Internet Merchant Account: How can it Benefit Small Businesses?
The invention of the Internet revolutionized the business-to-consumer (B2C) sales arena. Instead of selling in store or by mail—methods that made customer acquisition painfully slow—a merchant suddenly had access to global consumers through a medium that offered around the clock shopping and real time payment. Today, these benefits are still why businesses open an internet merchant account through a merchant service provider (MSP).
Internet merchant accounts benefit
Internet merchant accounts benefit businesses of all sizes, but their benefits for small businesses can be especially crucial in terms of:
Increasing Revenue
Research shows that one-third of active Americans prefer to shop online instead of in store. If you do not sell online, you ignore the shopping preference of millions of U.S. consumers. A similar statistic exists for shoppers in the United Kingdom. Most businesses would do anything to attract customers. Opening an Internet merchant account happens to be one of the easiest and most effective methods of attraction.
Minimizing Operating Cost
In business news, cost cutting is mostly associated with corporations, undermining its importance to small businesses. Unlike corporations, most small businesses cannot add locations to increase sales. When a small business opens an Internet merchant account, it can increase sales without dangerously increasing operating cost—a scenario that can gradually create revenue for location expansion.
Minimizing Advertising Expense
The advertising budget of most small businesses prohibits TV ads in prime time and print ads in popular magazines. They need to increase sales without investing in expensive forms of advertising, and selling online helps them do it. Selling online may require search engine marketing (SEM) services, but their cost is drastically more affordable compared to large ad campaigns
Sales Territory Expansion
For businesses that sell to consumers, selling online can dramatically increase sales territory. In the past, quickly moving from a regional sales territory to a global one was unthinkable. Today, the Internet allows businesses to set their products and services on a global stage without performing the traditional motions of sales territory expansion.
Selling Niche Products
If your business sells niche products, only selling them locally can kill business growth. When sold on store shelves, niche products can gather dust. When sold online, their sales can increase dramatically and remain sustained. Internet merchant accounts allow businesses to take niche products off store shelves and sell them globally.
Competing with Big Competitors
For most small businesses, the ultimate value of ecommerce is the opportunity to compete with big businesses. A corporation might gobble up your customers in Albany, but that does not mean its dominance extends to Austria. Corporations once forced small businesses into extinction, but now they can use the Internet to level the playing field.
AVPS Provides Internet Merchant Accounts
At AVPS, we provide merchant accounts that help businesses increase sales, including ecommerce accounts. We also sell the equipment (e.g. card processing terminal) needed for certain account transactions. If your business needs account solutions that encourage revenue growth, contact us today. We have over twenty-five years of experience in Small Business Merchant Accounts and servicing merchants.
