Design A Website

Online Payments: Selling via Credit Card Online

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:57:00 GMT

Planning to sell items or services or collect payments online?

There are many ways to accept online payments with credit cards or e-checks:

Taking your customers outside your web site to PayPal Standard or Google Checkout using "buy now" or "pay now" buttons on your regular web pages.
Accepting credit card and e-check payments on your own web site by opening your own online credit card merchant account and subscribing to a payment gateway service.
Using shopping cart software within your web site, which can sell not only products but also memberships, services, subscriptions, downloadable items, etc.
Having Atlanta Web Design GA LLC write programming code to handle your transactions, usually needed when the information you need to collect requires a special form, or because you are handling out-of-the-ordinary transactions that require computations, recurring billing, etc.

Which method is correct for your web site depends on these factors:

How many kinds of items or services you need to sell via e-commerce
What is your expected dollar volume of online credit card payments in one month?
Do you already have a credit card terminal at your place of business, or plan to only use an online payment form?
Do you need recurring billing, where customers are billed in the future monthly, yearly, etc.?
Do you need to collect additional info from your customers, beyond their name, email, billing phone, billing address, and credit card info?
Are you charging customers for a membership to access private areas of your web site?

Now let's review these issues to decide your best alternative for taking online payments with credit cards and e-checks...

How many items or payment types are you offering?

If you are selling many products or many service choices, then it's usually best to install shopping cart software on your web site, since it can usually sell much more than products. Shopping cart sofware is best if you have to calculate shipping costs. Using shopping cart software means we can avoid costly programming time to write our own software to handle your transactions. We offer a variety of shopping cart solutions (which will be described later in Part II of this series on online payments) such as Adobe's Business Catalyst, Ecwid, WP E-Commerce, Zen Cart, etc. Business Catalyst is the top-of-the-line shopping cart solution with wonderful features that let you sell unlimited products for $39 a month, with no additional fees (we always avoid shopping carts that charge a high monthly fee or worse a percentage of sales.) Ecwid, WP E-Commerce, and Zen Cart are free to use, but have their limitations. If you are only selling a few items or services, it's usually wiser to use an online service like Google Checkout or PayPal Standard. Our web developer time to install Google Checkout or PayPal Standard is minimal. You do not need to purchase a secure sockets layer certificate (SSL certificate) for your web site, because the credit card payment info isn't collected on a form on your web site, but rather by taking the customer to Google or PayPal's web site to pay. (Of course, some merchants prefer having the customer pay and remain within their own web site, not on an external web site.) If the customer is only buying one item at a time, the easiest way is simply adding a Google or PayPal Standard buy now (or pay now) button within your web page. If your customer needs to purchase more than one thing in one order, then a step up is using Google's virtual shopping cart, which adds a pop-up cart running on Google's server atop your web page, needed if your customer needs to buy more than one thing at a time. There may be some drawbacks to using Google Checkout:

Your customer must create or have a Google account.
Google stores the customer's info on their server, not on your web server, so you do not have access to all the customer's information (like email address) unless the customer allows you to have it. Otherwise, Google handles the transaction for you but keeps some customer info private.
You have to log your Google Merchant Account to see your transactions.
Some automated or necessary features you might have with regular shopping cart software won't exist with Google Checkout, which has limited functionality.

What is your expected monthly dollar volume for online payments?

If you will have less than $1200 a month in credit card sales, it is usually cheaper to not get your own credit card merchant account and instead use PayPal Standard or Google Checkout to handle your transactions. This is because they do not charge any monthly fee or monthly minimums, and there is no one-time charge to open an account. If you have more than $1200 a month, then PayPal Standard and Google Checkout can be more expensive. Their top rates for under $3000 a month in sales are 3.1% of the sale plus a transaction fee, costing about $3.40 on your $100 sale. By comparison, we can establish your own credit card processing at Authorize.net where your fee is always 2.19% of the sale, plus a 35-cent transaction fee per order. However, when these fees don't exceed $25 a month, you will be charged a $25 minimum regardless of how few sales you had. (This is why Google and PayPal Standard are cheaper if your web site has low monthly sales.)

