Merchant Services Information

If you want to maximize the amount of sales on your eCommerce website here are 5 tips to help you do that.

#1. One Click Check Out –  Your customers like to shop on-line for two reasons, #1 its faster than going to the store and #2 your products are so unique you can only get them online.  If your products are not unique, if you want t maximize your profits and not be the low-cost provider, you want to maximize your sales by making the check out process as easy as one click.  Simple allow the customer to add the product to their shopping card and then be brought directly to the final page where they enter their billing information.  On that page your customer should be able to enter their billing information, hit the submit button and have completed a purchase.

#2. Recommended Products – Work with your shopping cart and merchant services provider to setup recommended products on your website.  So that when someone adds a product to theri shopping cart they also receive a message that says something to the effect of, “People who purchased X also purchased, X, Y, & Z. Do this will surely increase your average order size.

#3. Transactional Emails with Upsell Products – Not only should your recommended products be shown on the check out page they should also be shown in the following up email that someone receives confirming their purchase, and emailing them a receipt.  Just make sure that 70% of the message content is simply a receipt and the subject line is a receipt.  This will enable you to do this without upselling your customers that just made a purchase.

#4. Loyalty Program -Setup a program that rewards your most lost loyal repeat customers with discounts, coupons and special exclusive offers.  This will keep them coming back even more and referring their friends to your website to make commerce purchases.

#5. Promo Codes – Discounts and deals sell.  You should always have promo codes up and live.  Y ou can then offer them to your loyal subscribers via your website, blog, email newsletters, and social media.  Then you can watch your sales go viral (AKA word of mouth online) and for next to no cost you will see increased sales and profits in your ecommerce store.

You will notice that Amazon.com employs many of these strategies to increase their sales as well.  Given that they are the number #1 eRetailer in the world we highly recommend that you emulate them.  In order to do all of the above you will either need to have a great custom programmer, or a great ecommerce merchant services partner that can give you all of these solutions with your credit card processing account.

For years the only solutions for retail merchant services were more traditional merchant equipment solutions and PC-based systems such as:

• PCCharge – a PC based point of sale system Verfone VX510 – a quick processing hardware solution
• Verfione VX510 – a quick processing hardware solution
• Verifone VX570 – a flexible merchant services solution that includes a thermal printer
• Nurit 8020 – a small and most versatile payment terminal and debit card pin pad with a thermal printer
• Omni VX570 – a fast  solution with a built-in thermal printer and ethernet connectivity
• Hypercom T7P –  merchant equipment that delivers fast processing times and receipt printing times.
• First Data FD100 – a touch screen credit card retail merchant terminal

Yet, in today’s world mobile merchant services have offered retail merchant services to retailers through simple and cost-effective tools that plug into any mobile device.  This allows companies such as Apple to not force their customers to stand in line to check out but instead they can check out with any retail associate no matter where they stand on the retail floor.  Phone Swipe is one of those examples at it is the lowest cost mobile merchant services solution in the world.

Have you ever seen the 12% or even 24% interest rates that Visa, MasterCard, American Express & Discover charge and think about how rich those companies have to be charging such ridiculously high interest rates?  Here is the crazy part – that is another HUGE part of their financial success that you may not know about – it’s called interchange fees.

Here is how interchange fees work:

1. Visa, MasterCard, American Express & Discover charge every company in the world that processes through them a percentage of every transaction.  These interchange fees range between 1% of a transaction to as high as 3-4% per transaction.
2. These fees essentially are fees that any company that accepts credit cards has to pay.
3. In effect, these credit card companies are enacting a global tax on almost all electronic transactions ranging from 1.2% to 4% per transaction.
4. Companies to combat these fees essentially charge an extra 1% to 4% for everything they sell – and this costs gets passed directly onto the consumer with a higher cost for a service or product.

As a small business, it is important for you to partner with a merchant services partner that can keep your rates as close to true interchange as possible – and therefore lower your payment processing costs.

PhoneSwipe mobile card reader gives you the ability to turn your smart phone or tablet device into a credit card processing terminal.

• There are no setup fees or monthly fees.
• The PhoneSwipe app is free and you can download it directly to your mobile device
• Your only fee is 2.69% per swiped transaction.
• You can opt out at any time.
• It is the best and lowest cost mobile merchant services solution in the market.

Here are some real world examples of PhoneSwipe in action:

1. A roofing or window replacement contractor collecting payments directly from their clients at their home.

2. A pizza delivery company taking payments at the customer home.

3. A retail store taking payments directly from customers no matter where the customers are within the store at the point of purchase.

4. A delivery company that delivers gourmet foods directly to their customers homes.

There are lots of other businesses using PhoneSwipe through our merchant services partnership, to improve their sales, profits, and customer shopping experience.

This past week we had a prospective merchant sign up and tell us that they needed a new merchant services provider.  They said that their current rates were so high that they could no longer afford to accept credit cards.  We immediately quoted them a rate, they filled out or online application, and 24 hours later they were approved to process transactions through us.

Here is where it gets interesting.  In the process of approving them we looked as some of their old merchant services statements and discovered that they were paying about 20% of each transaction to their merchant services provider.  To contrast, with us they were paying under 2% – a savings of 18% of their revenues.

At Choice Merchant Services not only do we offer the best merchant services by giving our merchants excellent 24/7 customer service and free merchant equipment and software  but we also offer merchant services rates that start at 1.05% per transaction.  This saves our customers a lot of money starting the day they start to process with us.

Check out Google+ for Choice Merchant Services there is a ton of great information here about the merchant services industry.

This is the kind of stuff you can find there daily:

• The latest payment technology
• Using local search on your mobile phone and using that to make payments and find deals.
• The advantages of interchange plus pricing to save money in payment processing costs
• Insight into the most convenient payment processing technologies
• The latest value propositions from the most active merchant services  provider in the industry

A small business that does not accept merchant services payments isn’t much of a small business is it?  Here are 5 reasons why getting your business connected for merchant services processing matters.

1. Increase Your Sales
   Accepting credit card, debit card and eCheck improves sales by 30% if you are a traditional retailer, business merchant or restaurant.  In addition, if your business is based on eComemrce payments your sales will increase by as much as 90% by having an online merchant services solution.
2. Improve Accounts Receivable
   By accepting  payments before purchase and getting payment information such as a credit card number prior to when a deal starts you will find that collections problems drop to be about 3% of your revenue.  This is because you can get payment 1st instead of after services are rendered, you have billing information so you can bill a client and get payment the same day, and you can verify if a check will bounce the moment your process a transaction instead of days after you deposit it.
3. Setup Easy Recurring Billing
   If you are accepting payments online or your business as a recurring billing model business, you can use services such as PlugNPay, Authorize.net or PCCharge to effortlessly automatically bill your clients every billing period.
4. No Cost Setup
   Choice Merchant Services offers free merchant equipment such as the Nurit 8020 and the Omni VX570 to all merchants that sign up. In addition, we charge no setup fee.  We even offer products such as PhoneSwipe for free that enable you to turn your smart phone or tablet into a credit card processing terminal.
5. Improve Customer Satisfaction
   Make your customers happier with your business and services by offering easy payment, fast receipts, and a streamlined buying process.