Tag Archives: conversion

8 Best Apps to Process Credit Cards on Your Website

The post 8 Best Apps to Process Credit Cards on Your Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . The internet makes it easier than ever to start a business or reach a larger clientele for the business you already have. But one of the most basic things you need in order to make money online is a way to accept payments on your website. In this article we review the top apps for processing credit card payments on your website, and walk you through how to choose the right app for your site. What You Need in a Payment Processing App No matter what type of business you’re in—or even if you’re just a blogger ready to accept donations— to accept payments through your website, you need to make sure of two things:   1. It’s secure. If people are going to give you their sensitive financial information, it’s your responsibility to make sure that doing so doesn’t put them at risk. You have to take the proper precautions to make sure you can accept payments securely. That means investing in basic security measures like an SSL certificate and security software , and using a reliable program for processing payments. Some hosting providers offer security packages that cover most of your bases, and picking the right credit card processing app will cover the rest.   2. It’s easy. Convenience is key when selling online. People aren’t going to take the time to write a check and put it in the mail or provide their bank account information for a transfer. In short, you have to accept credit cards. All of the best online payment processing apps make this possible and keep it convenient for your customers.   8 Top Credit Card Processing Apps for Websites Luckily, there’s a whole industry of products designed specifically to enable websites to safely and easily accept online payments. Here are eight of your top choices.   1. Flint Flint was specifically developed with small businesses in mind, so it’s easy to use and affordable. They promise security measures that are in compliance with PCI standards. And you can easily get it setup on your website within minutes, without having to use any coding. Their Pro plan costs $99.99 a year and allows for unlimited online sales.   2. Flagship Merchant Services Flagship ’s online payment product enables processing f or all major credit cards, as well as bank transfers. As with other payment processing apps, they offer a secure and convenient transaction process. They also have features to make recurring billing easier for repeat and subscription customers, and can be set up to sync with Quickbooks to easily import your sales details into the accounting software. They offer a number of pricing models that businesses can choose based on what works best for the way you do business.     3. Stripe S tripe ’s payment processing app allows you to accept both credit cards and wallets (like Google Pay and Apple Pay). They have a UI toolkit that lets you build your own checkout form. And they use an encryption process for security that’s in compliance with all the highest industry standards. They price per credit card transaction, with each sale costing 30 cents, plus 2.9% of the total charge.     4. Braintree Braintree  allows you to accept payments via credit cards, PayPal, Venmo and wallets.  They offer both a drop-in UI you can use to easily set up your checkout process, or a custom UI that allows you to tailor the details. They offer Level 1 PCI compliance for security, as well as additional features you can use for fraud protection. And they have features that make it easy to save billing info for repeat customers to make check out easier. They charge a per transaction fee of 30 cents, plus 2.9% of the total purchase.   5. 2Checkout 2Checkout ’s shopping cart product is easy to get set up and provides both an inline cart you can use that’s designed to be intuitive, and a gallery of different templates you can work from if you want a different cart design. All of their cart options are responsive, so you can count on them to work seamlessly on mobile as well as desktop. They accept payments from all the major credit cards, Paypal, Apple Pay, and bank transfers, and can process payments from all over the world. Their fees start at 3.5%, plus 35 cents for each sale.     6. PayPal Payments Pro The familiar brand for all types of online payments and money transfers also provides a product for accepting eCommerce payments through a website.  PayPal Payments Pro allows you to accept payments using credit cards or PayPal accounts. They offer a customizable API, if you want to create a particular checkout experience, and provide the option of financing, which can be useful for businesses selling big ticket items. They charge $30 per month, plus 30 cents and 2.9% for each transaction.   7. Authorize Authorize promises advanced fraud protection using a number of filters (velocity, IP, shipping, and transaction) to help you avoid scammers. They process all major credit cards, Apple Pay, PayPal, and Visa checkout. And they make recurring and repeat payments easier for customers. Getting set up is as simple as copying and pasting some html code into your site. The app costs $25 monthly, as well as 2.9% and 30 cents per charge.   8. Payline Payline promises PCI compliance for data security, as well as fraud protection features. They allow you to accept all major credit card options, as well as ACH transfers. They also offer free subscription billing features and integration with over 175 online shopping cart products. They charge a $10 monthly fee, as well as a 20 cent per transaction fee, and 2.3% for all credit card charges.   Get Paid Quickly and Easily The last thing you want is to make your customers feel like they’re jumping through hoops to give you their money. These payment processing apps make the purchasing process on your website quick and painless, so you get a higher conversion rate and more profits. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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7 Tips For Creating Landing Page Content That Actually Converts