PayPal offers PayPal Standard which has no monthly fees but a 3.1% fee, but also offers other options that let customers pay on your site without going to Pay Pal to pay: PayPal PayFlow Payment Gateway, and PayPal Website Payments Pro. However, the rates for these are not as low as Authorize.net, which is why we recommend Authorize. Authorize.net is similar to PayPal Payments Pro but less expensive.

There are also other fees for having your own credit card merchant account. You need two components to process credit cards online, a payment gateway and a merchant bank account.

The payment gateway service checks the customer's credit at the time of purchase, and authorizes the sale by removing the sale amount from the customer's credit.
When you later ship or deliver the product or service, only then may you capture the payment to have it transferred to your merchant bank account. This is a special bank account that only receives your online transactions, with no other transactions allowed except the periodic withdrawals to move the money to your regular business or personal checking out. The special merchant bank account is required so all transactions can be easily audited if necessary.

After you are done reading this article, read our page explaining how to apply to open an account with Authorize.net Atlanta Web Design GA usually recommends our customers order their payment gateway and merchant account through us from the provider we consider to be the low cost value, Authorize.net, which is one of the very largest online credit card processing firms. You cannot buy direct from Authorize.net; you must order through an authorized reseller like ourselves. We prefer their service not only because it's the cheapest but because we know how to implement it. That means we get your web site transactions working quickly, without having to bill you for unusual web development time to hook up another system that is problematic. Your fees for Authorize.net are published online. At the time of writing, you pay $9.95 a month for a merchant bank account where the payments are deposited before they are moved to your own business or personal checking account. You also pay $17.95 a month for the payment gateway service to authorize the transactions. There is a one-time application fee of $99 to create your account. If you are thinking of just going to your local bank to sign up for online credit card processing, think again. Most big banks are simply charging you more to rebrand the exact same services from the same providers you can buy at a discount through Atlanta Web Design GA. Your card processing rate may be 2.4% to 2.5% from your local bank compared to 2.19%, and your monthly fees will be higher as well. In addition, you will need to spend $29 a year for an SSL certificate to make your web site able to handle secure credit card transactions, so the page collecting the payment info appears in your browser as https:// not http:// and there is a lock symbol shown in the browser indicating the data being collected is encrypted and difficult for hackers to steal. An advantage to having your own credit card account is your customers get a better experience because they pay within your own web site, and you get to collect and keep all the customer's records in your own database on your own server. After you are done reading this article, read our page explaining how to apply to open an account with Authorize.net

Do you already have a credit card terminal?

If you already process credit cards with a terminal at your place of business, you may think you can use your existing account to handle your online transactions. That isn't the case. Banks charge higher rates for online credit card transactions, because they consider the payment to be riskier than when the customer is face-to-face with you with their plastic credit card present. "Card present" transactions are as cheap as 1.6% of the sale, whereas the cheapest online transactions are usually about 2.19%. Online accounts are similar to "moto" accounts which stands for mail order telephone order transactions. A credit card processor requires one account for "card present" payments and another account for "moto" payments. There is a simple work around, of course, if you already have a "card present" account and a credit card terminal and don't wish to open a second "moto" account. You can manually key in the credit card number and verification codes into your credit card terminal, after collecting that payment info online in a web form. You will still need an SSL certificate to collect the payment info in your online form. You'll receive an email notice or SMS message to your cell phone whenever a payment request is made online, then you'll need to log in to your web site to get that payment info to manually key into your in-store terminal. (It's not safe to email payment info to you, since unless the message is encrypted hackers could steal the credit card data in an ordinary email message.)

Do you need recurring billing, where customers are billed in the future monthly, yearly, etc.?

If customers are subscribing to a service, or purchasing products delivered every month or year, then your options are more limited. PayPal Standard can handle some kinds of simpler recurring subscriptions whereas presently Google cannot. Some shopping cart software can sell recurring services and products, many cannot. If your recurring billing has out-of-the-ordinary parameters, you may need Atlanta Web Design GA LLC to write your own software to setup up Automatic Recurring Billing in a service like ARB offered by Authorize.net.

