New website help with ideas on payment etc

xeine · Nov 23, 2009

Hi All,

Nearly finished 1st project.

I have joined paypal business to take transactions on the account, but looking for other ideas. I have read through the forum and many users say join FSB for cheaper rates with HSBC etc.

Are there any users that have just paypal on there site ?
Does it work well for you ?

Or would you advise we use HSBC or RBS etc as well ?
Or just use HSBC or RBS ?

What else do i need to make the site secure, paypal has SSL built in but im not 100% sure paypal is best way forward for our business.

Also may think about SEO and costings. My budget will be small to start with. Yes i understand what you pay for is what service you get. Or may be user generic keywords to cut costings.

Many thanks for your time i look forward ot the replies.

Regards

Xeine

Jolora · Nov 23, 2009

Personally I believe the route with paypal sounds like a good option for you - but I would use paypal pro to integrate into your own cart rather than redirecting users to paypal as you currently are. You would be surprised how much benefit an integrated shopping card checkout system will have on your business.

Also before you even think about giving out shed loads of money for SEO take a proper look at the usability of your website. All the money you spend on getting visitors to the website will be a waste if you don't put the proper time/money into making sure you make conversions.

ivebeenstiffed · Nov 23, 2009

Hi Xeine,

Nice looking site.

I would agree with the above. If you are going to use PayPal you will really need to use the Pro option as the way your shopping basket is working at the moment is rather clunky and will put some people off.

The only problem with moving to PayPal Pro is that you will need to incorporate an SSL certificate in your site which is not always possible if you are using shared hosting space.

PS - just noticed you have a small smelling mistake in your contact us banner on the home page. You have "Contact are sales team" instead of "Contact our sales team".

Trev

KidsBeeHappy · Nov 23, 2009

Beaten to it!

xeine · Nov 23, 2009

Hi All,

Thanks for your comments.

I have paypal pro but just used paypal links to redirect to paypal.

Do you have any integrate shopping carts as a example.

I will check on my hosting company to see if any options on there.

Just changed spelling mistake also many thanks.

Cheers

Ian

ivebeenstiffed · Nov 23, 2009

Personally, I tend to use OSCommerce for any online shops that I do. It is very rarely worth re-inventing the wheel.

Trev

devin · Nov 23, 2009

i use only paypal on my site and it works just fine

abellnsmith · Nov 23, 2009

While considering other options like pay pal, you should consider to use other means to generate traffic or earn revenues, e.g. use your site as a platform for others to advertise their sites, its a good mean for profit increasing

RoseRover · Nov 24, 2009

I too sell furniture and started out using Paypal Pro as it was free to set up and easy to integrate with my shopping cart (Erol).

I do still offer Paypal as an option but have switched to Streamline using the FSB deal and Sagepay as the Paypal charges were really starting to annoy me - especially the fact that they don't differentitate between debit and credit cards and on transactions in the thousands, this makes a big difference.

Some people like paypal, other don't. The more options you give people the better.

Rose

Nov 24, 2009

Isn't a drawer as in furniture spelt as I have written it? down the right hand side it says Draw? Also there are some punctuation error on the page.

IMO Paypal is expensive but I guess it depends on the margin you are working to. I think that if you are selling something like quality oak furniture and you only accept paypal may lead people to think that the product is not of high quality.

I think you should never just have paypal as a payment option as it looks cheap and unprofessional.

I use Barclays for my Merchant account and Sagepay as a payment Gateway. Sagepay is fully secure and deals with taking the payment. You will still need a business merchant account however.

I cannot sing the praises of Sagepay enough. It is an excellent service and extremely cost effective.

xeine · Nov 25, 2009

Hi All,

Thanks for your comments, Im looking into sagepay now costs seem to be £20 per month does any one use sagepay go ? with trustwave.

Or Do sage have a intergrating PCI package.

£20 per month does not seem to bad but then you have all these bolt ons.

Does any one use these ?

Is protx not as good as sagepay ?

Sagepay also charge

Merchant services rates

3D Secure and MOTO with CV2Credit card2.5%Debit card40pCommercial card2.5%

Plus your £20 per month and add ons.

Do you also get charged these figures from RBS and HSBC.

Lastly if you join FSB and get reduced rates for merchant banking through RBS or HSBC etc does that mean the figure with sagepay is lower also.

Many thanks again

Ian

RoseRover · Nov 25, 2009

Hi,

Sagepay is the new name for Protx so they are one and the same.

I don't know about Trustwave as I use Erol and it integrated with them easily - 5 min job.

I use the FSB deal so the rates are cheaper than the ones you have quoted from sagepay but you still have to pay £20 per month to sagepay on top.

Hope this helps

Rose

xeine · Nov 25, 2009

Hi Rose,

Thanks for that just realised after i posted the thread and searched protx.

