Apr 1
Ecommerce and PayPal sites go hand in hand today with having an online retail website. You must accept credit or debit cards as cash cannot be transmitted and most people do not use money orders. The ability to accept credit cards by a retailer has been proven over and over to add to your total sales volume. People do not carry a lot of cash anymore and in fact will overspend if they can simply use a card. Being able to postpone the actual payment instead of paying cash gives consumers the greater incentive to purchase impulse items that they normally would not buy.
The charge card fees charged by some of the card companies can be pretty stiff for small retailers but all in all those sales would not have been made at all if it were not for the charge cards. Each of the Ecommerce sites provides the retailer with signs and cards that they may display on their tables showing that the retailer accepts credit cards. I did find that at major shows we had to have an extra person on hand to perform the credit card transactions. It does take a few minutes to complete the paperwork but most people that see if you are working just on them will be patient.
For the first two years of our web site presence we did not have an online checkout cart and took only checks and money orders as payment. Although we did well in sales, quite often and much more than we liked, an order was canceled when the buyer could not use their credit cards. PayPal was not yet offering checkout carts outside of eBay so we were somewhat limited as to whom we could partner with in a checkout cart. We did locate a company in Connecticut who not only had a online cart feature but also offered us the ability to use a hand held scanner to make credit card sales at our craft shows. Sales more than doubled when we started accepting the major cards. We did add the PayPal checkout cart to our website when it became available which in turn added even more sales from eBay users.
Some care must be taken however before you sign on the dotted line to assure the fees that are being charged are competitive. The charge card portal fees as they are called, range greatly between different companies. Some charge by the transaction, some charge by the total monthly sales volume and so on. Even a quarter of one percent difference can add up to a substantial amount of money that you will have to pay each month for the service. Get the lowest fees you can find.
You will find that the shopper who would have bought perhaps only one item if it was a cash sale, will purchase two, three or more items when they can be placed on a credit card. The "I'll pay it later" mind set causes them to overspend and of course this works very well for the retailer. Being able to place the major card's logos on your website pages showing you accept credit cards, lends some additional credibility to your web store and shows you are here to stay and are a serious business person.
Pete Ackerson
Pete is a 30+ year building inspector with experience in both public and private construction industries. From schools to treatment plants, from private homes and condo projects, to large residential landscaping projects, he has worked both in the building design areas and field construction in the Eastern US. In 2006 he formed along with two other building inspectors, Wagsys LLC which produced software for municipal agencies in the fields of building departments, planning boards and Zoning Boards of Appeals.
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