The ascent of the world wide web in more countries than ever in conjunction with the popularity of online shopping has made the prospect of going global an attractive prospect to many online retailers. Furthermore, a weak U.S. dollar makes such prospects look better and better as the demand for U.S. products overseas continues to increase.

One of the biggest obstacles merchants face when going global is providing flexible, relevant payment methods. It’s no secret that offering a number of alternative payment methods will increase your sales, especially when you are branching out internationally. Payment methods vary widely between countries, so selecting a comprehensive, well-versed online payment processing solution will make the global transition much easier and enable you to accept numerous international payment methods, ensuring you do not miss a sale just because you do not offer a customer’s preferred payment method of choice. And since a thriving business essentially depends on absolute trust between itself and its customers, reliable payment solutions with the highest possible security and safe IT infrastructure is vital.

NextPage will be appearing at three upcoming conferences in the remaining months of 2008. If you are in the area, or can get in the area, go check it out:

• Sept. 17th: in New York, NY at the “Kahn Compliance In Information Management Forum Conference and Workshop”.  This conference will focus on compliancy laws and privacy issues. NextPage will be offering information about compliance software and the effects of unmanaged documents.
• Oct. 20-23rd: Las Vegas, NV at the ARMA’s International 53rd Annual Conference and Expo. Focusing on electronic records and the difficulty of keeping track of all versions of said document and realistic and possible solutions. Information management is important for every business.
• Dec. 8-11th: New York, NY at the IQPC 6th E-Discovery Conference. Digital records can be overwhelming feat. Find more practical solutions for your business.

· Identify your goals – What are you hoping to accomplish with these survey? Improve customer service platforms? Survey audience response for a new product or service? Make sure you know what your goals are before you begin to construct a survey.

· Pick your tools – When it comes to online survey software, you can either host the software or employ a vendor. Using a vendor is highly recommended since it allows you to focus on either things besides the technology side of administering a survey, such as quality of the questions and managing incoming results.

· Write your questions – Take into consideration the wording and order of the questions. Something as simple as the tone of the survey can affect the responses of participants. Also consider whether you want multiple choice or open-ended questions.

· Test your survey – Once the survey questions have been written and revised, test the survey on a small handful of customers to see how well it is received.

· Launch your survey – The next step is to launch your survey; announce it to your target audience and guarantee maximum participation. This can be done by advertising the survey to more people than you need. For example, if you are looking to garner 200 responses, invite 400 customers to ensure you meet that goal.

· Measure your results – Identify results that are similar and indicate numerous customers respond in a particular way. You may also want to look for unforeseen results may open your eyes to issues or concerns you weren’t aware of or had not considered.