Make More Money Per Sale
Quite simply, people who buy with credit cards are not as concerned with price as customers who pay by cash or check. The typical customer who pays by credit card is more interested in convenience than price. This means that it is easier to make the sale, and you can even raise your prices, and make more money per sale, without it negatively impacting the number of sales you make.
Automatic Recurring Billing
If you offer a service or a product that requires a monthly fee, then credit card acceptance will save you a HUGE amount of time and effort in your regular day-to-day administration work. With credit card acceptance you can automatically bill your customers credit card on a regular basis, ensuring your payment, and reducing the hassle of paperwork and invoicing. This removes the problem of having customers who forget to remit their payment.
Improved Efficiency
This is one aspect of credit card acceptance that cannot afford to be overlooked. Credit card acceptance greatly reduces your day-to-day administration tasks because the payment process is completely automated. This will not only save you time and money on your office administration costs, but will eliminate the large time delay it takes for your checks to come in the mail. Even after getting your check in the mail you must take it to your bank, and wait for it to clear. Then, if there are any NSF charges you must go through the process again...
Beyond greatly reducing the time involved in doing your paperwork, and reducing your operating costs, credit cards offer another very significant advantage:
More Free Time To Market, Promote and GROW Your Business
The time that you save on doing your day-to-day administration tasks is time you can re-invest back into marketing and promoting your business. The importance of this is so significant, that it simply cannot be overstated. If you are not working to grow and expand your business, then you are just standing still while your competitors pull ahead.
By becoming more efficient you can direct more of your efforts towards promoting your business and updating your website, which in turn drives more sales and generates further profits. It is a win-win situation!
E-commerce Growth
E-commerce is continuing to grow in leaps and bounds. It will not be long before your competitors realize that their website should be making them money, and not costing them money.
According to comScore Inc, retail e-commerce spending in the U.S exceeded $95 billion USD in the first half of 2007. As an industry, e-commerce has grown nearly fivefold between 2000 and 2007.
To be right to the point -- the sooner you get into the e-commerce marketplace, the sooner you can begin to establish your customer base and become a leader in your industry. Your competitors will be racing against you to establish their presence in your market.
You will see your most significant company growth once you implement credit card acceptance -- and the sooner you implement it, the sooner you can begin to carve out your place in your market.
Cost Comparison
There is no magic formula that I can give you to calculate exactly how much credit card acceptance could benefit your business. The points I have listed here are just the tip of the iceberg, but should certainly help you to see how accepting credit cards is an important part of operating a successful e-commerce website.
One thing you can be certain of, is that for the small investment of time and money it takes to put credit card transactions on your website, the return on investment is tremendous. It will be one of the best investments you can make for your business..
In comparison, the same amount of money invested into traditional advertising would only be able buy a small add in the back of a local newspaper, that ran once a month.
The cost is so small, and the benefits are so great, that in most cases it simply doesn't make sense to not accept credit cards.
You now have a good foundation for why taking credit cards is essential to successfully operating and growing an internet business.
In the next part of this article, we will continue by looking how you can ensure that you get the best rates possible when you setup credit card processing on your website.