Storefronts
A storefront allows you to make credit card sales of products and other services online via a secured connection. You may also utilize a 'virtual software terminal' to do your monthly billing - also part of your storefront setup. So, if you're a small business, chances are pretty good that your business could benefit from having a storefront as part of your overall website presence.
What are they?
When we refer to storefronts, we're speaking of a website which provides a means for customers to use a shopping cart to shop online for goods and/or services, and to pay for those services using their credit cards. The product can be books, or computer software, digital photography, or even donations.
Free Solutions
While there are numerous free solutions out there, none give you the total control over each credit card transaction that a full-up storefont supplies. Some of the more popular free solutions are Pay Pal, Yahoo Merchant Solutions, and mroe recently, Google Checkout. NOTE: While the free services provide a fair amount of flexibility to purchase online, we do not support nor offer such solutions at this time. We provide references only to give you, the customer an idea of existing options.
Benefits of a Total Storefront Solution
If your primary focus is selling merchandise online, you're going to benefit the most in having a complete storefront built on your site.
Generally speaking, a full-featured storefront offers the following benefits:
1. Total control over customer transactions before and after the sale. If you would like to offer a discount from time to time on a product or group of products, owning a storefront allows you that level of control. You may also choose to offer gift certificates, in addition to discounted pricing and you may choose to place a time limit on inidvidual and group sales items. You may also choose to provide an 'affilliates program' whereby other businesses can participate in your profits by referriing others who become buyers.
2. Provides a database of existing cleints - Our storefront solution provides a newsletter/email listing which you may use as often as you like to make your existing storefront customers aware of new products and services.
3. Control over types and methods of transaction processing. You may choose to have all transactions post directly to the credit card or you may have it setup to do authorizations only and then come behind the transaction and submit each transaction manually after the sale.
4. Virtual Terminal - You can use the 'virtual terminal' feature of your Site Servants storefront to charge your customer's credit cards for any and all services rendered - either on a one-time or recurring basis. Such transactions can be done outside of the actual website storefront.
5. Additional storefront specific features - Our storefront solution provides an online magazine and a "Members Only" subscription service built into it. This allows you to produce articles and other informative reading material for your customers who can then use the storefront to 'subscribe online' and get granted instant access to that area of the site. If your company sells digital media or software, our storefront allows for the purchase and download of such products.
As you can see, the benefits of owning the storefront solution vs. using a free service are many. Contact us today for a detailed quote.