Erich Stauffer

Tag: eCommerce

  • How to Convert Shopperpress Custom Post-Type Articles to WordPress Posts

    Recently I wrote about how to setup a blog on Shopperpress, which then led one of my readers to ask about what happens to the custom post-type articles Shopperpress uses for the blog functionality when you convert to another theme or want to move your content to another site or ecommerce platform?

    I saw your Shopperpress post, and I just wondered if you could give me any advice. I probably will move from Shopperpress to another platform in the near future. But for now, is it OK to use the “new-articles” function on WordPress to write articles/blog posts? I just wondered if I did this, would the blog posts be transferable from Shopperpress to the new cart I purchase? I just was a little confused by your blog post that’s all. I currently use the “article” template from Shopperpress on my blog page.

    I haven’t tested it, but I believe that posts written as “articles” are custom post-types, which don’t display natively without the plugin or theme calling them specifically. This means that if you were to switch themes, your articles would not display unless the new theme specifically went looking for them.

    Switching to a different shopping cart platform is an entirely different matter unless you were referring to a different WordPress plugin like WP-Ecommerce, which I don’t recommend. If switching to Big Commerce, you’d probably have to copy and paste it all in manually so make sure you do some sort of backup that makes sense to you before switching over.

    I haven’t actually written any blog posts thus far, I’m just in the process of setting it up. Is there an alternative than using the “article” post type to write blog posts? Basically, Shopperpress has hijacked the “posts” option on WordPress to create new products instead. So I can’t create blog posts that way. Is there an easy way to write blog posts on Shopperpress that are easy to move to a new shopping cart if I did move? I don’t know if doing it manually in the future is particularly appealing.

    You’re right in that Shopperpress uses the normal “posts” option to post products. Your options for moving custom post-types like Shopperpress articles to normal WordPress post-types involve using a plugin like pTypeConverter or Post Type Convertr. Your other option is to use a plugin like Backup WordPress.

    Wordpress Post Type Converter

  • eCommerce Blueprint 2.0

    I started writing this in January of 2013 in response to the original E-Commerce Blueprint from December of 2012, but now, 2 years later, I have more perspective after having helped several e-commerce companies get started.

    In 2013 I wrote a basic outline of things I felt were important ways to market an e-commerce business: pounding the flesh (pounding the streets and pressing flesh) as well as magazine adverts, Google Adwords, and trade shows.

    Here was my eCommerce Blueprint 2.0 from 2013:

    • Rough Plateau map
    • Buy the domain
    • Build Twitter and Facebook
    • Finalize design request / brand identity document
    • Hire a designer
    • Research product manufacturers
    • Buy a few products
    • Hire a video company
    • Do a Kickstarter campaign
    • Order original inventory

    I recommended Shopify but thought it was worthwhile to mention Squarespace. Lately, both are still fine platforms, but let’s dive into why the list from above is nearly worthless. First of all, what does “Rough Plateau map” even mean?

    Instead of going through them one-by-one, I’m just going to say that this list assumes you have a) a clear idea of the problem you’re solving, b) a known business model (i.e. I do X and I get paid), c) someone to actually do the work.

    Setting up a business in 2015 is incredibly easy. Creating a company that makes money is still hard.

    What Problem Are You Solving?

    There has to be a raison d’être (reason for being). How are you moving someone away from pain or towards pleasure? Do your customers love your product or service? It’s very easy to build a brand, but it’s very hard to build one people care about.

    How Will Your Business Make Money?

    How will you do “X” to get “$” in a repeatable fashion? Discovering the process for acquiring a customer for less than their average customer value (ACV) is called a “business model” and means you actually have a business.

    Who Will Do the Work?

    Even if you have a solution to a legitimate problem people have, customers love you, and you’ve found a way to acquire them for less than ACV, you still need to have someone to actually do the work.

    While at first it may sound obvious, ‘actually doing the work’ is quite complicated. It’s not a hard problem like ‘discovering a business model’, it’s a wet problem because we’re dealing with humans.

