We are glad to finally say that our help desk and website are back up and running, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused over the last couple of days! You should not notice, but our help desk is now at redpeachsolutions.org/support (instead of redpeachsolutions.com/support), however the old links will just redirect to the new location so you don’t need to change anything on your end…it’s just an fyi.

Also, we had a little bit of server downtime a couple of nights ago during some scheduled maintenance. It lasted longer than anticipated, and had I known I would have sent out an email beforehand. It was supposed to be a quick thing that only lasted a few minutes, however in the future I will send out a notification anyway. For anyone who is interested, we upgraded from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5. This should not affect your sites with us as we have already made the changes necessary.

As we finally feel better around here, we are continuing on with our planned changes for our website and business, one of which was our new web design which we rolled out a couple of weeks ago. Secondly, our site is now Boutique Web Design as you can now see on our homepage! Along with the name comes the domain www.boutiquewebdesign.com, however our old domains will still work as well. Red Peach Solutions is now the “parent company” and we will do business under the name of Boutique Web Design from now on.

I mentioned we are finally feeling better - I want to add a little more about that…these last two weeks have been pretty terrible with a nasty virus circulating through our three kids and then to ourselves, hopefully to never return again! My poor husband had the worst case our doctor has ever seen in her life. So today my first day back to work almost full time and so things should return to normal soon. Thanks for all your well wishes during this time! I try to keep my site updated with current info, but I wasn’t always able to do so this time and I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Stay tuned for more news and changes coming soon!

The tenth annual Shop.org report, The State of Retailing Online 2007, conducted by Forrester Research states that e-commerce has come of age and its profitability throughout the channel has stabilized. Eighty-three percent of respondents to the survey reported making more money and 78 percent said they were more profitable than just two years ago. The report found that apparel, accessories and footwear reached $18.3 billion in 2006 for online purchases and is expected to hit $22.1 billion by the end of 2007.

e-onlinedata (EOD) is the nation’s fastest-growing, most trusted provider of online payment solutions. Thousands of Internet, mail order, auction sellers and retail businesses — from start-ups to billion-dollar companies — are choosing EOD every month for affordable, reliable, and easy-to-use credit card processing and Authorize.Net payment gateway solutions. For more information on e-onlinedata or to apply for a merchant account, please visit http://www.e-onlinedata.com/redpeachdesigns

I get a lot of questions about accepting credit cards, how it works, and why it’s important so here is some information that I hope is helpful for you.

Years ago, an exchange of cash was all it took for a customer to make a purchase from a merchant. How things have changed! Today, most businesses offer their products or services on the Internet — clearly, they can’t be restricted to cash-on-delivery practices anymore. E-commerce has emerged as a lucrative channel for merchants to boost sales and grow their bottom lines. Many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home, and browsing an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store — and customers get the added convenience of shopping 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Merchants should understand the value of operating in multiple channels. For those who haven’t yet incorporated e-commerce into their business but want to, there is much to learn. They must educate themselves on how payment processing works in order to best accommodate their online shoppers and serve the needs of their business. Though paying for an online purchase takes just a few seconds, it involves a complex chain reaction of behind-the-scenes processes.

Merchants can increase revenues and reach more customers by offering an efficient, successful e-commerce solution. This article examines what must be in place in order to complete a transaction that is both secure and offers superior customer service.

What Makes an E-Commerce Solution Possible?
In addition to the range of software and hardware that companies use to support the sale of products and services online, there are three vital components that make online shopping possible: the shopping cart, payment gateway and payment processor. Each is critical to ensuring successful implementation of e-commerce functionality.

Shopping cart. The shopping cart acts quite literally as a virtual shopping basket. It holds the items customers select from a Web site until they are ready to proceed to the checkout stage, where their credit card information will be processed. The shopping cart:

• Keeps track of items until they are purchased
• Automatically totals the amount of a customer’s order, including shipping and tax
• Allows shoppers to securely enter address and credit card information

Red Peach Solutions offers two shopping cart systems that are easy to use and provide the means to accept credit card (and other) payments online. Click here to read more about our shopping cart solutions.

