you should

It is a place where you can process credit card payments from potential customers or donors. A place where your profits can soar and your future can grow. Yet many organisations, small businesses especially, fear this step. The reason: merchant accounts needed for such an arrangement cost money, and it's hard to spend money when you're not bringing a lot of it in. This defeatist mentality leads to a lot of missed opportunity. Following are five things you must remember about virtual terminals:

If you build it, they WON'T come. It is still your job to employ clever marketing tactics. You must know where your customers are lurking, and furthermore, you must know how to reach them. Stretch your marketing dollars as far as you can, and target efforts instead of springing for big ad campaigns that play to mass audiences. A 40 percent response rate from a smaller group is usually more profitable than a .001 percent response rate from millions of people. For starters, the raw numbers are usually higher. Secondly, repeat customers are easier to develop. Having a virtual terminal helps with your image, but it won't automatically find you customers.

If you have it, they WILL use it. This is great news if your customers were going to buy anyway, but ecstatic when convenience leads to dollars where there may not have been any. Including the option for credit cards and other eCommerce solutions instills confidence in those fringe people-window shoppers who like what you are selling, but are too standoffish to jump through many hoops. Credit card payments say to these individuals that you have it together, and that you are someone worth doing business with.

If they use it, you should, too. Merchant accounts that enable credit card payments are a blessing to your customers, providing a service that offers both security and convenience. But they also offer a service to you. In addition to aiding in your marketing efforts and helping you bring in shaky customers, they also provide you with a variety of value enhancing features that allow you to run reports and see how effective your online business efforts are. These reports are also valuable come tax time.

If you're not keeping up, you ARE falling behind. It's a new world, and it gets newer every day. Technology enables us to meet many challenges and treasure every convenience. Successful businesses, charities, and organisations adapt with the times. If not, they stay in the past, which equates with death. After all, you can't revisit the past. You can't make it the norm again. Refuse to keep up with society, and it will refuse to keep track of you.

Your virtual terminal is a ticket to success, but it won't do it for you. Take pride in your business efforts, and reap the benefits of a job well done.