E-commerce portal

Choosing Shopping Cart Software
Over the past decade the Internet has risen to become the most powerful tool in the world economy, as an imperative marketing aid and crucial sales platform for any business looking to remain competitive. Without doubt, this online commercial environment is built on, and depends on shopping cart software and e-commerce applications to enable live online transactions. Moving away from the basic ‘brochure’ approach, it is shopping cart software that has brought about the level of interactivity we come to expect when shopping online. So when it comes down to choosing shopping cart software for your business, what features should you be looking for to benefit your online presence and to provide you with the greatest level of online customer service? One of the most crucial elements of your online shopping cart is security, and the software you select must be protective enough and secure enough to win and retain the trust of your customer base. Many shoppers are apprehensive about giving out their credit card details online, and any hint of a lack of security within your system will be enough to lose a customer forever, and to dramatically damage your reputation permanently. Before buying shopping cart software, check the software’s security properties, and feel free to probe the distributor for more information on their software’s security features before choosing to integrate it within your e-commerce site. By analysing the safety properties of your chosen software application, you can help determine its commercial value prior to installation, a crucial step in preserving your image and reputation online. Another particularly important feature of any shopping cart application is how search engine friendly the software is. By design, it is possible to streamline shopping cart software to fit in to the website involved without hindering the all important search engine rankings of your site. SEO can be a lengthy and expensive process, and one clumsily designed software application can have a serious detrimental effect on your search engine rankings. To avoid causing search engine damage to your site, it is a good idea to make sure the software is designed with the major search engine algorithms in mind to avoid doing the potential irreparable damage to your website’s natural rankings. On top of that, an important pragmatic feature for any shopping cart system is its ability to handle most major credit and debit cards. You want to find a software application that handles as many payment options as possible to avoid losing a sale. If you can’t accept a customer’s credit card details, you’re losing money and a potential customer forever. To give yourself the best possible chance of winning every sale, you should ensure that every customer can be converted where possible without the barrier of your shopping cart software. Selecting a shopping cart application is a crucial decision, which can have a massive knock-on effect for the rest of your online operation. With some consideration of these vital elements, finding a suitable shopping cart application that integrates within your existing ecommerce model, whilst vital, may not be too problematic. Andrius Zabulionis is presendent of Smart Shop Softwares. The author writes about <a href="http://www.smart-shop.com">Smart Shop Softwares</a> and <a href="http://www.smart-shop.com/features.html">Shopping Cart Features</a>.
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Choosing The Right Merchant Account Provider
As a business owner, you want to succeed. You undoubtedly want to increase your sales and make more money. The best way to do this is to offer your customers the ability to pay for merchandise with their credit cards. Whether you operate your business in a physical location or online-only, allowing customers the option of credit card payment is logical. You will increase sales because of the convenience of the payment options you offer. The vast majority of shoppers, online and in person, prefer to pay with their credit cards. Opening a merchant account is the way to give your customers more payment options. But it is important that you find out as much as you can about merchant accounts and merchant account providers. A merchant account is set up through a bank or an online merchant account provider for a retail or online organization in order to accept credit cards as payment from customers. A merchant account is not a bank account. The merchant account provider’s job is to place the money you earn from credit card sales into your bank account. It used to be that merchant accounts were only offered by banks and providers to retail businesses that were located in a physical location. But with online shopping gaining popularity over the past several years, merchant account providers have started providing accounts to online business owners as well. Even though most banks still do not provide online merchant accounts due to the constant concern over credit card fraud, there are an increasing amount of online merchant account providers that offer services especially to those merchants that market their products online. Because of the high number of merchant account providers out there, it is important that you research all aspects of them, what services they provide, and especially the costs they impose, so that you don’t lose precious profits. When looking into merchant accounts and providers, be aware that there are two types pf payment processing that they will offer. These are manual and real-time processing. Manual processing requires that the credit card number be delivered through a phone transaction, fax transaction, or an online order form. The order is processed manually by contacting the payment processing company (through an Internet connection) to verify the credit card number, or by using a point of sale machine to swipe the card at the time of purchase. This type of processing is more secure, less costly, and ideal for a low-volume merchant in a physical store location. Real-time processing is perfect for web-based merchants because the credit card is immediately processed at the time an order is placed. Pending verification and approval of the credit card, the customer receives notification (via e-mail) that his or her order is accepted and fund transfer is approved. This is the less secure of the two processing options. There are costs associated with opening and sustaining a merchant account. Not all of the fees are necessary, and not all merchant account providers will charge them. One type of cost is the application fee, which covers the costs of processing your application, whether you open an account or not. A number of merchant account providers will waive the fee if you decide to open an account. And some merchant account providers do not charge this fee at all. There is often an annual fee associated with a merchant account as well. Merchant account providers charge this fee simply for holding an account with them. Another common fee is the statement fee, a monthly fee that can be as much as $25 per month, and is supposedly imposed by the account providers in order to cover their own costs. Yet another fee is the discount rate, which the merchant account provider earns from each of your sales, usually between 2 and 4 percent. The fixed transaction fee, like the discount fee, is also based on each sale, but the provider takes the same amount regardless of the cost of the product purchased, usually .20-.30. Usually, buried in the fine print of your agreement with your provider is a termination fee. Because some providers require a lengthy commitment period more than 2 years, this fee applies if you cancel your account early. There are also various miscellaneous fees that are levied on your account. Often, these charges are withdrawn if a customer requests a refund, and wants the amount credited back to their card. There are many costs associated with an online merchant account, and it can cut into your profits. It is important that you evaluate different the merchant account providers you are interested in so that you save yourself money down the line. You can also use your current sales information to guesstimate the costs of your merchant account. More than likely, you will have a long relationship with your merchant account provider. Therefore, you should have the utmost trust and confidence in them. Your provider should offer various services that will give you options in making your business transactions run smoothly. They should be able to accommodate several brands of credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, etc.), in addition to providing other payment alternatives, such as PayPal. They should have a record of impeccable service and reliability. They should also be first-rate customer service providers. Any problems should be handled discreetly and quickly. Despite the seeming necessity of having a merchant account provider, it can make or break your business with its fees and service. That is why it is important to know the ins and outs of a merchant account provider, and to choose one carefully. Learn the essential information for picking the right merchant account services at <a href="http://www.merchants-account-services.com/merchant-account-provider.html">Merchant Account Provider</a>
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Payment gateway Security key
Payment Gateway is a software interface between a web-based shopping cart and a merchant account. It’s an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. Security: Security is most important Section for online gateways like Pay pal & eBay. For that in 2007, PayPal introduced an optional security key that adds an additional layer of protection when logging into PayPal or eBay accounts. A security Key is a may be just like a physical device that an authorized user of computer services is given to aid in authentication. A user account tied to a security key has a modified login process; once the user enters their normal login ID and password, they are prompted to press a button on the security key, and then enter the six-digit number generated by the key to complete the login process. This two-factor authentication (T-FA) prevents an account from being compromised by a malicious third party without access to the physical security key. If a user loses their security key, they can authenticate by providing their credit card or bank account number listed on their account. T-FA is an authentication factor is a segment of information and process used to substantiate or verify a person’s identity for security purposes. Several products store passwords in plain text for either the token or smart card software or its associated management server. The option of adding a security key to one’s account is currently available only to users registered in the United States, Germany and Australia.Rusty Clark is a very experienced person in an IT Field. Having Rich knowledge of Open Source Software, Web Development, Web Application, and Programming too. Clark is always modernized his knowledge with new Web Technologies discovered in IT Field day by day.
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