Tag Archives: merchants

Interchange Settlement Nears Preliminary Approval [2023 Update]

Today the Official Merchant Services Blog explains why the controversial Interchange settlement is being considered for preliminary approval, despite the backlash from merchants and large corporations. We began talking about the possibility of ‘The Big Cash Comeback’ when the settlement was first announced, and later we discussed the opposition to the settlement.

Last week Judge John Gleeson said the controversial proposed settlement appears to meet the requirements for preliminary approval, however he also said he would hear merchants’ objections to the settlement as well. Lawyers had struck the settlement between the merchant plaintiffs and the bank defendants back in July.

“It seems clear that there is an expectation among some interested parties that the preliminary approval process should be more involved in this case than in the usual class action,” Gleeson, of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., wrote in an order setting the next hearing for November 9^th.

The involved parties and observers alike agree that this is no ordinary case. The litigation involves merchants and merchant trade groups, some individually and some as a class, which sued Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., and some large banks to challenge credit and debit card Interchange rates on antitrust grounds in 2005.

The proposed settlement would have the defendant’s pay $6.6 billion in damages and temporarily cut Interchange fees by $1.2 billion, as well as provide merchants with relief from some network rules. In return, the merchants would forgo the right to sue the networks in the future over interchange and rules. The general consensus is that the settlement gives too much to the networks and would bind millions of current and future card-accepting merchants to its terms.

Judge Gleeson acknowledged the controversy, stating that all objections will receive careful consideration by the court. The Judge also noted that the threshold for preliminary approval of a settlement is “meaningfully lower” than the standard for final approval.

Gleeson said, “Preliminary approval is appropriate where the proposal appears to be the product of serious negotiation and further appears to be within the range of possible final approval.” He later added: “I have reviewed the settlement agreement, and at first blush it appears to satisfy the threshold requirements for preliminary approval.”

While we have discussed this settlement from different aspects previously, noting the advantages it would seem to give the Issuing Banks over merchants, the settlement seems to be proceeding along without much further adjustment or negotiation. Although it is not finalized yet, the dissenter’s cries seem to be going unheard, as they believe that the settlement protects the status quo more than anything, and will not change the way the networks set interchange. Host Merchant Services will keep you informed of all the latest news involving this legal battle between the merchants and the card-issuing giants.

Barnes & Noble Data Breach [2023 Update]

Today’s edition of the Official Merchant Services Blog will take a look into the newest data breach, involving NY-based Barnes & Noble Inc.

Barnes & Noble revealed last week a “sophisticated criminal effort” had taken place at 63 stores, resulting in hacked PIN pad devices putting some of its customers at risk. The company discovered the hacking in September, but did not disclose it until recently on the advice of federal authorities. Security experts at the FBI have admitted that immediate disclosure in data breaches can make it harder for investigators to find the perpetrators.

In response, the chain has ceased using all PIN pads in its stores, and it has identified the affected locations in California, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

“The tampering, which affected fewer than 1% of PIN pads in Barnes & Noble stores,” the company said in a news release, “was a sophisticated criminal effort to steal credit card information, debit card information, and debit card PIN numbers from customers who swiped their cards through PIN pads when they made purchases. This situation involved only purchases in which a customer swiped a credit or debit card in a store using one of the compromised PIN pads.”

Barnes & Noble said its customer database was unaffected, and that none of the compromised PIN pads were at its college bookstores. The company also said the breach did not affect e-commerce sales, customers who bought online or through company’s Nook e-reader and Nook mobile app remain safe.

The bookseller is also working with the payment card networks, banks, and card issuers to identify accounts that may have been compromised. The company expects to have to go through a re-validation process before it again is deemed to be Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant.

