The season is upon us.  Analysts and media have made their predictions for what the holiday shopping season will bring.  Not surprisingly, most surveys reveal that consumers plan to be “careful” with their spending this holiday season.  They are looking for the best value, with many respondents indicating that they’d like to be able to buy more, but spend less.  A neat trick if you can manage it.  Given the nature of consumer spending in general, and particularly over the holidays, how can merchants manage these trends to their benefit?

A variety of consumer spending surveys released over the last few months, reveal a few tips for merchants to help their consumers realize value during this harried holiday season.  Among their advice for businesses was:

1) Free Shipping - This is a theme that is played out in a variety of sources and has been extremely prevalent over the last three years or so.  Consumers are searching for value and becoming more savvy about the “cost” of purchasing.  If a buyer can get an item for $5 less online than in the store, they are more likely to do so.  However, that savings  can be erased by adding a shipping charge.  Buyers would then be incented to go to their local store and purchase the at the higher price.

2) Highlighting Value – Help shoppers find the product and the price that they are looking for.  Online retailers can accomplish this by featuring sale items and specials on their home pages.   The GfK survey finds that online shoppers are using more and more resources to find the best deals available.  Leverage the platforms that these customers are usings – social media, blogs, review sites, etc.

3) Gift Idea Lists - According to the NRF’s Holiday Spending Research, the largest proportion of spend will be on family.  That is probably not a surprise to most businesses.  However, retailers and online merchants might consider capitalizing on that by helping shoppers find gifts for family. Organizing items by “Gifts for Dad,” or “Gifts for Girls,” or similar categories, can help shoppers locate what they’re looking for faster.

4) Online Shopping Experience – Consumer Reports tells us that online shopping increased significantly last year, with almost 34% of respondents purchasing gifts online.  To leverage this trend, online merchants may want to “user test” their websites.  Ensuring that the site is easy to use and appealing can help increase conversion.

Certainly, this is not a comprehensive list of the trends that are facing merchants this holiday season, but it does give a sense of the constraints facing shoppers, and therefore the merchant as well.  Understanding and responding to consumer needs is an excellent way to build trust and loyalty any time of year.

Dr. Heather Mark, PhD; SVP Market Strategy

Another year has flown by and the busy season at ProPay is about to begin. We want our merchants to have a successful and stress free holiday season. This is the perfect time to make sure our merchants are up to date on the latest fraud schemes. A fraudulent buyer, chargeback or theft of data can put a damper on your end of year sales.  Here are just a few of the most prevalent fraud trends today.

Spam— Unsolicited email, possibly fraudulent from a company that you didn’t authorize to send you messages.

Phishing/Spoofing— Phishers will impersonate a legitimate company by sending fake emails or creating fake Web sites in order to acquire your personal information—like PINs, credit card or bank account numbers.

Spyware— Software that records your personal information without you realizing it. Several anti-spyware software programs are available to combat spyware.

E Commerce Fraud- Before you buy anything online, ask yourself if the site is legitimate. Look seal from trusted companies that have certified the site as safe and secure. If the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Get-out-of-debt fraud— Many online debt elimination resources are fraudulent. Be wary. Investigate them thoroughly. If they aren’t a legitimate 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, then it’s likely that they’re trying to take advantage of your debt-related vulnerability.

International schemes— Don’t respond to emails that suggest you have won or inherited money from someone in a foreign country—Nigeria and Eastern European countries are where many of these emails originate. And any scheme that asks you to give advance money for a larger sum in return is too good to be true, and will always be fraudulent.

Evil twin— A fake Wi-Fi network set up near to and often using a similar name as a real public Wi-Fi network, like those in libraries, parks, and coffee shops. If you unknowingly join the evil twin network, the criminal behind it will have access to all of the information on your computer.

Take a few moments to review this list and to research other fraud trends that could impact you and your business. The small investment of time will be worth it in the long run. Here’s to a successful holiday season and a strong push to the finish line in 2011.

As information sharing and technology are updated at an increasingly rapid pace, it is critical to maintain a competitive edge by keeping customers informed of new solutions to their problems. 

