Cutting Expenses

Well, like every other retailer, money is getting extremely tight.

Two things I'm targeting to cut my expenses: payment gateway fees and SSL.

Just got my bank statement and am completely disgusted at payment gateway fees. I'm using Authorize net with, I think, National Bankcard processing. What I didn't understand is that BOTH take a cut.

I know taking credit cards on your own site looks professional, but good grief! It's way over 10%. Not worth it in my opinion.

If any Zenners have better solutions, please share.

I have Google checkout available - which I prefer, but couldn't figure out how to get rid of the other payment button. Love to be able to do that.

Second, must a site have SSL for Zencart to work? If I use Google checkout, credit card info is entered on Google's site, not mine.

No you don't strictly need SSL for Zen Cart, but many people won't sign up with you if you ask for personal information on non-secure pages, even if that doesn't include credit card data.

Thank you, kuroi.

Google Checkout gathers and saves customer information for me in their app. Paypal does as well.

Can the sign up portion of Zencart be disabled?

Not currently in core code, though it's planned for the future. for the time being you would have to use an add-in mod to achieve this. There's at least one, possibly two.

Google Checkout gathers and saves customer information for me in their app.
It is not possible to use googlecheckout in LIVE mode without an SSL cert that is approved by Google...

Concerning Credit Card fees, try your local bank, credit union or even Costco to see if they have better discount rates. You might have to use the Off-Line CC module and buy/lease a regular merchant terminal but it might save you some $$$.

I have a bricks and mortar store and have found that doing it this way saves an enormous amount of money.

Because Merchant Service Clearinghouses never compare 'apples to apples' so to speak, I take my last statement, clear out all the discount rates and other fees, then make potential Clearing Houses give me a comparable statement.

For instance:
x number of Qualified transactions for $xx.00 dollars
x number of Mid-Qualified transactions for $xx.00 dollars
and so on.

Some will charge you per transaction, other charge a monthly fee, some charge a statement fee. All you care about is the bottom line. Remember that you always pay more for telephone or internet transactions where the card is not present, and your transaction rate also depends on your average ticket

Most Clearing Houses HATE my method of comparison, but it keeps them honest, so to speak. It'll take them a week to generate a comparison statement.

You'll sacrifice convenience for the sake of savings using the off-line CC payment , but it might be worth it depending on your volume.

Good luck.

By the way, I get a call every 6 months or so from my Merchant Services Clearing House and when they ask if there's anything they can do for me, I ask for a rate review. Every time they've reduced one charge/discount rate or another, so it never hurts to ask for a lower rate.

You'll sacrifice convenience for the sake of savings using the off-line CC payment , but it might be worth it depending on your volume.

Please note: READ your merchant agreement - using your terminal for internet sales could be against the rules and if caught you could lose your merchant account -

Also - in the end you usually end up paying about the same one way or the other - where one place is cheap another place makes up for it.

This next piece of advice is going to sound completely off the wall - but RAISE your prices by 10 to 15% - While you may lose a sale or 2 the extra profit on the rest will more than make up for it AND cover your merchant account costs.

Good SSL costs 15-50usd per year(you dont have to go for those that cost 1k+), so I dont see how skipping SSL can really cut your cost here.

Transaction fee is a different story. Each merchant provider can offer a slightly different fee, and if you have good sale volume you can lower down the rate as well. Since the economy is going bad, I think they may be more willing now to lower the rates to keep you with them, why not try giving them a call and see what they say?

And also, Kim recommendation on price raising is worth considered. You should really try it.

Almost all web hosts offer a shared SSL. No extra charge. Some customers will see the URL change when in SSL mode but will continue to chug on through the order.

I dropped my membership in PayPal Pro saving $360 US per year. Now only using PayPal express and have not dropped one bit in my Conversion Rate. Customers have complained but continue through the purchase anyway.

Folks-

Something that needs discussing here is what is an expense and what is an investment in your business...

A true expense is something that does not give you a return on your investment - Your electric bill is probably a cost that doesn't generate any income, but your advertising is a cost that shold bring back more money than it cost, an investment in growing your business.

