42 replies to this topic

[Leann_Pass]

In our experience with online retail:


Most people prefer to pay by CC.
Some people love PayPal, some hate it, some don't even know what it is.
Some people are scared to death to enter any personal info on the Internet at all - they prefer to pay by phone or postal mail.

We have a much higher conversion when offering ALL the payment options.

I will clarify that we don't see this with online services - just retail.

Leann

[KPautomotive]

I guess it depends on who you are selling to ... young people don't seem to mind paying with paypal, its quick and easy... older people might prefer to pay directly with a credit card.

I have paypal as a payment option on my site any the majority of my customers have paid with paypal.

[MaKa]

OFFTOPIC:

Sorry Bach technically does mean 'little' but it is also an accepted abbreviation of Bachgen (boy, male) it is an affectionate term for friend. so Dim Problem bach, means no problem my friend! Dim Problem bach I'm slowly learning a little Welsh

[web-junkie]

My

I believe paypal to be a decent option if you are just opening shop and don't want to spend the $.

In fact if I am going to buy something from a site I have never been to before, a lot of times I find myself looking for the paypal logo if they are not using a well known ssl.

That being said, they pull rank with my $.

That's just me though.

[lyn]

I would love to do interac and some day will.
For gigs!
What is the penetration of online banking?
My target client will be a very late adopter on average.

Wish I had a good answer for that. Possibly (or probably) Interac would have decent data.

'Course, if you do any of your own banking online and you have an e-mail address, you're already set up for Interac Email! All that's left for you to test it out is an invitation to customers to use it.

Are most of your buyers in Canada, or in some less-fortunate land?

[On edit: FWIW: I personally see a growing number of the elder population adopting online banking as a highly attractive option to writing cheques and making trips to the post office to pay bills. Can't quantify it for you though.)

L.

[harpsound]

Our income for our website 1 is from:
99% music service oriented clients
Destination weddings - mostly from canada USA japan UK NZ Oz
Memorials and family events - canada
Corporate - mostly USA canada
Teaching and workshops - canada USA
We accept payment in client's currency (usually under CAD$1000 equivelant)
Plus 1% from
CD sales - global
We accept payment in CAD$ and USA$ only for CDs.

Our income from our website 2 is from:
100% sales
Harp sales - canada only in CAD$

On the surface credit card makes sense.
The hidden costs are exhorbitant when one looks deeper.
Increased clientel from accepting CCs is a mute point.

For website 1
We are far more profitable to take a personal cheque on a foreign bank and swallow any exchange fluctuation - clients like the conveniece of having a firm known fee when we quote in their currency and mailing a cheque is the simplest method for delivery.

For website 2
Clients initially want to use canadian credit cards to buy a harp.
CC co's want a 7% whack out of our low 25% markup.
We cannot raise the markup above shipped USA price.
Giving away 30% of profit is very questionable as we are not volume sales.
We like the security and speed of clearing using electronics funds transfer for sums from $1000 to $6000 - the barriere of this is that the credit is not coming directly from the client's credit card so unless there is a little fancy financial footwork the client feels poorer using this method and less likely to commit as compared to a CC.
We are the only seller in Canada and our only competition is USA online with many perceived border issues to prevent client purchase from them.

So after a long winded scenario build.
Interac would work for website 2 but the last time I looked you paid a relatively stiff fee.

If interac became global then it would work for website 1. Give interac 10 years. Then it may be the universal solution.

S

[lyn]

Interac would work for website 2 but the last time I looked you paid a relatively stiff fee.

When my wife uses it, the fee is $1.50 per transaction. Are we talking about the same thing?

L.

[harpsound]

Can you give me a link off list as I am definitely interested.
Stephen V

[Cosita]

If you can't afford $30-$50 per month for a merchant account, consider using echo-inc.com. I believe that they charge $19.95 per month and if you don't use the merchant account for a specific month then you don't get charged.

I don't know if there is a set up fee and what the cost is per transaction.

[Bethers]

I disagree with the $3000 cut-off to go from Paypal to a merchant account. That difference in today's figures for me is way less per month. Auth.net has much lower transaction fees for me and the monthly charge is no where near $50.00.

That said, when I had a site with only paypal sales were slow. The month I added the merchant account my sales more than doubled and no one elected to use paypal. I kept paypal for a time, but when it was accounting for less than 2% of my sales, I dropped it. I may add it again some day but for me, the merchant account made a big difference in sales.

As another poster said earlier in this thread, I look closely at a website that takes only paypal to make sure they have good contact info - in fact, I might call just to see if someone answers the phone- because it often is a start-up business.

I do like what the poster said above about using paypal as a secure payment method.

I've been making most of my purchases online for 7 or 8 years now (I hate malls) and have yet to purchase from a store using paypal. I do use it for services and obviously, for ebay. And I will bill a client on it if that's how they want to pay.

[floatingworld]

Fasinating topic! I don't have much to add regarding Paypal vs CC, but I did have a look at the website. I think it would still be a good idea to keep working on the website's content and presentation. It looks good! However, I think it would benefit from a testimonials area. If I was considering buying this product, I would definitely want to read about other peoples experiences. Also, there are some gliches in the template when viewed on my mac using the latest version of Firefox. Finaly, on the RSS feed page there is a typo- "Do I need appetite cotrol or a diet?"

All the best,

Aaron

[alan]

Hi Aron,

Thanks for visiting my site. But your comments confuse me.

I think it would benefit from a testimonials area. If I was considering buying this product, I would definitely want to read about other peoples experiences.

I have a dozen or more testimonials on the appetite control pages, and the smoke cessation pages, not only in print, but also I have online videos of the clients with both before and after shots of my weight control clients. And for those surfers who have dialup, I have audio playback only of the videos.

Also, there are some gliches in the template when viewed on my mac using the latest version of Firefox. Finaly, on the RSS feed page there is a typo- "Do I need appetite cotrol or a diet?"

The only page that has an RSS feed on it is my support groups. I found what you are talking about: "Do I need appetite cotrol or a diet?" Obviously the user who typed in the question misspelled the word control. There isn't a whole lot I can do about user's spelling. I can edit it, but then the post will show that I've edited it. I know this because I've edited other user's posts because they used a very small font. So I think I'm better of to just leave it alone. But thanks!

I don't have a Mac, so I'm not able to test for that platform. In the past 11 months, 96.3% of the people who visited my site were using Windows. And only 3.47% had a Mac. FYI .41% were on linux, and .01% were using SUN OS. .08 were unknown.

Thanks for your input.

Alan

[slstg]

I just ran into this thread and was surprised that no one mentioned Paypal Pro. This is Paypal's version of a merchant account. You can collect credit card payments the same as any merchant account and Paypal is the processor. To the customer, it is transparent. He does not know that Paypal is the processor (nor would he care just like he would not care if another processor was behind the transaction).
No set up fees, $20/month for the service, very resonable merchant discount % and it works well - much better and simpler than another merchant processor we use -- and will soon get rid of.
I think one limitation may be that Paypal won't accept payment from certain "high risk" countries, but that may be so with many other processors as well.
Paypal recommends using specific shopping carts and/or specific integrators. Our developer handled the integration quickly with no significant problems and I'd be happy to hook anyone up with him who is interested.