Although unfortunate, this data breach could have been prevented by discontinuing the use of unnecessary equipment. PIN pads for terminal are no longer a cost benefit to a company, since the Durbin Amendment. Durbin makes PIN Debit rates the same as Swipe Debit rates (as long as the bank is large enough to qualify), essentially eliminating the need to a PIN pad altogether. Check out our blog post on the differences between PIN and Swipe Debit here. Fewer PIN pads would reduce tampering of terminals and theft of cardholders PIN numbers.

In the meantime, Host Merchant Services continues to offer the lowest PCI Compliance rates in the industry, as well as a vigorous PCI Compliance Initiative that seeks to inform and educate everyone interested as to the details of the process, step-by-step.

Industry Terms: Large Ticket Programs

This is the latest installment in The Official Merchant Services Blog’s Knowledge Base effort. We want to make the payment processing industry’s terms and buzzwords clear. We want to remove any and all confusion merchants might have about how the industry works. Host Merchant Services promises: we deliver personal service and clarity. So we’re going to take some time to explain how everything works. This ongoing series is where we define industry related terms and slowly build up a knowledge base and as we get more and more of these completed, we’ll collect them in our resource archive for quick and easy access.

Today’s term, Large Ticket Program, is a specially designed program for merchants who accept high dollar transactions on credit or debit cards. Visa, MasterCard and Discover all have their own Large Ticket Programs with different Interchange rates and requirements for merchants.

Visa’s Large Ticket rate is 1.45% and $35 for transactions above $5,000. This lower interchange rate accompanied with a higher per-item fee amounts to a lower overall effective rate for the merchant.

MasterCard qualifies Large Tickets as anything above $7,255, and the accompanying Interchange rate is 1.25% and $40 per transaction.

Discover, the most recent company to implement a Large Ticket Program has the lowest rate for this category, at 0.90% and $20 per transaction. Discover also sets the amount for ‘Large Tickets’ at transactions above $5,000.

Host Merchant Services offers this program to our larger merchants that may find it useful. While some processing companies hide added percentage points in the difference that exists between small ticket and large ticket processing, Host Merchant Services gives the savings directly to you. The Large Ticket Program gives you a rate that saves you more money in processing fees for all purchases $5,000 or more. If you qualify for the Large Ticket Program, contact us immediately for your large ticket savings.

HMS Small Ticket Program

Today’s edition of the Official Merchant Services Blog will discuss the best way for merchants to save money on fees when accepting credit or debit cards for smaller transactions. Host Merchant Services is committed to bringing its clients the lowest fees in the industry. Our Small Ticket Program is a feature that helps us do just that for those merchants who process transactions at $15 or less.

Many merchants have seen debit savings thanks to the Durbin Amendment, which caps the Interchange Fees that Visa and MasterCard charge for debit cards at $0.24 and 5 basis points. Smaller merchants do not see the savings when running transactions under $15, since the 24-cent per item fee and the 5 basis points amount to 2.1% of the total ticket, before any additional fees are incorporated.

The Small Ticket Program however, allows qualifying merchants to pay a per item fee of only 5 cents, while paying an interchange rate of 1.6% for Visa. MasterCard has set its small ticket rate at 4 cents and 1.55%. This program saves merchants money on lower transaction amounts, since the per item fee is less of a burden on them in terms of overall effective rate.

The Interchange category for small tickets is available for merchants who are on Interchange Plus pricing, and who qualify under the Visa business types listed below. Merchants enrolled in flat rate pricing or any type of three-tiered pricing will not be able to utilize these savings, which is just another way Interchange Plus pricing is truly the best out there.

While some processing companies hide added percentage points in the difference that exists between small ticket and large ticket processing, Host Merchant Services gives the savings directly to you. Our Small Ticket Program offers a better Interchange category and a lower per item fee, saving you more money in processing fees for all purchases $15 or less.

