The Internet Merchants Association and its sponsors recently presented eight educational sessions to the ASD trade show attendees. The bi-annual sourcing show was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center with over 30.000 visitors in attendance.
Platinum and Diamond level sponsors including Vendio, Alibaba and MIVA Merchant were among the featured speakers on topics ranging from integrating social media to building effective web sites and search engine optimization.
Most of the speakers have provided their slide decks so that session attendees can review them and download them. The slide presentations are available at slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/imamerchants
The Internet Merchants Association is now accepting applications for the March, 2011 educational sessions. Speaking preference is given to all IMA Platinum and Diamond level sponsors. Interested parties can learn more about the speaking and membership opportunities by contacting Pat Pepe. She can be reached by email at pat@imamerchants.org.
As of May 1, 2010, MasterCard and Discover have released new rules that impact the way merchants who accept those cards must handle certain aspects of PrePaid Credit or Debit Cards as well as regular bank Debit Check cards.
Going forward there are three critical issues you must be aware of as a merchant:
1. If someone uses a PrePaid Credit or Debit Card, when you give them the receipt for their transaction you must display the remaining balance available on that PrePaid card.
2. If someone uses a PrePaid Credit or Debit Card or a regular bank issued Debit Check Card and there’s not enough available on the card to complete the entire transaction, you must accept split payments and allow them to pay the remaining balance with another card.
For example, suppose someone is checking out of your online store and their order costs $50 total. When they go to checkout, if their PrePaid or Check Debit Card only has $30 available on it, the system will authorize the $30 and then give them an opportunity to add another card during checkout to pay the remaining $20 balance.
3. If your customer chooses to cancel the order in the case of #2 above, then your gateway must be able to immediately release the hold placed on the initial Authorization created for the PrePaid or Check Cards.
So what does all this mean to you, the online merchant?
Well for now it doesn’t mean a whole bunch for your average small- and medium-sized online merchant.
The first step to make the above even possible in the world of SMB Ecommerce is for the common gateways we all use (like Authorize.net) to implement the tools needed to support these mandates.
Second your shopping cart vendor will need to add support for these features specifically to your gateway; finally, you’ll need to implement these changes in your online store.
For now all you need to do is be aware of what’s coming and pay attention to future announcements from your shopping cart provider and, more importantly, your merchant account and payment gateway provider. As of now, Authorize.net has gotten an extension from MasterCard and Discover and these mandates are not required for Authorize.net customers until June 30, 2011 (14 months from now).
If you have questions, you should check with your payment gateway provider as the mandates and dates for compliance will vary by gateway.
Guest post by Rick Wilson of Miva Merchant. Miva Merchant is an IMA Diamond member.
I budget a lot of money on seminars every year, I feel my education is important to me and my business. Although IMA is fairly a new trade association, I continue to be impressed with the conferences that is put on. This year’s conference, which I’m still thinking about, was no exception.
I didn’t have the opportunity to go to all of the ASD & IMA seminars (this photo by IMA president Fred Neff is of just one of the well-attended seminars).
Because I’m familiar with videos and blogging, the rest of the social media venues and networks intrigue me most. So I found this video extremely powerful, and I hope you’ll take the time to watch it.
I keep remembering what Rick Wilson of Miva Merchant (an IMA diamond member) said: social media is a “circle of life.” It’s about the three C’s: connections, then conversation, and then conversations. So if we can build a community of supporters for our businesses and give them good content, they can help us tremendously with our marketing.
Here are some free tools I learned about at the conference:
Backtype.com, which is a real-time tool for you to keep tabs of what people are saying about your business
Alterian has a freemium version of its monitoring service for you to monitor your social media venues
Here is a free tool that helps you with documents, www.docstoc.com
We all think we are the best person to grow our business. The best person for SEO, the best web designer, the best IT person, the best at everything we do. But the problem is that your competitors think the same. The e-commerce industry moves so fast that it is actually impossible to keep up with all the trends and changes. You need help; we all need help to stay ahead of our competitors.
I have taken my education very seriously the last few years and to be honest, the improvement in my bottom line is the proof that it was well worth it. I have gone to business seminars, web design conferences, SEO conferences and many marketing seminars and to me, the cost of being away from my business and the conference expenses were worth every penny. A conference can cost up to thousands of dollars and when you spend this kind of money, it is important to make sure that this investment is going to help your business grow.
One of my favorite conferences that I look forward to every year is the one from the Internet Merchants Association (IMA) which will be held in Las Vegas, March 2-3,2010. It is presented in conjunction with the ASD/AMD Sourcing Show where IMA offers free business seminars to the attendees. This year on the 1st & 2nd of March, IMA will present titles that include “The ABCs of Web Design”, “Big Ideas for Small Businesses” and “Get Found in Search Engines: SEO 101″ to just name a few.
Rick Wilson, Vice President of MIVA Merchant will present an important topic at the IMA Conference, “Top 10 Tips for Designing a Great Checkout Process.” I look forward to hearing what expert Rick has to say about the checkout process. The checkout process for your customers is so important and if your customers “don’t get it” then you can be out of business quickly.
While I love to blog, I am not consistent with the “other” social media stuff. I really do understand it but there has to be a way to make it more financially viable for my business. “Nine Ways to Make Your E-Commerce Site More Social” will help me pull it all together and complete my 2010 plan for my business. Another title that I am looking forward to attending at the IMA Conference in March is “How 21st Century PR Can Build Your Brand”.
I hope you can attend the IMA Conference, March 2-3 in Las Vegas. If you do attend, track me down and I will be happy to buy you a few drinks in the IMA Networking Suite.
