Tubular Gauze / Retainers
Ankle injuries are common (estimated at 600 000 attendances at accident and emergency departments per year in the United Kingdom), and 30% of patients may have continuing symptoms. To read more please click here.
Surgilast Tubular Elastic Bandage Retainer, Surgitube Tubular Gauze, Tubigrip Elastic Tubular Bandage
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Tapes / Adherent Wraps
Tapes / Adherent Wraps
A latex-free version of Coban Self-Adherent Wrap is available. The wrap adheres without adhesive or clips, can be adjusted easily, and won't slip or stick to the patient's skin. It can be used to protect primary dressings, control edema, wrap splints and arm boards, and secure intravenous and other devices, according to 3M Health Care. To read more please click here.
3M Coban Self-Adherent Wrap, Adhesive Silk Tape, Clear Plastic Surgical Waterproof Tape, Medipore Cloth Tape, Transpore Tape 1 x 1.5 YD
A latex-free version of Coban Self-Adherent Wrap is available. The wrap adheres without adhesive or clips, can be adjusted easily, and won't slip or stick to the patient's skin. It can be used to protect primary dressings, control edema, wrap splints and arm boards, and secure intravenous and other devices, according to 3M Health Care. To read more please click here.
3M Coban Self-Adherent Wrap, Adhesive Silk Tape, Clear Plastic Surgical Waterproof Tape, Medipore Cloth Tape, Transpore Tape 1 x 1.5 YD
Tape Closures
Tape Closures
SIR,-The two papers on sutureless skin closure and subsequent correspondence lead me to offer a technique of sutureless skin closure which has been in use for a good many years. I do not know the inventor of the method. To read more please click here.
2nd Skin Cut Closure, Sterile-Strip Adhesive Skin Closure, Sterile-Strip Blend Tone 1/8
SIR,-The two papers on sutureless skin closure and subsequent correspondence lead me to offer a technique of sutureless skin closure which has been in use for a good many years. I do not know the inventor of the method. To read more please click here.
2nd Skin Cut Closure, Sterile-Strip Adhesive Skin Closure, Sterile-Strip Blend Tone 1/8
Sponges, Non-woven
Sponges, Non-woven
A side-by-side evaluation of a first set of "control" sponges with a second set of sponges prepared and treated in accordance with the present invention was performed.
To read more please click here.
Curity O.B. Sponge, Gauze Packing Strip Sterile, Soft Sponge Sterile, Versalon Nonwoven All-purpose Sponge
A side-by-side evaluation of a first set of "control" sponges with a second set of sponges prepared and treated in accordance with the present invention was performed.
To read more please click here.
Curity O.B. Sponge, Gauze Packing Strip Sterile, Soft Sponge Sterile, Versalon Nonwoven All-purpose Sponge
Diabetic Corner
How to Attract Qualified Sales Leads to Your Website
There are many ways to increase your website traffic, but traffic really is not the key. The key factor is trying to get qualified sales leads and customers. I would rather get 25 people that are actually looking to purchase a new website than 2500 people that are not. Listed below are some of the ways you can get the kind of visitors you want. I will however, keep the descriptions short as I will be writing a full article about each one of these topics in upcoming months. Keep in mind that some of these techniques will not work for every business but most will. TRY THEM, THEY WORK! 1. YOUR PAGE TITLES. Your page titles should be short and descriptive and should be 5 to 8 words. This is a safe amount for all search engines and will insure people searching for your website will be able to read your page title when the search engine results are displayed. This is a very important tag for search engine placement. Your title should be in the header of your HTML code and should look something like this.
Web Site Promotion - Increasing Your WebSite Traffice
2. KEYWORDS AND PHRASES. Look at every one of the pages in your website and prepare a list of keywords and key phrases that go along with the content of each page in your website. If they end up to be the very similar, simply rotate them so that you don't have the same keywords in the same position on every page. So many people make the mistake of placing keywords on their first page and no where else. Your keywords should be different on every page of your website. You should also be careful not to repeat any words more than 3 times and you should not have more than 30 keywords in your page. Your keywords should also go in the header section of your HTML page and should be in a meta-tag that the search engines can read. If after a while you are not getting the traffic you expected try changing your keywords and resubmitting to the search engines.
"KEYWORDS" content"promoting, promotion, Website promoting,"
3. PAGE DESCRIPTION. Write a precise description of every page in your website using as many of the keywords that you prepared in step 2. Try to leave out as many filler words as possible, like if, that, is, are, to leave more space for the keywords. This is the description that the user will see when the search results are displayed. The description will also be placed in the header section of your HTML page. And again will be in a meta-tag. Your description should be about 200 to 250 characters in length.
