PayGate payment gateway partners with merchants to provide them with online payment solutions to maximise the revenue and profitability of their online business.  As Robin Philip, Marketing Manager of PayGate says.  "The success of our internet merchants is our success."    In line with this thinking, here is the first in a series of tips from PayGate on how you as an internet merchant can grow your business online.  Some of them you may be doing already, but if you there is just one thing that you can gain from it today that will grow our mutual business then we are happy.

1.  One thing every day
Get your key people together once a week and encourage them to do just one thing a day that grows your online business - just one thing each day keeps it simple and executable and at the end of the year each person will effortlessly have done 200 things to grow your online business

2.  Measure, measure measure
How do you know how well you are doing if you don't measure.  Have a weekly meeting with a weekly sheet of key measures.  Things that are important to the success of your online business.  Sales in rands, sales in units, gross profit margins, debtor collections . . list 20 things that you think are measures that are most important to your success.  Sit down once a week with your team and go through the performance last week compared to the previous week, cumulative month to date. 

3.  Celebrate your wins and successes
Celebrate your success regularly.  Every week, every time a small achievement is made for example that you beat last week's figure, that it's a new record for that measure . . celebrate, get excited, buy chocolates, order pizzas . . cultivate a winning attitude and a success culture.  Make every week a celebration of your wins.

4.  Records
Go for records every week, note your best performance ever, make sure your previous best is recorded on your weekly measure sheet and go for a record every week, in your key measure in whichever category.  Encourage and celebrate the records . . create a team culture of breaking records

5.  One email address
To make sure everyone is on the same page, streamline your email addresses . .for dealing with customers, make sure you have one for sales and one for support if those are the one's applicable to your online business.  Put your people on the distribution list and encourage them to communicate with customers using these addresses and not their individual email address.  Then everyone knows what's going on and can help and back each other up, manage and improve the service, create a team culture of exceptional customer service

6.  One number 086
If you haven't got one already, get a national toll free 086 number - it gives one number for people to call, it gives the impression of a national online business and makes people feel comfortable dealing with you even if you are not in their region, it simplifies the way people can get hold of you.  If you move office, the number stays the same and you can redirect extensions to different numbers or regions.  Same with a fax, get your faxes to come in on an 086 number and distribute them to the appropriate communal email address . . so everyone's in the know.

So that's the first in our series of helping grow your online business from our payment gateway perspective.  Providing you with more effective online payment solutions to help you grow your business online.  Online business is the way to go and we as a payment gateway encourage your success.  Watch out for more of these tips on how you can grow your business online.