Monthly Archives: October 2010

Opinion

Choosing an Ecommerce Service

There are any number of ways of adding an online shop to a  website – we looked at 3 extensions for Joomla here if you’d like to know more. But in the posting, we will look at payment methods – once your customer has chosen to buy something, how are they going to pay for it? It’s at this point of the sales process that a lot of sales are lost, so it’s crucial to get it right.

The Easy Option

Paypal and more recently Google Checkout are the most common payment methods found on e-commerce websites. Why? Because they are so easy to set up, require nothing more than an email address, credit card and bank account. The registration process is very easy for the shop owner, and they support all credit card types at the same rates. The integration process is typically straightforward with lots of examples and pre-built buttons provided.

But from the customer point of view are Paypal and Google Checkout ideal? Perhaps not. Usually the customer will have to leave your website entirely so they may be wondering where did the e-shop go? They may also face additional advertising and “become a member” links on the payment processors site.

For the business owner, use of these processors can be frustrating. If you are selling downloadable products it’s highly unlikely that PayPal or Google Checkout will accept some proof of purchase, even a commercial invoice, as a valid argument not to refund the customer.

The Alternatives

There are of course a number of alternatives to Google and Paypal. These include credit card processors, off-line payments and even payment on delivery.

Taking payments online can help increase your sales

If you do support a number of payment methods, it’s a good idea to give the customers a choice during checkout – but don’t go overboard.  Too much choice can confuse – the customer just wants to complete the purchase, not read through 10 different payment options.

For online payment with a credit or debit card the process involved requesting a Merchant Number from your bank – these are normally only provided for businesses, so you’d need to be a limited company or sole trader. Once you have the merchant account set up (for which you’ll be paying the bank a monthly fee), you can go shopping for a payment processor. These charge by different methods but typically you might pay a fixed monthly fee plus a percentage or small fixed fee of each sale. Providers include Paypoint, WorldPay, SagePay.

Benefits over Paypal and Google Checkout include your name on the customer’s statement, control over the process, negotiable fees, transparent checkout process and lower costs for high volumes.

2020Media can help you with adding ecommerce to your website.

  • Secure SSL Hosting
  • SSL certificates from multiple sources – get the best for your application
  • Experience with multitple payment processors – ask us for a referral.
  • Accept Direct Debit – ask us for a referral.
Opinion

The Economist migrates to Drupal

The Economist runs Drupal

Drupal is used on many thousands of websites, but a recent convert to Drupal is The Economist. The Economist is now using Drupal 6 to serve the vast majority of content pages to its primary web site, economist.com. Drupal powers the homepage, along with all articles, channels, comments, and more.

The site is incredibly busy – over 100,000 stories and a Posting rate exceeding a comment per minute. It also boasts 20-30 million page views per month with 3-4 millon unique visitors over the same period.

The Economist has a large varied dataset and moving from the previous system (based on ColdFusion and Oracle) was no easy task. They hired  a specialist company called Cyrve who’ve written and open-sourced a Drupal module to enable migrations of existing complex databases to Drupal. Read more about the migration, or check out Drupal Hosting from 2020Media.

Opinion, Technical

2020Media supports ISOC IPv6 project

1 Comment

The IPv6 Matrix project, proudly supported and hosted by 2020Media, was featured in a presentation at London INET this week. The ISOC project looks at the entire internet for take up of next generation IPv6 addresses. IPv4 addresses are due to run out in under a year so adoption of IPv6 addresses is crucial to the future growth of the internet.

INET London

INET is a worldwide set of conferences looking at the future of the internet. Opportunities, threats and challenges to business were examined and discussed by the participants.  Matthew Ford, technology program manager from the Internet Society spoke about the current state of internet penetration and how ISPs are constantly increasing capacity to keep up with demand. The big 6 ISPs who account for 94% of UK broadband services now use an arsenal of technological techniques to manage, control, and limit their users internet use. These include traffic shaping, deep packet inspection, acceptable use policies (AUP) and limits hidden deep in their terms and conditions.

2020Media’s broadband has clear up-front quotas on bandwidth use, no deep packet inspection or traffic shaping, and a clear indication of the line speed you can expect. View our broadband site for more information.

Other comments of interest included one likening the internet to the large banks – “too big to fail”. The internet is now such a essential part of the way services are delivered to the public that it is now considered essential infrastructure. ISOC warned that in the future the freedoms and accessability of the entire internet we have now, may not exist. Their Future Scenarios videos demonstrate some of the problems we are internet users and providers may face.