"DESCRIPTION" content"Increase your Website traffic using, meta-tags, descriptions, and effect page titles"4. PAGE CONTENT. Your page content is also very important to search engine placement. The content of your pages should be keyword rich and should be about the same subject of the keywords and phrases in your meta-tags. Don't try to fool the search engines, it will only hurt your placement. Again try to leave out as many of the filler words as you can saving more room for the important words and phrases. Your page design should not include frames, to date there are only 2 search engines that understand frames, the rest don't. 5. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO THE SEARCH ENGINES AND DIRECTORIES. There are so many search engines in many different countries, among the largest are Alta Vista, Infoseek, HotBot, Excite, Lycos, just to name a few. There are also many services on the net that will charge you to submit your site to all these search engines ranging from $25.00 to $250.00 dollars. WHY PAY for something that you can do yourself, FREE. Unless you really don't have the time, I would recommend using this service here: http://www.addme.com/submission.htm Fill in one form and this script will submit your site to 30 search engines. Do this once a month or every other month to keep the search engines up to date with changes to your pages. 6. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO YAHOO. Yahoo is the most important and a highly visited directory on the internet. This is probably the single most important submission you can make, however it must be done manually unless you have expensive software to do just that. Instructions can be found at Yahoo. http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/include.html
7. REQUEST LINKS ON SITES THAT PERTAIN TO YOUR INDUSTRY. Search for sites that support your industry, such as trade organizations and suppliers. Write the webmaster a nice letter or email asking for a reciprocal link to your site and in return put a link on your site to theirs. 8. INCLUDE YOUR URL ON STATIONERY, CARDS, AND LITERATURE. Make sure that all your business card, letterheads and brochures have your web page address and email. 9. KEEP THEM COMING BACK WITH A FREE USEFUL SERVICE. If your a realtor, put a free amortization calculator on your website, free reports, free email address and useful things that make them bookmark your site and keeps them coming back. If you sell used equipment or merchandise, add an Auction to your site. Be creative, there are a host of free CGI scripts on the internet, get one and install it. The largest resources I have seen are listed below. You will have to know how to install CGI scripts but if you can't do it ask your webmaster or Hosting Service to install it for you.
The CGI Resource Index http://www.cgi-resources.comSearch Script http://www.scriptsearch.com (5400 scripts) Hot Scripts http://www.hotscripts.com/10. START A RESELLER OR ASSOCIATE PROGRAM. Just about every business can use a sales force. One of the secrets to being successful on the net is to duplicate yourself and your efforts. These sites will show you how to do it.http://www.associateprograms.comhttp://atlnetwork.comhttp://associate-it.com 11. LOCAL BUSINESS DIRECTORIES. Do a search on the search engines for your local city, town and state. Many have local business directories that are free to place ads or links on. Write them a short email and description about your business. 12. START AN OPT-IN MAIL LIST OR NEWSLETTER. People love to belong and be accepted. You can start an eGroup (email group) for your business to keep your visitors, customers, suppliers up to date on just about any topic you desire. Learn how here. http://www.egroups.com13. BUY KEYWORDS FROM THE SEARCH ENGINES. Very few people know that you can buy "keywords and phrases" from all the top search engines. Buying keywords will insure excellent engine placement. Make a short list of your most important keywords and phrases. Contact the sales department at the major search engines and ask them what it would cost for each one of your keywords and phrase. The cost will depend on what words you are asking for and the number of times that they are searched for on that particular engine. They keep close track on every search that is placed with there service. If your in the right business you might be surprise at how inexpensive this can be, however if you are in the type of business that is very "big business" like cosmetics or web development, your budget probably won't allow for this type of cost. 14. KEEP A DATABASE OF VISITORS. Keep all your contacts that you obtain through your website for future use, you will want to use them later for such things as announcements, specials and sales. Always respond quickly to any inquires you get from your website. The internet is a "instant gratification" medium, meaning people don't like to wait. I would also suggest setting up an Auto-Responder for your website. 15. CREATE A "SIGNATURE" IN YOUR OUT GOING E-MAILS. Most e-mail programs such as Eudora, Microsoft and Netscape allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a description of your business offerings. 16. NEWS GROUPS. There are over 40,000 news group on the net on just about every topic you can imaging. Find some pertaining to your industry and partake in the discussions. Do not send Advertisements to these groups, let the Signature File At the bottom of your email do the work for you. Use a service like DejaNews http://www.dejanews.com or the news client in Microsoft Outlook or Netscape with the news service that your ISP subscribes to, and most of them do. 17. HAVE A MONTHLY CONTEST. People love getting something for free. Usually no matter what business your in, whether your selling products or a service you should be able to do this one. Having a contest brings a surprising amount of people to your site. If you sell baskets for example, give one basket away per month, or every other month. There are many places on the net to announce a contest.