Visa opened up the types of businesses that qualify for Small Ticket Processing in November, 2010. Now each of these industries qualify:

Local Commuter Transport
Limos & Taxis
Bus Lines
Bridge & Road Fees/Tolls
Grocery Stores/Supermarkets
Convenience Stores
Service Stations
Fast Food Restaurant
Drug Stores
Book Stores
News Dealers, Newsstands
Dry Cleaners
Quick Copy, Reproduction & Blueprint
Parking Lots & Garages
Car Washes
Motion Picture Theater
Video Tape Rental Stores
Post Stamps/Government Only

If you qualify under any one of these categories, contact Host Merchant Services for your small ticket savings right away. Host Merchant Services promises: we deliver personal service and clarity and as always, we want to keep merchants informed of any potential savings.

Host Merchant Services and Certified Hosting Announce Partnership

Certified Hosting, a leading web hosting services company, announced today a new partnership with Host Merchant Services that will enable webmasters to use merchant services with their web hosting plans. All Certified Hosting customers, including those on shared web hosting, virtual private servers (VPS hosting), and dedicated server hosting plans, are now able to apply for Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant payment processing that is delivered to Certified Hosting’s high standards of customer service.

“Certified Hosting offers a range of ecommerce hosting services,” says Kacy Carlsen, co-founder and CEO of Certified Hosting. “We have made it easy for our customers to get up and running with an online store using the latest scripts and rock-solid hosting services. Quality merchant services are an essential part of a good ecommerce strategy for any business, and we are proud to announce Host Merchant Services as our chosen payment services partner. We are confident that Host Merchant Services will deliver the quality of service our customers have come to expect, at an affordable price.”

As a leading web hosting provider, Certified Hosting balances cost against quality of service. The company’s reliable web hosting services come with a 99.999% uptime, at a price that is affordable to new and growing businesses. Similarly, Host Merchant Services offers professional payment processing with fees that are clear, fair, and incredibly low. Typically, each type of credit or debit card transaction incurs a different fee, depending on the risk associated with it. Some merchant service providers charge merchants predetermined fees, meaning that merchants always pay the highest rate, regardless of which card has been used. Host Merchant Services charges merchants using a system known as Interchange Plus. Interchange Plus ensures that merchants only pay the fees that have actually been incurred, plus a small surcharge for administration. As a result, merchants using Host Merchant Services can reduce their payment processing expenses and more accurately project the cost of future transactions.

“There are no other industries where customers pay unnecessarily high charges,” says Carlsen. “Yet merchants routinely pay fixed fees for payment processing that do not reflect the actual transaction cost. At Certified Hosting, we provide fairly priced services thanks to Host Merchant Services. And now we can offer credit card processing to match. Even better, Host Merchant Services is – like Certified Hosting – an honest, upfront company that does not surprise merchants with hidden fees and charges.”

Another factor in Certified Hosting’s success is the company’s unlimited web hosting services, with no charges for customers who use a lot of disk space or bandwidth. The payment processing industry is full of complex terms and conditions, including additional charges buried deep in endless documentation. Host Merchant Services removes several common surcharges in the industry, with free applications, free setup, a free virtual terminal and an affordable payment gateway. Merchants are simply charged for the transactions they carry out, making accepting credit cards online more affordable and, crucially, more predictable.

“The most important thing about Host Merchant Services is that payment processing is made simple,” says Carlsen. “Host Merchant Services has no hidden charges, no expensive setup fees, and no unpredictable fees. With Host Merchant Services, our ecommerce hosting customers can quickly apply online, be approved in minutes, and begin taking payments in as little as 24 hours. We hope customers will take advantage of this new partnership so they can spend less on payment processing and maximize their profits.”

Certified Hosting has a proven record of excellent customer service, going the extra mile to help customers grow their online businesses. With this new partnership, Certified Hosting allows customers to get started right away with an affordable and efficient solution for payment processing.

Customers interested in merchant services from Certified Hosting and Host Merchant Services are encouraged to visit certifiedhosting.hostmerchantservices.com.

