In this recent American Express ad, John McEnroe comes to an epiphany that credit card “dispute resolution” is easier than he’d ever realized. The commercial ends with McEnroe hugging after resolving a tiff with Klauss Umlauf, his former nemesis and referee at the U.S. Open. The announcer then reminds us how easy it is to resolve credit card disputes with American Express. Unfortunately for merchants, disputing a charge really can be that easy for customers. That is why merchants should take every precaution to be prepared for them should they arise.

According to Wikipedia, here are reasons customers ask for a chargeback:

· Card holder requests a copy of the transaction receipt.
· Card holder did not authorize the transaction.
· Non-matching account number.
· Transaction was processed more than once.
· Transaction receipt was not imprinted.
· Refund not processed.
· No authorization.
· Customer never received merchandise/services.
· Card not used within valid expiration date.
· Services not rendered.
· Error in transaction amount.
· Transaction receipt is incorrect, incomplete, or illegible.
· Transaction processed for incorrect amount.
· Product different from what was described or promised.
· Counterfeit transaction.
· Transaction not processed within Visa or MasterCard time frames.
· Failure to obtain card-holder signature.
· Signature on the card was blank.
· Signature on receipt different from card.
· Card-holder never authorized transaction.
· Card-holder claims merchant changed transaction amount without permission.
· Merchant knowingly participated in a fraudulent transaction.
· Incorrect Transaction Date.
· Card-holder claims invalid mail or telephone order transaction.
· Card-holder was denied ability to return item.
· Transaction was not canceled successfully.
· Card-holder not satisfied with quality of product or services

As you can see, there are many reasons why a customer can request his or her money back. As a merchant, you probably realize that customers are not always being honest or fair when asking for chargebacks, so it is important to cover your bases in case you are hit with a potential chargeback.

John Conde of sitepoint.com laid out the chargeback process like this:

1.) A customer disputes a transaction by contacting the bank that issued the card.
2.) The card-issuing bank researches the claim to see if it is valid or not. If not, the customer is responsible for the charge.
3.) If the claim is valid, the issuing bank offers the customer a provisional credit. The bank then takes the issue up with the merchant’s processing bank.
4.)The merchant’s processing bank then researches the chargeback on their own. They can decide to decline the chargeback and send it back to the card-issuing bank.
5.) The chargeback amount is removed directly from the merchant’s account and the merchant’s processing bank provides written notification to the merchant.
6.) If there was a processing error that was not the merchant’s fault, the sale is presented back to the card-issuing bank for corrections.
7.) The merchant provides documentation to remedy the chargeback. If this documentation is satisfactory, the chargeback is declined and the customer once again is charged for the sale. If the documentation is unsatisfactory, the chargeback is successful and the process ends.

In addition to taking the steps to prevent chargebacks covered in our blog previously, you can also ensure that your phone number is on any receipt or packing list, and that you respond to chargebacks or return requests as quickly as possible. This will ensure that you stay under that standard maximum of one to two percent that allows you to still use your merchant account.

Interested in more data about merchant accounts in general? Read our blog post that explains how payment is processed on your site.

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist

http://www.volusion.com

Chargeback Process, Chargeback Processing, Chargebacks, What is Chargeback, volusion

Bookmark to:

Acording to Goggle, 10-20% of all Goggle searches are actually mispelled.

If you didn’t catch that much of that sentence itself was misspelled, you are probably also missing out on the 80-90 percent of searchers who aren’t misspelling their search terms. As crucial and somewhat obvious it seems to ensure you actually spell your own keywords correctly, it’s also important to catch the ones that are not. It’s something that is very easy to overlook, but 10-20% of your customer base is certainly worth finding in any way you can.

Take the often misguided, yet popularly searched Britney Spears. “Britney Spears” is misspelled 20 percent of the time in Google, and there are about 600 common misspellings of her name, according to Google founder Sergey Brin. Here are different ways that Google users happen to misspell their targeted keywords:

1.) Flat out misspelling words
Example: britney spears–>brittany spears

2.) Hitting the wrong key
Example: britney spears–> brotney spears

3.) Hitting a letter one too many times
Example: britney spears–> brittney spears

4.) Omitting a letter
Example: britney spears–> britny spears

5.) Transposing letters
Example: britney spears—> britneys pears

How important are factoring in misspellings to your site? Although meta keywords are not nearly as heavily weighted as they once were, misspellings here can come into play during a search. Misspellings are also important to factor for your internal search feature on your site. Customers who enter their product in the internal search bar are more likely to buy than those who search for and find their products. Adding misspellings to your keywords will ensure that Spellcheck junkies everywhere will always be able to find what they need on your site.

If you have a pay-per-click campaign, you have probably noticed that certain keywords are more expensive than they are worth to you. Many simple misspellings of these keywords are much cheaper, and they might get the kind of traffic to actually justify the expense. For certain keywords, the misspelling can actually heed better results than the correctly spelled word. So much for having spelling bees.

Looking for possible useful misspellings without spending all day on Google? Check out this tool for generating typos. Until everyone actually chooses to use the spell check feature in Firefox and IE7, you might pick up a couple of sales as a result. Just make sure to double check the addresses before sending anything out.

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
http://www.volusion.com

Bookmark to:

“I’ve optimized the content on my site as well as all of my metatags. I have quite a few backlinks built up. Much of my site is custom designed as well. Despite all of my work, I am not getting great traffic, and the customers who are going to my site just aren’t buying. What am I doing wrong?”

We do expect that when a store owner does the work to market their site and improve their products, they do better. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Competition is stiff and more and more sites are being added to the web everyday.

