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Set Up Online Payment Processing in Four Steps
By Vangie Beal
November 13, 2008

FormSpring Makes Web Forms, Payment and Order Pages Easy

One task that can be challenging for small online businesses is setting up Web forms.

While a basic Google search can offer you all the code snippets you need to create the form, most need to hire developers when it comes to linking the submitted form data to a database.

FormSpring, a company that opened in March of 2006, offers a service that helps anyone create a Web form on-the-fly.

This hosted service also maintains the database, reducing overall costs associated with gathering information from your visitors through form submissions.

For those with a small product catalog, FormSpring is a very easy way to accept online payments without the time and cost it takes to implement and manage a full shopping cart application, though it can be used for many other information-gathering tasks, too.

FormSpring forms can be embedded in your Web page keeping the "hosted service" transparent to your customers. (Click for larger image.)

FormSpring's marketing manager Chris Lucas said that the application is used by clients to build online forms for "contact us" pages, event registrations, online estimates, marketing surveys, order forms and for any function where they want to collect data from site visitors.

For instance, one client used FormSpring for an online photo submission contest. The e-business owner  was able to cost-effectively provide a contest entry form that let registrants provide their personal information and also upload their contest photo submission right from the entry form. All contest entries were then stored in an easily accessible database, hosted by FormSpring.

New Payment Options for E-Commerce

The company has always offered PayPal payment services, but also recently started offering several additional payment options that add Google Checkout, LinkPoint, and Authorize.Net integration to FormSpring. These new payment options let small e-tailers collect payments online without adding a complicated shopping cart.

FormSpring lets you set up a payment form in four easy steps. (Click for larger image.)

Web shop owners can use online tools to create the order form and payment page, which can be branded to match their Web site.

Each product "buy now" link can load an order form in which the shopper can enter credit card information or checkout using any of the supported payment services.

Lucas said that the new payment integration makes FormSpring a good choice for brick-and-mortar retailers who want to offer some products for sale on their site, but can't afford a full-blown e-commerce shopping site and for casual online vendors.

"Retailers, especially those without online cart and selling expertise," he said, "can simply build the form and either link to it or embed the form in their own Web page."

(Continue to Page 2 for Details on Templates, Routing and Reporting Features)

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