Industry Terms: Monthly Minimum Fee

Today’s term is the Monthly Minimum Fee. This fee is one of the more confusing credit card processing fees because it’s not really a fee at all. A monthly minimum is more accurately described as a benchmark, or limit that may result in a fee, rather than as a fee itself. It indicates the minimum amount in fees that a processor will collect in any given month. If actual fees resulting from processing activity don’t meet or exceed the minimum amount, the processor will charge the difference in order to meet that minimum. For example, if a merchant has $50 in fees in a given month, and the account has a $75 monthly minimum on it, they will be charged an additional $25 in order to meet the monthly minimum.

Perhaps the most dangerous caveat with monthly minimums is that processors determine which fees count toward the minimum and which don’t. One processor, for example, may count all discount and credit card transaction fees toward the minimum while another may only count its discount rate.

Host Merchant Services differs from the competition in that it does not charge any type of monthly minimum fee for our merchant accounts. We do not discriminate against small business merchants that may still be growing, by charging them for not doing enough business. This is just another way that HMS differs from the competition, and excels in understanding customer needs.

Industry Terms: Downgrade Fee [2023 Update]

What is Downgrade Fee?

Today we will define the term Downgrade Fee. This fee is a surcharge added to the Discount Rate of the total processing fees for a transaction. There is no standard on what a Downgrade Fee must be called so the terminology can vary by processor. A Downgrade Fee may be assessed for a variety of reasons including a customer’s card type, issuing bank, how the transaction is entered and other merchant actions.

Under a Tiered Pricing model more than 50% of a merchant’s credit card transactions experience Downgrade Fees, on average. Downgrade Fees generally cost merchants an additional 1%-3% per transaction on top of the Qualified processing rate. Host Merchant Services saves merchants money on these fees by using the Interchange Plus pricing system. For an in depth analyses of Tiered Vs. Interchange Plus Pricing, see here and here.

The main cause of these Downgrade fees, are card-not-present transactions. These transactions occur frequently with MO/TO or E-Commerce processing, however the downgrade itself can be avoided. As a security measure, processors who charge Tiered pricing tend to raise rates on transactions where risk may be involved. In these cases since the merchant has not physically handled the card, there is a downgrade fee applied. This can be avoided however, by requiring additional information from the customer. When a merchant requests a cardholder’s CVV code, the 3-digit code on the back of a Visa or MasterCard, another layer of security is applied thus avoiding the potential downgrade, and saving the merchant money on fees. Additional information helpful in avoiding Downgrade Fees, are cardholders’ billing ZIP code and numerical street address, this is known as an Address Verification System, or AVS.

Downgrade Fees are often the fees that merchants report as “hidden fees” because they are rarely disclosed before the merchant account activation. Host Merchant Services advises merchants to request as much information as possible when keying in sales, as to avoid downgrades, as well as charge backs. This added knowledge, and our Interchange Plus system of pricing creates a culture of savings for all of our merchants.

Customer Service: Tips From a Friend [2023 Update]

Today The Official Merchant Services Blog begins a special two-part series on Customer Service. A previous blog focused on how important Customer Service is for a business during the holiday shopping season. We are currently in the midst of one of the busiest holiday shopping seasons on record, according to the early sales data that has been reported. So to bolster your efforts, we’re going to highlight information and advice brought to our attention from our friends over at Software Advice.

Fellow industry blogger Lauren Carlson ran a two-part series at Software Advice dealing specifically with customer service and the holidays. It’s an insightful series that begins with offering advice on how to prepare your customer service department –– namely your help desk –– for the rigors of increased business from holiday shopping.

And What Are Those Tips?

Carlson’s article was timed for the lead up to Black Friday, but much of its advice is still extremely relevant to merchants facing the rest of the season. After all, the questions that get asked at your help desk aren’t going to subside until after the holidays. Or as Carlson says, the guidelines she gives “if done, can prevent potential chaos and better prepare your agents to handle the spike. This translates to happier customers during the holidays, who will turn into repeat customers once the wrapping paper has settled.”

