Accepting Credit Cards Online Should Never Be a Gamble

Updated November 8, 2008

If you have a compelling product or service - and a compelling way to market it - the potential for building a lucrative online business is as enormous as ever. In fact, the opportunities for profitable ecommerce grow as quickly as the online population - now tallying 200+ million Americans alone. Of these Internet users, more and more are turning to the Internet to as convenient, fast, and efficient means to shop and transact daily business - from banking to buying gifts.

More good news: marketing research firm InsightExpress indicates that the profile of the 'typical Internet user' is now falling in step with the profile of the 'average American consumer'. In other words, your customers are on the web - a vast, encompassing demographic of diverse communities with diverse consumer needs.

Of course, building a sturdy online business entails more than establishing a website: you need to identify your target market, understand and outmaneuver your competition, establish a credible, professional web presence, and develop powerful marketing tactics designed to attract qualified customers. Then once you generate the right traffic, you need a persuasive website optimized for sales - as well as a reliable means of accepting online payments for you goods or services.

A comprehensive strategy is the key, and successful ecommerce has no weak link. That's why it's very curious that statistics indicate many online businesspeople are willing to spend more money on a basic search registration package or a piece of affiliate tracking software than on their own ecommerce infrastructure: the mechanisms by which they catalog products, collect order information, and accept credit card payments.

Though marketing is vital, a balanced campaign will eliminate any room for error in your business plan, marketing program, or ecommerce platform. Getting qualified traffic to your website is challenging enough, so why jeopardize business by sacrificing a key lynchpin of e-business - the one that closes an online sale?

Certainly, anyone who has experimented with low-end or commodity ecommerce solutions will tell you that the long-term costs are not worth the short-term savings. In fact, the short-term savings are often lost the very instant you receive your first bill and suddenly discover added costs, limitations, and undisclosed fees. And then come the long term costs associated with unreliable ecommerce systems - from transaction errors and abandoned order pages to slow downloading systems and expensive chargebacks garnered from a lack of anti-fraud protection.

Rather than chart the perils of a dangerous ecommerce gamble, it's more instructive to list the things you should look for when selecting a reliable ecommerce solution - one designed for efficient and streamlined sales.

Pre-Integrated Systems: To avoid having to coordinate different ecommerce software products from different vendors, look for turnkey ecommerce systems that come pre-integrated. That is to say, catalog and shopping cart systems should come flawlessly joined with the secure order interface and payment processing gateway - with all components hosted on secure ecommerce servers. All systems should be top quality, highly scalable, and customizable. Avoid the nightmare of selecting disparate components and then having to force them to work together - and then having to deal with three or four different customer service departments when the system refuses to work properly.

A Reputable ecommerce Hosting Platform: Having your catalog and order systems download quickly and without error is not an added bonus - it's an ecommerce necessity. Patience is not a virtue Internet shoppers are known for. Testing patience with a poor ecommerce hosting provider will result in transaction bottlenecks, lost sales, abandoned shopping carts, transaction errors, or multiple re-submits for a single transaction and other complications. Solid hosting means using a reputable data center with a direct, high-speed connection to an Internet communications backbone. Here, your systems load fast, your transactions authorize instantly, and you have the bandwidth to process peak-period orders without a glitch.

Security and Anti-Fraud: Low-end payment processing substitutes may leave you exposed to fraud - which can lead to chargebacks and paralyzing financial consequences. Verify that your solutions provider is using powerful anti-fraud and security software, from address verification to stolen-card databases to CCV2 authorization and industrial strength SSL encryption. Make sure that anti-fraud is not an added feature - with added monthly costs. Additionally, to keep business operational, work with payment processing services current with recent security mandates issued by major credit card companies.

Reliability: A robust ecommerce system is one that is up and running all the time, regardless of traffic magnitude, regardless of peak period transaction volumes. If you launch a costly holiday marketing campaign and your catalog and order systems disappear - or your processing stops - then you have not only burned your marketing dollars, you've lost all the sales those marketing dollars would have generated. Look for an ecommerce provider with reliable, high-quality ecommerce software components.

Powerful Payment Gateway: Direct access to banking networks is key. Many payment processing services, due both to certification and processor inadequacies, offer modem speed transaction times, route transactions through processing intermediaries, and offer unreliable batch-processing instead of real-time authorization and split second transaction times. The solution is to choose a certified payment processing company to handle your ecommerce systems. Rather than fall for an Internet middleman re-selling commodity solutions, look for a non-commodity payment processing company offering comprehensive services and efficient systems.

Customer Service: The term "customer service" has a vague, contingent, unimportant kind of ring to it - until you find yourself on hold for three days listening to Muzak while you need critical ecommerce support. Customer service is important - 24 hours a day - live and in-person.

With much investment riding on your ecommerce infrastructure, it pays to cover your bases and not take risks with your ecommerce software and service provider. Only when you know you can accept credit card payment reliably and securely should you worry about which affiliate tracking software is the best. There's no room for a weak link online.