To add e-commerce capability to your website you will add an online shopping cart to your website. Putting a shopping cart on the your website will allow you to accept credit cards online. The easiest way to have the shopping cart available in your website is to purchase a website template that already has the shopping cart built into it. You can get a very nice one online in the price range of $ 150 to $ 250. This may seem that the website template that you purchase is a little expensive, but the extra expense is well worth it, if the cart is already integrated with the website template. There are a lot of templates available in the price range of $15 to $50, but these don't usually have an integrated shopping cart. If you purchase a web template that does not have a cart with it, don't worry; there are lots of carts that can be easily integrated into an existing web template.
There are many variations of shopping carts available in many different price ranges. You will want to select the shopping cart for your website that best suits the products that you are selling. If you are selling only one or two products, you should be able to find a free shopping cart. There are other shopping carts that are better suited to online stores that have many categories of products to sell. These carts allow you to categorize your products into groups so that customers can easily locate items that they want to purchase. The most important part of the shopping cart is its ability to allow customers to pay for the products that you have for sale, right through the shopping cart. You should have a shopping cart that will allow customers to purchase your products with credit card. When you think about it, the only reason you have an online shopping cart is the accpet credit cards from customers. Credit card transactions are extremely secure through the website. And you should make credit card payments available to customers so they can pay throught the website. It will be necessary for you to have a merchant account with the correct discount rate to be able to take credit card payments through your website. You can find companies that sell shopping carts in Provision, Inc.'s Resource web pageson this website.
You will have to have a payment portal, like Authorize.net, installed in your website so that customers can use their credit cards for payment. It is easy to get the portal, you will pay a one-time license fee for the portal, then you will have to pay a monthly gateway access fee to use the portal. Provision, Inc can help you get the portal for your website. Please visit our website for more information.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
A Well Designed Website is Easy to Get
You can spend thousands to hire a website developer to build this site for your business. You can also go the much cheaper route, and quite frankly, the route that is easier to control, by selecting and purchasing a quality web template. There are thousands of sellers of website templates on the Internet. You can find several excellent online businesses that sell website templates on the Website Templates page in the Reources section of this website.
The selection process and associated development of a web template is not as difficult as you think. The web developer who built the template that you are going to buy for your business has already done all of the hard work. They have selected the color scheme that works together, added a menu system, and several web pages. What you contribute to this website is the appropriate text that describes the products and/or services that you have to sell and how these will benefit the purchaser. Usually these templates come with excellent directions that were put together by the developer, explaining how to add text and/or pictures to the pages and menus. Most of the time you can use Windows Notepad or any text editor to write the text that you want to add to your web pages. These templates range in cost from the very inexpensive ($15 to $20) to the very expensive. It depends on your budget. You will need to follow the directions that the template developer gives you in the “readme” file that comes with the website template that you purchase. This “readme” file contains the procedure you need to use in adding information to your new template.
The selection process and associated development of a web template is not as difficult as you think. The web developer who built the template that you are going to buy for your business has already done all of the hard work. They have selected the color scheme that works together, added a menu system, and several web pages. What you contribute to this website is the appropriate text that describes the products and/or services that you have to sell and how these will benefit the purchaser. Usually these templates come with excellent directions that were put together by the developer, explaining how to add text and/or pictures to the pages and menus. Most of the time you can use Windows Notepad or any text editor to write the text that you want to add to your web pages. These templates range in cost from the very inexpensive ($15 to $20) to the very expensive. It depends on your budget. You will need to follow the directions that the template developer gives you in the “readme” file that comes with the website template that you purchase. This “readme” file contains the procedure you need to use in adding information to your new template.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Levels of Risk and Associated Discount Rates
Risk and credit card processing rates have a practical connection. Quite simply, the higher the risk, the higher the cost of processing a credit card transaction. The risk of acceptance of a credit card from a customer is determined by the circumstance of the acceptance. Let’s look at some examples. The qualified rate is the rate with the lowest risk. The low risk factor is determined by the fact that the credit card is present at the point-of-sale when the purchase is made. The customer gives the credit card to your clerk. Your clerk swipes the credit card through your credit card terminal. This creates an electronic transaction that is successfully transmitted by the terminal to the merchant bank for processing. Optionally, the address for the credit card number can be verified in a large database. If the address is found the transaction will receive the qualified rate.
