gateway to actually collect money and put it into their account. In this article, I will give a brief overview of how the system is set up to collect your money. I will then discuss briefly what to look for in evaluating payment gateways. As usual, I will keep this basic and understandable just as I do with all of my articles.
The Basics – How Funds are Collected
Ecommerce simply refers to the practice of shopping online. From the site owner’s perspective, it entails collecting funds from sales transactions on their website and depositing that money into the bank. In order to collect funds, you need to have a merchant account and a payment gateway (discussed below). Basically, when a person enters their credit card number on a website, the card number and buyer information is sent to a payment gateway. This is done securely. The payment gateway will interface with a payment processor to check availability of funds as well as any other criteria set for accepting transactions. If the funds are available, the payment processor will then deduct the funds. The payment gateway will then report back a successful transaction to the merchant, at which point the merchant’s shopping cart system will respond by displaying a “Thank You” type message to the buyer. Funds will sit until the transaction is settled, which means the funds are collected and deposited to your bank account. Until a transaction is settled, the transaction will not post to your bank account and the corresponding debit will not post to the buyer’s credit card account.
Merchant Accounts
A Merchant Account is a special type of account specifically for online retailers. They are designed to allow non-POS (point of sale) transactions using credit cards, or transactions where you don’t have the person’s credit card in hand. In other words, you don’t have a card swiper. A merchant account is not the same as a bank account. It acts as a go-between between your payment gateway and your bank account, accepting funds from credit cards which are then deposited into your bank.
A merchant account is a relationship based on trust between you and the issuing bank. The bank takes funds from the buyer’s account and deposits into your account. A payment processor takes care of checking for availability of funds and debiting from the credit card account. The bank issuing the merchant account is trusting that you will fulfill your end of the transaction by providing the product or service that the buyer purchased. In case where this does not occur, the buyer can dispute the transaction. This puts the issuing bank on the line because they are then obligated to return the funds to the buyer’s card (a chargeback). Therefore, merchant providers are taking a risk in allowing a merchant to take credit cards under their name.
The organization providing your merchant account will do underwriting on the account when you apply to check your credit. If you have a history of too many chargebacks, you may be denied. In fact, too many chargebacks can result in you, as a merchant, being put on the Terminated Merchant File (also called The Match File). This is a blacklist which will effectively prevent you from ever receiving a merchant account again.
Payment Gateways
A payment gateway serves as the front end to your merchant account, allowing you to manage funds, transactions, and the like. It also serves as a connection between your website and your merchant account. It takes data submitted via your secure order forms and presents it to your processing bank. The processing bank then approves or declines the transaction and sends its response back to the payment gateway. The payment gateway then turns around and provides this data back to the merchant for appropriate handling of the transaction. A payment gateway, then, does not offer services such as merchant accounts or shopping carts, although some of the larger-known gateways do provide such options as value-added services.
Some of the better known payment gateway services are Authorize.Net, Verisign, 2CheckOut.com, Linkpoint, Paysystems.com, Worldpay.com, and MerchantCommerce. Some of the things to look for in a payment gateway are compliance with CISP, SDP and DISC (security initiatives put out by the major credit card companies), virtual terminal (to be able to accept transactions over the phone by typing in their data rather than only relying on your website), fraud prevention, recurring billing, methods of integration, cost and whether they can accept e-checks or not.
Fraud prevention is a big one because, as stated above, too many fraudulent transactions will result in chargebacks which could end up putting you on the Match List and your merchant account closed. Some of the common fraud detection mechanisms are Address Verification (AVS) which compares the customer’s address with that on file with the issuing bank, CVV2 which makes use of the 3-digit security code on the credit card (4-digit on American Express cards).
Most gateways will provide instructions on how to interface with their servers from your web store. Most gateways offer two methods of integration.
One method is to have your site POST a form to the gateway’s server which is pre-populated with your customer’s information. At that point, the customer will provide the customer with the payment form which allows them to type in their credit card number in a secure environment. After processing occurs, the customer is then routed back to your website along with the results of the transaction. Your site again takes over the process. This method is usually easier to set up for site owners and it also means the site owner does not need to purchase their own SSL certificate (allowing secure transactions on the site itself). The tradeoff is that you do need to send your customers off of your website for payment collection. Many gateways offer ways to make the payment form look like your website using customized headers and footers, but the fact remains that the visitors are leaving your website.
The second method is totally invisible to the customer. If the site owner has an SSL certificate, they can set up security on their own site. This means they can host the payment form themselves, totally customizing it to their website. When the customer submits payment, your site will securely and invisibly submit the information to the payment gateway. The payment gateway will do the usual processing and then invisibly send the response back to the merchant’s website, allowing it to respond properly. From the customer’s perspective, they never left your website. And they never did. This type of setup requires an SSL certificate as well as access to the CURL library.
Many gateway providers can get you set up with a merchant account at the same time as the gateway. So, in most cases, you do not need to sign up for them separately.
Conclusion
Hopefully this has given you a brief introduction to how credit card payments are processed on the internet.
