- E-Commerce
- How to Prevent Abandoned Shopping Carts
- Checkout Options for Your Online Store
- A Look at Your Online Customer Service
- General
- Keep Bad Check Losses Away from Your Bottom Line
- Cash Flow Protection Strategies For Your Wholesale Business
- 4 Great Ways to Boost Sales
- Marketing
- Try Customized Marketing For Your Wholesale Business
- Tips for Doing More With Less in a Down Economy
- Blogging and the Wholesale Business Owner
- Search Engine Optimization - SEO
- Basic SEO Tips for Online Wholesalers
- The Basic Rules of Search Engine Optimization
Checkout Options for Your Online Store
By Sarah Pearson Published: 29/01/2009
If you're ready to take your wholesale business online, or you're already online but only running your site as a catalog type of endeavor, now is a great time to begin examining the options you have in regards to what checkout and payment options you can offer your customers.
There are several great checkout systems out there that you can use to great effect for your website and online store, and which one you choose will depend on your needs and what you would like to be able to do for your customers. The watchword should be “easy” because if your payment system is too difficult and makes people jump through too many hoops, then you are very likely going to lose a sale in the process.
The checkout systems that are the most popular, by far, are PayPal, Google Checkout, and Bill Me Later. Each offers the same basic idea, but they each also offer some different features you will want to examine in order to find the right fit for your business.
Google Checkout is a system that is easy for both buyers and merchants. Buyers create an account with Google that stores their payment information and then they can make purchases at participating retailers with a couple of mouse clicks. It offers fraud protection, tracking, and order status. In general, Google charges merchants 2 percent of the purchase, plus 20 cents per transaction, but if you spend a certain amount in AdWords a month, the fees can be waived.
PayPal's Shopping Cart offers features that are similar to Google Checkout, but takes it a step farther by allowing merchants to integrate it with their current in-house or other third party billing systems. And last, but not least, is Bill Me Later, which does the usual shopping cart things, but also allows you to implement deferred billing, which may encourage buyers to make purchases that are more expensive, since they can pay later or in installments.
The system you choose will need to be based on your business's individual needs and what your goals are. For example, if you sell on eBay, then you cannot implement the Google Checkout system for those sales, as eBay wants you to use their PayPal system instead. Or, if you already have an in-house system, you may wish to use PayPal, since it will integrate with it and make record-keeping that much easier. Whatever the case, you will see your sales increase from offering an easy, convenient checkout option to your buyers right on your site.
