Accepting Online Payments - Cost vs. Convenience
If you rely on online marketing to promote and market your
business, you know that you must accept credit card payments
online to be successful. Immediacy and convenience are the
hallmarks of online transactions. When you're making a decision
about which online payment solution to use, you will ask
yourself the following question.
"Should I pay a bit extra for a professional solution or should
I pinch pennies and hope that a free solution will do?"
This is a fair and legitimate question for all online businesses
especially those that are new and financially constrained. We
all want to save money.
The question can be restated and better answered as "Is it worth
it to pay more to have branded payment pages, customized thank
you notes and receipts, a level of automation in post-sales
processing, and ease in reporting"?
The answer, I believe, is yes it is definitely worth the extra
expense because of the time and effort that you will save by not
having to perform the non-revenue generating tasks that managing
and dealing with a merchant account or a generic payment
processor entails.
How much time does it take to answer calls from clients that are
unsure what to do when they get to your 'free' generic payment
page, or track down payments from clients that didn't pay
because they couldn't understand the generic payment page
instructions (enter your account name etc.)?
How much time does it take to manually cut and paste email
addresses or send thank you notes and receipts to clients? How
much time does it take to change pricing or the language on your
'do it yourself' payment page?
The non-revenue generating tasks required to manage a business
are necessary but should not become the main activities of the
business. If you are a service professional, i.e., a coach or
consultant, your time should be spent in line with the 80-20
rule. That is; 80% of your time should be spent on revenue
generating activities and 20% on other activities such as the
administration of the business.
Think about it in terms of how much your time is worth. For
every hour that you spend dealing with non-revenue generating
activities, multiply it by the value of an hour of your time.
The answer to this math problem is how much money you are losing
by performing these tasks yourself. If the number of hours you
spend on administrative tasks exceeds 20% of your work week you
are cheating yourself out of revenue. And, aside from the lost
revenue potential, you will soon find that administrative busy
work is a drain on your motivation, energy and ultimately the
success of your business.
If paying an extra $10 a month for a professional, managed
online payment processing solution helps you to;
* reduce the time you'll spend searching for client payment
information, * automate post sales follow up and receipt
delivery to clients, * quickly get new payment pages up and
receiving payments, * reduce calls from clients making payments,
* look more professional and trustworthy, * not have to pay a
web developer for a secure site and * save money by not paying
gateway fees, statement fees and other variable merchant account
fees
then using a premium online payment processor isn't just worth
the extra 33 cents a day, it's a necessary cost of doing
business right.