Still The Greatest Fear Our Online Customers Have

Last Friday I attended the annual APEC Conference in Melbourne, Australia. (Asia Pacific Economic Corporation). I was also invited to sit with the Federal Minister of Trade & Foreign Affairs on his table at the luncheon.

This was a unique opportunity to talk to, government officials, politicians and the private sector on e-commerce related issues in our region.

The forum attracted some 200 delegates from some of the most prominent companies in Australia for this daylong symposium. The focus of APEC is on B2B trade with our neighboring Asian countries in the Pacific Rim.

One of the discussion groups I participated in, was the e-commerce sub-forum. A forum where company CEOs and government representatives raised their concerns and main problems on doing business on the Internet.

It is estimated that by 2005, 28% of all Internet e-commerce transactions will come from Asia.

Not surprising when you consider the potential business that will eventuate from China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and others as the Internet expands.

I was surprised to learn that the major problem facing even these large companies with a website presence was still the reluctance of consumer confidence in purchasing goods and services using online financial transactions.

In fact, most of the e-commerce discussions centered on this concern. It was the number one barrier holding back global free trade and the future of dot com profitability.

This is an important issue as APEC wants to increase “paperless transactions” as a business model in the future.

One Lady, a CEO of an online travel agency who conducts all her business solely from a website and turns over 15 million dollars a year, receives most payments by mail, fax and direct bank deposit! When she offered online credit card facilities only, her sales dived steeply.

I had always felt those small Net operators such as ebook marketers and web sites operated by relatively unknown sole netrepreneurs, were the ones most affected by consumer credit card security issues.

Many felt this fear of giving out ones credit card details online could only be overcome once the banks and financial institutions created a more secure environment online for credit card usage. Even using secure servers, encryption technology and other verbal reassurances on web sites still cannot prevent fraud, the use of stolen cards and privacy violations totally.
Others felt that the world governments needed to resolve the issue on a global scale, or maybe the World Trade Organisation itself.

Now many of us are willing to take the risk in using our cards to purchase items of low value like ebooks and other items that won’t break the bank should something go wrong.

Digital downloads being a safe bet because often you get immediate access to the download file once your credit card is approved online. There is always a sigh of relief and a comforting feeling once our modem lights signal the download is in progress!

But how many of us would be willing to purchase goods worth several hundred or even thousands of dollars on the net?… Especially Hard goods that need to be physically delivered to our door!
Sometimes it can take weeks before we know if the transaction was successful or if we’ve been had!

Often we feel our sales copy, wording, our site designs, credibility issues or lack there of, benefits offered, etc, for sales we might not get…. Yet sometimes it’s easy to forget that through no fault of our own, it’s this consumer greatest Internet fear that’s really to blame!

Offering your customers alternate methods of payment… By mail, phone, etc… May help in the meantime… But it still does not solve the underlying problems facing the e-commerce world in this matter.

I often say…. “We know only of the sales we make…. Never about those we never got”.

I wonder how many sales many of us humble ebook authors have missed out on… And whether this online payment fear will one day be a thing of the past?

Time will tell.

Warmest Regards & $uccess

Ricky Higgs




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