    Building a company in 2015 still requires human capital. Somebody has to do the work. Even if you hire someone to do the work for you, they have to actually do the work. No one wants to do the work.

    Who Has the Time to Work?

    It starts with an idea (1,2). You have the best intentions. You’re pumped. You’re excited. You start working on the problem. You get some traction. People are interested. People are buying. It’s time to hire.

    At an e-commerce business, typically the first person you hire is a person to help ship orders. Next, you hire someone to help with customer service issues. Third, you hire a salesperson to get more accounts.

    As you add more staff, you need more income so you decide to hire a marketing person, who then needs to hire a graphic designer to help create content for the website. Soon, you’re spending all of your time in meetings.

    Meanwhile, the first person you hired to ship orders has worked there long enough and seen enough new people hired that they feel entitled to either become a manager, move on to another organization, or hire someone under them to do what they do.

    “I need to get things off my plate so I can ‘X’,” you might here someone say. Or “I just need someone to help me do ‘Y’ so I can do my job.” These are all signs of humans trying to get out of the thing they were hired to do: work.

    But it’s not just employees. You’ll do it too. You’ll say to yourself, “I can’t ship boxes or write a blog post because I’m the CEO. I need to be out there pounding flesh and signing deals. I need to be leading my people to greatness.”

    All of these things can be true and still be wrong.

    There is a time to hire new people and there is a time to lead instead of produce, but make sure it’s not out of a place of selfishness or entitlement. It’s human nature to want to be doing less work and get paid more.

    How to Manage Your e-Commerce Staff

    Let’s say you have already figured out what people want, how to get customers, and you’re profitable. You’ve created a lifestyle business, but you want to scale it into a bigger company. You need to take things to the next “Plateau”.

    You decide to hire more sales staff and you ask the person shipping to help post to social media. On a whim, you decide to have a sale. Someone suggests a new product idea and you okay the development. Things are starting to hum.

    But then salespeople start fighting about one person stealing their leads or who gets credit for what. They don’t like the CRM they are using and not everyone is leaving contact activity notes leading to some embarrassing interactions.

    The warehouse specialists says he needs an inventory system to keep track of all these new products, but since he’s the one who has to ship out the orders, he’s subconsciously sabotaging marketing efforts with his blog posts.

    You decide to hire an outside IT consultant to come in and help implement and train your staff on how to use the new systems, but despite all the upgrades, sales begin to flatline, all while productivity and culture declines.

    People > Processes > Technology > Marketing > Sales

    Your people are your most important asset. It matters greatly who you hire. People affect culture, marketing, attitudes, and product decisions. Early hires have more impact, but every person impacts the company in some way.

    Processes built on the right people can be used with better effect, but bad processes don’t help the company. Be sure that the processes you have in place are known, are useful, and are being used. Ask them to do it and ask if they did it.

    Technology is a multiplier of people and processes. If you have good people in place with good processes, then invest in technology to support them, they will be happy, productive, and may actually enjoy doing the work.

    Once you’ve got all of those things in place, you can focus on marketing because you know with confidence that you’re not throwing good money against people who will turn customers away either consciously or unconsciously.

    A good marketing campaign supports a sales team – and if you’re going to take your e-commerce company from a lifestyle business to a large company, you need a great sales team. Sales will help you grow more than marketing.

    A good manager asks people to do something and asks them if they did it.

    What is My eCommerce Blueprint for 2015?

