Online Payment Processing by Streamline.com

eCommerce payment processing by Streamline.com

This service provider in the payment card processing domain claims to be the largest of its kind within Europe and boasts of being able to cater to all types of businesses irrespective of the size. They are a member of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

Since this company is also one of the premier providers of merchant accounts, it has the flexibility of accepting both debit and credit card payments by different modes such as by phone or through the website.

With card transactions on the increase, you as a merchant need the support of a company which makes your business dealings easier and more customer friendly. Streamline is the company which makes that possible through their different service offerings.

Services offered

a) Cardholder preferred currency service

This is made possible through the many point of sale terminals provided by the company and the transaction is easily processed due to the terminal duly recognizing the card in question and making available the required currency.

b) Card payment on the move service

This service is for those who are always mobile as the company provides mobile payment terminals through which the card payments can be processed.

c) Streamline online service

This is another management type of service which allows you to view the various card transactions that you have done for the business and since they are up dated daily, you can have real time information on all your card transactions.

d) PAN truncation service

The primary account number truncation is a service wherein the card number is disguised and is not made visible to avoid any fraudsters taking advantage of accessibility to such numbers.

e) Internet trading service

With the growing popularity and access to internet, many businesses are able to now conduct a lot of their business activities through the internet. So ecommerce and online trading activities are very much a part and requirement of many customers. Streamline is able to offer internet retailing opportunities and also provides general guidelines on how to get started on this activity.

Strengths

1. Handle a huge number of transactions within the UK
2. Can process most major card payments and as a merchant you can cater to diverse customers.
3. State of art technology which ensures that transactions are quickly done and there is no waiting time for customers.
4. Great back up systems to ensure total reliability at all times

Support Provided

They provide support services to help customers manage their account much better by helping out in areas like easy authorization, ensuring fraud free sales, reconciling statements to reflect the up dated information and so on.

They place great emphasis on getting proper feedback from customers and encourage it through the online feedback form. Customers can also use the email and visit the website to place complaints or offer suggestions.

They offer both call back as well as Text phone services to enable customers to get through to them.Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image.

Buy or rent shopping cart software which is cost effective

Should you buy or rent ecommerce shopping cart software

If you have an ecommerce website, you cannot do without a shopping cart. It is the shopping cart program that enables your customers to select the products and place them appropriately for payment. Without the shopping cart, your customers will face problems completing their transaction and that will impact your ecommerce initiative severely.

The question is whether you would want to buy one or take one on rent. This article examines the advantages and disadvantages of buying versus renting out a shopping cart.

Buying a shopping cart

When you purchase the shopping cart, you have total ownership, control over how you wish to customize the software to suit your requirements. You can tweak the software to include or delete features. This is of course assuming that you possess the necessary knowledge and expertise to do so.

However, the flip side is that when you buy such software, you need to keep paying for any upgrades that the software may undergo. If you wish to do the upgrade your self, it may not be possible and in the process if you end up making changes to the software, you will stop getting the after sales support from the company you bought the software from.

Renting the shopping cart

When it comes to renting, there are limitations as well. You will not be able to do any customization since you do not own the software and have to make do with the features it already possesses. The only solace is that you are not making a bulk one time payment but paying it over several months and this may come back to haunt you as time passes. The advantage is that you can get started with your business and contribute to the rent per month from the profits you start making in your ecommerce business. If the business starts doing well, you always have the option of buying out the software with the additional cash it has generated for you over time.

The positive aspect of renting the shopping cart is the fact that you can get free upgrades and avail of the benefit of any improvements made to the software without paying anything. You need to check this out when you do rent out the shopping cart with your host. Also make sure that you will have access to regular service help when required so that you are not left high and dry when there is a problem.

Your decision to buy a shopping cart or rent it out thus depends on how technically savvy you are or whether you have access to such a person and what is the importance you wish to accord to customization. If you cannot provide for your own support system and do not attach much importance to customization, then renting out the shopping cart software would be ideal for you. If you are one of those who does not wish to pay a bulk amount upfront, then renting is the right option.

Many web hosting companies do offer such shopping cart software in their monthly hosting package and that is one way you can start using the software without making a huge payment upfront.

However if you wish to buy it outright, you need to always remember that the cost will increase depending on the features you decide to have on it.

Ultimately as mentioned, it is your business requirements that will decide whether to rent or buy the shopping cart software.

You can discuss this post by commenting at UK webmaster blog or UK webmaster forum

Busiest online shopping day ever; today 9th of December

Cyber Monday, busiest Online Shopping Day in the UK

According to ecommerce and Internet analysts, the busiest day in the history of online shopping will be about lunchtime today, Monday the 9th of December 2009 when millions of online shoppers are expected to log on to their computers, surf to their favourite online retailers to buy items for their loved ones Christmas stockings. It is estimated that collectively, online shoppers in the UK will spend about £4,000 per second.

