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PayPal and eBay Here To Stay, Merchants Take Advantage of New Services

12/29/2003

New Internet services are emerging to help merchants using services like PayPal and eBay to sell online. One new service that is emerging is Secure Image Hosting.

Indianapolis, IN (PRWEB) December 29 2003--New Internet services are emerging to help 3rd party merchants attract and retain as many potential customers as possible. A “3rd party merchant” is any online merchant that uses a service to help either sell or collect payment. PayPal and eBay, among countless others, are examples of 3rd party service providers as they each help merchants sell products or services and collect payments. These are the kinds of companies that help make big dogs out of small fish. They allow businesses of any size to leverage their enormous pools of resources to reach and transact with a number of consumers that would otherwise be infinitely out of reach. And lately, companies are launching new services aimed at helping 3rd party merchants take full advantage of their potential.

One service emerging as a real value for 3rd party merchants is Secure Image Hosting (SIH). SIH services provide secure server space for 3rd party merchants. Merchants can use this secure server space to store their logos and other important images.

This is a tremendous benefit and cost savings for merchants that can best be described in an example. Say XYZ Co. uses PayPal as their method for accepting credit card and check purchases online. XYZ Co., like the majority of small companies, don't have a large budget for their website, and thus do not have the means or desire to pay $150 to $500 per year for their own SSL Certificate. This is why they use PayPal for their shopping cart and payment collection needs. PayPal is a fantastic service that allows merchants to sell goods through their (PayPal's) secure ordering system, but they have a drawback that can make XYZ lose customers. When someone buys something from XYZ's website they are sent to a PayPal checkout page.

First problem…customer is being sent to a different website during their purchase…this makes people nervous, and more likely to cancel their order. But PayPal offers a solution…sort of. They will allow XYZ to display their logo on their checkout pages to give their customers a little more piece of mind. This is great, and it does help, but they'll have to store the logo on a server other than PayPal's.

This creates the problem…if the logo is not stored on a secure server, when the PayPal checkout page loads, the customer will get a security popup message saying that “Part or all of this page is not secure…” This is because, though PayPal's checkout pages are secure, they are now referencing a logo on a non-secure server. There is no getting around this popup window, and there is no getting around the fact that this will scare off some of XYZ's would be customers.

That's not good news for XYZ however, companies are now offering a solution that solves this problem at a tiny fraction of the cost of full-blown SSL certification. One such company is PushCode Incorporated (www.pushcode.com), a web development and design company based in Indianapolis, IN. PushCode provides a service they call PushPic Secure Image Hosting (www.pushpic.com). For a small fee you can host varied numbers of images on their secure servers. They provide account access and the necessary code to be able to reference those images on checkout pages from PayPal and countless other services. It's a quick and simple service that provides the tremendous benefits of a more secure feeling for customers and a more professional, branded sales process for merchants.

Increasingly more merchants are turning to services like PushPic to improve their sales process and retain more customers. All third party merchants would benefit by taking the time to research services like these and assess their value.