The post 7 Tips For Creating Landing Page Content That Actually Converts appeared first on HostGator Blog . How To Create Landing Page Content That Actually Converts Creating a well-optimized landing page for your company website, eCommerce store or blog can be tricky. Depending on your niche and the audience you built up, chances are that your landing page already has a stable design solution . However, you may find that even if your landing page is functional, it’s still not bringing in enough new conversions . The main reason for a landing page to exist at all is to present your site to would-be customers. With only a short timeframe available for dazzling each visitor, what are some tips and tricks that can help your landing pages convert more easily ? 1. Limit Distractions The number one mistake of most websites is that the landing pages rely on a bombardment of information and options. Your landing page is often the first contact your potential customer has with your brand. Remember that it’s almost impossible to fix bad first impressions, so why squander the opportunity? Create a list of essential information, visual elements and hyperlinks that will go onto your landing page. Every link or piece of information irrelevant to the presentation of your brand and product should be left out. This is one of the most elemental rules of visual design – the proper use of negative space in web design. The fewer elements you have present, the more attention will go to the ones present.   2. Focus on Benefits, Not Products Instead of featuring a load of products right there on the landing page, why not go easy on your visitors? Make sure to include the benefits of using your products as the main selling points. Your landing page should convince a user that your brand and services are worth their time and money. In the words of Jason Chase, head of content writing for  TopWritersReview,  “The benefits you offer your clients are what separate you from the competition.” Once you create a need for your products in your visitors’ eyes, it will be easy to convert them into customers and followers.   3. Keep Your CTA Short Landing pages should feature short-form text that doesn’t take long to read but carries a powerful message. Calls to action (CTAs) can play a huge role in your conversion rates and site performance overall. Focus on creating short-form content without going into details of why your products are good and what differentiates them from others on the market. Information such as this should be featured on additional pages that are specifically designed to go into details of who you are and what you do. As for the landing page itself, direct, short-form content with clear messages should always take priority. Even if someone is only remotely interested in your brand and products, they will still manage to read your CTA in a few short seconds. Once they do, it might be too late to turn around and forget your site.   4. Feature Testimonials Testimonials are considered some of the best conversion rate boosters on the internet. This is because people trust other real-world people more than they trust stock photos with smiling faces. Gone are the days when it was enough to come up with a quote and put it on a staged photograph in order to drive your business forward. Make sure to ask your customers for a quote and a picture that you can use on your website. If they can get a picture of themselves while using your product, even better.    5. Use a Friendly Tone Your audience is human just like you. You should use a casual, friendly tone in addressing them while still maintaining a sense of professionalism. Be respectful in your writing but don’t be afraid to let your guard down and use a small joke or a funny line here and there. People like coming across websites with quality services that manage to maintain a sense of humor while still delivering on their promise. Your landing page should represent the mentality and mindset of your employees and office culture. In short, be yourself when creating content for your landing page and don’t try to simply copy what the competition might be doing. What works for one business doesn’t necessarily work for the other – be original and it will come back to you in spades. If you don’t have in-house content creators, you can refer to a professional writing service for such assistance. Using services such as RewardedEssays , SupremeDissertations , FlashEssay , GetGoodGrade , or HotEssayService will get the job done. Each of these services offers a distinct type of writing depending on individual project needs – make sure to check them out.   6. Use Numbers Numeric data is always a good selling point to feature on your landing page. No matter what data you include, the fact remains that people like seeing numbers and statistics when browsing the internet. You can add things such as the percentile of your satisfied customers, the number of products you sold the past week, email subscribers you have on account, etc. Make sure to use the data that works in your advantage and would likely convince someone to pitch in with your business. Once you establish trust through data, there is very little that can stand in the way of your conversion rates going up.   7. Make It Easy Lastly, the most important task you have as a website owner is to make the conversion process as easy as possible. People don’t want to verify their identities two or three times just to create an account on your website. Mistakes such as these can easily be avoided. The same rule applies for purchases, discussion participation and interaction with your content overall. Make it as easy and obvious as possible to make contact with your brand and products to maximize your conversion rates. You can always refer to web design color theory and create a color pattern that will identify interactive elements from those that are decorative. Find a method that works for your specific niche and stick to it. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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Customer Testimonials: Why Your Small Business Needs Them

