Payment systems: in this case, it's all about the repeat purchase.

Credit cards still trump all other methods of payment for online purchases made in the United States. That said, you'll find that by offering a suite of payment methods, visitors to the retail and donation sections of your organization's Web site will be more inclined to purchase or give, and possibly repeat the process.

Two other key motivators of online purchasing include, particularly for international charities, providing local currency--don't just put a dollar sign up and expect everybody to give - and localizing language to make all visitors more comfortable.

But taking orders on the Web involves more than the payment. There's the Web page design, installing shopping cart (or giving basket) software, creating an effective form, as well identifying your organizational objectives beyond just getting a visitor to purchase that t-shirt. Before you decide on an online payment system, consider the following points:

Facilitate the repeat purchase. People tend to give to the same organizations over and over. This is largely clue to a good experience the donor had with the charity, which probably asked it self the question: How do I facilitate the repeat donation? According to Sharon Anstey, vice president of new media for Click and Buy, a micropayment company, the same approach should be taken for the charity's online retail operation: How do we facilitate that repeat purchase?

Other things to consider before launching your retail site are the secondary objectives. These include brand enhancement, customer loyalty, and establishing a trusted relationship with a constituent. Some nonprofits can also educate or inform visitors during this process, but run the risk of distracting users from the primary task and thereby increasing the abandon rate.

eCommerce And Web Integration. You must first decide whether it's more cost effective to go with a company that provides the back- and front-end, with little or no work done by your organization, or to assemble and manage all the pieces yourself.

The market for eCommerce software is brimming with players. Most tout an eCommerce solution with, for instance, built-in shopping cart (or giving basket) software, enabling users to build a virtual storefront, track visitors, and communicate with customers.

They also tend to provide integrated payment gateways for accepting online transactions. Smaller organizations might want to work with local banks that offer them a better fee rate. Typically, for a merchant account the standard fee rate is 1.5 percent, while for an Internet merchant account the rate is 2.5 percent. Anstey said the rate is higher for online credit card transactions because, in part, the card is not present (i.e. the merchant isn't seeing the customer face to face).

Providing alternative methods of payment is a great way to appeal to a broader audience. One option is the electronic check, or eCheck. Not to be confused with electronic fund transfer (EFT), which deducts payment from a personal or business account and verifies funds before it's approved, an eCheck can be returned for insufficient funds. And eChecks typically don't require anything more than a standard checking account to be processed, which is appealing to some donors.

However, doing international eCheck transactions can be tedious, especially with the post-September 11 restrictions on international commerce. Not many alternatives are widely known beyond having donors send a check in the mail and having to deal with exchanging it, or relying on that person to have a credit card.

Larger organizations with greater revenue at stake tend to implement their own eCommerce payment solutions to enable product categorization and processes to meet their specific needs, according to Rick Johnston, CAE, a senior Web strategist for Ironworks Consulting, a management and information technology consulting firm. Many of these applications are customized. Small- to mid-size nonprofits may use a solution hosted by an application service provider (ASP) to handle all of their eCommerce needs. Online payment solutions typically charge 3 percent plus 30 cents per transaction.

There are also generic hosted solutions, such as CafePress, that will host an online store for a percentage of the sales. CARE uses this solution for the sale of its branded merchandise, CARE Wear. "The very short of this is we do almost nothing at this point," said Michael Langford, Webmaster for the international relief charity. "We put some work into designing the graphics ... and creating the HTML wrapper for our store, but CafePress has basically been on auto-pilot since." According to Langford, CafePress is a JIT (Just In Time) end-to-end vendor, meaning they build and host the site, and they handle all fulfillment in near-real time.

Optimize user experience. The visual design and physical structure of Web pages is important when optimizing the user experience. However, nowhere is it more important than in eCommerce.

Web site visitors are generally impatient and more apt to abandon a catalog or shopping cart if next steps are unclear or they become concerned about security of their personal info (see: 'Make security a top priority' on next page). Very minor issues, such as the placement of a button, navigation label, and length of page can cause major increases in abandon rate. According to Johnston, some sites report abandon rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.

Studies suggest a best practice is to keep the check-out process between two and three pages. Anstey recommended not more than two, "but more than that, you just really want to minimize clicks." Andy Leuthe, director of product marketing for WebSideStory, a Web analytics company, said the main points regarding the form come down to two simple points: don't include information you don't need, and don't make your forms long.

Requiring users to scroll down a page is another "don't," according to the experts, as are drop-down boxes. "The Web is open to anybody," said Leuthe, including those users who don't know that there may be more to a Web page than what's displayed in front of them.

Utilizing pre-purposed forms is another great way to enhance user experience and facilitate a repeat buyer. That way, when the buyer returns a second or third time, she simply types in her log-in and password, and voila, they're taken to a pre-filled form. The form should include the visitor's name, address, and whatever else information was given during prior purchases. According to Anstey, if you want to collect information beyond that, do it after check-out is complete, on the landing page. This is where you give your new purchasers the option to provide added personal information, but always within reason.

If your abandon rate is a concern, Web analytics enables organizations to track critical processes and identify the exact points that users opt out of the purchase process. According to Leuthe, it's all about conversions. "The general purpose of the software is to help any organization ... improve their Web site utilization," said Leuthe. "For nonprofits, I would imagine just like for-profits ... they want to make sure that it's easy for that visitor to, A, come back, and to navigate or to move around that Web site" with ease.

Make security a top priority. With everything going online these days, the market is ripe for fraud. According to www.privacyrights.org, from January 2005 to early June of this year more than 150 million online records containing sensitive personal information were involved in security breaches. That said, it's no question nonprofits must take precautions when expanding into the World Wide Web.

According to Anstey, there are three ways to reduce the risk of online fraud, including using an address verification system, a negative database where credit card numbers that are possible risks are placed, and a credit card verification service to perform security checks on each transaction. The companies you work with, particularly the payment providers, should handle your transactions through a secure server or a payment gateway that encrypts the information.

And finally, consider where the information you've gathered resides. Encrypting data is the best answer to keeping user information safe from hackers. However, according to David Friedland, vice president of business development for CoSort, a Melbourne, Fla-based data firm, while encryption is the magic word it can reach overkill. He suggested encrypting data only where it needs to be. Additionally, you need to consider security precautions not only for when the data is in motion--thumb drives, emails with data attached--but for when it is stored as well.