18. TRACK YOUR VISITORS. I also highly suggest adding a Tracker to your website. Trackers will tell you where your visitors found your website, keywords they used, what country they're from, day of the week, time and a many other statistics that will allow you to tweak and change your website and really know what advertising is working for you. There are many Free Trackers available but the one I suggest is http://www.extreme-dm.com/19. ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS. If you are really serious about making money on-line, you must accept credit cards. There a couple of ways to do this, however. You can add a shopcart service like AmeriCart http://www.americart.com , I have used this service for some of my clients and they are very professional and the service works very well. This will save you from having to buy a Site Certificate to add security or SSL to your site, a site certificate runs about 300.00 dollars and your hosting service usually charges and estimated 20.00 per month for the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) The only draw back to a service like AmeriCart is that you will need to have an existing Merchant Account which you can set up through your local bank Another alternative is a service like Total Merchant Solutions (TMS) which will accept and verify credit cards over the net. This is a little more expensive but easiest way since there is no intervention required from you, except to fill the order. A service like this will automatically deposit your money directly into your account.
20. BANNERS. There are many ways to drive traffic to your site that other marketers may recommend, such as banner exchange programs, awards programs, Free For All Link Pages, etc. etc. etc. They in fact add very little value to your site or business, and even distract your visitors away from your products, when you've worked so hard to get them there. I just hate to go to sites that are filled with other peoples banners. If your going to do banners, do them right, buy space for your banner on other sites that will drive the kind of traffic to your site that you need, and keep other peoples banners off your site if you can. If you need banners try this on-line banner maker, it's free and it's fast. http://www.animationonline.com/I have certainly not even touched on all the ways to generate sales leads to your website. The business of E-Commerce is basically a numbers game. The more links and more search engines you are listed in, the better chance of your success. Advertising on the internet is just like any other business, YOU HAVE TO WORK IT in order to succeed. Success is a very relative term, success is not making a Million dollars on the internet, unless that is the goal you set. If you planned to make a hundred dollars and you've made a hundred and one, you have been successful. Set your goals and achieve them!
About the Author:Robert Boilard is a professional developer, marketing strategist and one of the principals' at i4Market, LLC. Since 1993 Robert has been producing successful website and marketing campaigns for companies from the 2 person office up to the Fortune 500's. Visit us today!
Specialty Wound Care, Tracheostomy Care, Urological Catheters, Urological Collection Devices, Vitamins / Oral Medications, Wheelchairs / Accessories, Women´s / Infant
There are many ways to increase your website traffic, but traffic really is not the key. The key factor is trying to get qualified sales leads and customers. I would rather get 25 people that are actually looking to purchase a new website than 2500 people that are not. Listed below are some of the ways you can get the kind of visitors you want. I will however, keep the descriptions short as I will be writing a full article about each one of these topics in upcoming months. Keep in mind that some of these techniques will not work for every business but most will. TRY THEM, THEY WORK! 1. YOUR PAGE TITLES. Your page titles should be short and descriptive and should be 5 to 8 words. This is a safe amount for all search engines and will insure people searching for your website will be able to read your page title when the search engine results are displayed. This is a very important tag for search engine placement. Your title should be in the header of your HTML code and should look something like this.
Web Site Promotion - Increasing Your WebSite Traffice
2. KEYWORDS AND PHRASES. Look at every one of the pages in your website and prepare a list of keywords and key phrases that go along with the content of each page in your website. If they end up to be the very similar, simply rotate them so that you don't have the same keywords in the same position on every page. So many people make the mistake of placing keywords on their first page and no where else. Your keywords should be different on every page of your website. You should also be careful not to repeat any words more than 3 times and you should not have more than 30 keywords in your page. Your keywords should also go in the header section of your HTML page and should be in a meta-tag that the search engines can read. If after a while you are not getting the traffic you expected try changing your keywords and resubmitting to the search engines.
"KEYWORDS" content"promoting, promotion, Website promoting,"
3. PAGE DESCRIPTION. Write a precise description of every page in your website using as many of the keywords that you prepared in step 2. Try to leave out as many filler words as possible, like if, that, is, are, to leave more space for the keywords. This is the description that the user will see when the search results are displayed. The description will also be placed in the header section of your HTML page. And again will be in a meta-tag. Your description should be about 200 to 250 characters in length.
