Web Development Blog » eCommerce

PayPal Payment Tools: Information and Resources

Olaf — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:38:00 +0000

If you’re looking for a trustful online payment solution, you will always notice PayPal as a well known payment platform. PayPal is a full featured payment solution provider for the (paying) user and for the merchant. This article is about why people should use Paypal and some tools which makes it easier to use this payment provider.

Why should you pay using PayPal?

Even if you don’t have a PayPal account, you should process your credit card payment via the PayPal platform. This makes sense if you don’t know/trust the payment provider from the merchant where you want to buy something. What if this merchant doesn’t offer the PayPal option on his website? In most cases companies having a Paypal account, just ask the merchant, if he want to make a sale, he will offer this payment method as well.
PayPal is also great if you don’t like to show a merchant your credit card details. In several countries it’s possible to pay by PayPal in real-time even if you need to fund your account from your bank account. PayPal is also some kind of online wallet, for example if you sell something on eBay and you get paid via PayPal. Just keep that money in your account and use it for later purchases. If you buy something on eBay and you pay via PayPal, you get some buyer protection. If the seller doesn’t send you the goods your paid for and he can’t proof the successful shipment, Paypal will refund your money.

PayPal features for merchants

As a shop holder you should always offer PayPal payments. Using PayPal as payment option on your e-commerce site enables additional payment methods: MasterCard, VISA and many other cards (depends on the buyer’s country). Since the funding methods are different for different countries, PayPal payments are the solution to offer many payment options. Some PayPal payment options for your website are:

Website Payments Standard – Add credit card processing to your site in about 15 minutes.
Use this option if you don’t like to pay a monthly fee and if your PayPal check-out process must be simple and hosted on the PayPal website. Costs per transaction are low from 2.2% + $0.30.
Website Payments Pro – An Internet merchant account and gateway in one.
This service is similar to the products from most other payment providers and the costs are a monthly fee of $30 and the price for each transaction starts from 2.2% + $0.30.
Payflow Payment Gateway – Process payments using your own Internet merchant account.
A solution to use PayPal’s payment gateway (including PayPal payments). Note, the whole payment is processed on the PayPal site.

For all these payment options is an API system available.

Selected PayPal tools and services

Most of the PayPal features require some setup or you need to add some code (or button) on your website. What if you just need to send a payment request to someone (without knowing his PayPal address or you need just a link that someone can pay you with his credit card? For Microsoft Outlook users is on the PayPal website a plugin available which acts like a kind of wizard that creates the button code you can place into your email.

This wizard is a nice solution, but this button might be a problem if the html code gives the e-mail message a higher SPAM ranking.

SIMPAY offers functions where the PayPal payment request is created on-site in a pre-defined form and where the user can send a unique link via e-mail or an instant message system. It’s also possible to e-mail a payment request for recurring payments.

Another great service is FundRazr, they created, together with PayPal, a Facebook application which enables the user to setup a gadget that shows the “charity” and all related information. Other Facebook members will see the gadget on the wall from the fund raiser and are able to send him money via PayPal or they share the gadget on their own wall.

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Top your sales with Google Commerce Search

Olaf — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:39:07 +0000

As a web shop owner you like to make your shop as popular and successful as possible. If you like to take your business to the next level, you should take a look at the Google Commerce Search. This hosted e-commerce search solution will allow your customers to have a much more pleasant and better shopping experience. The easier your e-commerce website for your customers, the better the chances are that they will buy your product and maybe will become a loyal customer.

Why Google Commerce Search?

Google Commerce Search is a scalable hosted e-commerce search solution. Using this Google service it’s possible to present your products online with a “special” type of Google site search.
But there is more:

Don’t worry about pikes of high traffic, Google Commerce Search will serve results for all your customers.
Your shop data become available in Google Merchant Center and inside the Google Product Search.
Synchronize or upload your data using the Google XML API.
Customize your on-site search engine so that it has the appearance of your website.
Manage all your products via the easy to use administrative console.
Analyze your statistics and use Google Analytics for details you might have never seen before; Follow reports on such items as top queries, special features usage, and much more.
Google Commerce Search makes the product search user-friendly. Provide for your products alternative spelling options or common synonyms. Your customer will see how easy it is to find a product, with the result of a higher conversion rate and a big chance that the customer will buy again.
Promote certain products and add them to related search results. This way you’re give more attention to specific products and maybe you can raise the purchase amount as well.
There is no waiting time, after your products are available in the Google Merchant center, they are available inside the search results.
Integrate Google Checkout and create a standalone shopping cart system (option)

Is my old shop or website not needed anymore?

Sure of course not! The checkout process and all detailed product information stays on your current website. Even if you use Google Checkout as payment solution you should use your own website for detailed product information and reviews. Your main website is the key to get products into the results of the “regular” Google Search engine. Add the search engine form to all pages of your own site for your customers convenience.

