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© Marketing Consultant - Adelard Gasana
#1 Credit Card Processing Company
Every company, whether large or small, needs to have an efficient, streamlined method of getting those with whom they do business to accept credit cards from them. And that is where payment gateways make their valuableness manifest. The technology used by MDS is sophisticated and up- to- date enough for all credit card processing companies and includes only the best credit card machines. These range from small calculator- like devices that process the card and print the receipt, to various “virtual terminals” such as First Data Global Gateway (FDGG), which requires no software to install: It is ready to accept credit cards from anyone who has an online merchant account, once that person is logged in. All major credit card lines— Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Diners Club, and JCB— are accepted.
Mobile credit card processing is also a big part of the merchant services of MDS. With them, the client with a merchant account can literally transform his own iPhone (or other smartphone) into a mobile POS device. To do this, the client must first sign up with MDS Mobile, after which both his desktop computer and his smartphone become “virtual terminals” and he can enact business transactions while “on the go.” The system is so flexible that no adjustments are needed should the owner of the credit card merchant account get a new machine or phone. What is more, usage of the software is cheap, costing only a few pennies for every transaction. And MDS Mobile is as secure as one can get: None of his personal data that could be used to commit identity theft is stored on the user’s machine.
Here, in greater depth, is a description of how MDS Mobile can be used on a smartphone. The seller logs in using his secure credentials, then attaches the MDS Mobile device— which is shaped like a half moon and has a slit which the card can go through— to the top of the phone and punches in the sales total on the keypad, presses “Next” and the swipe button, and slides the card through. All of the online merchant account owner’s information then appears on the screen in truncated form, and the seller hits “Next” and types in his own notes, which will be available to him alone. He also clicks on the “Send Receipt” button, so that the customer will get the receipt in his email account. When he hits “Submit,” then authorization of the credit card merchant account takes place within seconds, and the seller knows whether it is valid or not.
Great and convenient as it is, what was just described is not even half of what MDS has to offer. Those who have merchant accounts with them can also have their cards processed over wireless network— and this feature is especially useful for those who work from places that have not traditionally been used as bases from which to do business— fairs, job sites, and the like. Those who continue to work from the conventional places can take advantage of the digital or analog technology that credit card processing companies have been using for a long time.
MDS is very flexible indeed; its architecture is capable of supporting several POS options. Best of all, MDS’s POS hardware is covered by warranty.
Not surprisingly, MDS— particularly its Cash Advance program, which offers advances on credit card receivables that enable the beneficiaries to purchase new equipment— is used by all of the leading restaurants in the nation. Likewise, many gas companies, mail and telephone order companies, and merchants whose businesses make them rank as “high risk,” are also turning to MDS for solutions.
MDS has been accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and on a scale of A+ to F, it has been given an A. Just the past year, too, MDS announced that they were joining up with Karma Snack, an online marketing company, in the hopes of being able to increase the sales made by their clients.
To sign up with MDS and start accepting credit cards, one puts in his personal name, email address, and phone number, and optionally, he may also include the name of his business, what they sell, and types of transactions (this category includes retail [swiped], online/ e- commerce, pay at the table, electronic check service, gift card program, and nonprofit). Applications are in the vast majority of cases approved immediately.
Like any online enterprise, MDS has its customer support team that is working 24/ 7 to answer their clients’ questions and help them solve any problems they might have. A happy customer is a long- term customer. As the people at MDS say: Let us have a successful and profitable relationship.
For the last 3 years, Karma Snack, too, has been a growing player as a marketing services company. A large part of the services involves SEO (search engine optimization), a system of using keywords in such a way as to increase a website’ ranking on a list of search results, and both Internet and mobile SEO are provided. Karma Snack will surely be a fine complement for Merchant Data Systems in their new partnership.
Incoming search terms:
- merchant data systems payment gateway
- apply diners club credit card online miami
- smartphone virtual terminal
It’s estimated by 2014, mobile traffic will overtake desktop, and getting traction for that now, is more critical. Still there are some businesses that don’t know how or where to get started. Can their current developer handle the conversion? Is it really necessary? Where do they get answers?
Karma Snack Regular Website
To give you a little background on how difficult the journey actually is for average business owners here is a background on me, a web developer. I’ve been computer programming in C++ and Perl since 1995, and designing websites back when Altavista and Lycos were running the show. I remember when CSS was still brand new, and Google wasn’t even a thought. Creating websites is in my blood, it is what I live for day in and day out. So for me to tell you that I had a difficult time with this task should give a small insight on how difficult it can be for newer website developers to handle. I knew businesses hand to take mobile seriously, so I took a hiatus and learned everything I could about the potential, frameworks, tested out script after script, and setup after setup.
A lot of back and forth with developers, programmers, and designers went into building the Karma Snack Mobile Architect. But just gaining the knowledge needed to answer questions for the perfect user experience standpoint was worth the headaches. After all this time, I can proudly say we’ve got the answers. We’ve already begun the conversion process for our bigger clients, and have stripped down a framework to barebones and usability for designers to have their fun too.