"DESCRIPTION" content"Increase your Website traffic using, meta-tags, descriptions, and effect page titles"4. PAGE CONTENT. Your page content is also very important to search engine placement. The content of your pages should be keyword rich and should be about the same subject of the keywords and phrases in your meta-tags. Don't try to fool the search engines, it will only hurt your placement. Again try to leave out as many of the filler words as you can saving more room for the important words and phrases. Your page design should not include frames, to date there are only 2 search engines that understand frames, the rest don't. 5. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO THE SEARCH ENGINES AND DIRECTORIES. There are so many search engines in many different countries, among the largest are Alta Vista, Infoseek, HotBot, Excite, Lycos, just to name a few. There are also many services on the net that will charge you to submit your site to all these search engines ranging from $25.00 to $250.00 dollars. WHY PAY for something that you can do yourself, FREE. Unless you really don't have the time, I would recommend using this service here: http://www.addme.com/submission.htm Fill in one form and this script will submit your site to 30 search engines. Do this once a month or every other month to keep the search engines up to date with changes to your pages. 6. SUBMIT YOUR PAGE TO YAHOO. Yahoo is the most important and a highly visited directory on the internet. This is probably the single most important submission you can make, however it must be done manually unless you have expensive software to do just that. Instructions can be found at Yahoo. http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/include.html
7. REQUEST LINKS ON SITES THAT PERTAIN TO YOUR INDUSTRY. Search for sites that support your industry, such as trade organizations and suppliers. Write the webmaster a nice letter or email asking for a reciprocal link to your site and in return put a link on your site to theirs. 8. INCLUDE YOUR URL ON STATIONERY, CARDS, AND LITERATURE. Make sure that all your business card, letterheads and brochures have your web page address and email. 9. KEEP THEM COMING BACK WITH A FREE USEFUL SERVICE. If your a realtor, put a free amortization calculator on your website, free reports, free email address and useful things that make them bookmark your site and keeps them coming back. If you sell used equipment or merchandise, add an Auction to your site. Be creative, there are a host of free CGI scripts on the internet, get one and install it. The largest resources I have seen are listed below. You will have to know how to install CGI scripts but if you can't do it ask your webmaster or Hosting Service to install it for you.
The CGI Resource Index http://www.cgi-resources.comSearch Script http://www.scriptsearch.com (5400 scripts) Hot Scripts http://www.hotscripts.com/10. START A RESELLER OR ASSOCIATE PROGRAM. Just about every business can use a sales force. One of the secrets to being successful on the net is to duplicate yourself and your efforts. These sites will show you how to do it.http://www.associateprograms.comhttp://atlnetwork.comhttp://associate-it.com 11. LOCAL BUSINESS DIRECTORIES. Do a search on the search engines for your local city, town and state. Many have local business directories that are free to place ads or links on. Write them a short email and description about your business. 12. START AN OPT-IN MAIL LIST OR NEWSLETTER. People love to belong and be accepted. You can start an eGroup (email group) for your business to keep your visitors, customers, suppliers up to date on just about any topic you desire. Learn how here. http://www.egroups.com13. BUY KEYWORDS FROM THE SEARCH ENGINES. Very few people know that you can buy "keywords and phrases" from all the top search engines. Buying keywords will insure excellent engine placement. Make a short list of your most important keywords and phrases. Contact the sales department at the major search engines and ask them what it would cost for each one of your keywords and phrase. The cost will depend on what words you are asking for and the number of times that they are searched for on that particular engine. They keep close track on every search that is placed with there service. If your in the right business you might be surprise at how inexpensive this can be, however if you are in the type of business that is very "big business" like cosmetics or web development, your budget probably won't allow for this type of cost. 14. KEEP A DATABASE OF VISITORS. Keep all your contacts that you obtain through your website for future use, you will want to use them later for such things as announcements, specials and sales. Always respond quickly to any inquires you get from your website. The internet is a "instant gratification" medium, meaning people don't like to wait. I would also suggest setting up an Auto-Responder for your website. 15. CREATE A "SIGNATURE" IN YOUR OUT GOING E-MAILS. Most e-mail programs such as Eudora, Microsoft and Netscape allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a description of your business offerings. 16. NEWS GROUPS. There are over 40,000 news group on the net on just about every topic you can imaging. Find some pertaining to your industry and partake in the discussions. Do not send Advertisements to these groups, let the Signature File At the bottom of your email do the work for you. Use a service like DejaNews http://www.dejanews.com or the news client in Microsoft Outlook or Netscape with the news service that your ISP subscribes to, and most of them do. 17. HAVE A MONTHLY CONTEST. People love getting something for free. Usually no matter what business your in, whether your selling products or a service you should be able to do this one. Having a contest brings a surprising amount of people to your site. If you sell baskets for example, give one basket away per month, or every other month. There are many places on the net to announce a contest.