Is this a great solution or not?

There is one point which makes this service only attractive for established online shops: The Google Commerce Search is not free, but it is well worth the cost.

Google Commerce Search will help your customers to find what product it is they are looking for quick and easy. They will be able to filter the product results they are looking for according to the price of the product, the brand, the category, or many other ways. This helps to cut down on the chances of your potential customers locating the products on another page first. When people can’t find exactly what they are looking for on one page, they will pull up a second page and begin looking at different options. With the help of Google Commerce Search you can avoid this happening to you.

Google Commerce Search is and easy and effective way to handle your online sale. The product search makes everything simple and you don’t need to use your own shopping cart software anymore

Promote your products on your website, they way you did before and make more sales using Google Commerce Search!

Setting up an Internet shopping cart

Olaf — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:05:07 +0000

If you plan to sell physical products, digital products or even a large number of services from your website, you might be considering setting up a shopping cart. Many large eTailers offer checkout solutions for their websites, and as the Internet has grown more “mature”, there are an increasing number of shopping cart solutions available.

However, before outright buying a shopping cart system for your website, there is something that you should consider. Mainly, whether you will run the shopping cart from your website or whether you will purchase, or “rent”, a shopping cart system from a third party website.

Remotely hosted shopping cart solution

Usually a hosted shopping cart solution requires little technical knowhow and less setup time than a shopping cart that you would run from your own website. Other than adding products, defining prices and setting up the shopping cart template, if this is an option, you’ll be up and running in a few days to as little as a few hours.

Some hosted shopping cart solutions offer optional marketing packages which may (or may not) help you drive targeted traffic to your shopping website. While these all-in-one shopping cart packages are normally pricey, they can certainly help the new online shop to get the most out of their new website right away without having to take the time to learn how to market on their own.

Remotely hosted shopping carts may also include, or optionally include, a payment gateway, meaning that you can accept credit card payments with their software. If a shopping cart solution does not offer this, you will need to acquire a merchant account on your own.

Hosting your own shopping cart system

While generally seen as a much more affordable solution for website owners to add the functionality of a shopping cart to what they have to offer, running a shopping cart on your own website will have its share of challenges if you are technically deficient.

What you need to run a shopping cart on your own website

1) A domain name. This should be an obvious step, but this is the first part of the process.

2) A hosting accountt that allows scripts to be executed and allows for one or more databases. Probably the most popular hosting accounts run with these basic configurations:

Linux operating system with Apache
Php/Perl script execution
MySQL databases

Because this is a very common setup for web hosting accounts, many free and paid shopping cart systems will run on hosting accounts with these features.

3) A shopping cart system. There are a lot of different types of ecommerce software and here are a few of the more popular open-source shopping cart solutions:

Zen-Cart
Zen Cart is a well-known provider of a free shopping cart system. While the administration back-end can be confusing because of the amount of options available, once you get the hang of things, Zen Cart can be an asset to your company because of its feature rich interface.

OsCommerce
Much like Zen Cart, Os Commerce is a feature rich shopping cart that also happens to be free. Released as Open Source software, Os Commerce has a solid community of supporters that help with the creation of plugins and modules, making this a feature rich shopping cart solution as well.

Cube Cart
Cube Cart is another free, yet versatile shopping cart system. Requiring only PHP and access to one MySQL database, the minimal requirements for this shopping cart solution are easily met by most paid web hosting accounts online today.

4) Payment processor / merchant account. If you’re catering to an online audience, you need to have a way to accept digital payments, such as credit cards. Depending on how you want to run your business, you can have all of the transactions handled online, such as through companies like PayPal.com, Moneybookers.com, Charge.com, Authorize.net and so on.

Some of the listed companies will also offer what is called a “virtual terminal” where you have the ability to key in your customers’ credit card information yourself, which would allow you to take phone orders. Even though this is turning into a digital world more and more, accepting checks as payment will help you to reach a greater number of people. Because the internet is still relatively new, there are many people who don’t trust technology enough to input their credit card information into a website; offering to accept checks as well as credit cards may be a worthwhile consideration.

5) SSL – Encrypted website pages. When you accept credit card payments on your website, you are obligated, at least ethically if not legally, to protect your customers’ financial information. With some payment processors all credit card information is entered on a third party website where you should not have to worry about protecting credit card numbers and such. However, if your customers key their credit card numbers into a form on your website, you need to have security measures in place so that the transmission of their credit card information is encrypted during transmission.

Setting up encrypted pages of your website requires a bit of technical knowhow, so this is something to consider when you are weighing out whether you should acquire the use of a remotely hosted shopping cart system or setting one up one your own website.

