Newegg Credit Card
Synchrony Financial has inked a new, multi-year agreement to offer private label credit card and small business financing programs for customers of Newegg.com and NeweggBusiness.com.
Payfont Nails Down Scottish Enterprise funding
Payfont has been awarded £100,000 funding from Scottish Enterprise, helping to fund its online security to counter data theft disasters. The Anonymised, Distributed, e-Commerce Architecture (ADeCA) will protect organisations and their customers by managing distributed data fragments via a contextual security protocol. It makes a user’s data completely unique to that user, anonymous to others. This approach raises the bar significantly against Cybercriminals used to stealing large databases of data records that rely on standard encryption and linear access security methods.Cybercrime and its identity theft and money laundering consequences are now at epidemic proportions globally.The 2014 average data breach cost for a company is US$3.5m, up 15% on 2013.
BitPay Partners With Newegg
Newegg announced a partnership with BitPay to accept bitcoin payments on Newegg.com (#NeweggBitcoin). The company’s more than 25 million registered customers can now pay for more than 10.5 million products including electronics, computers, game consoles and household items using bitcoin through BitPay. Newegg’s acceptance of bitcoin payments adds yet another convenient and secure way for its customers to fulfill their e-shopping needs.
Zealous Launches e-Retailer Outlet
Zealous Interactive announced that The
Collectible Exchange will become a fully-operating business
that after more than a year of testing the online store concept.
The store will be run by Randy Kepper who has led the testing for the project.
Nevada-based Zealous conducts its existing business
through its wholly owned subsidiaries; Zealous Interactive, Inc., Health
and Wellness Partners, Inc., and Zealous Capital Group, Inc.
Coinstar/Overstock Offers Free Coin Counting
E-retailer Overstock.com has joined forces with Coinstar as part of the
“Coinstar Coin to Card” program that converts change to gift cards. To
receive free coin counting, consumers deposit their coins into
the Coinstar Center, the coin is then counted, and the full value is
applied to the eCertificate. The eCertificate is dispensed directly from
the machine and can be used immediately at Overstock.com. The
Overstock.com eCertificate is available on approximately 10,000 Coinstar
Centers across the U.S. Overstock.com offers over
600,000 products on their website, including apparel, jewelry,
designer accessories, home goods and sporting goods.
Online Retailers Expect Higher Holiday Sales
More than half of online retailers expect their holiday sales to increase at least 15% over last year. The “2008 eHoliday Study,” conducted by Shopzilla for Shop.org, also found that 78% plan to offer free shipping at some point during the holiday season, consistent with last yearâs levels. Many retailers have beefed-up their Website features to improve the customer experience. Other findings: consumers acknowledge that 24-hour shopping convenience is one of the main reasons why they choose to buy online (58.6% this year vs. 58.5% last year). Shoppersâ other top reasons for buying online instead of in stores include not wanting to fight crowds (41.1%), easy price comparisons (36.4%), and free shipping (33.3%). Also, nearly one in four shoppers (23.1%) says they are spending more online due to high gas prices, more than double the number which said the same last year (9.0%).
ShopSite 6.0
UT-based ShopSite released version 6.0 of its e-commerce shopping cart application. ‘ShopSite Pro v6.0’ features two major upgrades, including United Parcel Service’s ‘Rates and Service Selection’ tool and National Processing Company’s processing credit card payment gateway. In addition, fraud prevention features, electronic couponing, digital downloads and improved performance capabilities have all been added to ‘Shop Site Pro v6.0’. Pricing for ShopSite Pro v.6.0 is $1,295 for a one-time/license fee. ‘ShopSite’ is available in three different applications: ‘ShopSite Pro’, ‘ShopSite Manager’ and ‘ShopSite Starter’. Pricing for ‘ShopSite Manager v6.0’ is $495 for a one-time licensing fee. ‘ShopSite Starter v6.0’ is only available through an ISP and is generally less than $5 per month and usually included in monthly hosting fees from an ISP.
Goes Multi-Currency
Austin, TX-based ClearCommerce Corp announced Monday that its processing technology is performing real-time credit card authorizations in more than 50 currencies worldwide. Through the ‘ClearCommerce Engine’, merchants can permit credit card transactions in U.S. dollars, British pounds, French francs, German marks, Euro dollars and 46 other currencies. At the end of each day, merchants can be credited with U.S. dollars, or another native currency, after the bank or processor performs the currency conversion. The merchant needs only one merchant bank account in its own domestic currency. ClearCommerce has certified its ‘Engine’ to authorize and process multiple currencies with major processors, including First Data, Paymentech and NatWest.
Return Policies Factor
Eighty-nine percent of online buyers say return policies influence their decision to shop with an e-retailer, according to a recent survey of 9,800 consumers by BizRate.com ([http://www.bizrate.com][1]), the Internet’s leading e-commerce merchant rating site and marketing research firm.
The post-holiday return rush is just around the corner and the focus for online retailers will shift from order fulfillment to processing returns. With 36 million orders forecast to be placed on the Web this holiday season, at least 5 percent of those orders are expected to be returned. At that point, the quality of return policies and customer support will become paramount in winning or losing customer loyalty.
“If online shopping is to continue the promise of convenience, merchants will need to pay close attention to building return policies that are customer friendly,” said Paul Bates, vice president of Information Products Group for BizRate.com. “Online buyers tell us every day that the key to winning their loyalty is the level and quality of customer support.”
The BizRate.com survey also revealed that simply having a return policy is not enough. Consumers stated that the most important factor for an optimal online return policy would be a 100 percent money-back guarantee, followed by not being charged a fee to have the merchant restock the product.
Certain attributes of return policies can actually drive potential customers away. These include the inability to receive credit on a credit or debit card (85 percent) followed by a time limit to return products that is “too short” (68 percent). Other attributes that online buyers consider important are whether the merchant allows products to be returned by mail (66 percent) and the ability to exchange a product for another item (58 percent). Sixty-two percent of consumers said they would prefer to return products by mail instead of traveling to a brick-and-mortar store.
Other findings include:
— Refunds (59 percent) ranked as the leading form of action taken on returned products followed by exchanges (27 percent) and credit at an offline or online store (11 percent).
— The three leading products returned were clothing (27 percent), computer software (20 percent) and books (15 percent).
— An overwhelming majority (92%) of respondents would be inclined not to do business with online merchants who imposed a service charge to return a product to an offline store.
— 71 percent said that if they purchased a tax-free item online, they would not exchange it at a retailer’s offline store if a sales tax were imposed on the exchange.
— 94 percent of returns were mailed back to the online retailer versus returned to an offline store.
— 73 percent of those surveyed said that return policies for online stores are comparable to returning items purchased through a catalog.
— On average, survey respondents had returned only one to two items purchased online during their individual personal histories of Internet shopping.
About BizRate.com
Founded in 1996, BizRate.com is an unbiased, independent rating guide built on the experience of millions of actual online buyers. The BizRate.com site combines valuable consumer information with a powerful set of shopping tools that help people find the store or product they want, as well as offers recommendations based on user-specified criteria. BizRate.com is the only company trusted by more than 2,700 e-businesses to collect this direct consumer feedback and transactional information at the point of purchase. The online store performance ratings, derived from this data, denote the only statistically rigorous way of differentiating retailers on “quality of service” metrics. BizRate.com information also appears on Consumer Reports Online and in Consumer Reports magazine, as well as through top Internet portals such as AltaVista, Go2Net, Go Network, Microsoft Networks and Snap.
[1]: http://www.bizrate.com/