18. TRACK YOUR VISITORS. I also highly suggest adding a Tracker to your website. Trackers will tell you where your visitors found your website, keywords they used, what country they're from, day of the week, time and a many other statistics that will allow you to tweak and change your website and really know what advertising is working for you. There are many Free Trackers available but the one I suggest is http://www.extreme-dm.com/19. ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS. If you are really serious about making money on-line, you must accept credit cards. There a couple of ways to do this, however. You can add a shopcart service like AmeriCart http://www.americart.com , I have used this service for some of my clients and they are very professional and the service works very well. This will save you from having to buy a Site Certificate to add security or SSL to your site, a site certificate runs about 300.00 dollars and your hosting service usually charges and estimated 20.00 per month for the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) The only draw back to a service like AmeriCart is that you will need to have an existing Merchant Account which you can set up through your local bank Another alternative is a service like Total Merchant Solutions (TMS) which will accept and verify credit cards over the net. This is a little more expensive but easiest way since there is no intervention required from you, except to fill the order. A service like this will automatically deposit your money directly into your account.
20. BANNERS. There are many ways to drive traffic to your site that other marketers may recommend, such as banner exchange programs, awards programs, Free For All Link Pages, etc. etc. etc. They in fact add very little value to your site or business, and even distract your visitors away from your products, when you've worked so hard to get them there. I just hate to go to sites that are filled with other peoples banners. If your going to do banners, do them right, buy space for your banner on other sites that will drive the kind of traffic to your site that you need, and keep other peoples banners off your site if you can. If you need banners try this on-line banner maker, it's free and it's fast. http://www.animationonline.com/I have certainly not even touched on all the ways to generate sales leads to your website. The business of E-Commerce is basically a numbers game. The more links and more search engines you are listed in, the better chance of your success. Advertising on the internet is just like any other business, YOU HAVE TO WORK IT in order to succeed. Success is a very relative term, success is not making a Million dollars on the internet, unless that is the goal you set. If you planned to make a hundred dollars and you've made a hundred and one, you have been successful. Set your goals and achieve them!
About the Author:Robert Boilard is a professional developer, marketing strategist and one of the principals' at i4Market, LLC. Since 1993 Robert has been producing successful website and marketing campaigns for companies from the 2 person office up to the Fortune 500's. Visit us today!
Specialty Wound Care, Tracheostomy Care, Urological Catheters, Urological Collection Devices, Vitamins / Oral Medications, Wheelchairs / Accessories, Women´s / Infant
Diabetic Corner
eCommerce. You hear it everywhere, every time you turn around. It certainly is one of the "buzz words" on the internet right now and for good reason. eCommerce is an excellent additional avenue to sell your products and services, and for many companies it is the only avenue. We're not saying that every business should consider an eCommerce website, because in many cases it would just not be advantageous for certain companies to do so. However, if you have a product or service that is easily shipped or sold over the internet, whether it be business to business, retail or wholesale, you may want to consider an eCommerce website, Intranet or Extranet. "How exactly does eCommerce work"? This has to be the most frequently asked question we get. They know people are buying online and they know they have to accept credit cards if they want to stand a chance in all the internet-based competition. Beyond that realization, most are uncertain as to how it all works. There are actually many ways to do eCommerce, since eCommerce means different things to many people. Some people feel that by having just an online order form makes a site an eCommerce one. This is not the whole picture though. We will explain your options and let you decide what "eCommerce" means to you and your business. There are five major components of eCommerce, the Merchant Account, the Shopping System, the Payment Gateway (for real-time-processing), the Hosting Service and the Security System. Before you even start thinking about all the orders that you are going to be bringing in, you need to make some very important decisions up front. You need to decide how you are going to process orders and how you are going to accept payments. There are a variety of ways. Processing orders. Simple non-secure order form sent to your email. Secure order form sent to your email. Shopping Cart System with database (Recommended) Using a 3rd party Shopping Cart Service. (NOT RECOMMENDED) Accepting Payments Checks, COD's and Bank Drafts only. (Don't expect a lot of orders) Manual Credit Card processing. Real Time Credit Card Authorizations (Recommended) Third Party Merchant Account (Shared Account) (NOT RECOMMENDED) Depending on what you decide, you are going to need different tools to set up your Order Processing and Payment System. 