    If I were starting an e-commerce business in 2015, here’s what I would do, in order, if I were one person with no capital:

    1. Research trends in Google Trends, eBay, Yahoo Answers, Quora, and Google Autocompletes
    2. Pick a trend and research a vertical/niche that has the problem and cash to buy the solution
    3. Pick a vertical/niche and then start calling people in that niche to see if they have the problem and would pay for the solution
    4. Research a solution for the problem and how much it would cost to buy or manufacture
    5. Call people in your vertical/niche and ask them to buy the solution you found for more than it costs
    6. If they agree to buy it, give them a way for them to buy it (i.e. a PayPal button or Square on your phone)
    7. If they buy it, then use the money to buy or build the thing and then deliver the product to the customer
    8. Get feedback from the customer on the product, ask for testimonials, get pictures of people using the product
    9. Use the materials to create a website to sell the product on either Shopify or Squarespace
    10. Setup social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Youtube, and Google+)
    11. Setup email list on Mailchimp and add the signup form to the website
    12. Write blog posts that answer people’s questions and post out on social media
    13. Reach out to relevant bloggers and offer to write blog posts for their sites
    14. Social bookmark from sites like Reddit, Delicious, and Digg
    15. Call prospects in the vertical/niche and ask them to buy

  • 10 New Business Ideas

    I closed my web design and IT consulting business in 2012 and plan on starting a new business in 2013. It wasn’t that the old business was failing. It was a success, I just wanted to do something different, something that was easier to scale up without adding employees (at least not right away), and the name (Watershawl) just didn’t make sense anymore.

    I am a professional!
    I am a professional!
    Why Start Your Own Business?

    One of my primary reasons for wanting to run my own business is to be able to hire workers just as I was hired when I first started out. I think of it as the natural progression of things and as a way to give back to the community who has given so much to me. The secondary reason is the scheduling freedom it allows.

    With that in mind, here are some business ideas I am considering in 2013:

    Start an eCommerce Business

    I’ve done affiliate marketing for around four years now, but I’m ready for the higher margins associated with e-commerce. It all started when I realized that three of my clients were doing e-commerce and I kept getting job requests from e-commerce companies. After I continually got told I was over-qualified I began to realize that I should probably start my own e-commerce business. The only issue now is in deciding what product to sell, which is not easy. In fact, there isn’t much about e-commerce that is easy, but it is a proven business model.

    Start an Alternative Energy Installer Business

    When you consider how many homes and businesses still don’t have solar, wind, or other alternative energy sources connected to them, the opportunity seems huge, but when you look up on a cloudy, winter day in Indiana it seems like there could be better businesses to start. It may be better to start a business simply painting roofs white in the summer. There are companies in Indiana doing this though, mostly up north.

    Start an eCommerce Consulting Business

    When I think about all I’ve learned from e-commerce in 2012 and couple that with my web design, SEO, and affiliate marketing knowledge I seem like a good candidate for an e-commerce consultant or what the customer might call a ‘ecommerce web designer’. I have experience with WordPress and WP-Ecommerce, but I recommend BigCommerce or Shopify.

    Start a Restaurant

    This is one of the most capital-intensive and risky things you could do, but I’ve always had the desire to own and run one. I’d serve chili with cut celery sticks (like a Bloody Mary) and put sliced pickles in our grilled cheese sandwiches. And since community involvement is one of the trends in 2013 I’d hold contests for creating and naming new menu items. Scotty’s does a good job of this and with social media.

    Start an ePublishing Company

    I see a trend towards self-publishing ebooks and even traditional paper books, but although this process had become easier it still requires some graphic design, layout, and technical knowledge not to mention basic editing, sales, and marketing techniques. There could be a need in the Indianapolis area for a digital book consultant service based on some feedback I’ve gotten through presentations and meetings I had in 2012.

    Start a Content Management Company

    Content managers are relatively new job roles that are a direct result of the amount of information now stored in company Intranets, business blogs, and e-commerce sites. Because of the ease of creation and the fact that content marketing is so important to SEO, the sheer amount of content each organization has to maintain has created the need for content management services. This interests me because I like to organize the world’s information (like Google).

    Start an Affiliate Marketing Business

    Although I have been doing affiliate marketing for a while now, you could say I haven’t been too methodical about it. By applying systems, consistency, and dedicated effort to affiliate marketing, I could turn this side hobby into a real business. Although the margins can be lower than traditional e-commerce, there is no inventory to store and ship. This is the least capital-intensive, but still requires a lot of work to be successful.