The organisation behind the statistics, IMRG, which is a consortium of online retailers said today is significant in Christmas shopping because the first Monday in December is when most employers have paid their staff, the staff in turn have money to spend and some people try to get their Christmas shopping out of the way in time and also place orders on time to give online retailers to get products delivered before Christmas. Approximately £340 Million will be spend on shopping for gift tomorrow, if the forecast is accurate, this means an increase of 10% over 2008. A great chunk of the spending is expected to be made on consumer electronic, DVDs and Music CDS. Some of the items that tops shoppers Christmas shopping list this year includes iPhones, Susan Boyles Album and Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince DVD.

Most of the orders are expected to be placed between 9-10AM and at lunchtime when office workers spend their lunch break ordering presents online. Leading companies such as M&S are expecting significant traffic to their website and call centres, Marks and Spencer are expecting about 3.5 million hits, John Lewis is expecting to take £4.5 million on Monday the 9th of December which is expected to be the busiest online shopping day in 2009. The high street on the other hand is expected to remain busy right until the last shopping day before Christmas.

Velnetweb UK web hosting review

UK web hosting by Velnet UK

One among the various sites of Velnet, this site VelnetWeb.co.uk has set itself the objective of providing a wide range of internet services at very affordable rates for its customers. The services provided are registration of domain names, hosting of web sites, web site design and ecommerce applications. With many businesses looking for a stable platform on the internet, this site is well placed given its data center location within the UK with adequate bandwidth facilities. They are also well equipped to provide free blog solutions.

Services offered

a) Domain registration and web hosting

They offer free domain name registration as part of their web hosting package service. You can also transfer the current domain name or go for the registration of alternative UK based domain names like .uk.com.org.uk, .me.uk and so on.

Velnetweb offers low cost web hosting, their packages starts from £29 per year. The basic package is called Velnet starter, it contains everything you need to get a basic website online including MySQL database and PHP script.

They also have other more advanced hosting packages which they have categorized under:

- Velnet Basic
- Velnet Business
- Velnet Premium

All the plans have excellent basic features with the Velnet Business and Velnet Premium offering more by way of hosting space, bandwidth, POP3 email accounts and data transfer.

b) Ecommerce Services

Velnetweb provides ecommerce services to help small businesses run an online store, they use Boss Cart shopping cart which is a time tested platform and is provided with any web hosting package for only £99. The ecommerce site is also integrated with eBay to help you push your products faster for sale. The software is powered with PHP and MySQL databases ensure that the whole process of running the online store becomes simple.

c) Web design

A comprehensive web design package is provided that includes the design of the site, domain name that is free of cost for a year and no cost search engine submissions.

Strength

* Different service package plans that are very affordable
* Web design packages that include free search engine submission
* Simple to use ecommerce software
* Quick launch of online store with customisation also possible
* Integration with eBay and inbuilt Google Base connector
* Secure Comodo SSL certificates

Support provided

* Online customer support chat system in place
* 24×7 ticket support system also in place
* Free pre designed templates for easy start up of online store
* Excellent tutorial assistance for those interested to know about web hosting

What do customers say?

Customers are very satisfied with the current services and are in fact demanding more from the company. New hosting package plans that would feature reseller plans for hosting on the web with control panels, bandwidth that need not be metered, quicker support systems, management of dedicated servers and high quality webmaster scripts are being planned by the company.

Google Commerce Search – helping your customer finding what they are looking for

Haven optimised your website, spend a lot of time building quality back links to get you organic search engine ranking to the top, you perhaps also use PPC to drive targeted traffic and may even use affiliate programme to get even more customers, now the customers are all on your ecommerce site, how do you ensure they find what they are looking for quickly so that you do not lose them? A good easy to navigate site will help with some of the problem, a search feature will be welcomed by your users but how about a very powerful search feature from the company recognised as the Search Engine; Google. That is exactly what Google has just launched; it’s called Commerce Search.

Google Commerce Search unlike most of Google’s products is not free, that is because it was not designed for small companies, its and enterprise tool for the larger ecommerce websites. The ultimate goal of Google commerce search it to reduce bounce rates, here are some of the ways Google says Commerce Search will help online retail ecommerce sites:
· Enable visitors to find the right products faster
· Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
· Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
· Increase website conversions and sales
· Boost or promote chosen products within search results
· Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
· Customize, track, and optimise performance
One company that is already using Google Commerce search is the USA arm of the legendary German sandals company Birkenstock, he was quoted on Google Commerce Search site as saying “With Google Commerce Search, customers more easily find the specific products they’re looking for, and we’ve seen dramatic conversion improvement since implementation.

This tool will probably not be ideal for most of the audience of this blog but if you run an online retail website with vast inventory, implementing Google Commerce Search may help you convert more customers.

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