Forum Moderators: buckworks
what I would be "selling" would be a consultation. personalized advice. I don't have to worry about getting visitors, or even visitors that're willing to pay- I've got some experience with this, and I think I can manage okay.
I have some questions, though.
1) how should I accept payment for a service such as this? what exactly is involved in being able to accept credit cards directly? would it come off as unprofessional if I used something like paypal?
2) how exactly should I co-ordinate the payment? I won't flat-out accept every application for this sort of consultation- I'll need to look at the information they submitted and seeing what I can offer. but I can't exactly have a field for them to give me their credit card information if they haven't even been guaranteed that they'll recieve what they want. I know I wouldn't feel comfortable giving my information out like that. so when exactly would I bill them? how should I? through what means, and how should I co-ordinate it?
any advice would be much appreciated, thank you
You can also look at 2checkout. I don't know if they will accept merchants whose primary business is a service, or not. 2checkout.com should be looked at as a cheap option to get you going. The headaches you will have to put up with will soon be more trouble than the money you would spend on a real merchant account.
I think only offering PayPal (especially when dealing with B2B) gives the appearance of being unprofessional. Especially if you are going to ask them to submit to an application before they get the privilege of becoming your client.
You can have them complete an online form as the application; you get the data, review the form, and notify them if they are accepted. You can have your payment policies explained on your site. Once they are accepted direct them your secure payment section and they can enter the agreed amount and submit their CC number to be charged.
with something like authorize.net, do they only accept automated billing, from a site? or would I be able to bill them "manually" after we had talked and I had agreed to accept their application?
or would the best way be to do what you suggested, have two seperate forms, one just for the initial contact and review, and then they're forwarded to billing page once I accept them?
what would the practical differences be between authorize.net and 2checkout be?
for those of you do that do use paypal, how much does it seem to affect the percentage of customers willing to pay? does it make much difference?
The SIM method doesn't require a SSL cert as the transaction takes place on their secure server, the AIM method does as the card information would be added on your own secure server.
I think it'd make a huge difference to sales by only offering PayPal.
do you have an example page that uses SIM? :)
is there a live demo I could see somewhere?
Anyway I use worldpay, which is great. They also have equivalents to AIM and SIM. I use Worldpays 'Select Junior', which is the same as SIM, but you have A LOT more control over how the page on their server looks. You can effectively have it looking exactly like your site. They also have 'Select Invisoble' which is like AIM, where-in people enter there details on your site, but you have to e-mail them about it.
Anyway, I used to use Paypal, and switched over to Worldpay, which has really helped sale. Like i say i use there equivalent to SIM, which is good (i was getting obsessed to start with, that even that would put people off), but out of everyone that has got to the payment page, only 3 have ever not made the payment.
What i am trying to say is Paypal should be avoided, try Authorize.net or Worldpay instead, anbd hopefully you can see the benefits over using one of these to paypal, and understand SIM/AIM.
Regards for now,
Craig
assuming SIM doesn't require SSL, and it takes place completely on their sites... are conversions better with this than with paypal?
I don't think it puts people off, my site integrates well with Worldpay, I'm not sure if Authorize.net has a good payment page editor, since I have never tried them, but paypals certainly isn't
Since I get an e-mail from the shopping cart before the payment is placed, I can see exactly how many people have nolt made a payment. Out of 400 or so customers, only about three never made a payment or return later on to complete the order.
Done well AIM works.
