You want to make purchasing as easy and smooth as possible for your customer. You’ve gotten them this far into the buying cycle and are about to close the sale. Offering as many payment options as possible is key.

Typical payment options include:

·      Major credit cards

·      Online checks (e-checks)

·Pay Pal

·     Google Checkout (New)

·      And possibly order now, pay later programs

Getting payment gateways setup with a company handle your payments and getting that money in to your account can be a complicated process. Here are some tips to get you started in the right direction.

Tip 1:

Many e-commerce applications come with recurring billing modules. This works for subscription-based orders as well as reoccurring orders. Getting your Merchant and Gateway company to be okay with this can be more work but usually well worth it.

Tip 2:

Accepting credit cards online can be handled in a myriad of ways. There are services where you hand the customer off to another site and they handle all the payment details. PayPal offers a service like this.

Here’s our short list of companies that will handle payment details

http://www.authorize.net/

Order management software comes in many different sizes, shapes and colors. We like Stone Edge. It’s fairly easy to integrate and they provide services for tracking orders. The software handles major inventory, drop shipping, invoice and payment options. There are also modules for using SQL server and even adding a POS system to work with brick and mortar cash register.

You can check out Stone Edge here: http://www.stoneedge.com/

Remember, there are several POS systems with e-commerce solutions that come as a part of the package.

Your Friendly Customer Service Representative

Virtual Host

For frequently asked questions you can use a virtual host (VHost).  Implemented correctly this is a very nice addition to a commerce site. Statistics show an increase in conversion as well.