Regards

Ian

alanc · Nov 25, 2009

SagePay charge £20/month (+ VAT)
They are fully PCI compliant.
They are responsible for handling the credit card transaction on the web.
Whoever you take out your merchant account with (e.g. HBSC) are responsible for getting money from the credit card companies and holding it in your merchant account before transferring it to your real bank account. They will take off the 2.5% (or whatever).

I believe that if you arrange an HSBC merchant account through the FSB, the percentage is slightly reduced.

I have no idea what TrustWave is.

realex_jonathan · Nov 25, 2009

hi xiene,

Realex Payments can help you process your payments into either of these banks (as well as many others). We can host a secure page for you that we will brand to fit exactly with the rest of your site giving you total security without affecting your customers' experience.
I would be delighted to talk to you about this a bit more, you can email me at jonathan.forde AT realexpayments DOT com or PM on the forum.

David Morson · Nov 26, 2009

Paltalk is another good site and it is there in the countries where Paypal is not available. Check this out.

RozLyons · Nov 26, 2009

Paypal have a bad track record on dispute resolution. A cheap online escrow service may be better for selling high value items, where the buyer puts money 'on account' until he/she receives and checks that he/she is happy with your furniture, and then presses a button on the trusted friend website to transfer the money into your bank account. If there's a dispute over a scratch or whatever, your chosen referee decides how to resolve it - you are not dependent on the nameless faceless jury in Luxembourg (where Paypal is based). What's more, as a British company, trusted friend is registered with the FSA so your money is safe.

Check it out and let me know if you think it could help you.

||MARK|| · Nov 26, 2009

As Michelle said previously, check through the spelling.

I don't know if I am looking at the same site as everyone else, but personally I would work on the design and usability first, maybe a better shopping cart software, before spending money on seo.
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JMCDesigner · Nov 27, 2009

This might also be of interest

https://www.multicards.com/en/

29 pounds per year or something...

mark one · Nov 27, 2009

can I please hijack this thread a little and ask if anyone use Google Checkout?

Nice furniture looking forwardto seeing the office stuff

xeine · Nov 27, 2009

Hi Mark,

I'm currently looking into google check out its more costly than others but its another option for the customer.

May be google will reduce costs in time fingers crossed

Cheers

Ian

Deleted member 61074 · Nov 30, 2009

if you dont have a merchant account then consider Worldpay

mycoolgadget · Dec 2, 2009

xeine said:
Hi All,

Nearly finished 1st project www.oakfurnituredirectltd.co.uk.

I have joined paypal business to take transactions on the account, but looking for other ideas. I have read through the forum and many users say join FSB for cheaper rates with HSBC etc.

Are there any users that have just paypal on there site ?
Does it work well for you ?

Or would you advise we use HSBC or RBS etc as well ?
Or just use HSBC or RBS ?

What else do i need to make the site secure, paypal has SSL built in but im not 100% sure paypal is best way forward for our business.

Also may think about SEO and costings. My budget will be small to start with. Yes i understand what you pay for is what service you get. Or may be user generic keywords to cut costings.

Many thanks for your time i look forward ot the replies.

Regards

Xeine

hi i would suggest you bought the other domain oak-furniture-directltd.com or the co.uk version with the hyphen in it for the future so google can rank you better if you start making SEO campaigns targeted to furniture business.
If you already have many links, you can use a redirect 301 to the new domain to keep your link value.

One thing i cant recommend is to use HSBC payment gateway, they give you grey hair to set up and have seen many people fail to setup incl. myself with help from programmers.

HSBC are ok for merchant gateway account and thats about it

will recommend an onsite payment provider that includes paypal as second payment method like secure trading, as most people in Europe likes normal creditcard but sometimes people drop by that prefer paypal and already have money and ready to buy through paypal. You will need both methods to get the most out of it.

edmondscommerce · Dec 2, 2009

Google checkout came into the market really cheaply (esp if you used adwords) but have since upped their charges.

It tends to be difficult to set up properly in comparison to other payment gateways.

If you are doing a decent amount of transactions (say 10 per day minimum or something) then I would go for SagePay.

Paypal is great to get started with but if offered as the only payment method, I think it makes the site look less professional. It will also in the long run cost you more money if you are doing the level of transactions / price volume.

Finally there are all kinds of horror stories about people getting locked out of their paypal accounts etc for stupid things (like being 50p over drawn) etc. Basing your entire business on it might be risky.

ny204193d · Dec 2, 2009

Hello Xeine

I use paypal for my website, but it is a subscription only site, this works really well for me so i would choose paypal.

Regards

Michael.

betterlife · Dec 4, 2009

Hi all,
I have heard of an UK company, Moneybookers, which is more convenient for you. It seems nobody here would like to use it. Why?

edmondscommerce · Dec 4, 2009

I've worked with moneybookers a few times and they are fine, just a lesser known brand

not sure how the compare costs wise

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New website help with ideas on payment etc

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