1. The Merchant Account Any type of real eCommerce requires a Merchant Account and this really is your first step toward eCommerce, unless of course you have chosen to go through a 3rd party like RegSoft, PayPal or ClickBank and are willing to give up a rather large portion of your profits. These companies can take up to 15% of your sales to process your orders for you, PayPal being one of the lowest! Depending on what company you go through, the up-front costs of a merchant account can be hefty for a small business, but the long-term savings can be substantial. i4Market highly recommends Millennium Bank Card systems. The best part about Millennium is it's free to setup. Your cost are just 2.25% of what you sell and 29 cents per transaction with a $10.00 monthly Statement/Customer service fee. You can also obtain a Gateway Account with Authorize.net at the same time for an additional $20.00 per month. (Talk to Kent and tell him i4Market sent you)! - Note: we will explain the Gateway Account Below. A merchant account comes with a merchant identification number. That is about all it gets you. In order to process transactions manually you'll also need either a POS (Point Of Sale) terminal (the little box that you swipe your credit card through at retail outlets), a Virtual Terminal software that runs on your PC and will dial up the bank via your modem or a credit terminal. Even if you decide to go with Real Time Credit Card Processing you will still need some type of terminal to process orders that are called-in, faxed in and/or mailed in, also for any returns or credits. Please note: Authorize.net and most other gateway systems usually provide a Web-Based terminal for your use within your account. 2. The Shopping System If you are selling just one or two items on your site you won't have much need for a shopping cart. A site with a variety of products should use the shopping cart system because it's the easiest way for your customers to shop. The easier it is to shop, the more they will spend, which is exactly the psychology supermarkets use, and exactly how shoppers are similar whether in a supermarket or scanning through your website. So shopping carts are good. But how will they work with your merchant account and the all-important payment system (or gateway)? If the orders placed on your site are to be processed manually with the customer's credit card as a sale through your PC, Web or POS terminal, then there doesn't have to be any compatibility between your shop-cart and your merchant account. The two will work completely independent of each other, each doing its part of the job but with your help. If, on the other hand, you would like all of your incoming orders to be automatically processed for you as the customer hits the submit button, you will need "real time processing with a gateway account. By doing this the only thing you have to do is fulfill the customer's order. There are many choices when selecting a Shopping System but some of the most important should be functionality, (does it do what you need it to do), ease of use, and compatibility. Shopping systems like anything else now days can be purchased or leased, and both ways have their advantages and disadvantages. However, i4Market highly recommends purchasing your own to maintain control and your user's financial and order information and your database - Don't trust this to a 3rd party Shop-Cart since all your customers data and your entire product database will reside on their server, not yours! 3. SSL Certificate i4Market also highly recommends the purchase of an SSL Site Certificate. This Certificate provides security for the credit card information from the user's browser through your website and then into the Gateway. Again you have two choices; 1- you can use your Hosting Service's SSL certificate (if they provide this service), however the secure address will not be https://www.yourdomain.com but would look more like https://webp1.yourhost.com/your-account-name/. We suggest you purchase a site certificate in order to keep the SSL with-in your domain. Notice the addition of the "s" on the end of https in the URLs above - this is usually one way to insure the page is secured. The other way is the indication of a Lock in the lower part of your browser which will look something like this FPRIVATE. For Microsoft Internet Explorer users the lock will be on the lower right side of your browser window and on the lower left side for Netscape users. A site certificate usually ranges from USD $99.00 to $800.00 depending on the vendor and level of security and must be renewed every year. Certificates can be purchased from companies like GeoTrust, VeriSign and a handful of others. Please note; a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is not an absolute requirement since everything will work without it, however many people will not purchase from websites that do not have SSL. You also run the risk of data-jacking if you do not have a Site Certificate installed, data-jacking is when a hacker actually intercepts the data while it is being transferred. 4. Gateway Account We mentioned the Gateway many times in the above article and here's how it works. Once the user sends his order it is transferred from his machine (or more specifically, his browser) to the Shop-Cart and is protected by the Secure Socket Layer (SSL), the server then hands off the data to the Payment Gateway. Gateways are services like Authorize.net™, CyberCash™, iBill™ and a host of others and is the actual link between your website and the banking networks. These services usually offer both the Gateway and the Processor. The Gateway is simply the door into the ATM banking network, and the Processor is what actually handles the Financial data and must be able to communicate with your Shop-Cart. The processor accepts the data from the shop-cart and brings it in to the ATM network, where it is now just like any other credit card transaction. Once in the ATM network, it connects to the Customers Credit Card Issuer, it then submits the data and waits for a Yes or No answer as to whether the transaction is approved or declined. After this, the whole process starts again in reverse order to give the user feedback as to the status of their transaction. If the order is accepted, it will then charge the order amount to the customer's account and sends the Gateway an authorization code. The Customers Bank will then settle the remainder of the transaction at a later time when they do their batch settlement processing, this is usually at the end of each business day. But for now, the user has his authorization and you have your order! When the bank performs it settlements, the sale amount will then be deposit into your bank account, minus any fees that that may apply to the sale. For this reason, the funds may not show up in your account for 24 - 48 hours after the actually sale has been completed. All that is required of you, is to fulfill the customer's order.