    Start a Business Consulting Company

    I believe management is an important component of a business’ success. As a business analyst I helped business owners create systems to manage their business by analyzing, summarizing, and reporting on my findings to business owners. I did this as a technology consultant, but most of the time IT work was very little of what I did. There seems to be a need in the Indianapolis market for people with advanced Excel and Visio skills, but the trends are moving more towards analyzing SQL and other types of databases which require programming languages I don’t know.

    Start a Dental Consulting Business

    Independent dental offices are usually ran by either the dentist alone or the dentist and an office manager. They don’t usually have their own marketing or IT staff, but have the need for both marketing and IT services. There is a steep learning curve to understanding dental procedures and their specialized software (ex. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Practiceworks). It also helps to know HIPAA laws, CPR and OSHA requirements, and systems for how to greet, treat, and keep patients. On top of all of that there is staff efficiency, utilization models, report tracking, and HR issues. It is amazing how complex one dental office really is and so there are many ways to add value through consulting services.

    Start a Mobile Device Consulting Company

    I actually started one of these in 2011 called “Geek Hand”, but I may have started it a little too soon. Since then smartphones and tablet PCs have only grown in popularity and use. Businesses are now starting to give their employees iPhones and iPads instead of Blackberries and laptops. The value here is in helping businesses learn how to sync their email, contacts, and calendars with Microsoft Exchange and Google Apps. For screen repair I normally refer people to CPR in Carmel.

    Bonus: Start an Import/Export Business

    If you have the connections, the capital, and don’t mind travel, this is an exciting business model that is similar to affiliate marketing in that you take a percentage of each sale you make. The primary difference is you’re normally dealing in wholesale amounts, which means the payouts can be bigger. The key to the import/export business is to look for opportunities where you can add value to the transaction. For example, you might have identified a farmer who operates 75% of a given market, but has no email account. By being the connection between the farmer (the manufacturer) and an e-commerce site, you can take a cut of the goods shipped. Another example is to look for countries that used to not trade with other countries that have had a change and now have started to trade openly. One example is Vietnam. The service you will provide is in developing first-of-its-kind relationships between vendors in the US and suppliers in Vietnam. You will have to find global shippers, learn the laws of their country and yours, and make sure your packages don’t get stuck in customs!

    If you read this, you might also be interested in 20 Good Business Ideas from 2011.

  • Why Warby Parker Will Be the Next Apple

    Warby Parker, the fashion company specializing in discount, specialty eyeglasses, is in the perfect position to take over the next wave in personal, wearable computing via Google Glass.

    After recently raising almost $37 million in venture capital the eyeglasses company, Warby Parker, seems poised to do more than just make ultra-hip eyewear with a side of delicious customer service. Investors are known for looking ahead to future trends and it’s now become obvious that augmented-reality glasses are the new future of mobile devices. The popularity of Warby Parker and Google’s need for an existing market base makes them good partners as product designer, McKay Thomas, pointed out on September 11, 2012, stating, “Like any new piece of hardware looking for its first customer base, Google Glass, Google’s heads-up display device, needs a distribution platform. A platform for Google’s eyeglasses attachment could offer a sales channel, as well as type of social proof that it is acceptable to use the new wearable computer.” Filmmaker, Albert Art, agrees, stating, “IF Google decides to team up with an eyewear company, might I suggest Warby Parker.”

    As LeVar Burton once said, “But don’t take my word for it.” Warby Parker is hiring a “Principal Software Engineer, Computer Vision” who can “develop computer / machine vision applications that make our company succeed.”

    Why Compare Warby Parker to Apple?