Payment gateway. In order to accept credit cards through the Internet, a payment gateway is critical to transport the credit card information from the shopping cart to the payment processor once the consumer clicks the “Buy” button. In most cases, this transaction happens almost instantaneously. The payment gateway receives encrypted transactions from the merchant’s shopping cart. An encrypted transaction simply means that credit card numbers can’t be read by people who are not supposed to read those numbers. Authentication is then provided and the decrypted payment information is transmitted for authorization. The payment gateway:

• Fulfills the same function as a point-of-sale (card swipe) terminal at a physical retail location
• Takes information provided through a shopping cart and transmits it electronically and securely to a payment processor to be routed for authorization of payment

Payment processor. The payment processor transmits a customer’s credit card information via the Internet to the merchant bank for authorization. It also sends data back to the merchant’s bank to approve payment or the transfer of funds. Specifically, a payment processor:

• Acts as a link from the merchant to the acquiring bank or merchant bank
• Receives information from the merchant through the payment gateway and packages the information for delivery to the acquirer, ensuring that all necessary transactional data is present and valid
• Later transmits information back from the acquirer for delivery to the merchant to settle the transaction

With the shopping cart, payment gateway and payment processor in place, merchants have all they need to offer convenient e-commerce solutions that deliver superior security and service. With a little research and education, merchants can find the best providers to accommodate their business needs and those of their consumers. It just makes sense — with online shopping projected to account for $116 billion, or five percent of all retail sales this year — e-commerce provides merchants an opportunity to make more money and succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Want to get started accepting credit cards on your site? Visit e-onlinedata — it’s quick and easy!

Merchant Processing 101 is a production of e-onlinedata, reprinted with permission from e-onlinedata. Content is intended to provide merchants and small business owners with practical information and insight into the world of payment processing.

Hello all,

I need to take it easy and rest for a couple of days. I came down with a nasty case of mastitis and basically feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, in addition to the other wonderful symptoms associated with this. I’m on antibiotic and will hopefully start feeling better by tomorrow but it’s been hard to work much as my body aches on top of my already hurting wrists make it hard for me to do computer work.

Thanks…
Danielle

I have had so many people over the last few years inquire about if I do search engine optimization (SEO) and have always had to say no or refer them elsewhere. I am now proud to announce that we have teamed up with Jay of iClickSolutions who is Google and Yahoo certified to provide our clients with these very valuable services at a huge discount!

I work with so many clients who are starting new stores and so many don’t know about SEO or internet marketing and it’s such a key part of an online business’ success. Starting a website is just the beginning…how will people find your site once you have it online? They won’t unless you make an effort in these areas. If you’re serious about your business succeeding, then you must know about SEO and online advertising and marketing.

We have several services and packages now available on our site here: Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Services

And if your business needs don’t fit in one of the packages, please contact me and we’ll work out a custom package.

We re-vamped the Pre-made Website Template options and instead of offering just a few packages to choose from, you can now customize the pre-made template to include anything you need and nothing you don’t need. You can add a shopping cart, hosting, banners, business cards, favicon, product data entry, as many pages as you need and more in one easy place.

We also updated our Custom OOAK Template product - you can choose your own package as described above and we have considerably LOWERED the price. So if you have your own graphics or design OR you want to choose from the graphics providers listed on that page, you can create your own package and have a custom website design for less money and less time than our e-commerce packages!

We weren’t around much this weekend due to Mother’s Day and a party we threw for our now 1 and 3 year old daughters! It was very fun and tiring at the same time but now we’re back to work on projects. Things are moving along…Andrea is doing more work and helping out greatly and I have started on the next couple of projects from the waiting list so things are moving along.

I’ve had some of my emails not make it to recipients last week, I think they are getting marked as spam again so if you are waiting on something from me, feel free to email again. I’m also working on finishing up a project management system where you can log in and see the status of projects at any time. I’m hoping this helps out with the amount of emails we receive as we would be able to communicate and check progress through this new system. Stay tuned…

I would like to announce that we have a new person on board helping with projects, website maintenance, support and anything else she wants to take on.

Andrea has been helping out a little here and there for a while but will now be helping out in a much larger capacity. She is a member of the support forum here (I believe her username is “Andrea”) and has already helped with several shopping cart questions. So far she is scheduled to be doing website maintenance, product data entry and shopping cart support!

You can read a little bit about her on the “About Our Team” page here: http://www.redpeachsolutions.com/pages/about-us.htm

After a horrible last two months, we’re finally moved in to our new house and I’m back to work. Still getting settled in and I don’t have a printer hooked up yet but overall I’m “back in business”.

Couple of things…

I am still working on the AlohaCart upgrade - I found a bug and am getting that fixed by the developer and then will FINALLY be releasing it. I know many of you are anxiously awaiting this upgrade and I am really sorry for the delay.

We did have problems getting internet access at the new house and so things did get a little backed up more than I expected during our move, but I’m working a lot and getting back on top of things so if you haven’t heard back from me about something in the next day or so, feel free to shoot me another email just in case I didn’t get it. My spam box worked overtime during this last week since I wasn’t able to clean in out regularly and I may have missed something.

I’ll post another update in a couple of days as things return to normal with info on our new work schedule.

Thanks!
Danielle