Do you need to collect additional info from your customers?

Shopping cart software, PayPal Standard and Google collect only the typical info associated with a sale, like customer's name, billing address, shipping address, email, and phone. If you need to collect additional information you need a payment tied to a customer data entry form, so you can ask any kinds of questions needed. Depending on your needs we may have a lower-cost solution involving ready-made software we can integrate with your web site, or we may need to write a customer program to collect info and process your transaction.

Are you charging customers for a membership to access private areas of your web site?

If the customer's payment gives them access to special areas of your website, like member's pages or access to download products or obtain an online service, then we usually have to write custom software for your web site.

Choosing Web Design Photos, Colors, Fonts

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:29:00 GMT

Web Color Palettes

Color Explorer - the best site with tools to create web compatible color palettes. Watch the "Getting Started" video to learn how to use the site.
Color Blender - Enter one color and get a palette of 6 compatible colors. To use: Below the 6 black boxes, move the red, green, and blue sliders to adjust colors. When you find a palette you like, send us the numbers for red, green, blue and we'll reproduce it.
Kuler - Color palettes suggested by web designers, searchable by themes. Search for "spa" and get color schemes for spas. When you see one you like, click it to find the theme ID number and send us that.
Photo Palette Generator - Upload a photo and get the palette of colors in your photo. Works great when you have a main photo on your web page header and you want all page graphics to match the photos colors.

Type Fonts

TypeTester - This site lets you compare 3 fonts side-by-side in three columns. For web design, please choose only from the Safe Fonts list, or perhpas those that are on all Windows PCs. If you are looking for a web font similar to another font you already use on printed material, you can put your print font in one column and find the Web Safe Font that is closest to it.
Google Font Directory - In May 2010 Google revealed a new idea where Google provides online fonts that web browsers can render, even if the fonts aren't installed on users PCs. They are served in real time from Google servers. You can choose any Google Font for use in your web design project. Google is now searching for more font vendors and designers who will provide free fonts for use.

Web Design Style & Templates

Free CSS Templates - You can view more than 100 web page designs here. Some are sedate and professional.
CSS Zen Garden - These are very artsy and creative designs.
Open Source Web Design - More than 2000 web design templates.
Theme Forest - Inexpensive templates created by budding web designers. Some are nice!
Free Templates Online - Commercial web page designs with graphics and photos, not all free, but categorized by type of business.

Stock Photos

Microsoft Clip Art - free photos downloadable to owners of Microsoft Office. Click to right of search button to select photos only (rather than clip art)
Deposit Photos - Inexpensive professional photos, usually cost $1 to $2 each. Try here first.
StockFresh - Professional photos, about $2 to $3 each.
IStock Photo - Professional photos available for fee, about $10 a photo. Very inexpensive.
Getty Images - Largest supplier of stock photos available for a fee, usually about $50 a photo.

What Google Knows About You

Google - Enter INFO:www.yourdomainame.com in the Google search box, and you'll get links that can show: 1) What Google has for the description for your site; 2) What pages on your site Google has included in search results; 3) Other sites who link to your domain name. (Keep in mind it takes weeks after changes are made before they will show up in the main Google index. It isn't updated immediately.)

Atlanta Web Design Choices: WordPress, Adobe Business Catalyst, or Custom Web Design

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:37:00 GMT

As a business owner you probably aren't aware of your choices for choosing a web design platform, so let's share some insight to help you know your options for creating your web site. Recent advancements mean Atlanta Web Design GA LLC can give you a more advanced web site for less money.

Atlanta Web Design GA recommends three web site software choices: WordPress, Adobe Business Catalyst, or a Traditional Web Design.

Which is your best choice for web design?

WordPress if you primarily need web pages or articles and perhaps simpler e-commerce, such as a small shopping cart with few products and easy shipping and payment options.
Adobe Business Catalyst if you desire a full-featured site with the easiest-to-edit pages, a large or complicated online store or e-commerce transactions, collecting data from customer forms, and marketing to prospects and customers via email.
Traditional web site when you have special requirements that cannot occur within WordPress or Adobe Business Catalyst.