    As Marc Andreessen said on August 20, 2011, “Software is eating the world,” and as David Kirkpatrick argued in Forbes, “Every company is a software company.” Warby Parker is no exception. At their very core they are a e-commerce store, which is it’s very nature, software running on a web server, but it’s more than that. They have “virtual try-on” functions on their website that allow you to upload a picture and see what you look like without every touching a frame. They have developed a pattern for making money and an e-commerce blueprint for how to be successful in 2013 and beyond. This includes doing things like hiring directors of Data Science, Software Engineering, and Computer Vision. Nokia was the number one smartphone manufacture for 15 years and until Apple started making the iPhone they were pretty hard to unseat. Warby Parker has already begun to unseat Luxottica in a $16 Billion dollar industry. If they can develop a platform for Google Glass or other wearable, augmented reality applications from Microsoft like Apple did with iTunes, they can create the one-two punch of selling the hardware and the applications developed for them. It’s safe to assume Google will want to do the same with Google Play, but unless they go the route they did of developing their own Nexus smartphones and purchasing Motorola they are unlikely to control the eyeglass market and will need someone like Warby Parker to deliver their products.

  • E-Commerce Blueprint

    While this isn’t a technical ‘how-to’ list on how to start an ecommerce company, it’s the top 10 list I’ve developed on how to start an ecommerce company in 2013:

    • Give back – be a socially conscious company with a cause
    • Use keywords in your titles (the most impactful part of SEO)
    • Make it shareable and shareworthy (Gamification/viralness)
    • Write about peoples problems (and how to solve/escape them)
    • Go small within a niche first – build up a “beachhead” then expand
    • Repurpose your content (ex. record you reading a blog post)
    • Build a platform for marketing (ex. a website + social media)
    • Be a real, transparent person (as a opposed to just a company)
    • Don’t worry about anything you can pay for (ex. design elements)
    • Start with the product first, then build out from there #sellfirst

    As I wrote on my Twitter profile, I am “an IT business analyst in Indianapolis specializing in WordPress web design & technology consulting & I’m now building an ecommerce business.” I have decided to document the building of this ecommerce business on this blog and a lot of these ideas have to do with content development, which I have talked about in customer development and how to get more customers. It’s really about creating systems for ecommerce and developing success by management. According to Steve Blank, startups are simply a, “organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” An e-commerce business is not a startup because it is already a well-defined business model that is proven and repeatable. The only question is to how you will run your e-commerce business. This is not a search for a new way of making money, but of your way of making money. Essentially it’s a question of how you will run, or manage your business. In other words, it’s a search for your internal business model, or management style, that can be repeated and replicated within your own company (or e-commerce business). This above list on how I choose to run my e-ecommerce business is a glimpse into the how I think an ecommerce business should be ran.

  • One Dozen Rubber Ducky Ducks

    This past week I sold One Dozen Rubber Duckie Ducky Ducks in a nativity scene (set includes: Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, 3 wise men, angel, lamb, cow, donkey and camel) without ever linking to the product. It would make most sense if it came from this website since I talk a lot about Erich Stauffer figurines and other collectibles, but it wasn’t. It was clicked on through my site on Coby Kyros Tablets. That’s right. Someone looking for information on Android tablets bought a nativity scene made of rubber duckies. But that’s not all. I have a site that exclusively promotes learning sets like science experiements for kids and yet MID Tablets sold a child’s microscope. Who did sell a Coby Kyros tablet? A page about technology consulting. This goes to show, it pays to post (and post often) #myBody. Here are some of the systems I use to use affiliate marketing to help transition to a full-fledged ecommerce company or “etailer“.

    Systems for eCommerce/Affiliate Marketing

    To run a successful online business probably requires some systems so I’ve been developing some and thought I’d share:

    • Review Amazon Best Seller lists and curate new items to add to your site(s) – (Daily)
    • Review sold items that were not linked to and create posts for them accordingly – (Daily)
    • Review Google Analytic trends for top content and keywords on your site – (Monthly)
    • Review Amazon sales clicked, but not sold* – (Monthly)
    • Review Google Adsense reports for trends – (Weekly)

    Posting Routines

    • Post SEO optimized title and META description, reviews, a picture, and some original content (I use WordPress SEO by Yoast)
    • Install “Social” plugin by MailChimp + “Twitter Tools” to not only display tweets, but post to Twitter
    • Post also on Google+ and Facebook (and any other social network you can systematically stay engaged in)

    How to Read the Amazon Associates Orders Report

    *When I download the Orders report, I get a view of what people are clicking on, but not buying. I think the “Product Link Clicks” is a better metric for us to track since we can’t control what they do once they are on Amazon, but let’s read what Amazon Associates says:

    Orders Reports display number of clicks for each product via a Product Link or add-to-cart button, number of orders placed through the Product Link, and the resulting Product link conversion. You can also see other items that were ordered after customers clicked through to other Amazon pages.

