Business trends today dictate that any business not growing with the times is losing ground.

For an online business that is trying to grow, the notion of adding credit card processing is no longer just a matter of choosing to get a benefit or standing pat. And the reason for this can be traced to modern consumer attitudes.

There have been numerous e-retailing studies that have shown that having merchant account services benefits Web-based businesses in several ways. It brings more traffic and repeat business to a site. And it drives additional sales and profits, as people shopping online with their credit card in hand tend to buy additional items, or are susceptible to making impulse buys.

All those reasons lead some people doing business over the internet to think that while card acceptance may be a good thing, if they don’t go down that path they will still be in good enough shape. But other trends indicate this can be a dangerous strategy.

There is an axiom in business that if you’re standing still; you’re going to fall behind. The notion is that with business conditions changing and evolving, any person who chooses to tread water in a place they consider “safe” is actually going to be left behind as the competition moves ahead. And that’s the case with the down side of not being set up to accept credit cards.

First, consumers today are getting more used to shopping with their cards. While they certainly aware of identity theft and fraud issues, they like the convenience of being able to close a transaction quickly using their plastic. Not to mention taking advantage of the additional buyer’s protection that comes with some credit card programs.

Second, more and more consumers have grown up doing their everyday business without using cash. Whether it’s their credit card, or a debit connected to VISA or MasterCard, they are at home with using their card for everything from buying a new suit to a fast-food lunch. These people have “voted” for a cash-less lifestyle and in doing so they expect the vendors they shop on a regular basis to be ready. In other words, their message to any business is that while you may have the store, we control what goes into the cash register.

And finally, because they do operate cash-less, they have gone 180 degrees of their baby-boom counterparts who were once wary of credit cards. Today’s consumer now is suspicious of any company that does not accept credit cards. And with the number of people and entities doing business on the internet, well, there’s just far too much competition. If a consumer isn’t happy with the way a certain site does business they can find three or four competitors with few clicks of their mouse. Taking their business elsewhere now takes a matter of second, as opposed to the days of having to drive across town.

And the great news is that merchant account services companies have made it easier than ever before to apply for card services. So when it comes to ecommerce payments solutions are your standing still/falling back? If so, for goodness sake, why?

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The last five years has seen an exponential growth in the use of
shockwave and flash animations in creating websites. The old tried and
trusted techniques such as D/HTML are slowy moving over to make room
for this newer multimedia delivery vehicle. Scripting, such as
Javascript, is viewed with disdain by some and ignored by others. Yet
the people who advocate the use of flash/shockwave in creating
multimedia-rich sites are not asking the right question: Is all that
glitters gold?

An important facet of flash / shockwave glossed
over by most people is that these technologies are a packaged scripting
environment: In other words – most of what you can do in flash, you can
do in DHTMl with a liitle effort. A question that pops up at this stage
is: Why would I want to go through all of that? The answer is simple
and is illustrated by way of practical example.

Pick a topic -
any topic – and type the relevant seach keywords into your favorite
search engine. Now try to find a flash site under the first thirty
results. You will be surprised to find that this ’silver bullet’ of web
design does not even feature. The majority of search engines do not
support the indexing of shockwave / flash sites – this can have a
detrimental effect on your Internet business if you rely on search
engine traffic to generate revenue. Remember one thing: Content is king
and the only recognised content is in HTML pages.

Bells & Whistles: Where, When and What

Deploying
rich multimedia sites are becoming more and more a design requirement.
However, the objective of your site should be the determining factor
between using D/HTML or Flash for multimedia content. Exposure and the
generation of revenue solidly discounts the use of Flash as the major
site component – search placement is too important to sacrifice for a
simple thing such shiny buttons. D/HTML provides an attractive
alternative to ensuring that your site is indexed properly by search
engines.

However, Flash should not be put out to pasture based
on this: Limited Flash content can still be an asset on your Internet
presence if used judisciously. Corporate Intranets are another matter
entirely: Flash provides the perfect delivery vehicle for rich business
applications, where DHTML would be more of a liability than an asset -
e.g. training material, presentations and etcetera.

In conclusion, the objective of a site should determine which of the two technologies are the preferred medium for mutimedia delivery.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Riaan
Pieterse is the CEO and founder of Kerberos Internet Services CC, South
Africa. Having spent a number of years conducting various consulting
assignments in the Far East, Middle East, Africa and Europe to
businesses and governments alike, Riaan has a solid understanding of
the business and technology issues in today’s market.
For more information visit http://www.kerberosdev.net

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Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your
ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would
be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net. Word count is 725
including guidelines and resource box. Robert A. Kelly © 2003.

Where is the Best PR Value?

by Robert A. Kelly

Wherever the fundamental premise of public relations is practiced.

Look at what it suggests. People act on their own perception of
the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about
which something can be done. When we create, change or
reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-
desired-action those people whose behaviors affect the organi-
zation, the public relations mission is accomplished.

What a positive message for those business, non-profit and assoc-
iation managers who don’t really understand the role public
relations can play in helping achieve their organizational objectives.
Nor, that reliance on public relations’ fundamental premise even
identifies the tools they need to put such a plan into action.

If, sadly, you are one of those managers, here’s how you can
make up for lost time and actually boost your chances of
reaching your organizational goals.