Compare WordPress and Adobe Business Catalyst

We design your site within the WordPress content management system (www.WordPress.org) which is used by 8.5% of all sites on the Internet, or over 20,000,000 web sites. Advantages to you:
- Once we create your design within WordPress and train you, you can easily edit your own web site pages, using your browser. Change copy , add pages or photo galleries, change the site menus, and lots more.
- Your single WordPress web site can include regular web pages, a blog, a discussion group, a shopping cart, animated photo galleries, and much more, all under your control.
- We can create a complicated site design in very little time with little cost by using software contributed to WordPress from other developers around the world.
- WordPress software is free to use. We install your own copy of WordPress on your own server, and your only cost for operating your web site is our $47.88 a year hosting cost, plus $9.95 a year for your domain name registration.
- Background: WordPress began in 2003 as an open-source project, meaning the programming code was open for any software developer to modify and share new code back to the project. While blogging was the initial focus, today WordPress is perhaps the largest web site development software platform on earth, with millions of websites running in WordPress including very popular web sites like the New York Times, Best Buy, Forbes Magazine, Martha Stewart, etc.
We can design your site within Adobe Business Catalyst online business platform, which is the hot new technology that lets you run your own online business, rather than just a web site. This is your choice if you want the ultimate web site without limitations. Advantages to you:
- Adobe, the leading firm providing web design software to developers, has unveiled a powerful platform that lets web developers build complicated web sites in a fraction of the time needed before, because all the features for your online business are already coded: web pages, blog, online shopping cart, financial transactions, event bookings, online forms, customer database, discussion groups, email marketing to prospects and customers, and much more. Every function you might need in a website is already built into the Adobe Business Catalyst system. We just style the design and configure the components, rather than building everything from scratch.
- We can now create a $20,000 web site for under $2,000 for you because Adobe Business Catalyst lets us launch a complicated web site with less programming on our part in much less time.
- Revolutionary stuff: you edit your own web page by going to the page, log in, then type your changes right into the web page you are viewing. Way cool!
- Actions by every web site visitor are recorded in a central customer database. You track web visitors as prospects and see them convert into paying customers, step by step.
- Cost to run in this powerful platform is only $39 a month paid to Adobe, which is a bargain compared to using individual services for shopping cart, email marketing, etc. that cost much more. Adobe includes support and software upgrades at no additional cost.
We can design a traditional web site for you, using no software platform. This is how we had to do all web sites a few years ago, which requires us to code all the programming ourselves with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery or PHP, so we can't save you money by using existing code provided by the WordPress or Adobe Business Catalyst platforms. However, a custom web site may be required if you have special needs.

Download Free Virus Software: Microsoft Security Essentials

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:26:00 GMT

Quietly last fall Microsoft began giving away for free the best virus protection and spyware software you can use, if you have a Windows PC running XP, Vista, or Windows 7. It's called Microsoft Security Essentials and you can install it by visiting this link: free virus software from Microsoft. Microsoft instructs you to uninstall any virus software you already have before installing Microsoft Security Essentials, as your old program may create conflicts. Uninstall your old programs by clicking Start and going to your Windows Control Panel. Once installed, your PC will be continuously updated daily with the latest virus and spyware protection for free. In past years Microsoft charged $49.95 a year for its virus protection software, but when Windows 7 was released in late 2009, Microsoft likely decided to give away virus protection because in the past so many people were calling Microsoft complaining Windows wasn't working, when in fact it was a virus causing the problems. Cheaper to protect everyone and not have them calling? Microsoft Security Essentials only works on registered PCs running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7.

Google Apps: Gmail On Your Domain Name

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:18:00 GMT

We set up Google Apps email for Atlanta businesses

Google Apps is our preferred way to provide free email service for Atlanta Web Design GA clients @ you own domain name. Here's all you need to know to start using your new Google Apps (Gmail) email service. (If you need more help request our free web design support, 7 days a week 8am to 11pm.)

Where Do I Get To My Email?

