Accepting
Payments Online
If you're going to be selling anything online, accepting credit cards is an
absolute must.
In recent years credit cards have become more popular online as households have
turned to the Internet to pay their bills, do their banking and retail shopping.
Credit cards allow you to 'strike while the iron is hot' by giving visitors a
quick and easy way to purchase your products and services.
Internet shoppers are an impatient and impulsive bunch, they want instant
gratification.
Once you've got a customer interested in your products and services, obviously
you don't want anything to get in the way of them making a purchase.
Unfortunately, many websites act as their own worst enemy by forcing their
customers to:
- Pick
up the phone to manually make an order
- Send
an email with their details
- Send
a cheque in the post (snail mail).
Think of the hassle a customer has to go through to make a payment via cheque
from your website.
They need to:
1.
Process their order as usual
2.
Write a cheque
3.
Post the cheque
4.
Wait for the cheque to be cashed
5.
Wait longer to receive their goods
Imagine your website payment process like a thermometer. The higher the 'hassle
factor' reading, the lower the chance of making the sale.
The bottom line is, if you can't quickly and
conveniently process payments online - expect to lose a huge chunk of your
sales.
