In making that determination Web Marketing Technologies considered several factors covering the entire purchase transaction process. This write up will concentrate on the cost considerations that most directly affect you, our clients. In doing the study, for the sake of simplicity, we based monthly costs on the scenario of 10 transactions per month, each transaction in the amount of $100. We also looked at a number of other issues that we will touch upon later in this article as we describe the web-enabled transaction process.

     Several studies have shown that the single most important factor potential buyers on the World Wide Web consider is the security of their transactions when they enter credit card or similar information into a purchase system. By using PayPal, with its rapidly growing name brand recognition, you provide your visitors with the sense of security they need to go ahead and make that purchase. Although Web Marketing Technologies offers a secure server service the reality is that we don't enjoy nearly the same name recognition that PayPal offers.

     From its inception PayPal has held the position of low cost leader combined with full transaction authentication and financial transfer functionality. One of the biggest benefits PayPal offers is that you, the client, need not have a merchant account. Using our $1000 per month transaction schedule we mentioned earlier PayPal would cost $25 for that month. Since PayPal does not require you to have your own, separate merchant account you don't have the additional transaction fees charged by the merchant account itself. PayPal also has no initiation or setup fee which is rare for this kind of service and another significant cost saving.

     Another service Web Marketing Technologies considered, CyberCash's Cash Register Service, has a flat monthly fee of $20. They also charge $0.20 per transaction so using our 10 transactions per month scenario the total monthly service charge comes to $22. CyberCash charges a $495 setup fee and they also require you to have your own merchant account in advance. This increases both the initial costs and the monthly charge.

     Excite, the web portal, also offers a payment system called StoreBuilder. Their setup fee is lower than CyberCash at only $49. Excite StoreBuilder also expects you to bring your own merchant account with you so those fees apply as well. The monthly fee for the Excite service using our scenario comes to $27.80 but they have an additional monthly service fee of $19.95 plus some miscellaneous charges bringing the monthly rate up to around $50.

     While doing the research for this article Web Marketing Technologies looked at over two dozen secure transaction systems ranging from completely customizable programs to "shrink wrapped" solutions. The three sited above were the best of their classes. As an added bonus to the criteria we used in the cost analysis PayPal even allows your buyer to pay by check or bank account transfer. Neither of these pay options could we find in any other system. For simple store fronts with less than 1000 transaction per month we recommend a PayPal Premier Business account. We will be happy to set it up for you.