Set Up Online Payment Processing in Four Steps By Vangie Beal
November 13, 2008
Special Features: Templates, Routing, Reporting
Once the form is built, the retailer then edits shopping-specific options
that are auto-calculated when the order form is used. For example, you can set
the default order form to calculate single or multiple purchases and to
calculate shipping and taxes. If your inventory is small, you can also create an
order form page for each item you want to sell online, and include product shots
right on the form itself.
To help new merchants, FormSpring offers a pre-built order form template that
can be edited to meet the specific needs of each small business. This form starts you off with all the
usual billing information form fields, with options to edit each. You also set
your options for e-mails and redirects, payment integration and security. What
many will like about FormSpring is that the service offers easy-to-use tools for
creating your own order form.
One unique feature of FormSpring is called Smart Routing, which lets you do very
specific things based on how your site visitor answers the form questions. For
example, a merchant reselling products can have the shopper routed to the
correct vendor's page when selecting a specific item, or in the case of an order
form, you can have the form send customers directly to PayPal or Google Checkout to
complete the purchase.
Your FormSpring form can also be set to direct shoppers back to a thank-you page
or another landing page. Other features of FormSpring allow you to set e-mail
notifications, thank you pages and so on.
On the backend, merchants will also have options to check payment
processing status directly from their FormSpring database.
If, for example, you use PayPal, you can see the transaction and
its status (e.g. pending, cleared, and declined) from your FormSpring database
without having to log into PayPal to check the status.
You can also choose to share some or all of the data collected with your clients
and vendors by adding user accounts where you define the type of access granted. All the information stored in your FormSpring database can also be
downloaded to your own database or saved as a file for exporting.
Security and Pricing
Nothing can make your online business more vulnerable than weak security, and Lucas said
security is an issue FormSpring takes very seriously. In using FormSpring,
SSL (encryption
through the Web browser) is required for anyone receiving sensitive information
through the forms, so you must have a certificate.
You can also choose to encrypt your notification e-mails with PGP and you can
also encrypt your saved data for an extra level of security. Lucas said that
when clients choose to encrypt their database, not even FormSpring is able to
access it. Obviously this is the most secure choice, but since your form
host can't even access it, you must remember how important it is to make sure you never lose the password.
Pricing is also affordable for small businesses and casual online sellers. The free FormSpring plan lets you create and use three forms and the
Smart Routing features.
To use the PayPal and Google Checkout payment options for order forms, the
minimum account service is the Professional plan, which offers 20 forms, and
other features including Smart Routing, redirects, CAPTCHA anti-spam and security for $19 per month. The Business plan at $39 per month offers the
addition of Authorize.Net and Linkpoint integration; and there is an Unlimited
plan at $79 per month.
Full pricing details and the features for each plan can be found
here.
Vangie Beal is a seasoned online marketplace seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and avid online bargain hunter. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com.
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