Running a shopping cart system is easily seen as a convenient solution when you are offering multiple products or services online. Choosing the right setup for your business needs should be weighed out with not only your budget in mind, but your decision should also be based on your technical capabilities as well.

Blog sponsor: Shopping Cart Templates – Get your online business up and running quickly with our eCommerce templates.Similar Posts:

Running a mailing list for increased traffic and sales

Olaf — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 02:23:53 +0000

Internet marketing Guru’s swear by them, and you’ve no doubt heard the phrase “the money’s in the list” more times than you care to acknowledge. Certainly running an email list can be lucrative, but why is it so lucrative, and how can you build a mailing list that not only increases sales, but increases your website traffic as well?

Why running a mailing list can increase sales

It’s statistically proven that on average a person must be exposed to a website or offer 7 times before they’ll make a purchase. While the underlying reason for this fact is not as clear as the “magic number” itself, running a mailing list allows you to keep your primary offer in front of perspective buyers until they purchase or they unsubscribe from your list.

Of course, a mailing list that is sent to potential consumers that is blatantly sales-focused will undoubtedly suffer from a high unsubscribe rate. Giving your potential customers value amongst subtle recommendations is a much better practice than blasting advertisements with no real value to their email inbox every other day. Get to know your subscribers and know what kind of questions that they are asking; if you cater to their needs with free information or free resources, over time they will learn to trust your insight and will be more likely to act (purchase a product or service) based on your recommendation alone.

Running an email list can increase website traffic

This fact is directly related to what we shared above; giving your email list subscribers value. You don’t have to give away the farm, so to speak, in order to give value to your email list, simply by knowing they type of information that your subscribers are looking for and providing the answers to their questions without coming across as trying to get into their wallets will undoubtedly help to increase trust in your relationship.

As your mailing list grows, you’ll see the positive effects of your relationship with your mailing list. Not only will this help to increase sales for your personal products and products or services that you are promoting as an affiliate, you’ll notice that your subscribers will frequent your website more often, undoubtedly looking for more insight that you’ve proven that you can give.

Creating a profitable mailing list

People who initially subscribe to your email list do so with the assumption that you have something valuable to provide them. They are looking for answers, and they think that you have the solution. By catering to the needs of your mailing list subscribers, you are establishing a name for yourself where you are seen as helpful and trustworthy. When you’ve established yourself as a helpful and trustworthy individual, people will naturally pay close attention to what you have to say. When people are listening closely, they’ll receive your suggestions for a certain product or service as advice given from a trusted friend, thus much more likely to buy a product or service than if they’re casually browsing a website.

Running an email list is really like starting a relationship with somebody. Successful relationships are not all about giving advice; they’re about listening to what your friend has to say. Undoubtedly, if you take the time to listen to what your subscribers are asking, you’ll build a solid relationship with them, and at that point you will be able to say from firsthand knowledge that the money is, in fact, in the list.Similar Posts:

Build a web shop with osCommerce

Olaf — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:34:55 +0000

osCommerce is the e-commerce software which can be downloaded for free and makes it possible to setup an online shopping site. osCommerce is a full featured web application and makes online shopping possible easy for the shop holder an the customer. Released under the GNU General Public License (open source), osCommerce came into existence in the year 2000 and is the brain that runs approximately more than 15.500 online stores.

For making an e-commerce site attractive to the prospective customers it is very important that the look of the web shop and the services that it provides are highly professional. osCommerce helps to make this task easier as it has several advanced features that makes it possible to maintain the inventory of the products and display the products online, deals with the payments and processes the orders, thus in effect it takes care of most of the functions of an e-commerce store. The free software osCommerce can installed within minutes and the new shop owner is able to insert his products immediately.

Developed by the community

osCommerce is an open source software making it accessible to any user who wishes to use it for whatever purpose it may be. This has provided the required dynamic angle to osCommerce as there are changes made on a continuous basis to incorporate the requirements of the prospective customer. The software provides both the front end and back end solution and is by default available in English, Spanish and German. Other languages are provided by the big osCommerce community.

osCommerce templates

sCommerce has features like templates which make it easy for a beginner also start an online e-commerce store. The osCommerce templates are pre-designed templates which make it very easy to build your own e-commerce site. You can start off easily and have a look at the completed design of your site in no time. The osCommerce templates make it possible to make all the changes required and incorporate all that is required to make the site attractive to the online customer.

Those templates are developed by expert web designers and web developers and have a variety of colors, themes and options to choose from. osCommerce templates are often not free and you need to pay a nominal charge for getting the templates and having a great looking website. osCommerce templates offer a great advantage as they are very reasonable as compared to what you would pay to hire a web designer and get a site designed especially for you.

osCommerce provides you with tremendous flexibility and saves on time and cost. First and foremost you should be sure of the look you want, the services that you would like to offer your customers, the budget and then decide on the templates that would meet your requirements.