Personal Touch From 1,000 Miles

As I mentioned back in February, my family is gearing up for the March for Babies walk on April 26th. We've been actively fundraising and spreading the word as best we can for a cause that is very close to our hearts.

This year, we decided to do something a little different and order t-shirts for everyone who joined "Team Carson". Since we were ordering a very small quantity and needed a quick turnaround, my wife decided to order them online from CustomInk.com. They had a cool web interface that allowed her to "build a design" online and send proofs back and forth with me. She ended up with a nice design (below) and placed the order.


This is where her "automated" online ordering experience turned personal. Within a few days, Kim received an email from Robin at CustomInk.

Hi Kim,

I noticed that you have designed shirts for an upcoming March for Babies charity event. We think it's terrific that you are participating in such a worthy cause! CustomInk would love to help you reach your fundraising goal by making a small donation to your team.

Could you please reply to this e-mail with the link to your individual sponsorship page, team page or an address to which we may send a check?

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Warm Regards,

Robin Matheson
CustomInk.com

In a matter of hours, we had received a donation from CustomInk via our online fundraising website. This small gesture was enough for me to become a raving fan of CustomInk.com for life. It's nice to know that other online companies have been able to connect with their customers in a personal way. Keep up the good work!

Ask CWS: How do Online Credit Card Payments Work?

As more and more business is being done online, we've seen an increase in the demand for applications that include real-time processing of credit cards. To make smart decisions when you're setting up a payment solution, it's helpful to have an understanding of how these transactions are handled. Although the whole process happens very quickly (usually just a couple of seconds), there are several different components involved that all have to work together.

Step 1: A customer submits payment information to your website. This connection must be encrypted with SSL, a sophisticated technology that prevents anyone from intercepting the contents of the request while it's being transmitted from the user's local computer to your server. As a website owner, you'll need to purchase (and renew annually) an SSL certificate for these connections.

Step 2: Your Web server takes the payment information and opens a second SSL-encrypted connection in the background to a payment gateway. A gateway is a secure server that acts as a bridge between Web applications and the payment processing network. There are many different gateway providers, though your bank may have a partnership with a particular vendor. Some popular gateways include Authorize.net, LinkPoint and Payflow Pro. Although they all perform the same essential funcion, each has its own set of features (and fees), and many factors may influence your decision. For example, if you're using an off-the-shelf shopping cart, it likely supports a particular set of gateways. Some gateways handle particular types of transactions that others do not.

Step 3: The payment gateway contacts the processing network to determine if funds are available for the transaction. The cardholder's issuing bank relays a response back to the gateway.

Step 4: What happens next depends on the type of transaction. An authorization simply gets approval for the purchase, with the actual charge to happen at a later time. For example, when shipping hard goods, the sale is not complete until the order has been fulfilled. A final sale, on the other hand, immediately charges the customer. Examples would be payment for a service or electronic download, where fulfillment occurs immediately. The payment gateway has details for the merchant account provided by your bank and will route the payment accordingly.

Step 5: The results of the transaction will be passed from the payment gateway back to your Web server. For approved payments, this typically includes a unique ID that can be used to reference the transaction later. If the transaction failed, a status code or other message will be given to help determine the cause (insufficient credit, incorrect expiration date, etc.). The Web server will then display an appropriate success or failure screen to the user.

The entire process happens very quickly under normal circumstances, and the customer never sees what's happening in steps 2-4. However, all this background infrastructure is critical and the pieces must work together. As a website owner, you must have the following to accept payments online:

1. An SSL certificate (see step 1 above)
2. A merchant account that supports Internet transactions. If you don't have one already, apply with your bank. One notable exception is a service offered by PayPal called Website Payments Pro, which bundles merchant and gateway services together and does not require a separate merchant account.
3. A payment gateway that supports your merchant account

Each of these services will have its own set of fees, so shop around and find the best set of features and value for your needs.

A helpful summary of the entire process can be found here. CWS specializes in developing Web applications that make businesses work better. If we can help you implement an online payment solution, contact us at support (at) cws (dot) net.

My Inbox: Abandoned Shopping Cart

Earlier this week, Jon wrote about E-commerce R.O.I. and mentioned that 60% of users will abandon a shopping cart before finishing the checkout process.

I was one of them yesterday.

Let me explain -- I received a catalog in the mail from a company called IDville.com, which sells employee identification tags and such. We've been contemplating enacting a security policy at our building where all visitors must sign in/out. So, I started the order process for a Visitor Log Book at IDville.

However, during the checkout process for this $17.95 item, I realized they wanted another $8.00 to ship the item to me. This made me change my mind and convinced me that I might be able to buy a similar item locally.

Now the important part of the story. IDville impressed me by sending the following email this morning:



As you can see, they noticed that I never completed the order yesterday. Since I had started the checkout process they had already captured my email. Instead of just forgetting about me and losing the sale, they then sent me an email with a link to "proceed to checkout now."

This is very smart.

Not only did it remind me about their company, but it gave me yet another option to complete the transaction I had already started. If they can get just 20% of the people to come back and complete an order by using this method, it could mean an increase in revenue of 50% or more. Great idea.