The Danemco Blog - Recent Articles

Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... the war of the web browsers began, and still continues today!  Simply put, a web browser is the program that you use to surf the web.  It interprets web page code and loads the information on your screen.  Popular web browser programs include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Konqueror, Opera, and Google Chrome.  There are literally hundreds of web browsers out there.

Each web browser displays websites slightly differently, because it's up to each program to interpret the web page code to display it on the screen.  Although modern browsers agree on many of the important web page code interpretations, once in a while a website will look different on your computer.  From a web developer's point of view, the web browser software that has the biggest problems is Internet Explorer version 6.  It displays and interprets web pages very differently from the others.  My personal favorite web browser is Mozilla Firefox.

One neat online program that helps you see the differences of web browsers is called BrowserLab by Adobe (http://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html).  After creating a free account, you can view any website in a few browsers.  You can even see them side by side.

Understanding how your website looks on the web in different browsers is your web designer's job.  But understanding that websites look differently helps you understand your customers better.  For instance, if you get a call from someone saying they have a big gray spot at the top of your site, but you don't see it, it could be related to a different browser interpreting things differently.  You can recommend they try a different browser until your web developer fixes the problem.

Below is a table of browsers popularity as of April 2010.  This information comes from w3cschools.com.  IE means Microsoft Internet Explorer. 

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Today we held a webinar about how you can increase your website's search engine rankings.  We discussed a number of topics that affect your website's search engine rankings, such as your web page's title, heading, descriptions, images, and paragraphs.  We also discussed a few strategies to increase your incoming links.

You're welcome to download the slides from the webinar for your personal use.

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I'm excited about this new change from Visa and MasterCard.

Ever get one of those prepaid Visa gift or debit cards?   They're getting more and more popular.  I have heard of some people who do a lot of shopping online purchase prepaid debit cards to limit the risk of identity theft.  Others find it a convenient method to issue refunds or rebates.

I received one of these prepaid Visa debit cards once as part of a rebate when we purchased an appliance from GE. I found it a bit frustrating because it was hard to use.  It wasn't the same as cash.  I never knew what my balance was, and if I wanted to buy something with it, it had to be below the balance on the card or else the card would be declined. 

Here's the good news.  Visa and MasterCard have put together a solution!  In about a year from now, all merchants accepting Visa & MasterCard will be required to display the balance remaining on the prepaid gift card.  If the order total exceeds the available balance, the customer is to be presented with another payment option to pay the remaining amount of the order. 

All clients that use Authorize.Net will be upgraded in the coming year to be compliant to this regulation.

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In a previous article, we discussed how to choose a merchant service provider when you want to accept credit cards.  Today I want to discuss how to calculate your total cost of accepting credit cards and to determine if it is really worth it for your business.

I recently took a close look at one of my recent merchant account statements.  I charged approx. $450 in cards in that month in several transactions.  The sum of the discounts (the percentage of the sale the credit card company takes) came to roughly $8.50.  However, my merchant account is set up to charge a monthly $25 minimum, so they actually take $25 even though I only had $8.50 worth in credit card discounts. I am also charged a per-transaction fee of $0.25.  Because I had processed 20 credit cards, that came to $5. My total for credit card fees was about $30.

I also have a gateway to connect my website to my merchant account.  I am paying $20 a month for that service.  In total, it cost me about $50 that month just to process $450 worth in credit cards!  I'm paying 11% of each sale for the privilege of accepting credit cards!

On the other hand, PayPal charges about 5% for each transaction.  If all of those payments went through PayPal instead, I would have been $22.50 richer.

In conclusion:

1. Evaluate your total cost to accept credit cards for your site.  It may surprise you how much of your profit goes towards the credit card companies.
2. If your credit card processing is low volume, like mine is, it might be best to go with another service with a higher percentage but no monthly fee such as PayPal.
3. Find a better deal for credit card processing than what I found. :)

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Aside from selling products on your e-commerce site, there are other ways you can make money from your website.  Today I'll talk about displaying ads from the AdSense ad network as a way of earning residual income.

Some websites you visit have ads on them.  Although there are many kinds of ads, the most common ads are served through Google.  Their ad program is called AdSense.  How it works is you create a free AdSense account and copy-and-paste a unique code to your website.  Here is an example of what you might see after you copy and paste the code:

Whenever someone clicks on a link on your site, Google is charging the advertiser some money (usually $0.15 to $0.65) for that click.  As a way of thanking you for bringing them the click, Google will share part of the revenue with you.  The amount they share with you depends on the cost of the ad running on your site.  It's usually a few pennies.  The goal is to get a your website visitors clicking on the ads on your site.

Once you have accumulated enough revenue through sharing ads, Google will pay you.  On my site, I have opted for the option of receiving a check in the mail after accumulating $100 in shared advertising revenue.  

As you can imagine, it can take a lot of time to accumulate enough clicks on ads to earn $100, especially if you're making pennies per click.  I have AdSense ads running on my Quilter Blogs website. However, it's an exciting thing to get a check like this one in the mail:

If your website won't look unprofessional with ads on an area of your site, I recommend trying AdSense to make a little extra money.

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