If you are starting eCommerce website, Few things should to know

Launching an E-commerce Website

Let’s look at a few things every aspiring eCommerce entrepreneur should know when launching a new online store:

SIMPLE USER-INTERFACE (WEBSITE) DESIGN

A website’s look and feel is the first impression a customer gets of an online business. Neon signs in the window of a brick-and-mortar store might attract customers, but a flashy website design with all the latest bells and whistles meant to impress visitors may not. The more complicated a website the more difficult it is for a customer to find a product. One important rule to keep in mind is “the fewer clicks it takes a customer to get to what they want, the more satisfied they will be with their shopping experience.” On the technical side, many times fancy website design options don’t perform well and may cause visitors to become confused or irritated.

MARKET RESEARCH AND TARGET AUDIENCE

Before launching an eCommerce website, get to know your competition and target audience. Competition for a local business may be limited to other stores in the same neighborhood. Well, competition for an online store can be worldwide. Make sure there is a market for the products or services. Find out if these products or services have something new or better to provide customers than the competition. Target audiences can vary as well since not all people who shop traditional stores shop online.

BUSINESS MODEL B2B AND RETAIL

Business-to-business (B2B) is the sale of goods, services or information to businesses instead of consumers. It is predicted that B2B sales will soon exceed sales to consumers. Of course, online sales to individual consumers, called e-tailing, will continue to be a popular choice.

WEBSITE MARKETING

It’s surprising that some people still believe the myth that, “if they create a website, people will automatically find it.” This worked in the 1989 fantasy sports movie “Field of Dreams” when a farmer heard the words, “If you build it, he will come.” And, it works to some extent for brick-and-mortar stores in attracting the attention of passersby on their way to somewhere else.

CUSTOMER SERVICE & ONLINE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

It is important for customer service. It’s nearly impossible to ignore a customer when face-to-face in a brick-and-mortar store. But, it’s easier when the only contact us via phone or email. Plus, communicating over the phone and through email can feel more impersonal. In all situations, merchants need to make sure their customer service departments respect and treat their customers well by being open and accessible, responding quickly, fairly and honestly, and providing solutions to complaints and inquiries.

Online Inventory - Just like traditional businesses, eCommerce businesses need to keep track of inventory for the products displayed for sale on a website. Using an automatic inventory system keeps product information and availability up-to-date 24/7. An inventory system is best integrated into a website during the planning and design stages. And, must have built-in protection from fraudsters and hacking attacks.

Online Payment Gateway for your Direct Marketing System

What is Direct Marketing?

Direct marketing is a promotional technique that includes introducing information about your company, product, or service to your target customer without the use of a promoting go-between. It is focused on the type of marketing that presents information of potential interest to a customer that has been determined to be an imaginable purchaser.

Efficient Front-end Systems and Credit Card Processing Gateway to integrate with Stronghold’s gateway API and be able to provide instant successful transactions are important, especially for a Direct marketing System. Stronghold’s credit card processing gateway not only accepts payment but also compiles reports so that merchants can keep records of transactions. Many companies these days promise to deliver these efficient systems, but most of them focus on providing fancy systems rather than better security. Merchant stronghold on the other hand not only have the most secure and solid gateways available but also close all loopholes that can harm the payment system of your direct marketing business.

Rather than using physical terminals, your customers can use secure online gateways for making transactions. There are many advantages; business gets daily batch reports, multi-batch reports, decline reasons, successful transactions, refunds, sorting last 30 days transactions, and much more. All these can be done using your personal or business computer. The Gateway also captures the IP Address and reports it in the system using the I Spy Fraud Technology.

Online Payment Gateway

Our virtual gateways can make credit card processing money saving, which means your business pay less amount to process transactions. Merchant stronghold makes sure that every transaction is secure. In order to provide better direct marketing gateways, we have set ourselves apart from our competition. We offer services that are tailored to your business – A glimpse of our methods:

SAFE AND SECURE PROCESSING

All the credit card processing transactions go through multiple secure servers means no data is stored on your business computer. This makes direct marketing processing safe and secure.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

The first thing that any business should focus on is better customer support. Our team is available to help you deal with any payment issue. You can contact us and discuss issues and we will resolve timely so that your direct marketing business thrives.

ECHECKS

The gateway allows you to accept e-checks too! Accept Credit Cards and e-Checks in the same Gateway.

