Cash, cheque, or credit
Give your customers several payment options to smooth the transaction.
As president and CEO of Donation Depot, Brandon Fix knows his nonprofit clients count on every penny they receive. Each month, the site handles up to $65,000 in cash donations for more than 17,000 nonprofit organisations in the United States and Canada. But not all of the money ended up at the charities. "When we do credit card and electronic funds transfer (EFT) processing of donations, the bank charges 3 to 4 percent of each transaction plus a monthly service charge," Fix says.
The fees represented a total of $18,000 in lost revenue for Donation Depot's clients last year. However with CheckSpace, which is providing free service to nonprofit organisations like Donation Depot through the end of 2001, Fix eliminated those losses altogether. Now, he says, "Everything goes to the charity. Even when we eventually incur charges, we expect to save 60 percent over normal EFT and credit card charges."
A hosted service, CheckSpace lets you accept electronic checks by transferring money from a customer's account to yours. To pay, shoppers click on a link to open an eCheck. The first eCheck your company receives each month is free. After that, you're charged $1 per check. CheckSpace also provides credit card payments, which cost $1 plus 2.4 percent of the transaction.
Most of the contributions made to Donation Depot average around $100. So even paying $1 per eCheck, Fix says, his organisation saves about $2 each transaction.
With CheckSpace you can also invoice or make payments to vendors, suppliers, or partners, the way Donation Depot does for its member nonprofit groups. "Now we're using CheckSpace on the back end," Fix says. "It's much less expensive than any other form of processing."
The service, which is free to set up, takes only minutes to add to your site, although integrating it completely with your accounting system (as Donation Depot did) takes a couple of weeks.
Expanding payment options isn't the only way to pull in more online sales. Until last fall, when customers surfed to the Robert Andrew Day Spa they could look but not buy. "We would send them to the Web site for information about our services, but then they'd have to call back to place an order for a gift certificate," says Melissa Hafh, vice president and general manager of the spa.
Amazia Gift-Connect, a hosted gift certificate service for small businesses, made it painless for the company to start selling its spa treatments onlineââ,¬"all the spa did was add a link to Amazia's site. The hosted service costs $39.95 a month; if you sign up for a full year, Amazia throws in two extra months free.
Gift-Connect manages the process from purchase to delivery. Robert Andrew customers order certificates either in dollar amounts or for specific spa packages, and then choose to pick up the certificates at the spa or have them delivered by e-mail, U.S. mail, or courier. The service processes orders and keeps a running list of customer contact information for future marketing efforts. Robert Andrew staff manage their end of the process via a Web-based interface.
Since activating Gift-Connect, the day spa has sold more than $10,000 in online gift certificates, nearly 25 times the amount it has paid for the service so far.