 When rolling out new services or products, it is important to have a clear, straightforward message that can be shared quickly on what the benefits of your new services are.  Some of the more popular and important ways to stay in touch with your customers are through social media, blogs, newsletters, email and your website.  These tools can help a company reach many people more quickly and cost effectively than traditional marketing channels. 

 These marketing methods allow you to communicate effectively with a broad customer demographic in the way they choose to receive information.  In addition, they provide an opportunity for you to hear back from your customers quickly and candidly what they think about your products and services. In fact, many new product developments, improvements and advancements are a result of customer feedback or requests for a certain item or service.

 ProPay employs many of these resources to communicate to our customers what is new, what is coming and what solutions you may not already be using.   Checking our site, blog and subscribing to our newsletter are great ways to stay informed on what’s happening in credit card processing.  In addition, you may want to make sure you’re subscribed to receive updates and promotions via email, including our weekly 60 second tip.  You can edit your preferences by logging into your account and going to ‘my account’ then clicking on ‘my profile’ and then ‘change options’.

 Stay tuned for on-going updates on new products and services from ProPay.

Site: www.propay.com

The ProPay Perspective Blog: blog.propay.com

Do you have a website? When potential customers search the Web are they able to find you in your local market? Many potential customers searching online are looking for local businesses. You might be very surprised to find that large numbers of people in your area are looking for services and products you provide. Are you getting that business?

Successful Small Business internet marketing requires more than just having a website. Internet marketing places your business in front of customers that are willing to pay for the goods and services you offer. There are many cost-effective services to help your website achieve better rankings with search engines such as Google®, Yahoo®, Bing™ and others. When evaluating various do-it-yourself Search Engine Marketing tools, focus on how they can help you in the following four areas:

• Keyword Selection – How to optimize your website to rank higher in search engine results for specific keyword searches.
• Content Optimization – How to build web pages that rank well. Properly selecting the right key words, the proper word density on a page, constructing page titles and meta tags, etc., properly is key.
• Link Building – How to get other reputable, trusted sites to link to your website. Search engines like Google look for these types of inbound links. If you don’t have good inbound links your search engine optimization efforts can be minimized.
• Map Optimization – Many searchers follow up with a phone call or show up on your doorstep. Map Optimization puts your business right in front of customers looking to buy.

Scott Nelson

VP Marketing, ProPay

When considering merchant services, it is important to understand how provider pricing works to understand what you will pay.  Getting an overall picture with some providers can be a challenge, but a good idea is to compare your total fees for processing in a given month or year and compare that to your total dollar amount of processing.  This will give you an effective rate of processing.

An important thing to understand in choosing a merchant account provider is how card processing fees work.  The card brands have hundreds of different rates based on business type and card type.  For example, swiped transactions are usually less expensive than key-entered or e-commerce transactions.  Basic consumer credit and debit cards are generally less-expensive than business, government, or cards that have rewards and air miles programs.  The cost to process each type of card depends on its ‘interchange’ qualification.

With so many different qualifications, most providers lump similar cards into two or three tiers.  The quote will generally include a qualified rate and a non-qualified rate, and possibly a mid-qualified rate.  Alternately, they may pass on all interchange and brand ‘pass-through’ costs and then mark up the rate by some % and per item fee (‘interchange-plus’ pricing).  Other providers, like ProPay, simplify the complexity by absorbing the highs and lows and charging the business the same ‘blended’ rate for every transaction, regardless of card qualification.

Many providers have other fees, including for statements, account maintenance, minimums, support fees, AVS, PCI non-compliance, and online access.  It is important to understand how those affect your total cost of processing.  Be sure to read the fine print because the low, low advertised rate is frequently not very close to what you may actually pay.

In the end, if the company does not have straightforward pricing, it may be difficult to tell exactly what your total fees will be until you start processing, since only then will you see how many cards qualify as rewards, miles, debit and so on.   You may be able to simplify your accounting, avoid some expensive surprises, and focus your time on the most important things by choosing a straightforward, blended fee structure.