Using the E-Commerce Internet .... Shipping Keep it simple!  You've heard this from us before but, we can't stress the point too much.  Your Internet store is not for you; It's for your customer. The quickest way to lose a customer is to give them sticker shock by adding a large amount to the order for shipping and handling just when they're ready to ante up with a credit card. We call this the "free tapes and records" scheme. You've seen it in telemarketing ads. The product is $3.95 and the S&H is ... well, extra. It's usually going to be such a hit that the advertiser won't mention it up front. Telemarketers get away with this because once a customer is on the telephone placing the order, they are reluctant to tell the salesperson to forget it when hearing the total charge. Don't count on such sticky customers at your internet store. In fact a recent survey revealed that the most common reason for abandoned shopping carts was the resentment and/or shock at seeing the last minute addition of shipping and handling charges. The best solution is to include the S&H in the item price and advertise S&H as included. Think of yourself as the consumer; wouldn't this be a nice offer. The chances are that if you have a specialty store with an informative web site, the price alone isn't going to make or break a sale. Sticker shock at checkout will. The next best approach, where practical, is to try and average out costs over all orders and just add a flat charge for everyone. Do not, however, add large handling charges to make up for under priced items. The internet customer has too much savvy to fall for that one. OK, we offer the MyStore3 storefront that will compute shipping costs at least five different, not mutually exclusive, ways and even provide zone and weight sensitive UPS charges. So why are we telling you not to do this. For one thing, your cost for MyStore3 will be more than our simpler webPeddle and PeddleGold stores and setting up MyStore3, using all of the options, is a lot more complex. MyStore products are targeted more toward the Internet catalog store with a large number of different products, varying widely in size and weight. It just makes good sense to go the simple route when you can. How should you ship your products? As the merchant, you know better than we do the best and most economical shipping method for your particular products. You probably also know that it's good practice to get a return receipt or at least delivery confirmation. In the past for US merchants, delivery confirmation meant using one of the common carriers. Recently however, the US Postal service has started offering delivery confirmation and signature confirmation for Priority Mail and Parcel Post at fairly economical rates. A delivery confirmation will cost an additional 40 cents for Priority Mail and 50 cents on Parcel Post. Signature confirmation is $1.75. In all cases you can now access receipt information on-line. For rate information:  http://usps.com/consumers/domestic.htm For confirmation info:  http://www.usps.com/shipping/trackandconfirm.htm One reason for mentioning signature and delivery confirmation is to alert you to a potential trouble area when shipping merchandise and taking credit card payment on-line. It's a very easy for your customer to call their card issuing bank and claim they "never got the stuff". If you shipped it to them and don't have proof of delivery ...goodby money and product. Sure this is a fraudulent claim but, it comes down to your word against the customer's. Most of the time, the customer's bank is going to side with their customer and charge back the payment to you. The funds will be deducted from your merchant account even before you're notified of a claim. The answer to this is:  You MUST keep good records, which is a great intro to our next article about taking credit cards on the Internet. Next issue:  Credit Cards Up-comming:  attracting and keeping customers Further reading:  Selecting a Storefront  Products of ImagineNation!    Providing on-line stores for small and mid-size Internet businesses since 1996,   Imaginenation is a full service company meeting all of your e-commerce needs:    Storefronts     Credit Card Processing     Back Office Utilities     Merchant Accounts DO YOU NEED HELP WITH OUR PRODUCTS OR HAVE A GENERAL QUESTION? Please E-Mail specific product questions using the mail form at  ImagineNation.com For general information questions, visit our moderated public Q&A   FORUM Recent     Changes    Improvements    Upgrades We added a new feature for BakPak clients and upgraded the order detail page. BakPak users now have a printable shipping invoice with optional shipping and return labels similar to that available for IAMS clients. The discount rate for IAMS clients has been reduced to 4.6% and the per transaction fee is down to 55 cents. These charges are the lowest available anywhere on the Internet for full service 3rd party credit card processing. The reductions are in part a tribute to the quality of our IAMS clients which has allowed us to negotiate the reductions with our merchant acquiring bank. Have you seen our new PeddleGold storefront? This may be just what you're looking for!  webPeddleGold is a subscribed storefront application service. You host all store profile and product tables specific to your site and we provide the shopping cart code to make it all work. This means any fixes, improvements, upgrades, and new features happen immediately. You never have to worry about downloading and installing new files. And to make life even easier, webPeddleGold includes an on-line console where you manage your product tables and automatically transfer them to your own site. With PeddleGold you have the option to choosing a seamless interface to any of our back office utilities for order management, credit card processing, and much more. PeddleGold is the standard for a robust, easy to use, low cost storefront. Take a demo ride.       Check our low prices. Get your first month free. Tips 'n Tricks    HTML syntax shown here uses brackets [] instead of braces <> for proper rendering. All of the ImagineNation storefronts use links for searching the TYPE field of the product database table to present your customer with a list of selectable items. Often you'll want to limit the list of items displayed from a specific link to only certain items. For instance, using the readdb() link to generate a list: Lets say you have a department store and one of the categories you sell is furniture. Presenting a full list of furniture items would be too long to make any sense to the customer. Therefore, it is desirable to break the list down further into the sub categories of chairs and further still, kitchen chairs and chairs for the den, etc. Different page links might appear as follows: [a href=javascript:top.readdb('furniture');void(0);]All Furniture[/a] [a href=javascript:top.readdb('chairs');void(0);]All Chairs[/a] [a href=javascript:top.readdb('chairs kitchen');void(0);]Kitchen Chairs[/a] [a href=javascript:top.readdb('den');void(0);]All Den Items[/a] [a href=javascript:top.readdb('chairs den');void(0);]Den Chairs[/a] The database list would look something like this: line[1] = new item('furniture chairs den','Windsor arm chair','','',''); line[2] = new item('furniture chairs kitchen','High Bar Stool','','',''); line[3] = new item('furniture chairs','','Arm Chair','',''); line[4] = new item('furniture chairs den','Recliner','','',''); line[5] = new item('furniture chairs kitchen','Retro metal arm chair','','',''); line[6] = new item('furniture chairs den','Queen Anne side chair','','',''); line[7] = new item('furniture sofas den','Wood arm, brocade sofa','','',''); line[8] = new item(....etc. The first link will return a list of all furniture items in the db, while the other links will be more selective. The last link will select only those items categorized as den chairs. The rule of thumb is that more terms used in the TYPE field of the db, the more control you have over the ability to select items by category for particular lists. ImagineNation © 1996 - 2002 Suffering from overload?  List Removal E-ComTips is brought to you by ImagineNation because you are listed as a user of one of our storefront products or have subscribed to receive the Newsletter itself. To remove your address from our list, go to List Remove and, if your correct address and service ID are not showing when you get there, enter the correct values manually. Please do not reply to this newsletter return e-mail address. Replies here are not received. Use the Mail Form at ImagineNation to correspond.

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