Simply Local Search

86% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses. Will they find yours?

For only $99/year, IPOWER is offering our Simply Local Search service. Get listed today!

The Secrets to Selling Online

Want to sell online, but not sure how it works or where to start? Our goal is to take some of the mystery out of ecommerce — particularly regarding how online transactions work. Be sure to also check out the ecommerce section of our new user guide for additional information. Why Sell Online? "Retailers are discovering," writes Kerri Shannon in the NuWire Investor, "[that] it pays to be web savvy, as consumers are increasingly heading online instead of out the door to spend." With the holiday sales season almost upon us, can you afford to keep your store exclusively offline? How an Online Transaction Works Have you ever wondered what happens after you click that "Add to Cart" button? Below are the basic steps of an online transaction: The buyer completes an order via the shopping cart of the merchant's online store. An online shopping cart is the software that assists buyers in choosing and purchasing products. At IPOWER, we provide you with shopping cart options, such as ShopSite and osCommerce, at no additional cost. The shopping cart submits the order to a payment gateway, which then forwards a request to the buyer's credit card company. A payment gateway securely transfers encrypted data, authorizing buyers' credit cards and processing the transactions. The credit card company validates the card and account, clears the card for purchase, then sends an acknowledgment back to the payment gateway that the amount can be transferred. The payment gateway informs the shopping cart that the transaction was successful so that the buyer and the merchant can proceed accordingly. The payment gateway initiates the transfer of funds from the buyer's credit card company to the seller's merchant account so that the payment can be deposited and finalized. A merchant account is a bank account designed to accept electronic payments for your business. When customers purchase your product online, the money they pay for that product is deposited into this account. How You Can Accept Online Payments We partner with iPayment to create a one-stop solution for you to accept credit card payments directly online. iPayment facilitates the entire online transaction process, setting you up with both a payment gateway and a merchant account. We've selected iPayment because they can provide you with special low rates, only accessible through your IPOWER hosting account. Learn more about iPayment today >> Accepting Payments via PayPal PayPal is an additional option for accepting payments online. In this case, the shopping cart submits the order directly to PayPal, who then processes the transaction for you. Many potential buyers already have PayPal accounts set up, with their credit card information saved. Upon checkout, they just log into their PayPal account to complete the transaction. You, as the seller, would have your own account with PayPal, where payments get deposited. Learn more about integrating PayPal >> The holiday sales push will be here before you know it. If you want to be ready in time, set up your store now.

Experience our New Drag and Drop Site Builder!

So it's been a little while since we've updated ... we're sorry for the negligence! We've actually been hard at work trying to improve your experience with us here at IPOWERWEB. One of our latest and greatest achievements has been the launch of our new Drag and Drop Site Builder, the Basic version of which now comes in all of our hosting plans (even if you've been a customer with us for years--it's not just for newbies). In the past, we'd heard some honest feedback from customers, letting us know that, as a novice, it's just not easy to create a site right away. With that input in mind, we've made it our mission to give you access to tools that will get you up and running on the web within minutes of signing up your hosting plan.

So, what is the Drag and Drop Site Builder?
Simply put, our new Drag and Drop Site Builder allows you to create a dynamic, polished website by dragging and dropping the elements you choose onto your web pages. It's seriously simple. Unlike other site building tools, our Drag and Drop Site Builder's flexible interface lets you move fluidly from one design aspect to another, so you can add content, create new pages, experiment with design templates and more, in any order you like. The Drag and Drop Site Builder enables you to:

* Edit content with a point-and-click interface.
* Customize a variety of design templates with your own images and logo.
* Upload photos to create an album.
* Add custom HTML.
* Include a blog.
* Add an ecommerce element.
* Customize a contact form.
* Tie in all those other things you like to do online into your website, including YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Del.icio.us and more!

Not only that, but integrating these elements is a cinch; you just drag the element from the tool bar and drop it into place on the page--then click the element to configure or personalize it.

If the Basic version isn't enough, we've got Premium and Ecommerce upgrades available for more features. Currently the Ecommerce Element enables you to integrate Google Checkout or PayPal to turn your website into an online store. Simply drag and drop product blocks onto your pages, and customize images, descriptions and prices as you go. Also, this year we're working to integrate outside merchant accounts, so be on the lookout for this awesome feature in the future.

Interested in checking it out? You can find Drag and Drop Site Builder under the Web Site section of your control panel. For those of you potential customers-to-be, we're working on launching a trial so you can "try before you buy" ... We'll keep you posted (ha, no pun intended) on when it's ready to check out!