"Time is money...standardizing the payment process saves everyone -- consumers and merchants alike -- time, money, and aggravation" -- Comments on ECML from Bob Purcell, Vice-president, Marketing and Business Development, Healthshop.com
Last month, ECML Version 1.0 was released, providing a set of simple guidelines for Web merchants to enable the uses of commercial electronic wallets at their sites. (Previously there was no set standard for information exchanges involving consumers and merchants concerning credit cards, billing addresses and shipping addresses.)
This month, we take a look at the problems encountered prior to the release, and the possible solutions that can be offered by a widespread adoption of ECML.
The Problems
For consumers, shopping online has become a tedious a repetitious inconvenience: The hassle of providing a name, shipping address, billing address, and credit card data on each and every e-commerce site lead to 66% of online shopping carts being abandoned prior to completing a purchase (Forrester research). Another problem was that completing check-out forms is a tedious and error prone process.
The Solution
A universal, open standard to define payment and order information exchange between electronic wallets and merchant Web sites, Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML), was released. ECML, in its initial form, consists of standardized form field names that are used for collecting data from online buyers. By modifying your Web site to accommodate rapid forms fill-in from ECML-complaint e-wallets, you can lower your abandonment rates, improve the quality of data you receive, and streamline the order checkout process from your customer''s point of view. It can also help advance electronic commerce in general.
Who''s Involved in ECML?
ECML is a result of a collaborative effort of industry leaders, including:
- American Express
- IBM
- MasterCard
- Microsoft
- SETCo
- Sun Microsystems
- Transactor Networks
- Trintech
- Visa
The ECML Initiative also defines the role of an "advocate" to aid in endorsing and publicly supporting ECML adoption. Merchants world-wide are being recruited as advocates to help in:
providing feedback to ECML Technology Advisors, incorporating ECML in as many appropriate Web sites as possible, and endorsing ECML within their own communities.
What''s Inside ECML?
At the ECML.org Website, you''ll find the Implementation Guide under the Specifications Link. The guide is organized as follows:
- Introduction
- Specification
- Implementation highlights
- Additional resources
The specification consists of a hierarchy of consistent form field names to replace the non-standard names that most merchant sites currently use.
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