The first tip given is to create a holiday specific FAQ list. Carlson states that the types of questions a lot of help desks get hit with during the holiday season can vary from the normal questions that get asked the rest of the year and as such, suggests brainstorming and coming up with a list ahead of time to prepare. Due to timeliness, that may no longer be a viable option for a lot of merchants. But by now, you may have a pretty good handle on the varying questions that you were hit with on Black Friday and all through Cyber Week. Which brings us to the best advice found in the first tip: “Post the simpler questions up on your site to avoid spending time on those calls.”

This can be done to enhance the e-commerce experience, getting it out to your customers and providing them with both information that they need, and a click through into your site. Or this can be done just for your own help desk’s internal sanity, having a quick reference guide on hand for when they are barraged with these questions that make your list. As Carlson states, this type of list “will enable agents to resolve a majority of issues on the first call.” And it will be useful for the duration of the season, preventing your staff from having to scramble to find answers even as it gets to be late into the shopping season.

Cross-training to Stay Prepared

The next tip Carlson offers is to cross-train your staff. She cites Matt Trifiro, Senior VP of Marketing at Assistly who explains that cross-training your employees can help you reduce the need for hiring seasonal staff. Carlson says of cross-training: “Much like athletes cross-train to improve the whole body, companies can train every employee – from receptionists to accountants – to be a support agent, improving support across the entire organization.”

This is a great tip for merchants looking to weather the holiday shopping blitz but not go through the process of training seasonal help that they have to let go a short time later. It’s also a quick way to deal with support issues that may have just now cropped up well after Black Friday. Host Merchant Services itself utilizes that same philosophy in its own customer support structure and finds that it does help a business be more responsive and more effective at handling support issues year-round.

Carlson maps out the plan for cross-training your staff, suggesting that a merchant should equip all their employees to answer basic questions customers may have. Then Carlson says merchants should set up an escalation procedure for situations that require additional steps or expertise. This will create a smoother flow for service during the high traffic times of the holiday shopping season.

Communication Has Many Channels

The next tip Carlson gives revolves around communicating when your business is on its own holiday. A lot of Merchants, such as restaurants, have a different set of hours as the actual holidays approach. Carlson suggests merchants should communicate clearly and consistently with their customers about any downtime or time where the business is unavailable during the holiday shopping season. And in 2011, there are quite a lot of avenues in which to communicate this information: “Alert customers on every possible medium (website, Facebook, blog, Twitter, voicemail) of your seasonal hours and availability. Communicating this clearly will help avoid confusion and, more importantly, dissatisfaction.”

This information also applies to any other Merchant needing to reach out to its customers –– including adding extra service hours during holiday shopping like a lot of retailers do. Social media sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are amazing tools available for customer interaction and can help you keep your customers up to date on all the latest developments your business goes through during the holiday shopping season.

Support Your Support Agents

The final tip Carlson gives for merchants to prepare their customer support help desk for the holiday shopping rush is to have a plan in place that will offer support for those who are your support agents. Carlson states: ” Help desk and support center employees will be very busy and likely very stressed during the holidays. Savvy companies will invest a lot of energy into supporting their agents via rewards, bonuses, in-office R&R, etc.”

Having something concrete in place that defuses stress and gives your support team some focus or incentive can help your business navigate through the increased stress and tension that holiday shopping can place on a business. This falls in line with Host Merchant Services’ own partnership protocols in the e-commerce section of its services –– where the company’s goal is to take the stress and burden of merchant services off of the business and onto the the merchant services provider. This enhances the overall partnership by making it less stressful for both partners. The same applies to customer service, especially during a time when the increase in business can exponentially increase stress.

Even though Black Friday has passed, this increased stress will continue to build. So it’s definitely not too late to consider implementing some sort of program or incentive to give your support staff both a tip of the hat for its hard work and a goal to strive for that will keep them going through the rest of the holiday rush.