You send and receive Google Apps email using any web browser on any PC or MAC. Not other software is needed.
When we setup Google Apps for our clients, we put your email server at http://mail.YOURDOMAINNAME.com so if your website is at http://www.happyfrog.org then you get mail at http://mail.happyfrog.org.
Just log in there with your user name (the part before @ in your email address) and your password.

Using Google Apps Email

Your new email service uses Google Apps, similar to Google’s @Gmail but @ your domain name. Play the 3-minute video below to learn how to use it.

Google Apps Help Center has lot of help articles like using with your Mobile Phone (note: if instructions for your phone are given for both Gmail and Google Apps use the later.) You can also find how to get email sent to your other address (@yahoo or @gmail or @hotmail or @bellsouth or @comcast etc.) to arrive in your Google Apps inbox. (If you use Microsoft Outlook to read your mail, read the instructions at the bottom of this page.)
Google Apps is more than Email…
- Contacts stores all your people, addresses, phones and email addresses and you can see them on your mobile phone and your PC.
- Calendar keeps your appointments organized on your mobile phone and PC.
- Chat lets you instant message anyone you email, plus saves the conversation in your email inbox.
- Docs lets you create or upload office documents or spreadsheets so you can share one copy with a few people you choose or all staff.
View many short videos teaching you how to use all the Google Apps features.
Tip: if you wish to group related email within your inbox, watch the two videos below on Labels and Filters.

Using Microsoft Outlook to Send and Receive Your Mail

The easiest way to read your mail is just to use any browser to go to http://mail.YOURDOMAINNAME.com and login with your user name and password. But some users still wish to use Microsoft Outlook to send/receive mail instead. To set that up, read the instructions at set up Microsoft Outlook to send/receive Google Apps mail.

Moving Your Old Email Messages from Microsoft Outlook into Your New Google Apps Inbox

If you no longer wish to use Outlook and you will just go to http://mail.YOURDOMAINNAME.com, you may wish to move all your old email messages from within Outlook into your new Google Apps mail server. Here's how to do that...

When you use a desktop email program like Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, it actually makes a copy of every email on your PC's local hard drive.

Google makes Google Email Uploader software that lets you take the email stored in your local PC Outlook and move it into your new Google Apps inbox. Also, Google has a User Guide for Google Email Uploader

Secrets for a successful doctor's web design

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 03:58:00 GMT

The first question a doctor usually asks us is, "I have my website, but when I search Google, why isn't it found first?"

While there are several reasons, the primary answer is: "Your web design does not match the way patients search with Google."

Here's an example...

We study Dr. P's web design and discover the keyword mentioned most often in his current web site copy is his specialty: otolaryngologist.

Keyword	Google Searches Monthly
allergy	1,500,000
sinus	823,000
ent	673,000
sleep apnea	301,000
sore throat	246,000
snoring	226,000
hearing aid	216,000
ear infection	201,000
tinnitus	165,000
tonsillitis	110,000
ear nose throat	110,000
otolaryngology	90,500
nasal spray	74,000
ear nose and throat	60,500
ear ache	40,500
otolaryngologist	14,800

The secret is this isn't the best keyword to focus his web design on. The table at right shows how many times a month Google is searched for other keywords:

Now we can plan our Google keyword strategy because we see:

Few people search for otolaryngologist.
ENT gets 45 times more searches and is the keyword patients search most.
Otolaryngology get 7 times more searches than otolaryngologist, so it's the better term for web design.

To get our web site found in Google, we should focus on "ENT" and "Atlanta" since we aren't competing nationally. When a Googler searches for "Atlanta ENT" Google will show the web site that mentions "ENT" and "Atlanta" most often. Now we know we're going to design that web site.

Searches for Medical Symptoms

Our Google keyword research shows many patents are searching about symptoms, so Dr. P is much more likely to gain new patients if the doctor's web design has more content than competing doctors about: allergy, sinus, sleep apnea, sore throat, snoring, hearing aid, etc. His website needs a page about each subject to capture searches on that keyword. Mentioning a keyword once won't help; it must be mentioned many times. Wording matters: "ear infection" is searched 5 times more than "ear ache."

When you work together with Atlanta Web Design GA, we create your pages after we research hundreds of keywords to discover those your web design must emphasize. Please read more about our web design process. Then email us to get a free consultation at your office.

