Ecommerce Payment SolutionsBlueport.com

According to the State of Retailing Online 2010 report from Forrester and Shop.org, the next big frontier for e-commerce lies in international expansion.   The annual report was unveiled this year at the 2010 Shop.org Annual Summit in Dallas, Texas, and it provides insight into where B2C e-commerce retailers are in terms of their capability to expand globally.

According to the report, nearly 73% of the 87 online retailers surveyed are already sending merchandise abroad from their home country's distribution center, with an additional 17% having an established foreign warehouse in place. Retailers who ship abroad see about 5% of their revenue generated from foreign orders. 

However the big hurdle still remains in establishing and testing e-commerce logistics or e-commerce payment solutions to service these international customers. For example, when it comes to processing international returns, 37% of retailers currently require customers who want to return an item use a returns center in the retailer's country of origin, while 12% have an international returns center located in their own country to handle foreign returns.

Beyond just international e-commerce expansion, the report also offered a picture of some of the gains online retailers are beginning to see resulting from online retail site improvements, especially as the industry gears up for the critical holiday shopping period: 54% of online retailers say they've increased conversion rates over 2009 levels, 27% have seen gains in units per transaction, 47% say the value of average orders has gone up, and 31% say they've seen a decline in shopping cart abandonment rates, a key measure of customer satisfaction.

I’d love to hear whether these gains are in line with what you are seeing across your e-commerce sites?


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Offering your online customers flexible payment options is a no brainer.  This final step in the ecommerce transaction process is critical for the customer who may very quickly abandon their cart if they cannot pay how they want to, or if checkout is not seamless and easy.

Be it credit/debit cards, PayPal, gift cards or loyalty points, providing a multitude of ecommerce payment solutions is the final component of a successful ecommerce shopping experience that drives conversion and minimizes cart abandonment.

But integrating multiple ecommerce payment solutions and checkout options into your site can be a daunting and time consuming task.  Finding an ecommerce platform that supports these multiple payment options can be even more difficult.   
 
That's why at Blueport, we make integrating multiple ecommerce payments solutions a one step process for our clients.  All of the payment and checkout tools that you need are readily integrated into the Blueport ecommerce platform. 

So, when your online store launches, so does a robust and flexible payments and checkout process.  It's really that simple.

One of the biggest concerns many retailers face going online is customer theft and fraud through ecommerce transactions.  At Blueport, we work with our customers to minimize these concerns through an extensive database and fraud intercept solution for every ecommerce transaction embedded in our ecommerce platform.

Through a combination of proprietary systems and manual intervention, each individual order that comes in through the retailer’s ecommerce site is reviewed for fraud indicators prior to passing the order to their systems. Non-compliant orders are intercepted before ever reaching the retailer, significantly reducing their risk of chargebacks for ecommerce transactions.

Many of Blueport’s clients often find that their fraud rates for ecommerce transactions are lower than in their stores.

Key features include:

• Automated Order Review – We begin by establishing a rule set against which transactions are screened, with passing orders immediately inserted in your systems.
• Manual Intervention - For ecommerce transactions that fail automated review, Blueport Commerce will contact customers and credit card companies to attempt to validate customer payment, inserting only orders that pass this second screening.
• Monitoring - We monitor accept and decline rates for retailers’ credit card and store card transactions.