Are you ready to accept online credit card payments

Building and running an online store entails much more then getting a shopping cart, throwing in some products, and telling your friends and family to come by and make a purchase. Any entrepreneur who does some research will quickly determine the core ingredients required to launch an online store: shopping cart, merchant account, and payment gateway. But there is so much more involved and it is these finer details that can make or break an online store before it even launches.

This checklist serves to guide a web designer in their efforts to build a secure and customer-friendly ecommerce web site. This is essential to providing your future customers with an informative, easy-to-shop, and safe online web store which is vital to securing an internet-based merchant account. Having a website that complies with this checklist will substantially reduce its exposure to chargebacks and increase your chance of getting approved for an Internet merchant account.

Merchant's DBA Name Appears Prominently On The Web Site
On every web page the name of the business that you are operating under should be prominent and obvious. Typically this means the header of each page. The text should be clear and easy to read. The name of the business should correlate to the products being sold. For example, a website called, "Mary's Flowers" should not be selling tires. A better name would be, "Bob's Discount Tires".

This one sounds so simple that it seems pretty silly to actually include it on our checklist. But it is here for a reason. When your customers get their monthly credit card statement they will be reviewing it to verify the recognition of each purchase. If they are unable to recognize the purchase as listed on their statement they may initiate a chargeback. A large portion of chargebacks that an online merchant experiences is due to their customer not recognizing their name on their statement. So, the more your DBA name matches your product and the more obvious and visible it is on your website, the greater your chances are that your customers will recognize your name on their credit card statements.

Customer Service Phone Number Is Clearly Posted
An established online store will tell you that having a toll-free telephone number on your website will increase your sales substantially. Customers love to discuss the products before they buy to be sure it is exactly what they want. But this is not the reason why the checklist recommends you have one on your website.

From a merchant account point of view, especially an Internet merchant account, the biggest concern is always risk. Chargebacks to be even more specific. If a customer has a question about an order they have placed, whether they have received it or not, they will want to follow up and have their questions answered. Some customers are more patient then others. Some will happily contact your business through email if a telephone number is not available. Others will instantly assume your business is trying to be elusive and therefore a scam and file a chargeback.

Return/Refund Policy Is Clearly Posted
To alleviate some of the uncertainty online shoppers have, every online store should have a return/refund policy posted. Topics covered in it should include:

• How long a consumer has to request a refund after their purchase
• What the process is for requesting a refund 
• Will they get a refund? Or a store credit?
  

The refund policy should appear throughout the shopping experience including the checkout process. Ideally a well designed checkout process will include a checkbox that requires the customer to acknowledge that they have read the return/refund policy and agree to it its terms.

A word of advice: make your return/refund customer-centric. In the world of online shopping the customer is virtually always right. Unless special steps have been taken a customer who made a purchase online will virtually always win a chargeback dispute. The best defense an online merchant has against chargebacks is to prevent a situation from arising where they may face a chargeback. Having a return/refund policy that is restrictive will only cause customers to file more chargebacks as opposed to forcing them to keep the product.

Delivery Methods And Timing Are Clearly Posted
A common cause of chargebacks is from customers who are impatient when waiting for their order to arrive. They may think, wrongfully, that their order will be at their doorstep in just a couple of days when in reality it won't be there for a couple of weeks. The only way to ensure your customers have realistic expectations is to provide them with clear information regarding your shipping methods and timing.

There are various ways of doing this. The most common ways include:

• Listing shipping times with each product (only used when different items have different shipping times)
• Listing the estimated shipping date on the order confirmation page 
• Listing the estimated shipping date on the order confirmation email
  

Privacy Statement Is Outlined
When accepting an order from a customer through your website you will be collecting sensitive information about that customer including their name, address, phone number, and credit card information. Of course you need it to process their payment and complete their order. But what are you going to do with it once you have fulfilled their order? Do you store it? Do you discard it? Do you plan to sell it? Outlining just how safe your customers' personal information is in your hands is necessary to help ensure that your customers feel safe purchasing from you. You want to reassure them before they get any bad ideas and reach for that phone and file a chargeback at the first sign of a problem.

Product Offered Is Clearly Described
What exactly are you offering to your customers? You may have an intimate knowledge of your products but your customers may not. If your products are available in various configurations or with different features this needs to be made very clear before your customers make their purchase. A detailed listing about your products is very helpful in assisting your customers to understand what they are looking at. Some helpful ways to describe your products include:

• Manufacturer
• Manufacturer product name and/or number 
• The function of the item. What is its purpose? 
• Size (Dimensions) 
• Weight 
• Color(s) 
• Where it was manufactured 
• Warranty information 
• Who would use it? 
• What is it used for? 
• What is it made of?
  

All of these pieces of information can help to better describe your product. This will help to reduce orders from customers who are not sure if it is the item they are looking for. This will result in less returns and chargebacks.

Page Where Credit Card Info Is Entered Is Secure
Of all of the topics covered in this checklist, this one item is the most important; both from a merchant account approval point of view and a customer confidence point of view. By a secure order page I mean you have either acquired your own Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate or are using one provided by a third party provider. You can acquire your own SSL certificate from companies like GeoTrust or Thawte, If acquiring your own SSL certificate is cost prohibitive or technically challenging, you can also use the free secure connection offered by your payment gateway provider. All of the popular gateways including Authorize.net allow you to use their free secure order pages as part of their payment gateway services.

You would be hard pressed to find a merchant account provider who would be willing to establish a merchant account for an ecommerce website that does not have a secure order page. Or, more specifically, merchant account providers expect all pages where customer data is captured, including name, address, and credit card information, to be conducted over a secure connection. Customers also have the same expectation.

Conclusion
As you can see, a lot more thought needs to be put into the design of an online store then meets the eye. There are plenty of factors in determining whether an online store will be successful or just a chargeback magnet. The merchant account  provider and successful ecommerce ventures already know this pay careful attention to the details laid out above. Following these guidelines will not only smooth over the application process for establishing your Internet merchant account, but will help to endure that your online store isn't handicapping itself by missing the little things.

Author: Emerson Law