Was your last order placed by an honest consumer impressed by your goods or a scammer who bought that credit card number from an internet chat room? Are some of your customers buying goods off your site but insisting to their credit card company that they didn’t? Internet fraud costs merchants millions of dollars a year, but taking these steps can help reduce the risk of chargebacks.

1.) Require a card security code on your checkout page.
There are different names for this code, but it consists of the last three digits on the back of most credit cards or the four digits on the front of an American Express card. There are many ways to steal credit card information, but requiring this code for every order can prevent the use of many of these numbers on your site.

2.) Do not process payment for an order until you have reviewed it first.
It seems much simpler to authorize an order and accept payment at the same time, but this gives you the chance to confirm that it is safe to process the order before capturing funds. If the shipping address is different from the billing address, you can call the customer’s billing phone number to confirm the order.

3.) Check the IP address where the order was placed.
If you are currently a Volusion customer, you can check the IP address for an order within the order record itself. It is located just under the customer number. You might want to call to confirm the order with your customer if the IP address state does not match the billing address state.

4.) Ask your gateway about their fraud protection services.
Some gateways allow you to set up filters that crosscheck customer data for you. If you get a lot of orders or don’t have a lot of time, the extra fraud protection might be worth it.

5.) Require a signature upon delivery.
This may not be a practical option for smaller transactions, but for larger transactions, it could be worth the expense.

6.) Use accurate product descriptions and require that your customers agree to “Terms and Conditions.”
It can be very easy for a customer to claim that they were misled on your site, but some simple idiot-proofing can save a lot of explaining to credit card companies. You can add “Terms and Conditions” to your Volusion site by adding a custom field to your checkout page.

-Michelle Greer, Volusion eCommerce Consultant

Technorati Tags: reduce chargebacks, prevent chargebacks, online credit card fraud, credit card fraud protection

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While domain names are not always equivalent with business names, they can be just as important. If your domain name is forgettable, overly complicated, or overly long, your competitors with straightforward, easy-to-remember domain names will have an advantage over you, because name recognition is often equivalent with consumer preference. Two heads may be better than one, but when it comes to domain names, one word is better than two. A multiple-word domain name can be effective (think www.nationalgeographic.com), but fewer words and characters equals fewer potential problems. Keep in mind that domain names display in browser address bars as unbroken strands of lower case letters, and the average English speaker’s eye reads them with certain natural tendencies. One of the keys to choosing an effective domain name is to work with those tendencies, because ignoring them can result in subtle, but annoying, problems.

When choosing your domain name, try to avoid:

1. Overlapping words and/or words within words
What do you see when you glance at “www.atlastinsides.com”? If you see “at last insides,” you’re not alone. And that’s bad news for Atlas Tin Sides. As your eyes move from left to right, they scan for familiar letter combinations. And when they find them, your brain assumes intentionality. Examine “jhdvthejqyf.” Your eyes easily pull “the” from the center because you are so used to seeing that combination of letters when you read. But just as importantly, you are not used to seeing “vthe,” “thej,” or practically any other combination in the sequence. “www.shareware.com” is not problematic because “sha” is not a word, nor is “shar,” nor is “sharew.” Your eyes immediately pick out “share,” making “share ware” an instinctive conclusion. But if you name your store “www.planthere.com,” your customers might plan there before they plant here.

2. Two words joined by a letter pairing that is regularly found within individual words
Our eyes are taught to combine certain two-letter sequences that contribute to a single sound in many printed words (think “ch,” “sh,” “ea,” “st,” “oo”). If the first word in your domain name ends with the first letter in such a pair and the second word begins with its companion letter, your brain will try to read the two words as one, or place the word division elsewhere when that attempt fails. Examine “www.withouse.com.” You likely thought of the words “without” and “those” before you saw “wit house.” And since neither “without” nor “those” occurs in the domain name, it should be clear by now just how powerful familiar letter pairings like “th” can be. Try “www.wit-house.com” or “www.houseofwit.com” instead. “www.comedycentral.com” avoids this problem, partially because the rarity of the “yc” combination in English helps our brains assume a word division between the two letters.

3. Non-word names, or names that combine words with acronyms and/or word abbreviations
“www.b1mqxsys.com” might make sense to customers already familiar with your B-1 Medium Quota Extension System, but to the unfamiliar shopper, your domain name just looks like gibberish. You might as well go with “www.5+^f$7h%.com.” And “www.strincwear.com” might seem fine for a clothing company called “Southern Texas Ranchers, Incorporated,” but your shoppers will likely assume the clothing is made of strinc (whatever that might be), or that some idiot misspelled “string.”