Payment Diagram
1. Consumer places an order with the merchant through any number of sales channels: Web Site, Call Center, Retail, Wireless or Broadband. 2. Authorize.Net detects an order has been placed, securely encrypts and forwards the Authorization Request to the Consumer's Credit Card Issuer to verify the consumer's credit card account and funds availability. 3. The Authorization (or Decline) Response is returned via Authorize.Net to the Merchant. Round trip this process averages less than 3 seconds. 4. Upon approval, the Merchant fulfills the consumer's order. 5. Authorize.Net sends the settlement request to the Merchant Account Provider. 6. The Merchant Account Provider deposits transaction funds into the Merchant's Checking Account.
Overview
The Shop-Cart is what keeps track of the user's order while they are shopping. When they are done and are ready to pay for their merchandise, they submit their order. Once they submit their order it is handed to the Shop-Cart secured by the SSL and sent to the Gateway for Processing. As you can see the Shop-Cart is only a small piece of the puzzle.
If you're on a tight budget, the extra fees involved in real-time processing might be better used to aggressively advertise and drive customer traffic to your site. Processing a few orders per day doesn't take very long and until you find it to be more time-consuming to process the orders yourself, you are probably better off processing a small amount of orders manually.
If on the other hand you are starting with a healthy budget and an aggressive marketing plan, you will probably be better off implementing real-time processing right from the start. Changing order-processing methods can sometimes result in system down time and you don't want anything to slow down your momentum once you've started.
So Who do you Choose to Make All this Work?
Choosing the right company for this task is perhaps the most important decision you can make. No one is an expert in all areas of eCommerce, because there are so many variables and options depending on which configurations of hosts, shop-carts, certificates, gateways and merchants accounts you choose. You'll need a company that is experienced in eCommerce and making all the pieces work together. i4Market is that company!
eCommerce can appear simple once you understand how all the components work together. A merchant account allows you to accept credit cards, your hosting company shows your website to the world, your shopping cart helps your customers shop and order more easily, the SSL certificate protects your user's financial data and your liability and the Gateway allows real-time processing. All independent components working together to make your job easier, more productive and profitable.
About the Author:Robert Boilard is a professional developer, marketing strategist and one of the principals' at i4Market, LLC. Since 1993 Robert has been producing successful website and marketing campaigns for companies from the 2 person office up to the Fortune 500's. Visit us today!
Diabetic Corner
Of all the of websites on the net there are many of them that use frames in some capacity or another. I've been to many of them and I stop and check the code to see if there done right. Yes, there is a Right way to use frames, however, if done wrong frames can be your worst mistake. Let me explain.
When you use frames it poses some problems for you, the search engines and ultimately your search engine positioning. There are trade offs that you have when you use frames and just a couple of them are listed here.
1. Sites that use frames are harder to build. They have to be perfect or you'll have pages that you don't want displaying in the wrong place. 2. You lose valuable screen space, the more frames and scroll bars the less working area you have. 3. They are confusing to the novice user to bookmark and print. When a user tries to bookmark or print a page on your site and maybe a certain product they may bookmark or print just your header, footer or menu depending on what frame they have selected at the time. This alone could lose you a sale and a maybe a new customer. 4. Believe it or not there are still people surfing the net with non-frames browsers and many cases webmasters build a No Frames version anyway or at minimum have to put full navigation on the framed pages.
5. They pose a major technical problem with search engines. To date there are very few search engines that know how to handle frames correctly. But what about all the other ones? When they crawl your page, what do they see? If your site uses frames, you can find out here what your page looks like to the search engines here. http://www.anybrowser.com/EngineView.html
If you visited the above site and didn't like what you discovered, read on. You can overcome the way search engines look at your site. First, your frames page should have a NOFRAMES section with a referring link to a Contents page or Site Map, that will have a link to every page in your website.