Promoting Your Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are a huge way to make money these days on the internet. There are, after all, a lot of companies out there selling a product. They are looking to sell as much of their product as possible. Setting up an affiliate program is a way to vastly expand their sales force, and the pay off is that you, as a webmaster advertising their products, can make some money in the process.
Being an affiliate can often pay off quite well, but the trick is that you cannot be totally passive about your participation. You can simply post the product to your site and sit back, and if you’re happy making some extra residual income, that might work for you (depending on your site traffic). However, those who really succeed as affiliates and make real money are very active promoters of the products they are selling. So, assuming everyone reading this has a website and wants to make as much money with it as possible, lets look at some proactive ways to maximize your income. [MORE]
Envision Your Ideal Scene
One of the big parts to starting and running your own business is to think ahead. In fact, one of the chief reasons for failure when doing your own business is losing grip on your original goals and instead being a day-to-day technician. When you start your business, you have high hopes and you are using your imagination to envision where you want to be a few years later. But, before too long, you are so busy coping with the demands of clients that you end up a slave to your own business, working 80 hour weeks and having no time off.
Many of us who work full-time on the internet do envision a successful business, but with the ability to make our own schedules and get time off whenever we want. This is one of the most enticing aspects of being your own boss. Part of making that happen is to continue to work ON your business rather than working IN your business. In other words, do not become just a day-to-day technician. That’s no different than a regular employee. If that’s where you are heading or where you are, what is really the difference between that and working for somebody else? [MORE]
Shopping for Shopping Carts
Over at PC Mechanic, I have been, for some time, running an online store which I programmed myself. That store was functional and it served well for some time. Being that I custom-coded the whole thing, I could also make everything work exactly how I wanted it. This was nice. However, the store had a lot of limitations that other pre-packaged solutions already took care of. I could expand the store to do all those things, but it would have taken me quite some time. I’m a busy guy and I don’t like re-inventing the wheel. So, I decided to take the plunge and switch store platforms, moving from my familiar but moody custom store solution to something pre-programmed and supported.
My criteria for the store was:
- Must be PHP/MySQL based
- Must have the features one would expect of a shopping cart platform
- Must be template based so that I can change the layout without modifying the source code
I played around with a few different titles that are on the market. Let me run through the ones I have worked with and give you my impression of them. [MORE]
A Look at AJAX
AJAX is one of the newest buzzwords circulating in the field of internet development. We’ve all known it for a long time as a cleaning agent. Its funny how this field loves to use names with other meanings (i.e. SPAM). However, in this case, it stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. In short, AJAX is a mix of already-existing technologies to do something which is somewhat new. What is it that is new? Well, have you tried Google Maps or Gmail lately? These web-based interfaces are a lot more interactive than usual. With Google Maps, for example, you can drag the map around without even refreshing your browser. Many web-based email clients are now turning to AJAX to enrich the user experience. The technology allows the web to act more like a desktop application. For instance, the usual method of submitting data to a website is to fill in a form, hit submit, at which point the page refreshes showing some result. The user has to wait for all this to occur. In other words, the user’s actions are synchronized with the server – (1) fill in data, (2) receive data, (3) show result. With AJAX, the user is freed from this normal course of events, and user actions on a page can asynchronously interact with the server right as the user is doing it. There is no form submission required. [MORE]
Getting the Work Done – Time Management
Time management is a bit of an art, but it is something every webmaster has to be pretty good at. Let’s face it – running a website can and usually does take a lot of time. Most webmasters usually work full-time jobs at the same time, working on their websites at night or over the weekend. There is a need to properly manage your time and steer your efforts so you can get the work done. Even if you are a full-time webmaster, the importance is still there. I no longer work for anybody. I run my own business as a webmaster. I ALWAYS have more to do on any given day than I have time for. The trick is to spend my available time on actions that will get the most done per unit of time. So, yes, this article is not going to be a technical one. But, sometimes, it is good to step back and look at the big picture. [MORE]
Use of Web Analytics in Marketing
Every website owner absolutely needs to be routinely collecting web analytics and using them to perfect the site and engage in marketing campaigns. Almost all web servers provide a raw log file, usually generated nightly. You can use a web log analyzer to analyze those logs and provide you reports. Some web hosts provide web-based reports on traffic. Still other services provide web-based analytics and they collect their data from a small segment of javascript code which you embed into all of your pages. Google Analytics is my current favorite such service.
These services provide a LOT of information and much of it you might not know how you can use. Most people who are not into internet marketing usually browse these reports for the pertinent data: page views, visits, referrers, and leave much of the rest of it alone because you don’t really know what use it could be. But, in general, let’s look at how you can use these traffic reports to your benefit. [MORE]
Integrating a Website With Your Business
It has been one of my continual themes when talking with clients about their websites that their site needs to serve their business. When I work with a client, I look at their website as an extension of their business model. I take a look at their overall business and evaluate:
- How do they make their money?
- Who is their public or target audience?
- How can their public be promoted to?
- How can the web be used to help automate their business?
I’ll listen to what they want to achieve with their website and then recommend options to help that website achieve the points above: making money, automate and promote to their target audience. [MORE]
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
