Reviewing the Best Merchant Account Providers

Can you imagine being in a line 10 deep at a checkout lane in your favorite store, with your shopping cart full, only to be told that they are going to check out the first two people in line then close? Do you think you’d shrug your shoulders and come back another day? Or do you think you’d find a new place to shop.

Or imagine the elections later this year. What if your candidate won the election with 80 percent of the vote. Would you say he squeaked by? That he was lucky? Or would you think he beat the opposition like a drum?

Finally, what if you were able to find what you needed only 20 percent of the time at your local grocery store? Would you keep shopping there? You would probably find a store that did a whole lot better than 20 percent.

The rationale for all this talk about 80 and 20 relates directly to online shopping, and a compelling numerical reason that online business people need to add merchant services to their e-stores.

According to several online retailing studies more than 80 percent of all goods and services that are purchased over the Internet are paid for using a credit card. Getting back to the above analogy about an election, the consumer is voting overwhelmingly for e-stores to accept payments online.

Among the reasons cited most often as to why people like paying with their credit card are:

•    Credit cards make the transaction go quickly
•    Credit cards allow them to track their purchases easily
•    Using their credit card offers buyer protections/affinity points
•    Using credit cards lets them stretch the payments over several months on big-ticket purchases

Perhaps a better way to look it as an e-merchant is that regardless of the reason, they want to be able to use their credit cards when they shop online and they expect online business owners to comply with their wishes. They certainly believe that the customer is always right.

So if you are one of those business owners, and you want your online business to grow and thrive, why would you turn away 80 percent of potential customers? Because people can be impatient and fickle when they shop online – if they don’t find what they are looking for they know there are dozens of sites they can click over to.

Make the effort and add credit card processing. Your customers will appreciate that you listened. And that 80 percent who prefer credit card services is a pretty large amount of folks to make happy.