Business Credit Card Payment Processing Solutions

Every business that sells goods and services online requires some form of credit card payment processing. Online payment services are similar to an offline merchant account. When the purchaser enters his details online, the credit card details are passed through an encrypted gateway, authenticated and the funds are transferred to the sellers account. This seamless process is the very foundation that ecommerce is built on. To accommodate international funds transfer, a plethora of different merchant services have arisen. Each of these services differs slightly. Just what are the key types and differences in online credit card payment processing services?

PayPal: PayPal is a payment alternative that is available to facilitate transactions in a diverse range of countries and currencies. Users are required to setup an account and verify their credit card details. They can then purchase goods and services through websites that provide PayPal shopping carts. Merchants that use this service do not need to interface with a bank account. The funds are held within the merchant PayPal account and can be transferred to the merchant FFFDs bank account. If the business is conducted in a foreign currency, currency exchange rates are applied to balance transfers. The advantage of this service is that it is quick to setup and does not require programming experience to establish a payment gateway to the merchants bank account. There are no fees to setup this process and transaction fees are cost-effective for low volume transactions.

3rd Party Solution Providers: Companies such as 2checkout.com provide an internet credit card payment processing service that operates in a similar fashion to PayPal. The advantage of this service is that it supports a wider variety of credit cards. The fees are slightly higher than PayPal and merchants are required to pay a one time activation fee. Funds are held in the merchants 2checkout account and can be transferred to a bank account when required.

Google Checkout: This service is provided by Google and is available only to merchants within the US and UK. Although Google plans to expand this internationally, they have not provided any further details on where and when. The advantage to merchants that qualify is the fee free period that extends into 2008.

Bank Merchant account: Your local bank can usually provide a payment processing service or recommend an authorized solution provider. Bank merchant accounts are usually an advantage to high volume transaction businesses because the processing fees are lower. They usually charge a setup fee and ongoing monthly fee. The service becomes more cost-effective to a business after a certain volume of transactions have been reached. The downside of this option is that it can require programming knowledge to setup the online payment gateway. Unless you have an in-house programmer or use the services of a programmer, the above solutions are usually preferred by web merchants.

This is a basic summary of some common services for processing credit card payments. You can find out more about each service by visiting the respective web site.

Ecommerce Analysis That Counts

E-commerce web analysis deals with traffic measurements, sales conversion, keyword conversion and site performance metrics. Knowing what the numbers mean and interpreting them within the framework of your online business is very important. Small reductions in pay-per-click advertising costs, an increase in sales or site traffic can add significantly to your bottom line. You need to know what ecommerce metrics to focus on and how to setup your e-commerce analysis to benchmark your site performance. Here are some essential components of web site analysis:

Sales Analysis: You should have conversion code installed on all your sales pages to record which search terms your visitors used to produce the sale. This will allow you to refine your search engine and pay-per-click campaigns to target terms that correspond to customer buying behavior. Google analytics has the capacity to measure these statistics. You can learn more about installing and using the features of this package by doing an online search for the Google analytics website.

Keyword Analysis: This applies at the organic and pay-per-click level. By knowing where your traffic is coming from you can refine your advertising options to increase your exposure to traffic that is relevant and decrease exposure to lazy traffic that does not convert. This allows a company to reduce pay-per-click bids and to focus search engine optimization on terms that bring highly targeted traffic that converts.

Traffic Analysis: E-commerce web analysis can indicate where the majority of your traffic is coming form. If you have targeted advertising on portal or partner sites, you can determine the suitability of the target market and adjust your campaigns accordingly. This applies across all search engine disciplines and can indicate areas that need attention and potential hidden areas for further refinement or research.

Content Analysis: A trend that reveals higher page views within your site can indicate potential audience interest that is ripe for further content or product creation. You internet analysis statistics will indicate how long visitors stayed on a web page. Pages that do not attract much interest may be topics that do not interest your target market or that require further advertising effort to bring them to the forefront of visitor attention.

Geographic Analysis: A high percentage of purchasers from a geographic area provides a good indication of where your target market resides. You can then seek advertising partners that have a high exposure to this area and create banner or traffic campaigns to divert relevant traffic to your site.

The above aspects of e commerce web analysis should be considered by any online business that is looking to increase its bottom line.

Ecommerce Sector Growth And Composition

Ecommerce web growth continues to accelerate on a worldwide basis as more consumers gain confidence to transact on the internet, traditional business shifts its service provision to ecommerce platforms and internet access levels in both developed and underdeveloped countries continues to increase. The following information provides a breakdown of the contribution to economic ecommerce growth. The reported statistics are from the US Census Bureau E Stats publication and outline the sector composition and growth rates over the 2000 to year 2005 period.

In the May 2007 edition of the US Census Bureau E Stats publication, it has been reported that business to business transactions by manufacturers and merchant wholesalers accounted for most ecommerce (92 per cent). Trade data indicates that during the period 2000-2005 ecommerce growth for manufacturing continues to outperform merchant wholesale trade followed by retail trade and selected services. As a percentage of total sales, e-commerce sales of merchant wholesalers grew more slowly than total sales.

Ecommerce Growth Rates And Trends:

From 2000 to 2005 manufacturing e-shipments increased at an average annual growth rate of 11.4 percent compare to 2.5 percent for total shipments during the corresponding period.

During 2000 to 2005, e-shipments as a share of total shipments were largest in the transportation equipment group, beverage and tobacco sectors.

The growth of ecommerce sector contributions in value terms: Manufacturing: Transportation and Equipment - 29 per cent

Chemicals - 13%

Petroleum and Coal Products - 8%

Food Products - 8%

Computer and Electronic Products - 7%

Merchant Wholesale trade: In the 16 industries that were recorded, four industry groups stood out contribution wise. Drugs and druggists, sundries, motor vehicles and automotive equipment, and professional equipment and grocery products accounted for 69% of total e-sales.

Retail Trade: Form the period 2000 to 2005, retail e-sales increased at an average annual growth rate of 27.3 percent compared with 43% for total retail sales. Over 90% of retail sales were accounted for by non-store retailers (73%) and motor vehicle parts dealers (18%).

Selected Service Industries: From 2002 to 2005 ecommerce revenues in the selected service industries sector increased at an average annual growth rate of 26.5 percent compared with 6.9 percent for the total revenue of the selected services industries. The two largest sub sector contributions came from the publishing and travel reservation services (23 percent collectively).

Ecommerce growth is expected to continue to accelerate in the years to come as emerging markets integrate into the world economy and as more countries join the world trade organization.