Make the time investment needed to identify and rank, as to their
impact on your organization, those important outside audiences
whose behaviors really do help or hinder your operations. Let’s
talk about the one at the top of the list.

It’s really crucial that you know what members of that “public”
think about your organization. Obviously, you must ask them!
Interaction is really necessary if you are going to identify percep-
tions likely to lead to negative behaviors. For example, wrong-
headed beliefs, misconceptions, inaccuracies and even rumors.

And while you’re talking to these audience members, keep an eye
or an ear on local talk show and newspaper columns for the same
signs.

The results of such opinion or perception monitoring are the very
data you need to establish your public relations goal. For instance,
neutralize that rumor, clear up that misconception or correct the
inaccuracy.

And the very same goal will stand as your behavior modification
objective so that you can measure your progress.

But here, the question always arises as to just how you will get to
that goal. You need a strategy to show you the way, and you
have three choices: create opinion/perception where there may
be none, change existing opinion or reinforce it. Fortunately your
goal will identify which strategy you should select.

Still, nothing happens until you write a truly responsive message
and transmit it to members of your target audience. You must
convince them that what you discovered in the way of rumors,
inaccuracies, misconceptions or wrong-headed beliefs is simply
not true. But do try for believability and clarity. And, above all,
make your message persuasive and compelling.

Meanwhile, a whole stable of “beasts of burden” await your
pleasure – communications tactics capable of carrying that
hard-won message direct to your audience members’ eyes and
ears. And there are scores and scores of them in that stable –
articles, interviews, newsletters, personal meetings, op-eds,
emails, speeches and brochures among many others.

Impatience always grows at this point as you wait for signs that
your public relations program is working. But that’s the signal
to once again interact with members of your target audience.
The difference the second time around is that you’re looking
for signs that their perceptions of your organization have been
altered by your message through its aggressive delivery system.
So get out there and, again, ask lots of questions.

If things aren’t moving fast enough for you, you may want to
add a few more communications tactics to the mix, as well as
increasing their frequency. Your message should also be
vetted again for factual validity and clarity.

Gradually, the perceptions, and thus behaviors of your key,
target audiences will begin moving in your direction, leaving
little doubt as to where the best PR value can be found.

I can tell you from personal experience that there is no more
satisfying moment in the practice of public relations.

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Think of DHTML as not a singular technology but a combination of three
existing technologies glued together by the Document Object Model (DOM):

1. HTML – For creating text and image links and other page elements.

2. CSS – Style Sheets for further formatting of text and html plus other
added features such as positioning and layering content.

3. JavaScript – The programming language that allows you to accesses and
dynamically control the individual properties of both HTML and Style Sheets.

The way JavaScript accesses the properties of an HTML document is through
the Document Object Model (DOM). The job of the DOM is to expose all the
attributes of HTML and Style sheets to JavaScript control. All you need to
know about the DOM is what JavaScript commands it accepts. Not that easy,
as different browsers have their slightly different versions of the DOM, so
they access HTML properties differently as well as display them differently.

So how do you locate an HTML element on a page and change its property?
This is the job of JavaScript. Obviously, I cant into all the details of
JavaScript or the DOM, but here is an example of how JavaScript can change a
visibility of a style sheet layer in both browsers.

Note: That every piece of HTML has a location much like a directory in a
phone book. When finding that piece of HTML you have to go through the same
hierarchy process of searching for a name in the phone book such as

(state) Washington -> (City) Seattle -> (Listings) j -> (Name) Jessica

In JavaScript, a reference to this would be equivalent to

washington.seattle.j.jessica

Now Jessica may have additional information such as her address and phone
number, so the JavaScript reference would be written this way.

washington.seattle.j.jessica.address

or

washington.seattle.j.jessica.phone

Lets transcribe the above metaphor to a DHTML document that contains a

layer [myLayer] with style attributes
[top,left,width,height,z-index,visibility,etc] and the layer contains a bit
of text “myText” (Note that the visibility attribute is set to hidden)

In Netscape the address to the DIV layer “myLayer” is

document.myLayer

in Explorer it is

document.all.myLayer.style

The W3C way of identifying the address is

document.GetElementById(‘myLayer’).style

To access the properties such as visibility under “myLayer” you would use
these addresses.

Netscape

document.myLayer.visibility

Explorer

document.all.myLayer.style.visibility

W3C

document.getElementById(‘myLayer’).style.visibility

To change the visibility of this layer you would assign a value to your
JavaScript address.

Netscape

document.myLayer.visibility = “visible”;

Explorer

document.all.myLayer.style.visibility = “visible”;

W3C

document.getElementById(‘myLayer’).style.visibility=”visible”;

Now the previously hidden layer is now visible. This is essentially how
DHTML works, but understand there are hundreds and hundreds of attribute
properties for text, images, documents and windows. Not all these
properties are supported in both browser and sometime accessing a property
requires a few more hurdles, but if you stick to the common denominator
properties both browser use then life it a bit easier. I recommend the
excellent DHTML reference book Dynamic HTML – The Definitive Guide by Danny
Goodman (O’Riley Books) It lists all of the DHMTL properties and their
cross browser compatibilities.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eddie Traversa
DHTML Nirvana http://nirvana.media3.net/ is a site
dedicated to exploring the possibilites of DHTML. It hosts free graphics,
dhtml templates and tutorials. Some of the tutorials emphasis is on
Flash/DHTML integration.

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