The next level of risk for a credit card transaction is what is called mid-qualified. In this case the customer gives the credit card to your clerk at the point-of-sale and your clerk swipes it through your credit card terminal. But for some reason, the terminal cannot “read” the card when it is swiped. Your clerk must then enter the bankcard number into the keypad of the terminal to create the transaction. When the transaction is sent to the merchant bank, the address verification is successful, so the transaction is assigned a mid-qualified rate. There is a little higher risk for this transaction because the credit card number was keyed into the terminal, rather than being “read” when it was swiped.
The third, and last, level of risk is the non-qualified level. This risk level is assigned in more than one circumstance for a transaction. In this case the customer gives the credit card to your clerk to swipe through your terminal. The credit card number is either successfully “read” by the terminal or the credit card number can be keyed into the terminal. But the address verification is NOT successful for this transaction. Then this transaction would be assigned the highest risk or a non-qualified rate. The non-qualified rate is also assigned to some corporate and foreign bankcards. This is done because the address verification for these credit card numbers is NOT successful. This rate is also sometimes called the “card not present” rate because it is applied to transactions that you might receive through your website or over the phone. These are instances when the card is not available to be swiped or keyed into your terminal.
The next level of risk for a credit card transaction is what is called mid-qualified. In this case the customer gives the credit card to your clerk at the point-of-sale and your clerk swipes it through your credit card terminal. But for some reason, the terminal cannot “read” the card when it is swiped. Your clerk must then enter the bankcard number into the keypad of the terminal to create the transaction. When the transaction is sent to the merchant bank, the address verification is successful, so the transaction is assigned a mid-qualified rate. There is a little higher risk for this transaction because the credit card number was keyed into the terminal, rather than being “read” when it was swiped.
The third, and last, level of risk is the non-qualified level. This risk level is assigned in more than one circumstance for a transaction. In this case the customer gives the credit card to your clerk to swipe through your terminal. The credit card number is either successfully “read” by the terminal or the credit card number can be keyed into the terminal. But the address verification is NOT successful for this transaction. Then this transaction would be assigned the highest risk or a non-qualified rate. The non-qualified rate is also assigned to some corporate and foreign bankcards. This is done because the address verification for these credit card numbers is NOT successful. This rate is also sometimes called the “card not present” rate because it is applied to transactions that you might receive through your website or over the phone. These are instances when the card is not available to be swiped or keyed into your terminal.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
What Kind of Merchant Account Do you Need
When you are getting ready to get a merchant account for your business you will usually find that you can get such an account through an Independent Sales Organization ("ISO"). This ISO, who has agreements with merchant banks, will help you fill out an agreement that goes to a merchant bank for underwriting. Getting one of these merchant accounts is a lot like getting a loan from a bank. You have to fill out the application and then let underwriting at the bank review the data you put on the application. They will decide whether your business is worthy of a merchant account, based on the information that you give them in the application
As technology has moved on, it is now necessary to decide what kind of merchant account your business requires. If you have a storefront where you sell products to customers who visit your store, then you would need a point-of-sale ("POS") merchant account. If you have an online business, you would need an Internet merchant account. Some businesses have two merchant accounts, one for the store and one for the website. Of course you will be using different technology to accept credit cards in a store than what you will use to take credit cards through a website. In the store you will use a credit card terminal to "swipe" most of the credit cards. On the website you will use a payment portal to accept secure credit card transactions through the website. Both of these technologies are very secure in protecting the credit card transactions as they are electronically submitted to the banking system.
As technology has moved on, it is now necessary to decide what kind of merchant account your business requires. If you have a storefront where you sell products to customers who visit your store, then you would need a point-of-sale ("POS") merchant account. If you have an online business, you would need an Internet merchant account. Some businesses have two merchant accounts, one for the store and one for the website. Of course you will be using different technology to accept credit cards in a store than what you will use to take credit cards through a website. In the store you will use a credit card terminal to "swipe" most of the credit cards. On the website you will use a payment portal to accept secure credit card transactions through the website. Both of these technologies are very secure in protecting the credit card transactions as they are electronically submitted to the banking system.
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