In the past 2 months, we’ve converted several clients’ website to mobile/tablet versions. In fact we made it mandatory for ALL new website development to be mobile friendly or enabled, there is no if-and-or-buts about it. If you get a website from Karma Snack, it’s mobile ready, no matter what.
Mobile Friendly Versus Mobile Enabled
What’s the difference in Karma Snack’s terms of Mobile Friendly or Mobile enabled?
Karma Snack Mobile Website
Mobile Website To Regular Website Transition
What I’ve learned so far for Karma Snacks’ user feedback, people love the smooth transition of the website, if a particular page is not mobile enabled, it goes to the non-mobile version without interference, and then it automatically detects, when they go to a page which is mobile enabled, and switches back. This style allows a website to slow or gradually change pages to mobile friendly, over a period of time, because transitioning 10,000+ pages which are not on a CMS would be a hell of a challenge for a project.
I suggest moving the top level pages and 2nd level pages first. Make sure the call to actions exist on the mobile site in a mobile version. I’ve seen too many times where people half-ass their mobile site, and have the call to action, the most important part of your website, in an ugly non-mobile friendly way. Get your designer involved from the beginning of the transition and challenge them. They’ve got about 320 width of pixels to play with, good luck, it will be a true challenge. The goal is to keep the look and feel of the website the same when going from Mobile to Regular. If a user visits your website on their mobile first, and then goes to their desktop for a more vivid experience, They should understand automatically that this is the exact same website. The feel, the navigation, the content, it’s all there. The ultimate goal is for them to not even have to visit your regular site, since all of the functionality needed is on your mobile version, and they can order, fill out form, or quickly get in contact with your business.
The Mobile User Experience
User experience is key for everything, it took us nearly 6 months of trial and error until we got the perfect framework, and created a customized Karma Snack Mobile Architect and launched our mobile site. We had to do research, test speed, and compatibility. The user should be able to scroll, search, and understand intuitively how to use your mobile site. Quick symbols for navigation work where there is not a lot of room for text. Depending on the design, I recommend have a navigation at the top and bottom of the pages, and maybe a subtle mini-navigation when in a particular section. Sitemaps will also help visitors and search engines. I like to keep the sitemap easy and tiered up by specific sections of the website.
Google Map Localization
Website Speed
Remember speed is very important, most people will be using your mobile site on their cell phone data plans, so I made it a top priority to that each page is under 300K in size and still stylish. All scripts are Asynchronous, and we made sure database calls are done only when absolutely necessary.
Utilizing WebSiteOptimization.com’s Web Page Speed (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/), I was able to achieve only 18 http request for the home page, and under 262K size in download speed. I love speed, because it creates a better user experience.
Quick Comparison of speed:
Mobile Karma Snack - 18 http requests at 262K download size
Regular Karma Snack - 28 http requests at 471K download size
Mobile Accessibility
I’ll admit, I’m from the old school, and I go W3C validating crazy. It helps with accessibility for disable person (blind, deaf, etc), and it also helps in making sure your website looks exactly the same on every browser and operating system.
Utilizing HTML5, and our new Architect, and Also using Google PageSpeed test I have the following results for Performance:
Mobile Karma Snack – 92 / 100 score
Regular Karma Snack – 95 / 100 score
These Google+, and Facebook plugins are really killing my 100 out of 100 score, which kinda of irritates me, but I digress.
Search Engines and Search Localization
Another key thing to getting mobile traffic, is getting on mobile search engines. Wait what? Yeah, if you notice Google gives different rankings for mobile and desktop. Google also localizes rankings. There were times I would notice certain web pages were not ranking for the mobile version of the exact terms. I had to do some serious digging, and it turns out there are special sitemap annotations for mobile now.
Regular sitemap Annotations:
<url>
<loc>http://www.karmasnack.com/build-a-mobile-website/</loc>
</url>
<loc>http://www.karmasnack.com/build-a-mobile-website/</loc>
</url>
Mobile Sitemap Annotations:
<url>
<loc>http://m.karmasnack.com/build-a-mobile-website/</loc>
<mobile:mobile/>
</url>
<loc>http://m.karmasnack.com/build-a-mobile-website/</loc>
<mobile:mobile/>
</url>
Check out Schema.org or Google (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34648) for more information.
Microdata – Rich Text Snippets
Microdata (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=176035) or Schema.org
Microdata - Rich Media
This would be the perfect time to implement your Microdata annotations as well. I found out that you can take it to the max by utilizing Rich Media Snippets to add photos, and your Google + profiles to their search results. Google even has a Rich Snippets Testing Tool (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets) to help web developers out. You can even add star rating with proper verification and annotations. I’ll discuss this in another topic, but jumping on board of this through Schema.org is going to be crucial for the survival of online businesses in the coming weeks.
Implementation
Matt Cutts Google Panda
Also, there are some Google updates coming up that are going to effect a lot of websites, you should check out: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
It’s Not About Just Backlinks Anymore
There is really no more waiting for online marketing. If you are still just thinking about creating backlinks and think that is what’s going to get you results you are completely in 2002 mode. I’ve put together a quick bullet-point guide on what you need to survive the coming Google updates and Internet.