Fortunately for merchants with concerns such as the one above, there are options they are probably missing. If you read a post from several weeks ago called “Increase Your Online Sales by Marketing to a Niche”, you read about the benefits of narrowing your marketing scope to better corner a market. This concept does not just apply to new merchants. Existing merchants can separate their products into different niche sites to better optimize their site for usability and SEO.

Here are the advantages of separating your site into several niche sites rather than trying to be a jack of all trades:

1. ) Your site will be much easier to optimize for search engines. Your domain name will probably better reflect your product because your product is more specialized. The content on the page will better reflect specific keywords that customers are using. Your categories and metatags will also reflect more specific keywords. You can also get more relevant backlinks from sites that are chock full of useful keywords. It’s good all around for SEO.

2.) Your site will be much easier to use for your customers. Think about it—is it easier to find the Pinot Noir section in a Super Wal-Mart or in a wine store? The difference between buying from you and buying from another merchant is just a click away, so making it easy to find any product a customer wants is critical.

If you do happen to sell some of the same products on both sites, don’t sweat it. If you are a Volusion Version 5 customer who is on a gold plan or above, you can manage your inventory for both sites using StoneEdge. Here’s more information on setting up this XML feed.

Dominate a niche by dedicating a site to a specific type of product. It will make the work you do to your site that much more effective.

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist

http://www.volusion.com

Technorati Tags: Increase Traffic Store, Online Retail Marketing, Niche Strategies, Marketing Online Store, Volusion

Bookmark to:

We have all seen it. You enter a site expecting to see about 20 categories, perhaps an attractive graphic on the home page, and the merchant’s contact information. And then something flies in your face out of nowhere. Some merchant trusted a designer who probably just learned Flash, and that designer decided to go hog wild by making it too big or putting it where it didn’t belong.

Flash can add an exciting element to a website or effectively demonstrate how a site or product is used. However, Flash used excessively actually distracts your customer from their original goal, which is to either purchase from you or read about your products. According to Jakob Nielsen, web usability expert and creator of the most boring looking site ever (www.UseIt.com), “Flash designers decrease the granularity of user control and revert to presentation styles that resemble television rather than interactive media. Websites that force users to sit through sequences with nothing to do will be boring and pacifying, regardless of how cool they look.” Nielsen doesn’t even approve of intro splash pages using Flash, but does appreciate the “Skip Intro” button. As boring as Nielsen’s own site looks, www.UseIt.com has a PR ranking of 8, meaning that plenty of other people feel his content is worth noting. So much for fancy design.

Here are a few tips for sprucing up your site with Flash while still keeping it interactive and engaging:

1.) Design around the content, not to entertain. Not only is Flash very SEO-unfriendly, it can take a while to load on the page, especially for the users still on dial-up. As a rule, Flash should be used sparingly on a page, such as an element of a home page graphic or a logo. Even if you are using Flash to present a demonstration, which is actually not a bad idea for some merchants, it should never take up more than half of the screen’s real estate.

2.) Use Flash to accentuate your message, not as the message itself. Considering not all users have even downloaded the Flash plug-in, any messages you need to convey to your customers need to be said either in text or as a graphic. If you are having a sale and you let people know in a Flash graphic, up to 10% of your visitors might not know it.

3.) When in doubt, leave it out. Much to the chagrin of designers of the past, websites are increasingly becoming web applications, which are fully capable of engaging the user. If your Flash animation or video does not help users achieve this goal, perhaps its better to stick with the basics.

So if you are clever enough to create an interactive Flash file that somehow encourages people to buy from your site, by all means, go for it. If including Flash animation enhances the message on your site, include it. If it’s just cool, remember that your store is offering a place for your customers to buy your products, and take the Flash somewhere else.

-Michelle Greer, Volusion Marketing Specialist

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Design, Flash eCommerce, Usability eCommerce, Create Flash Intro

Bookmark to:

Before the internet, merchants often made more money by withholding information. To shop around for a car, you had to comb through scores of newspaper classifieds or drive to several dealerships just to compare prices. Before do-it-yourself websites, a contractor banked on your insufficient knowledge of the electrical components in your house. If someone didn’t teach you and you didn’t have the time to read a book about it, you just had to trust the person selling you the good or service.

Now, comparative shopping sites can pull up the same product’s pricing from dozens of sites in less than ten seconds. The service that seemed too hard to do on our own is outlined step-by-step on a do-it-yourself website. In this internet age, being an informed consumer is easier than ever. Rather than trying to hold on to information that your customer should be able to find anyway, be the first to offer useful information in forums so you can become an influencer in your industry.

What are you more likely to trust—a site that is completely new to you or a site that is owned by a trusted member of the forum you like? Would you be more likely to trust a site that has no other presence on the web aside from their store, or a site that pulls up on pages and pages of forum and blog posts when you Google them? You can put your phone number, address, and profile on your store to establish credibility, but it doesn’t show that you are a leader in an industry. It just shows that you exist.

If you read our blog frequently, you saw how creating a blog can help you establish yourself in an industry. But how will people know about this blog? Participate in forums, and when appropriate, you can include links to your blog or even your store with helpful information. Forums are full of people with tons of questions. If you can answer those questions AND lead those people to a blog post or your storefront with even more relevant information, you can gain that customer and possibly other forum members who read that thread.

Be sure that the forums you post your links in allow links in their forum posts. Sometimes forums consider this spamming. Spamming a forum can get you banned from that forum. Just read the terms and conditions for the forums you join.

So focus on offering a service to the web community. You will be rewarded by search engines, and hopefully by more customers.

-Michelle Greer, Volusion Marketing Specialist

Bookmark to: