The e-commerce industry is growing at a rapid pace, and businesses must invest in reliable electronic payment systems to make sure they are able to accommodate future increases in sales. The online publication Retail Customer Experience cited data from a recent eMarketer study that found global business-to-consumer Internet sales will grow more than 20 percent this year. That forecast is slightly higher than what B2C organizations generated in 2012. By 2017, the total value of the B2C e-commerce sector could reach more than $2 trillion.

Small and midsize enterprises have several issues to consider when operating an e-commerce portal. Especially when these websites run in tandem with a brick-and-mortar presence that also accepts credit card payments, managers may run into trouble keeping track of transaction information as it streams in from multiple sources. No business owner wants to forego an opportunity to experience growth by being ill-equipped to process a large volume of electronic payments on a daily basis.

Online shopping growth creates new obstacles for SMBs Recent research highlighting the performance of e-commerce websites emphasizes the importance of reliable credit card processing tools even further. According to a survey from Radware, a digital application delivery and security solutions provider, the growth of online retail has actually placed a strain on many Internet shopping websites. For example, the median time it takes for a home page of any of the top 500 online retailers to load is 9.3 seconds. That measurement is 21 percent slower than it was one year ago.

"Slowdowns occur 10 times more frequently than outages, and over time, slowdowns can have double the negative financial impact as outages," Tammy Everts, a Web performance evangelist at Radware, stated in a press release. "This also has a major long-term impact on customer retention, as the permanent abandonment rate for a slow site is up to three times greater than the abandonment rate for a site that is down."

The e-commerce website builder Store Express suggested that design and capacity of an online retail channel is a major influence on the user experience. The owners of small and midsize businesses will also want to be sure the technology they use to accept credit cards online is consistent and reliable enough to not slow the online shopping process down any further. With the right tools, enterprises will continue benefiting from a robust e-commerce industry for several years.

Source:Sage Payment Solutions