1) Mobile Friendly or Enabled Website – By 2014, Mobile internet visitors will over take desktop computer traffic. You no longer need to be in front of a computer to search or find what you need.
If a business has over 70% of their customers coming from one source, what happens if that source decides to drop them? That’s what most website owners are doing when they only concentrate on Google rankings, Google this, Google that. Screw Google, get traffic from multiple sources, social media, social networking, social bookmarking, forums, Linkedin, and more. It is very critical to go where you TARGET audiences is online.
2) Fresh Articles and Content – Search Engines, and especially Google take a strong consideration with website which have fresh content. Indexing your website within 10 minutes of publishing an article happens all the time. Get content, and keep creating quality relevant content. This means content people want to read.
3) Website Speed – Google takes Speed into consideration for rankings! They said they do, so make your choice – do you want a heavy slow website with flash (seriously – Flash???), or fast loading and a better user experience?
4) Usability – Did you know what 80% of disabled people are head of their household? Why are you not W3C validating your website?
5) Schema.org compatibility – whether it is sitemaps, or Microdata, get with the program if you want traffic from the search engines.
6) Solid Online Marketing Plan – Get engaged, don’t spam website through blog comments, get engaged on social websites, and web 2.0 platforms. Create content, buzz, discussions, and get rankings. 70% of your website traffic should be coming from non-search engine sources.
Social Media Traffic
If you are a website designer and looking for business, go to small business web forums, find out where business owners are and talk to them. If you sell dolls, go to forums for doll and toy enthusiasts and engage there. Just go and drive traffic back to your site!
7) Take your website and your mobile website seriously! If you create a mobile site make sure it is truly user friendly, and has options for feedback from people!
Good luck my friends, if you have any questions drop me a line or comment below, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Data, data, data, all the answers lay within the data. Today I learned quite a number of things looking over all the data of all my clients. It’s game time for many of my clients going into the holiday season, and understanding what current rankings they hold and have achieve in the last week gave me profound awakening about most businesses.
Being a new business owner I find there are not enough hours in the day to simply get the major work done for the core business to help it grow. There can never be enough marketing, enough data analysis, or enough creative ideas. I sometimes wish I could spend whole weeks just analysis data streams with my team because the answers to all marketing campaigns lie there.
Search Engine Optimization has evolved a lot in the last several years, but it’s still not mainstream. SEO Experts and Gurus all agree the power that search engines have can literally bankrupt or make a shooting star out of a website. Search engines know this, and every website dominating a particular niche knows this.
One thing a lot of lower ranking “SEO 7 optimum” companies offering $99 SEO realize though is the power of the data they have.
I’m a firm believe in data analysis, at Karma Snack we have a dedicated team of data analysts on staff just to discover new keywords, trends, and shifts in client’s industries. Their job it to find the information, quickly process it, and at the end of the day have a working marketing campaign that is geared towards the new mini-strategy. I love them, especially the ones that are up till 4 o’clock in the morning with me instant messaging me back and forth about why this new marketing campaign will or will not work.
What I realized though is that most businesses simply do not have people sitting around analyzing data. I mean the big companies like Humana, American Express, etc. do, and some will say “Well they can afford to”. I believe that any expert in their field, whether it is Internet marketing for my company, or selling uniforms for a client, or international commercial loans for another client, needs to sit down one a week or once a month to really look at the data. Can you really afford not do? Who are you best customers, who are worst customers, what initiative this month/week have you done to promote your company? What promotions are working, and what aren’t and why? What is all the data telling you?
Lucky for my clients they have my team of expert analysts and me, and lucky for me we have tracking analytics tools installed, heat-maps, custom visitor behavior models, customized in-house SEO tools, and really top of the line business metrics available to us.
But even if you have a simply website with Google Analytics or Awstats, oh yeah I remember those days, looking and finding trends can be easy. Analyze where you where a month ago, 3 months ago, 1 year ago in terms of data, and compare it to the industry. Are you doing better or worst than every one else?
Strange things you find in the data can be either a gold mine waiting to be discovered or can alert you of future potential problems.
In my business I always have clients telling me they want to rank for this or that keyword, with no data to back it up on why. They just want to rank so they can be number one. Usually it’s an obscure keyword that I can get rankings for within a week. So I end up doing 30 minutes or so of work on this particular keyword, and get them the rankings in a week or so. The client is happy at first, but then realize the keyword is not bringing enough traffic because it is not popular or it’s bring in the wrong traffic, cause it’s not targeted. This is where I have to then go back and explain about data and why understanding the data is important. Data is so important, you should look at your stats at least once a week, if not every day.
A perfect example is today I found about a minimum of 20 new keywords for each clients that they where not ranking a week ago for before, and we where not targeted. These keywords have already started to bring in good traffic, but most important GREAT sales. So now come tomorrow morning, my staff and me are going to be at work getting rankings for these as well. Keywords I would have not discover until maybe Monday, if I hadn’t decided to randomly check all the stats on a Friday afternoon. That equates to an extra 2 days worth of sales, and in this economy every sale counts, and I believe my clients appreciate it.
One thing I will always love about data is it is never wrong.
If you are ever in South Beach Miami and want to talk give me a ring. Till next time, see on the beach!
