eCommerce Strategies
eCommerce Strategies
For Internet retailers to participate successfully in this highly competitive marketplace, they know they must implement programs that drive site traffic, provide a pleasing shopping experience, offer desirable merchandise at competitive prices, and accurately fulfill customer orders.
Many successful online retailers have focused renewed attention on the payment process, a frequently overlooked component of eCommerce. This post attempts to explores
four payment-related strategies that can enhance a merchant’s online services, open new markets and increase profits:
1. Expand Into International Markets: A global payment processor can help you to start tapping the vast potential markets for your products beyond U.S. borders.
2. Offer Consumers More Ways to Pay: Greater choice in payment types increases sales and reduces incidence of abandoned shopping carts.
3. Protect Your eCommerce Bottom Line: Fraud prevention is a prime opportunity for improving profitability and building customer loyalty.
4. Leverage Your Business Intelligence: The payment process generates valuable data you can use to make smart business decisions.
Strategy #1: Expand Into International Markets
Over the past decade, the world has increasingly become a global marketplace. With the proliferation of
inexpensive computers and Internet connectivity, consumers around the globe have access to products that in
the past would have been available only locally or regionally. It is now taken for granted that a teenager in St.
Louis can effortlessly find and buy a T-shirt from a designer in Tokyo, and a music lover in Kiev can order 12-inch
vinyl records from an independent record label in Seattle.
Strategy # 2: Offer More Consumers More Ways to Pay
Payment options can be a key factor in where a consumer decides to shop online. How do online shoppers pay
at checkout? What changes are occurring in their payment preferences? Answers to these questions offer new
opportunities for expanded services that improve the consumer’s shopping experience, prompt more frequent
visits, increase average order value and boost sales. By offering more payment options at checkout, online
merchants can expect to see fewer cart abandonments and more sale.
Strategy # 3: Protect Your eCommerce Bottom Line
Online fraud collectively costs merchants billions of dollars each year. Fortunately, fraud losses declined in
2009 for the first time in six years, indicating that improved fraud detection and prevention efforts are having
a measurable effect. However, the back-office and personnel costs associated with managing online fraud
continue to grow. High fraud rates on international online transactions have not declined, either. And the
face-off between fraud perpetrators and merchants continues to escalate in intensity and complexity. When
merchants bolster protection in one area, criminals soon find new weak spots, triggering another round of
costly fraud detection and prevention measure.
Strategy # 4: Leverage Your Business Intelligence
One important advantage that online businesses have over traditional brick-and-mortar stores is the ability to
collect detailed information about what customers do when they visit the Web site. Online merchants can not
only see which products individual customers purchase, but they can also gain visibility into the pages they
visit, how long they spend on the Web site, how often they abandon shopping carts, and many other types of
information.
Closing thoughts
As the eCommerce channel continues to grow across geographies and vertical markets, it will soon represent
more than 10 percent of total retail sales. It is no longer a novelty, and merchants are finding innovative new
ways to make their online business an important driver of future growth.
Security First Merchant Services is a business-focused payment solutions company that strives to provide payment processing, small business loans, and credit repair services with a high level of detail and flexibility.