A merchant account or payment processor IS going to have costs involved - there is no getting around it, but you have to look at whether you have gained or lost sales because you limited the payment options available to your customers. The more options you have available, the easier it is for the customer to pay you, the more sales you make and the more profit you make in the end.

Agreed that spending in order to retrieve is required. I believe efficient spending were my points. Testing what works and does not work should be part of ones business plan. And continued testing throughout the life of the business is needed.

Lovely:

Well, like every other retailer, money is getting extremely tight.

Two things I'm targeting to cut my expenses: payment gateway fees and SSL.

Just got my bank statement and am completely disgusted at payment gateway fees. I'm using Authorize net with, I think, National Bankcard processing. What I didn't understand is that BOTH take a cut.

I know taking credit cards on your own site looks professional, but good grief! It's way over 10%. Not worth it in my opinion.

If any Zenners have better solutions, please share.

I have Google checkout available - which I prefer, but couldn't figure out how to get rid of the other payment button. Love to be able to do that.

Second, must a site have SSL for Zencart to work? If I use Google checkout, credit card info is entered on Google's site, not mine.

Not sure why your cost is 10% but mine for the year is about 2.5% of sales on credit card sales using Authorizenet and a processor.

Also, agree with Kim.... I do not recommend being the low ball player (even good margins look slim at the end of the year when you remove expenses). I had a competitor slash prices... what did I do? I raised prices. Sales are unchanged at a positive growth.

If you are my competitor I would definitely recommend you get rid of your SSL! :clap: And move to cheaper hosting too. :clap:

Shrimp-Gumbo-mmmhhh

I have always thought about opening a second store with a different name and look. And having higher prices. I will have to bring that back into a new project.

I use the credit card processing built into my Peachtree Accounting software. You do have to type in the card information, but it works great. $20 a month plus the standard 2%-3%.

I would not foresake an SSL or use the shared SSL.

you don't want your zencart to be at mysite.godaddy.com/store or some such. you want it to be at YOUR domain - mysite.com/store

HOWEVER I found a great deal on SSL certificates: check out RapidSSL

I don't work for them or anything, but I did get my cert there, and it works great.

If you're looking to reasonably cut expenses, this is a good option. An SSL is an SSL.

I have also been surprise at the cost of gateways and whatnot. I had a brick and mortar and and used the offline processing method to run cards, however I have now closed that store in favor of just dot-com. I currently only have PayPal and Google Checkout for payment options and have seen no decrease in online sales from before and now.

I did at one point make sure to have info regarding that customers do NOT NEED a PayPal account to pay through PayPal.

Another option I considered was using PayPal's virtual terminal. It's $30/month plus I think 3%. Seems cheaper than others.

You could use offline CC Zen Cart module. I use it but it takes so much time to manually process orders that if you get a load of orders like I do near Christmas, its probably a false economy. Your time costs money!! So if could be cheaper to use a live gateway as you do rather than processing orders manually, wasting time you could be using to grow your business.

I think you need at least two payment options, one a gateway or offline CC module and Paypal. Paypal Express Checkout works great for me. It's not too expensive as long you don't get very low order values and its great for conversions. I would suggest Google Checkout aswell but I can't get it to work yet. Two payment options will help conversions, no doubt about that.

As Kim said you need to invest some money, but in the right things. In my bricks and mortar store I pay over £50,000 a year in just rent and rates. You can't cut all costs, to run a business, there's going to be costs involved. Kim's right on the money!

Do not get rid of SSL!! Do that and you might aswell give up now. As others have said shared SSL is available from most hosts for free.

1. Keep SSL
2. Use two payment options - paypal a must to help conversions!
3. Control other business expenses

John
Retro 36

www.retro36.co.uk
www.retro36.ca

I know this thread spans a couple of months is posting.

At least for SSL there is http://www.namecheap.com that appears to be offering some good deals on SSL.

They have RapidSSL for $9.95 or Comodo for free with another purchase. I am though skeptical about the low prices on what usually is a more expensive product.

I have never used them, but maybe could save money over GoDaddy which I currently use.