Conclusion

Lauren Carlson offers some rock solid advice for customer support during the holiday shopping season. Many of the tips are easy to implement and do not take a lot of added time investment to get working. Host Merchant Services is always looking for useful insight on customer service to pass along to merchants. Quality customer service helps build long-term relationships with your customers, and can keep them coming back to you long after the holiday shopping season is over. Tomorrow The Official Merchant Services Blog will take a look at part two of Carlson’s series.

Use Analytics to Maximize E-Commerce

Then next phase in The Official Merchant Services Blog series on assisting merchants with beefing up their e-commerce presence this holiday shopping season focuses on web analytics. In a previous blog we gave merchants tips on how to improve the overall e-commerce picture. That blog focused on broad strokes and the process of landing on the merchant’s site and purchasing goods or services from the site. A second blog delved into Search Engine Optimization, assisting merchants with boosting their web site’s page rank when potential customers searched for the goods and services the merchant was selling.

Today’s blog brings both of those strategies together through web analytics. The process needs to be streamlined and strong. Your customers need to be able to find your page when they search, find your products when they get there and buy your products with no hassles. Click, click, purchase.

And how do you know if that is working? If your site is actually doing that and doing it well?

That’s where analytics come in.

Good website analytics take the mystery out of wondering who’s visiting your website and why. You don’t need to be an online marketing whiz to use them effectively. There are plenty of analytics packages for sale, but you can get started for free through Google Analytics. The Google service provides you with a line of code to plug into each of your website pages, and you can then start tracking your site’s data. You can get a breakdown not only of how many visitors came to the website, but how long they stayed, what site they previously came from, what search terms they used to reach the website, and which pages they visited the most.

Here are five questions to help you maximize your use of website analytics:

Do your visitors already know you? The whole point of the website is to link you with potential new customers who interested in your business. A well-designed website should only have a small percentage of visitors who have used the company’s name to find it in a search query –– suggesting they already know your business before they stopped by.
Are you bringing in potential customers? You want to make sure that people landing on your page are getting there using specific keywords. These keywords are relevant to the goods and services you provide. That way the traffic that seeks you out is the traffic that wants to purchase what your site is selling. Let’s say you’re a web hosting provider. You want the people searching for “web hosting” or “cloud hosting” to find you.
Does your social media presence work? Analytics let you monitor where your visits come from. So you can gauge how many visitors are coming from your social media activities. Google Analytics also lets you set goals, which can then be tuned to your social media outlets. Essentially you can judge how effective your Facebook Ad or Google Ad campaigns are by seeing what traffic they generate. And you can also tailor your goals section to track specific things related to your social media profiles. For example you can set a goal to monitor how much traffic you get from a specific Facebook ad or a Twitter Tweet.
Are visitors bailing from your homepage? Google Analytics tells you your homepage’s bounce rate, the percentage of homepage visitors who never clicked on additional pages. This is key for analyzing your e-commerce vitality. A lot of sites can generate visits, but if you’re not keeping people around and they’re not clicking through to your goods and services, you’re going to have a high bounce rate. If the bounce rate is more than 60 to 70 percent, you have a problem with your landing page, and possibly your marketing strategy. This problem is infecting your entire e-commerce setup and hurting your business. The search terms your visitors are using to find the site tell you whether they’re the people you want. If they are the right type of visitors and they aren’t delving deeper into the site, then the blame goes on the homepage.
Are they looking at your product or service pages? Your website is designed to generate sales or interest in your services. So beyond just the bounce rate of the homepage, it’s important to analyze your product pages. If website visitors aren’t looking at the pages that allow this to happen, then either your homepage is not doing its job or (if your bounce rate is not terrible, but your business isn’t being generated) there’s a problem with the product pages themselves. The homepage should be divided into decision-making paths that quickly separate visitors by their interests and lead them to the information they are looking for. The goal is to make the click through process easy and seamless. The customer arrives, finds what they want and goes and gets it.

