Merchant Accounts

A business needs to set up a merchant account with a bank to handle credit card transactions. This can be done easily with your bank. Usually a fee is charged for this type of transactions yet it is worthwhile for the benefits you get. The flow of the process is, when a customer uses a credit card to purchase a product, money form the customer’s credit card account is deposited directly into the company’s merchant account. The financial institution that sets up the merchant account, process the transaction and deposits the amount to the merchant’s account.

Following diagram shows how the cyber source credit card services function. Cybersource act as the intermediary that receives the credit card payment, transfer it to the issuing bank, receives confirmation and then deposits the money in the merchant’s account.

CyberSource transaction process

Yahoo Questions and Answers

I could not be regular with my articles these days because My ISP had a problem. Well, I am back again. My post today is different from all the e-commerce articles I have written so far. I want to write about something different to make a change. Until I come up with some e-commerce articles I hope you will enjoy reading this one about yahoo questions and answers.

I find Yahoo Questions and Answers very interesting and well organised. I still have to familiarise myself to Yahoo Q&A. This has helped me find answers to several questions and I have answered to others as well. My answers have been chosen as best answer several times.

This is a group where you can ask questions and also answer other people’s questions as well. You can also make friends with others. Yahoo has organised it in a very nice and user friendly way. All you have to have is a yahoo e-mail account. Then you get your own yahoo page to interact with people. You can write your blog entries here as well.

In the questions and answers area you have to select the category your question belongs to. Then publish your question. People visiting the area will notice your question and if they can help, they will answer your question. There is a probability of finding a good solution to your question. This has helped me several times.

You can answer others in return as a favour. And you will also earn points to increase your ranking in this group by answering to questions. Check Yahoo questions and see if there is any question you can answer. If you find one, just answer from your general knowledge. Who knows, your answer might become the best answer. There are open questions and closed questions as well. Closed questions are questions that have been already answered and the person who asked the question has selected an answer as the best answer.

What you have to do is, Publish your question and wait for some time, you might have to wait a week or two. And check weather people have answered to your questions. If you find a satisfactory answer to your question, just select that answer and that becomes the best answer. The person who answered to your question earns points to increase his or her ranking.

I find Yahoo questions and answers page very interesting. Visiting yahoo Q&A at least once a week, gives me something to think about.

Easy to remember domain names

One of the easiest ways to attract visitors to your website is to provide a web address that is short and easy to remember. A domain name is one of the first decisions a company make because the domain name chosen must blend with the service or product that particular company is offering. Top level domain names are dot com domains. Dot com names stand for commercial sites. Other types are .org, .net and .gov. for government.

You will have to come up with several domain names and check their availability before starting your online business. Online investors buy lists of good domain names and resell them at a big profit. These investors buy domain names from Companies who no longer need a web page.

Cyber squatting has become a headache these days. This means registering a company name and then trying to resell it to its lawful owner. Some kind of a presence in the Internet from the beginning is needed to prevent this.

There are other options to make it easy for people to set up a domain name as a cc domain name. Some companies are now purchasing domain names like au-for Australia, ca-for Canada and so on relating to the country of origin.

What ever domain name you purchase, the main thing is, it should be related to what you are doing online and your business. It should represent your business. For example I have a blog named Curry Kitchen. Its URL is ‘kurrykitchen’. If you get a domain name like http://www.kurrykitchen.com , what will you do with it? Will people be able to find you by typing your domain name? They will probably type currykitchen instead of kurrykitchen.

Things to consider before e-tailing

E-commerce transactions mainly involve the use of credit cards, smart cards and other methods such as digital cash or coupons.

If you are selling low value items in large quantities online, it is better to use one of the large commercial gateways such as provided by the big banks to minimise your risk and maximise your security.

If you are selling high volume items, think twice before you start doing online transactions. Online presence and online transactions are not the same. Use your website to show the customers what you have to offer, and use it to get more customers and business contacts.

Many people waste their money trying to sell goods and services online simply because they have not done their preliminary preparation and research well enough.

Before planning to sell online, as I have stated in many articles just answer these questions and you will then see whether it is worth selling online.

• Do you sell a product or service that people will want to buy online?
• What is the benefit to your customer by purchasing that item or service online?
• Who are most likely to buy your products and where are thy located?
• How are you going to pack and ship the items?
• What will be your return policy?
• Can you manage refunds?
• Is your product a common one that is available always on retail stores?
• If so why do you think your customer will want to buy them online?
• How are you going to minimise errors happening. E.g.: a customer orders a blue one and you dispatch a pink one?
• What are the costs likely to occur for all above and are you able to price the item covering all the above costs and still make it cheaper than the same item in the brick and mortar store? (especially if you are selling a common item like clothing)
• If you have a shop, there might be customers who come to your shop in search of one item and get interested in other items that are in the store and this might bring you a big profit. Are you likely to get this type of sales online?
• If you supply your products to retail stores run by other companies, what percentage of your products get sold simply because they were in this main stores?

After finding answers to these questions you will be able to decide doing sales online is for you or not. You should still not back away. Your online presence is very likely to promote your business or brand and generate lot more sales offline.