Accepting Online Payments

There is no doubt that the ability to accept credit cards through your site is critically important. It will represent a majority of your purchases made through your site.

It is also very important however to realize that not everyone is comfortable yet with giving out their credit card information online. If you aren't giving other options for your customers, you are limiting your online profits.

Since I started selling two different DVD's online, I have found that between 5 and 10% of my orders have not been from credit card paying customers.

I have had emails and phone calls from prospective customers not wishing to purchase with a credit card through the web site.

The reasons vary from:

• not trusting credit cards on the internet
• wishing to speak to a "real person" to validate things
• not having a credit card to order with

I've been more than happy to help them out as best I can.

In some cases I process their order manually over the phone and in other cases people have sent me money orders for the DVD's.

Interesting Ebay Observation

What has surprised me is my recent experience with Ebay.

While auctioning off the DVD's, I had the option of what types of payments to accept. Ebay is naturally promoting paypal because they own it but I can also choose to accept just about any other form of payment.

In addition to paypal, I decided to take money orders and also indicated that I could process credit cards outside of paypal (with my merchant account).

I have seen an interesting trend. I have had several winning bidders pay me with money orders and they have been some of my top bidders. In some cases with the auctions ending at twice the price of other similar auctions.

I have been pleasantly surprised by receiving the money orders quickly in the mail. I have also been thanked for accepting alternate forms of payments because they do not own a credit card. It appears that they are willing to pay extra for that convenience.

This experience has reinforced my decision to make sure that credit cards are not the only payments I will take. If I limited myself to it, I would be denying myself approximately 10% of my profits.

Is your site as payment friendly as possible?