That’s analytics in a brief nutshell. The data that programs like Google Website Analytics gives you can help shed light on problem areas with your e-commerce package. It is easy to use, so don’t be intimidated by the numbers. Take your time learning the program as these numbers are the key to finding out whether your website is effectively generating business.

E-Commerce SEO Tips for Merchants [2023 Update]

The Official Merchant Services Blog once again picks up its thread about the impact 2011’s holiday shopping season is going to have on e-commerce. Previously we gave merchants tips on improving their e-commerce experience for customers. These tips were primarily focused on things merchants can do with their website and their online shopping cart. Today we’re going to offer some tips on improving your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is basically the other side of the coin. With the first set of tips the goal was to make it easy for your potential customers to use your site, and buy things from you effectively. With these SEO tips the goal is to make it easy for potential customers to find your web site in the first place.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” search results that come up from using the search engine. SEO is absolutely vital to your online business. SEO is what helps the search engines such as Google find your website or your products in whichever marketplace you are using. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. So the basic goal of SEO is to get a web site ranked on the first page.

How to Improve your SEO

Here are a few effective tips from Google itself and its SEO Report Card to help you use best SEO practices and boost traffic to your website or listings:

Offer Quality Content and Services

–– According to Google, interesting websites will increase search engine recognition on their own. The internet is content driven. So the first step in improving your SEO is to make sure you have compelling, consistent content. In fact, here is what the Google SEO gurus have to say about your site’s content: “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here.” Great content is more apt to be shared and linked to, which will help boost your rankings with the search engine results pages, or SERPs.
Create more descriptive title tags

–– Optimized keywords and an effective URL naming structure can help the search engine understand the content of the page better. It is suggested to use a maximum of 60 characters on title tags as an opportunity to tell both users and search engines what the focus of the page is. There’s no need to go past this many characters, as most search engines will display ellipses ( … ) after this limit. Also, search engines may give less weight to words after a certain point.
Write Better Anchor Text

–– What is anchor text? It’s the clickable text that users see as the result of a link and is placed within the anchor tag. This text tells Google and the other search engines, as well as internet users, a little something about the page you are linking to. You should use descriptive, concise text and format links so that they’re easily spotted. Don’t neglect your internal anchor text, either.

Create effective URLs

–– Choose the form of the URL that is easiest to remember as the canonical and be consistent with this canonical form across all products. Think of the most common URL forms visitors are likely to try and then 301 redirect these to the preferred/canonical URL or be sure to use the rel=”canonical” link element if you cannot redirect.
Optimize Your Use of Images

–– In the last blog post, we discussed the importance of using high quality images of your products in your shopping cart and how that helps you make sales. Those same images can help your SEO, if you utilize the text that comes with them properly. You can use a filename along with alt text for images and should take full advantage of both. The content of the alt attribute contains information about your image. Don’t scatter your image files in a bunch of directories and subdirectories, but store them all in a single directory. This will greatly simplify the path to your images. Use commonly supported file types such as PNG, JPEG, GIF and BMP.

The real work here for a successful e-commerce merchant is combining the strategies from the previous blog with the tips presented here. You need to make your site come up on the first page of a google search so customers can find you. Then once they click you need to have an strong, easy to use site so those same customers can make their purchase quickly and hassle-free. All of this leads up to the final submission of the sale, which is where Host Merchant Services steps in and makes the payment processing easy for you and completely worry-free. Let our tips and information help you with the first two steps, and then we’ll handle the processing.

What is Downgrade Fee?

And What Are Those Tips?

Cross-training to Stay Prepared

Communication Has Many Channels

Support Your Support Agents

Conclusion

What is SEO?

How to Improve your SEO

Offer Quality Content and Services

Create more descriptive title tags

Write Better Anchor Text

Create effective URLs

Optimize Your Use of Images