The defacto standard has been to just put a note in the noframes section saying that "Your browser does not support Frames" and leaving the viewer no choice but to use the BACK button. However if you put in this section a reference to a contents page that the browsers and engines can follow (as above), they will bypass the frame and index all the pages on the contents page. 6. You have to (or you should) put full navigation controls on each and every page any ways, just in case someone comes into your site through the back door (and they will). What I mean by this is someone loading a page with out the frames page and if they do they will not have any navigation on the page and thus don't see the rest of your site.
Now there is a way around this also, it's called JavaScript. By putting the code below in the head section of your pages (except your frames page) you can insure that 99% of users will load your frames page. The only way they won't is if they have their Java turned off or they have a non-java compatible browser. What this script does is checks to see if the page is inside a frame or loaded by itself, if it is it will instantly load the Frames information. Put this code in the head of your pages and change the index.html to the name of your main frames page.
The reason we are using JavaScript here instead of a fast meta-refresh is simple, search engines penalize pages that use a meta-refreshes and the meta tag itself cannot determine if it's in a frame or not.
Now I am not saying that Frames are bad, and in some case they are absolutely necessary. In my professional opinion, frames are good if they are used correctly, have a purpose, and add value to your site. I'll simplify that for you. If you don't need them don't use them.
About the Author:Robert Boilard is a professional developer, marketing strategist and one of the principals' at i4Market, LLC. Since 1993 Robert has been producing successful website and marketing campaigns for companies from the 2 person office up to the Fortune 500's. Visit us today!
Incontinence, Infusion/IV Supplies, Lift Chairs / Geri Chairs, Lympedema Pumps / Accessories, Medications / OTC, Needles / Syringes, Orthopedics, Ostomy, Pain Management
When you use frames it poses some problems for you, the search engines and ultimately your search engine positioning. There are trade offs that you have when you use frames and just a couple of them are listed here.
1. Sites that use frames are harder to build. They have to be perfect or you'll have pages that you don't want displaying in the wrong place. 2. You lose valuable screen space, the more frames and scroll bars the less working area you have. 3. They are confusing to the novice user to bookmark and print. When a user tries to bookmark or print a page on your site and maybe a certain product they may bookmark or print just your header, footer or menu depending on what frame they have selected at the time. This alone could lose you a sale and a maybe a new customer. 4. Believe it or not there are still people surfing the net with non-frames browsers and many cases webmasters build a No Frames version anyway or at minimum have to put full navigation on the framed pages.
5. They pose a major technical problem with search engines. To date there are very few search engines that know how to handle frames correctly. But what about all the other ones? When they crawl your page, what do they see? If your site uses frames, you can find out here what your page looks like to the search engines here. http://www.anybrowser.com/EngineView.html
If you visited the above site and didn't like what you discovered, read on. You can overcome the way search engines look at your site. First, your frames page should have a NOFRAMES section with a referring link to a Contents page or Site Map, that will have a link to every page in your website.
The defacto standard has been to just put a note in the noframes section saying that "Your browser does not support Frames" and leaving the viewer no choice but to use the BACK button. However if you put in this section a reference to a contents page that the browsers and engines can follow (as above), they will bypass the frame and index all the pages on the contents page. 6. You have to (or you should) put full navigation controls on each and every page any ways, just in case someone comes into your site through the back door (and they will). What I mean by this is someone loading a page with out the frames page and if they do they will not have any navigation on the page and thus don't see the rest of your site.
Now there is a way around this also, it's called JavaScript. By putting the code below in the head section of your pages (except your frames page) you can insure that 99% of users will load your frames page. The only way they won't is if they have their Java turned off or they have a non-java compatible browser. What this script does is checks to see if the page is inside a frame or loaded by itself, if it is it will instantly load the Frames information. Put this code in the head of your pages and change the index.html to the name of your main frames page.
The reason we are using JavaScript here instead of a fast meta-refresh is simple, search engines penalize pages that use a meta-refreshes and the meta tag itself cannot determine if it's in a frame or not.
Now I am not saying that Frames are bad, and in some case they are absolutely necessary. In my professional opinion, frames are good if they are used correctly, have a purpose, and add value to your site. I'll simplify that for you. If you don't need them don't use them.
About the Author:Robert Boilard is a professional developer, marketing strategist and one of the principals' at i4Market, LLC. Since 1993 Robert has been producing successful website and marketing campaigns for companies from the 2 person office up to the Fortune 500's. Visit us today!
Incontinence, Infusion/IV Supplies, Lift Chairs / Geri Chairs, Lympedema Pumps / Accessories, Medications / OTC, Needles / Syringes, Orthopedics, Ostomy, Pain Management
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