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Secrets of a Successful e-commerce Business

A successful e-commerce business requires a good website, merchant account, shopping cart and secure payment gateway.

Website

The website is your chance to make a first impression on your customers and directly influence your success. Your website should have a professional and attractive aesthetic, legible typography, but most of all well organized and easy to navigate. You want to ensure a pleasant and seamless experience and convert first time shoppers into regular buyers.

As with any e-commerce site, the primary goal is to get shoppers to be buyers and every part of the site should focus on getting visitors to purchase your products. The best way to contribute to this goal is to be clear and concise when it comes to listing products and their descriptions. Remember to list the prices, features, benefits and any additional information that may help you sell your products. Not providing enough information may actually drive sales away.

Another key aspect is increasing your customer's trust in your products and providing credibility for your website. Testimonials and comments from previous customers is a great way to convert potential buyers. Money-back guarantees are another method to boost customer confidence and increase sales. Finally, register your business with the Better Business Bureau.

To enhance the user experience, offer your visitors more than one option for placing orders. Let customers call in the order or simply place it online.

Merchant Account

If you want a successful online business, you will need a merchant account to accept all major credit cards. Almost 100% of internet orders are paid with credit cards. If you don't accept credit cards, just imagine how much business you are throwing away. Make sure the merchant account provider you decide to use for setting up a merchant account is well experienced with online sales. An unexperienced provider can cause serious damage to your business.

Shopping Cart and Secure Server

A shopping cart software will need to be installed on your website if you're accepting credit cards online. Shopping carts allow your customers to select from your merchandise and place the chosen items in their "shopping cart" or "basket". The shopping cart adds up the items, tax, shipping rates and then allows the customer to provide billing, shipping and credit card information to send the order to payment gateway for processing.

There is a lot of shopping carts available to choose from and with a variety of payment options. Shopping carts may be purchased with a one-time payment, a monthly fee or sometimes even for free. When choosing a shopping cart for your website, make sure it meets your business needs as well as budget.

To prevent identity theft, the order form has to be hosted on a secure server to protect your customers' information. A secure server can be setup either from your ISP or your own personal server if it's available. You will also have to purchase a digital certificate from a company, which can cost an additional $150 per year. Another solution and alternative to hosting the order form is Authorize.net payment gateway. A payment gateway Authorize.net offers a secure checkout page and prevents you from getting your own secure certificate.

Payment Gateway

Payment gateway like Authorize.net, connects your site with your credit card processor. After credit card information is submitted through the Authorize.net secure order page, Internet payment gateway forwards the data to an authorization network for verification of funds. Payment gateway returns the results of the transaction to complete the sale and the customer gets an online receipt. If the transaction is declined, the customer gets an option to pay with a different card.

Payment gateway also reduces fraudulent orders by declining orders where the address and zip code entered don't match the credit card billing information or the security number doesn't match.

Merchant Guide