The post Customer Testimonials: Why Your Small Business Needs Them appeared first on HostGator Blog . Why Customer Testimonials Matter for Small Business Prospective customers want to know what other people think of your business before they hand you their cash or their card number. That’s where customer testimonials come in. Done right, testimonials on your website and social media channels provide social proof, raise conversion rates, and even help promote specific products or services you offer. Here are some best practices to make sure your hard-won testimonials work hard for you. How Testimonials Help Your Business First, what is social proof, and why does your business need it? Social proof is a fancy way of saying that we humans like to know that other people have had a good experience with something before we give it a try. Think about your own habits – when you’re trying to choose which product to buy online, do you go with the one with no reviews or the one with a dozen mostly positive reviews? Objectively speaking, your choices may be more or less equal, but you probably choose the one that other people have chosen, because it seems less unfamiliar. The idea behind social proof may sound vague, but marketers can and do measure its impact. One business case study found that adding properly formatted testimonials to a company’s homepage boosted the conversion rate by 34 percent . (Testimonials aren’t the only way to strengthen your business’ social proof. Learn more ways to leverage social proof for your site .) Getting more customers to contact you or buy your products is one way to use testimonials, but you can also use them in more specific ways. For example, if you’re launching a new product or service, testimonials from preview users or beta testers can help overcome that natural human reluctance to be the first to try something new. Keep in mind that there are some ethical guidelines for sharing testimonials from people who tried your stuff for free, which we’ll go over below. You can also use testimonials to raise interest in specific products or services that offer quality but aren’t selling as well as your other offerings.   How To Get Customer Testimonials Getting testimonials from your customers sounds easy—just ask—but some requests are easier than others, so start with those. If you get great feedback via email or on social media from one of your customers, thank them and ask if you can use it on your website. Most of the time, they’ll say yes. You can also embed positive customer reviews from third-party sites like Yelp and Google on your site and let them serve as testimonials, and you don’t need to request any special permission to include those on your site. There’s also straight-up asking your best customers if they wouldn’t mind writing a testimonial for your site. If you have a good working relationship and they’re naturally expressive people, they’ll probably agree to share their feedback. Make your request something short and sweet like, “I’m inviting my best customers to write short testimonials about our widget/service for our website. If you’d like to contribute, I’d really appreciate it.” Be sure to thank them for their time, too. As we mentioned above, you may have preview customers or beta testers for a new product or service, and you can use their testimonials with their permission. However, to stay on the right side of ethics and Federal Trade Commission rules, you must disclose it if the people providing your testimonials got a discount, a free trial, or anything else in exchange for what they’re writing about.   4 Ways To Make Your Customer Testimonials Even More Effective Getting testimonials from clients and customers is just the beginning. To get the most value from their comments, follow these best practices.   1. Use names, faces, and places. Prospective customers seek out testimonials, but more importantly, they seek out testimonials that seem real . In an age of bots and online shenanigans, it’s more important than ever to show that your testimonials are from real people. The simplest way to do that is to include their names (full or just first), photos, and city or company—with their permission, of course.   2. Include specific positive feedback. Prospects check reviews and testimonials to see why other people like your business. If you have the best customer service in town, try to get testimonials that mention it. If your products do something none of your competitors do, get a testimonial that says so. And if you’re easy to work with and deliver great value, let one of your customers sing your praises in their testimonial.   3. Keep testimonials short. The best testimonials are only as long as they need to be to share specific positives about your business, so keep testimonials to a couple of sentences at most. That respects your visitors’ time. It also makes it more likely that local prospects who are searching on their mobile phones will see your testimonials and take action—reading short blurbs is much easier than reading long paragraphs on a phone. What if you get a great testimonial that’s more like a story than a blurb and really makes your company look great? Turn it into a case study and level up your marketing.   4. Update your testimonials. A good testimonial can work for your business for years, but it’s a good idea to check your testimonials every now and then to make sure they refer to products and services you still offer. Keep asking for testimonials as your business grows to cover more aspects of what you do. Asking for feedback is also a way to find out what your customers like best and what they’re only lukewarm about. Those are the areas you can work on until they’re worthy of a testimonial, too.   Testimonials Help Grow Your Business Testimonials are just one way to get the customer feedback you need to help your business thrive. Learn more about listening to your customers to grow your business . Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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The 25 Best WordPress Plugins Recommended By Marketing Experts

The post The 25 Best WordPress Plugins Recommended By Marketing Experts appeared first on HostGator Blog . As a marketer, you’re great at growing a website, but you probably don’t know how to make one from scratch. That’s not a problem because you can easily create one using WordPress. WordPress makes it super easy to create a website by installing “plugins.” Just like on your smartphone, plugins are “apps” you can install […] Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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Understanding Why You Simply Need Long Tail Keywords

The post Understanding Why You Simply Need Long Tail Keywords appeared first on HostGator Blog . The long tail is a fairly new concept. Yet, it’s one that should penetrate all of your marketing and branding efforts. The days of marketing to large masses of people are over. No longer are you going to build a company that looks at everyone in the world as a potential customer. Today you’ll find […] Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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