Payment Options

Archive for the ‘Payment Options’ Category

3 Things Not To Do In Ecommerce

December 8th, 2011

We all have heard tips about what things you should do to increase your conversions, so we thought to change it up a bit and talk about the things that you shouldn’t do, the things that are going to hold you back and actually cost you sales. So real quick, here is a list of 3 ecommerce no no’s that we think are most pertinent.

DON’T Force Registration
There is no real logical reason why you should do this. It just pisses people off. You can offer the option, but don’t require it. It’s a hassle, and your more than likely to lose conversions because of it. Think about it, have you ever been happy that a site made you register? We can understand those sales that require follow ups, support for specific software sales and regular updates, but if you’re selling a one off product, you’re better off taking your money and thanking your customer. People don’t like to be bullied in to things. If you hold you product hostage, people better love it or their not going to bother paying the ransom.

DON’T Hide Payment Options
This one is simple. People want to know how they can pay, right away. You don’t want to make a customer jump through hoops at the end of an order because they have a Visa and your site only accepts PayPal. They are more than likely to take their business elsewhere. List the available payment options prominently on your site, and even create a custom page within Wazala to give this info. This will help your conversions, and encourages more interested customers in completing the purchase.

DON’T Overuse Keywords
I get it. You want to stuff as many relevant phrases into your content so that you can get better rankings. But while SEO is still somewhat important, selling to customers is and always will be the first priority of a good e-commerce site. Cramming in keywords for keywords sake only serves to muddle up your message, and therefore hurt conversions. Use them only when it seems natural. If you can’t do that, hire a writer to do it for you.

Happy Selling!

Three Tips for Better Conversions

November 16th, 2011

Choosing the right landing page for the right keywords can have a dramatic effect on the amount of traffic you get, and therefore how much money you make. While it helps to do testing first, here are three guidelines that will help you avoid the pitfalls that some sites fall into and improve your conversions rates dramatically.

Get Rid of the Choices

You shouldn’t present many options to a potential customer. This will just serve to confuse them. If you want them to buy something, put a “buy” link in big letters right where they can see it. If you want them to download something put a “download” sign in big letters right where they can see it. You get the point. Eliminate all other options, or at least put them in really small print so they are hard to see. You want to keep the customer focused on what you want them to do, so why give them other choices? That would just be silly.

Stay True to Your Word

This is very important. You have to make sure your landing pages matches the expectation set by the link that the customer clicked to get to it. If your link says “click to find out how to listen to MP3’s in style,” and when the the customer clicks the link it takes them to a landing page of your main site, and they have to search for what they wanted to see, your customer won’t be happy, nor will they trust you. You must follow through on what you promised in the link or the customers’ expectations will not be satisfied.

Don’t Peacock

While you want your landing page to stand out, you don’t need to be loud about it. Avoid having a ton of visual distractions that will take the visitor out of the buying experience. Only truly relevant information should be displayed. Everything else should be nixed. Visitors to your landing page want to find out about what they were promised in the link and satisfy and expectation. If by satisfying that expectation you get a sale, why would you want to put up road blocks in the form of other visual distractions? Keep it simple, keep it neat, keep it focused.

While these techniques don’t guarantee sales, you sure won’t lose any because of them. So apply them to your landing pages and see what happens. You could just make bank.

Choosing A Payment Gateway For Your Online Store

August 25th, 2011

Wazala offer simple integrations to allow you to accept payments through PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net as well as a pay later options you can use for offline payments. But how do you know which ones to offer your customers as payment options. What’s best for you may not be what’s best for others. To help you decide we though we’d share some features of each.

Merchant Accounts
PayPal Website Payments Pro and Authorize.net are great solutions to offer. It allows you to accept credit cards right within Wazala, and never direct your customers elsewhere to make a purchase. The entire process is done within your own site.

PayPal does charge a monthly fee for this, but the transaction rates they charge are less. It is available for those with a PayPal Merchant account and works for currencies of USD, AUD, GBP, CAD, EUR, JPY.

Authorize.net is a premier payment gateway that you can connect your bank account to. They charge a monthly fee for this, but the transaction rates they charge are less than others. It is offered in the USA and Canada only, but works for all currencies listed in Wazala except the Turkish Lira.

Google Checkout
Google offers the ability to pay online for all Google account holders. Many out there like the convenience of signing into Google and not creating a new account with a payment gateway to make a purchase, and this may help your sales. Available only in the USA and Great Britain and works for currencies of USD and GBP. Easy to set up, no monthly fees, and a reasonable per transaction fee.

PayPal Express Checkout & PayPal Website Payments Standard
Available for those with a Premier or Personal PayPal account, they are the most commonly used solution within PayPal as they are free accounts with no monthly fees, but do charge a per transaction fee based on your account and monthly billings. Usually available in all countries PayPal offers, and in all currencies listed in Wazala (except Turkish Lira does not work in PayPal Express).
In both cases the customer is directed to PayPal to pay, the difference is a few less steps to take in PayPal Express Checkout to complete the process, and they state a more secure transaction than PayPal Standard with Express Checkout.

Pay Later Option
Wazala also offers a pay later option, that allows you to accept, Wire Transfers, Cash on Delivery and any other off line payment option you wish to offer to your customers. You can offer this along with specific instructions on how to proceed to payment offline. For more about this option take a look at our FAQ found here.

When deciding, it is always helpful to read through their policies. You may find that some of these payment gateway are more likely to protect you against disputes or refunds depending on the types of products you sell, while others may offer added solutions to better your bookkeeping. No matter what you choose, you’re sure that with Wazala your payments are secure, just remember, offering options to your customers is a plus, as many out there abandon shopping carts when it’s time to pay if they do not see a trusted name they are comfortable with.

Also a good read is our article on accepting credit cards found here!

COD & Wire Transfers

May 16th, 2011

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
– Warren Buffett

Wazala facilitates the course of selling goods and services online. No matter what you call it, shopping cart, ecommerce solution, or online store, the idea is simple. Get paid in return for something. Be it through a credit card transaction, a PayPal account transfer, a bank paper trail or good old fashioned hand over of currency at delivery, you are getting paid. Yup COD and Wire Transfers was rolled out this weekend as Wazala’s latest feature.
It seems more people are still skeptical about online payments and the use of credit cards. This feature grew in popularity in our forums, and many of our store owners were asking us to include it. So we did.
Store owners can now offer the ability to pay later. Name the checkout label as you wish and give out the instructions appropriate to your own business and voila the transaction is complete and you have a buyer willing to pay you in exchange of your offerings.
The options is found in your Options tab under Payment Options, and setting it up is simple. Wazala even delays the download email for digital products until the store owner instructs to send it. Simple, safe and secure Wazala!

Wazala And PayPal Integration

December 11th, 2010

In this new wave of technology, you can’t do it all yourself, you have to form alliances.
– Carlos Slim Helú

We are so happy and proud to announce that Wazala is a PayPal preferred shopping cart solution. PayPal is one of the largest and trusted payment gateway online, and Wazala’s affiliation and integration with PayPal is a trusted one. We hope this news gives you the peace of mind when dealing with Wazala.

You can find Wazala listed on the PayPal site as a preferred shopping cart for the following account types:
Express Checkout
Website Payments Standard
Websites Payments Pro

And you can find Wazala listed within the PayPal website here

Hurray PayPal! 