4. Long, unusual words
If your domain name contains a long, technical word or a long name from an unfamiliar etymological background, your customers will instinctively (and unsuccessfully) try to read the word as a combination of shorter words. Always keep your average customer in mind. Most middle class American shoppers are unlikely to know what to make of “www.tervahartialaframes.com.” Now you know why they’re not interested in your frames, Mr. Tervahartiala.

If you’re unsure about whether or not your domain name is too hard on the eyes, ask a friend or two to glance at it and tell you what they see. If it takes them longer than a couple of seconds to read the name correctly and confidently, you might want to consider a new name.

Visit our previous entry Tips for Choosing the Right Domain Name for more tips on choosing the best possible domain name for your online business.

-David Yakubik, Volusion Customer Care Specialist

Technorati Tags: domain name tips, choosing a domain name, get domain name, domain name help, volusion

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Knowing Google’s famous mantra “content is king” can be vital for getting better search engine rankings, but you are not restricted to using the text on your site alone to boost these rankings. If your link is associated with relevant content on another site, your site gets “votes” for those keywords. The higher the page rank for those sites, the more it helps you.

How does a common merchant accomplish this? Here are just a few ideas for getting your website better SEO exposure:

1.) Post frequently on blogs or forums that relate to your products. Blogs and forums are chock full of content and you might as well capitalize on them. Don’t get too carried away in your post to include an incoming link to your site though.

2.) Be proactive by hosting your own blog on another page. You can host this blog on a subdomain, such as blog.yourdomain.com, and then link it to a category on your site. Movable Type and Wordpress provide blogging software and the most basic version is free. This gives you the opportunity to create another site full of both content and links to your store.

3.) Exchange links with another site with similar content. Both sites will benefit from the links within the pages.

4.) Write articles for sites relating to your products. You can include links to your site throughout the article as well as at the end.

Wanting to take link building to the next level? Volusion offers different options as part of its Search Engine Optimization Packages. This service is also available a la carte by buying a Custom SEO Package. Contact our sales team at 800-646-3517 option 2 for more information.

-Michelle Greer, Volusion eCommerce Consultant

Technorati Tags: link sharing, offsite links, text links, blogging, volusion

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An efficient Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign will drive qualified traffic to a website, helping to gain exposure and increase sales. The best vehicle for driving this traffic is a well targeted list of keywords. Targeted keywords can also improve your Quality Score, lowering overall campaign costs. Gain more efficient leads while weeding out those searchers you’d like to avoid by adding negative keywords to your list.

Keyword Matching Options

Let’s say you have an online store that sells only one type of item: high-end regular organic ground coffee. Only one item, yet a very specific type of item. An obvious keyword for this campaign would be the general name of the product- organic coffee.
You can then make a keyword list with that term, as well as all other Keyword Matching Options:
Broad Match:
organic coffee
Phrase Match:
“organic coffee”
Exact Match:
[organic coffee]

Your keywords are now specific enough to target only those searchers that type “organic coffee” into the search engine. Now the overlooked step comes into play. Although your campaign is equipped with keywords to specifically describe that item, think about the variations on the broad match keyword that may not apply to what you sell. As noted earlier, your site sells “high-end regular organic ground coffee”. However, as of now, if a searcher types in “cheap decaf organic coffee”- your ad will be displayed. An easy way to eliminate traffic you’d like to avoid is through the use of negative keywords.

Use a Keyword Tool to Find Negative Keywords
Once you generate an overall negative keyword list it can often be applied to several campaigns. Some basic negative keywords to include in PPC advertising may be words like “free” or “image”, depending on those items you have for sale. When making your negative keyword list, you can add general terms as well as terms that apply to the particular item you are targeting. Use a keyword tool, such as the Google Adwords:Keyword Tool to view keyword variations. Then, list out those keywords that do not apply to the item you’re trying to drive traffic to.

For example, type “organic coffee” into the tool now and take a look at the searched for terms. You’ll notice those that would not apply to the “high-end regular organic coffee” for sale, such as bean, kona, decaf and so on. Each of these keywords can now become a specific negative keyword to add to that list.
-bean
-kona
-decaf

Remember the underlying goal behind pay per click campaign efforts. When gaining exposure for your products, those exposed should be your ideal customers!

-Stacie Leonard, Ecommerce Marketing/Copywriting

Technorati Tags: negative keywords, ppc, ppc advertising, ppc management, pay per click, pay per click advertising, keyword list, volusion

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