Online merchant account

Boost your sales by 300%

If you're going to sell on the Internet, you need to take credit cards. You need an online merchant account.

I a recent study they found that giving your clients the ability to use their credit cart increased sales 300%.

To begin taking credit cards online first you need to establish an online merchant account. If you already have a Merchant Account for regular transactions, you might be able to add online sales.

Our clients have fond that the bank often requires them to set up a second account and the fees can be a bit steep. You might want to compare their fees with the chart below.

There are three players in the online merchant account game.

Your Bank or Credit card company (the Merchant Account)
The gateway (the most popular is AuthorizeNet)
Your client's bank

Of course, everyone has his or her fees.

Although Papal has the appeal of no set-up fee and no monthly minimum, you need to carefully consider if this is the right option for you.

Paypal has the stigma of being the payment processor for people who either can't afford a "real" credit card processor or may have bad credit.

Also, your clients may be required to go through a long process to sign up as a Papal account to buy your product or service. You can't make it difficult for people to give you their money.

With so many inexpensive and good options you don't need to get involved with such controversy.

The online merchant account we use is Practice Pay Solutions. Their rates are reasonable and their service is great. You can give them a call and a real live person answers the phone (wow).

You can also sign up for their online shopping cart (they call it E-commerce Solutions).

Designing your own web page

If you'd like to know how to build a web page I strongly recommend you don't go to one of the "design your own pages online" sites.

You might think because we do design that I might not be objective on this point, but there are some serious considerations:

Limited designs - When you use one of these design, you have a limited number of designs to choose from.

You site will look like a lot of other sites (most of the people who provide this service get their templates from the same place's).

Slow download - Many of the web pages are generated from a database. This can make opening your pages very slow.

You can't move your web site - If for any reason you want to move your site to another server, forget it.

You are on one huge server -This can be a problem if your server gets banned from the search engines (see Small Business Web Site Hosting).

No "back end" access - To be an effective Internet marketer it is critical that you have access to your whole website, including what the public doesn't see.

You must have access to:

• Your Metta files,
• Your email accounts,
• Your statistics

These are critical to your success.

Do it yourself web page

There are a lot of great resources to show you how to build a web page. One that sell your products and promote your service.

If you don't feel you have the design skills to build a web page from the ground up, there are a lot of well-designed templates you can start with, some free and some that cost a few bucks.

First you need to know what web page design you like and what is the standard in your market.

From a technical view you want a web page that's;

• Fast loading
• Well designed (good colors and arrangement)
• Easy to navigate
• Full of content (that you will add)
• Search engine friendly, and
• Easy to update

If your ready to explore the options, please feel free to drop me a line or give me a call (800) 606-1255. My name is Dan Smith and I look forward to helping you build a great website.