FLEXIBLE SETTLEMENT TIMES

The business can customize or set a certain time for the transactions to batch out and send out for settlement.

MULTIPLE USER ACCESS

Our direct marketing credit card processing gateways give users multiple options. Your customers get email receipts at the time of processing. This ensures that the transaction is authentic and quick. All the records are available for future references.

HOW TO SIGN UP FOR GETTING YOUR MERCHANT ACCOUNT?

So, it is quick and easy! Start an online application or call one of our merchant specialists will walk you through the process. We offer various services and based on your requirement, we will provide a payment solution that will best suit your direct marketing business.

What will be the Next Steps to Exploring the Future of Credit Card Processing?

Credit cards are the future of payments. More and more people are opting for credit or debit cards as they are readily available and you can carry as much as you want with as much money as you have in your wallet.

If you take a look in most shops, you’ll find that almost all of them have credit card processing machines. It’s much easier to simply swipe your credit card, pay for the goods, and leave. This is especially true for people at the cash register and even accountants because every payment gets processed and all of that information is available at all times. Anyway, let’s see what the future of credit card processing will bring us!

Virtual Terminals

In short, virtual terminals are online POS machines. POS machines are Point-Of-Sale machines which are used to process credit card payments. Virtual terminals are programmed in such a way that they usually accept most credit and debit cards, as well as access from all web browsers. They are most often hosted on the service provider’s servers. Virtual terminals are great because they can speed up payment by a significant margin.

POS Credit Card Processing

Point-Of-Sale credit card processing has been around for a long time. However, it is constantly evolving and improving. POS works by processing credit cards and giving out invoices to customers (which isn’t always required). Even though there are various, more modern methods of processing credit cards, POS systems will most likely stay for a few more decades in the very least.

EMV Chip Readers

About 5 years ago, no credit card or debit card had an EMV chip on it. Nowadays, however, almost all major card providers are switching to EMV chips. Several security breaches are what caused this change. EMV chip cards are more secure than regular cards because of the computer chip that exists on them. EMV chip readers read these chips. You might have seen small, metal squares on new credit cards – those are the EMV chips. Before the change from magnetic strips to EMV chips is finalised, most first generation credit cards will be equipped with EMV chips and magnetic strips because EMV chip readers aren’t available everywhere yet.

Payment Gateways

Payment gateways are merchant services that an e-commerce application service provider provides to direct payment processes for online retailers, e-businesses, bricks, and clicks, etc. They are also used for authorising credit cards. Payment gateways were particularly useful for High-Risk merchants because most banks don’t want to work with these merchants and they have to find an alternative. A high-risk payment gateway is great in this case because it offers credit card processing and authorisation without having to go through the hassle of contacting a bank and requesting services.

Can Refunds On Merchant Account Lower Chargebacks?

Difference between a Refund and a Chargeback

Most of us often get confused between these two terms and usually think that these two are one of the same things. But that is not true. For refund, customer contacts the business where as for charge back, customer instead of going directly to the business contacts the bank that is managing the merchant account of that particular business and asks them to remove that charge from the merchant bank account. Further, bank enquires about the request and if found valid, removes the charge from merchant account and returns it to the customer.

How Refund Can Help

If a customer is not happy with the product or has received wrong product, he/she can either ask for a refund or a chargeback. In case of refund, business simple sends the money back to the customer directly to his/her bank account through which the payment was made. But that is not the case in chargeback. In chargeback, the issuer bank refunds the money to the customer from merchant account if the complaint is proven correct. Issuer bank not only refunds the amount from Online merchant account but also charges a good amount of penalty/fee to the merchant. This fee can vary from bank to bank. But in case, the complaint is found to be fraudulent, refund will not be generated and the issuer bank could charge an additional fee.

How Chargeback affects your Business

Chargeback is not what you would want to get involved with, as there stands the risk of losing both, the product sold and its amount along with the additional chargeback penalty. This will come as a big loss to the business. The merchant account that receives too many chargebacks will be labeled as fraudulent by the Credit Card Company and will damage the image of your business as well as affect your business in near future.

Nowadays, banks also take chargeback seriously and the main reason for this is their ‘win-win situation’. Bank imposes fee for chargeback, and have the authority to hold back merchant’s payment for a particular time span to cover the fraud and increase their commission, especially if you hold a high-risk account. So for any business it is advisable to have a refund policy else you have to deal with chargebacks.