Keeping Web Design Costs Low

How much will your new web design cost? $1500 is typical. Figure $500 to lay the web design foundation, and $50 to $100 for each additional page. The more content your web design has, the more visitor traffic it will attract from Google keyword searchers. You can lower web design costs by helping with copy writing or finding existing photos or graphics we can use.

Operating your website costs $48 a year for web hosting. Unlike some web design firms, Atlanta Web Design GA doesn't charge any monthly fee for using our web design. We even make quick changes and updates for free.

Beware of web designers advertising cheap prices. Many have hidden costs or the design work is done overseas. Not all "Atlanta web design" firms are in Georgia.

Be sure you end up legally owning your domain name and your web design. If another person registers a domain name for you, he may own it, not you.

You can have a new web design online in 2-3 weeks if you make decisions quickly.

We can tailor a web design for any medical specialties including:

Aesthetics
Allergy & Immunology
Anesthesiology
Cardiology
Chiropractic
Dermatology
Endocrinology
Emergency Medicine
Family Medicine
Gastroenterology
Internal Medicine
Medical Genetics
Neurology
Obetetrics & Gynecology
Opthalmology
Orthopaedics
Otolaryngology
Pain Management
Pathology
Pediatrics
Physical Medicine
Plastic Surgery
Preventive Medicine
Podiatry
Psychiatry
Pulmonology
Radiology
Surgery
Urology

Secrets for a successful retail web design

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:20:00 GMT

Why do few people visit your retail store's website?

The reason we often find: Your online store fails when the web design just describes your physical storefront. Secret #1: Design your website to fit the way Atlanta surfs the web, not reflect how your real store looks. An example makes things clear... Ms. J has a website for Atlanta Specialty Foods. We analyze Ms. J's web site design to learn why it isn't found when Atlanta surfers search Google. When counting the keywords the old web design has, we learn "specialty foods" is the big buzzword. Therein is the problem! We should be using "gourmet foods" because here's how many people searched Google last month:

Keyword	Google Searches Monthly
gourmet foods	301,000
specialty foods	40,500

Secret #2: Feature the most popular keywords for your retail store in the web design. Secret #3: Surfers include "Atlanta" when searching for local retailers. So "Atlanta Gourmet Foods" is the keyword phrase our web design must feature. In fact, we need the word Atlanta to appear often in web site copy in order to rank highest in Google search results. Secret #4: We'd catch even more Google searchers if we focus web design on gourmet food products, rather than the overall store:

Keyword	Google Searches Monthly
Atlanta coffee	12,100
Atlanta chocolate	3,600
Atlanta cheese	1,800
Atlanta gift basket	910
Atlanta gourmet foods	320
Atlanta specialty foods	73

"Atlanta Coffee" is searched often, and Ms. J confirms that her rare gourmet coffees are a main reason people visit her store. To be top-ranked for Google search "Atlanta coffee" our new web design needs an entire page devoted to coffee. We also need web pages focused on: "Atlanta chocolate," Atlanta Cheese," and "Atlanta gift basket." By buying more domain names for $10 like "AtlantaCoffeeShop.com" and "AtlantaCheeseShop.com" we can put up small specialty sites that catch more shoppers and route them to our main site. This overcomes the problem that Ms. J's old home page has: it has a home page that tries to describe so many food products on one page that none stand out. Google won't rank a page high on "coffee" if it only mentions it a few times, but when the entire page or web site mentions only coffee and often, it can be top-ranked. Secret #5: One keyword, one page. Our retail web designs feature specific pages for the keyword "drivers" that bring online customers in. When you work together with Atlanta Web Design GA, we create your pages after we research hundreds of keywords to discover those your web design must emphasize. Please read more about our web design process. Then email us to get a free consultation at your office. Keeping Web Design Costs Low We create successful retail web sites for $600 to $1500, the average is about $800. Operating your website costs $48 a year for web hosting. Unlike some web design firms, Atlanta Web Design GA doesn't charge any monthly fee for using our web design. We even make quick changes and updates for free.