  • How to Link to Articles in Shopperpress

    Shopperpress is an ecommerce WordPress theme that has many functions, but some are not so obvious. For example, you can’t easily edit the header navigation bar links. While it automatically links to pages you create and gives you the option to hide the ones you don’t want displayed, you can’t add custom links without editing the theme files directly. We created a Shopperpress child theme for one of our clients, but we didn’t want to break the inherent functionality of the theme – we wanted to work with it. The problem was, the client wanted the header navigation bar to link to “articles”, but it wasn’t really clear at first how to do this.

    How to Link to Articles in Shopperpress

    Shopperpress takes over WordPress default post types and calls them “Products”. This means that typical blog content is forced over to a custom post type called “Articles”. These articles are created and managed in the “Article Manager”. If your WordPress website already had blog posts, these will need manually changed over to the post type “Article Manager”. To display all of the articles, create a page called “Articles” or “Blog” or whatever you like and change the Page Template type to “Articles Template”. This “TPL” file in the Shopperpress theme calls a hook that pulls in all of the articles. This new page will now appear in the header navigation until it is asked not to. To change the order in the menu, change the Order number of the pages. The lowest number, starting at “0” will appear on the left and the highest number will appear on the right. If the numbers are the same, they go in the order they were created.

    More Notes About Shopperpress Blog Function

    • Shopperpress requires you to change the Permalinks to %postname% which means that you lose any SEO value of putting categories before post names with %category%/%postname%.
    • Shopperpress requires you to put in a description for each article. It doesn’t automatically display the content or the excerpt. This gives you more control, but takes time.
    • Exported blog post Articles created as the Articles Template custom post type will not display on a default WordPress installation when imported unless Shopperpress is used.

    While Shopperpress is great for automatically pulling in affiliate products from sites like Amazon and eBay, it’s not a great blogging platform, but that’s okay if your primary goal is to use WordPress for ecommerce. However, if you’re wanting to develop an ecommerce site, we are currently recommending Big Commerce due to it’s speed, extensibility, and CSS/HTML editability.

  • Balls of Steel

    In response to marketing and distribution device about product development:

    Sometimes you just have to write something, make a decision, just do something before the true answer will come to you. That’s how it is with me at least. A lot of times I won’t know what to do so I’ll just choose something and then it’s like the fog lifts and everything becomes clear. A lot of the time my first choice is wrong, but if I didn’t make it I wouldn’t have been able to know the right choice. In a small way that’s what happened after I emailed you last. I almost immediatly knew how I wanted to help you.

    I’m starting an online store for coffee and tea accessories called pourjoy.com and would like to sell your steel balls as an accessory for making non-diluted ice coffee. I wouldn’t call it Balls of Steel though. I’d have to call it something else like “liquid metal” or “iced beans”. I’d see if your mom could buy like ten sets of them from you for me to sell in my store and that would be a good market test and potential new distribution channel for you. What I’d encourage you to do is to find ways to sell the same product as many different ways as you can.

    Think about the movie The Hudsucker Proxy and how the circle is used first as a hoola hoop and then as a straw. If you haven’t seen it then Coca Cola is a better example. They sell you the same coke in a bottle, can, and by fountain drink. Mmmm. I’m getting thirsty just thinking about it. For your product I can see it being sold as ying yang balls, stress balls, desk toys, marble run accessories, a game of some sort, a drinking game, as a way to move large furniture, or as a way to shatter large panes of glass.

    If you really want to sell a lot of these you’ll need to both have market demand and either large barriers between you and your competition or a huge head start. If you haven’t read how Warren Buffet picks companies, it’s very similar. He would want to know how hard it is for someone to make what you have or do what you do. He would want to see patents and large capital costs that make a virtual moat around your product protecting its business model for years to come. I guess I don’t see that with your product.

    Have you considered getting into ecommerce or affiliate marketing instead of manufacturing? You know what ecommerce is, but you may not know about affiliate marketing so here’s a brief primer. Using Amazon.com as an example, anything I link to at Amazon with my code I get a percentage of if someone buys it. Percents range from 6-8% on average. With ecommerce the margins are higher, but so is the risk when inventory is involved. Some of that risk can be mitigated with drop shipping services, but the margins are lower.

    I know I want to get into ecommerce and so I am leveraging my background and experience in affiliate marketing, SEO, and web design to learn ecommerce and make a go of it. I’d be happy to share with you what I’m learning and catch up with you in December when you’re in town. Your mom says you’re making a lot of money waiting tables down there and that you’re doing good in school. I know she’s really proud of you and wants to see you succeed and I do too.

  • 2 Ways to Get More Email Addresses 2 New Ways to Get Money

    For small businesses who are interested in growing their email marketing and transactional email in order to better market and reduce costs, I wanted to share two new ways to collect emails, which just happen to dovetail into two new ways to make money.

    2 New Ways to Get Email Addresses:

    In the past, you may have ‘straight-up asked’ people for their email addresses with a paper form in your office or a web form on your website. You may have even incentivized them with a coupon for handing over such valuable information. But maybe this hasn’t worked so well for whatever reason (fear of spam? older client base?) so here are two new ways to collect email addresses:

    1. Ask the patient or customer at checkout whether or not they’d like their statement receipt emailed to them. If they don’t have an email on file, we add it then. People may be more likely to give you their email address when it has to do with transactional information like statements and balances.

    2. Allow patients/customers/donors to make payments online or to buy products (like toothpaste or gift certificates) online. In either of these cases, the patient will be required to enter their email address. These also happen to be the two new ways to get money.

    While cost savings associated with email vs. paper mailings, turning off the lights when you’re not using them, and stopping the local newspaper might work for a while, eventually you’re going to want to start getting more cash flow in the door. You’re going to want to leverage the website you’ve already paid for to start collecting payments and/or selling products online.

    2 New Ways to Get Money:

    If you don’t already take payments online, your paitents or customers are paying in person or by mail. Why are you making it so hard for your constituents to give you money?. Here are two ways you can get patients or donors, respectively, to start paying online:

    1. Allow patients, customers, or donors to make a payment online. These payments can be setup as a one-time or recurring payment and can be stand-alone or embedded in an ecommerce platform like OScommerce, WP-e-Commerce for WordPress, or Shopify. I’ve also heard Big Commerce is good, but have no experience with it.

    2. Sell something online that you can ship to them – a new revenue source. If your office is already used to mailing out packages daily via USPS, FedEx, and UPS, why not add product sales to the mix? Think of it as a value-added service to your business by saving your customers or patients a trip to the office to pick something up you sell.

    Payment Gateways

    One of the most confusing aspects of setting up and accepting payments online via credit card or debit card is the “payment gateway” which is the service that actually processes the transaction. There are plenty of banks and other companies that offer this service with a host of different requirements and possibilities. While I recommend using Square for some small businesses, they do not offer a web payment gateway. The alternative to Square is Stripe, which has similar pricing and transparency. Paypal has traditionally been a great option and one I have used in the past, but Stripe is making it easier to stay PCI-compliant due to the way their technology keeps all the credit card processing on their servers. However, according to their site, “SSL is required when you use Stripe.js to make live charges. If you aren’t using Stripe.js, you’ll also need to ensure your server is fully PCI compliant.”

    If you would like to learn how to add payments to your website and are located in the Indianapolis, Indiana area, please give Erich Stauffer a call.