Many experts say that their success is due to their effective way to perform integration marketing. It is one of the most powerful ways to make the life easier to your customers and partners so that you can encourage them to take action, and this is what you want!

Integration marketing means: marketing processes and strategies integrated. Many web sites today are structured in integrated parts including the payment process and the access to the data.

There are some steps to follow to perform integration marketing:

- The process is easy: one click or a Yes is the best to access anything your customer or partner wants from your site

- There should be no risk or very low risk: you can use the 30-day back guarantee approach, or ship now, pay later, or sell low price products, free-trial policy, etc.

- Any next step should happen as close to the original process as possible (co-registration, upsell on thank-you page, etc.)

- Any single process must be similar to the overall process

- Products, offers or services are targeted or complementary to the original action if this was related to the first purchase. This is to bear in mind in case of up-sell or cross-sell. If you sell a transcription of a seminar you can then sell the DVDs and then the resell rights. Your imagination is your only limit

- If you need the system of a third party to be integrated in yours make an agreement with them, maybe propose an incentive (JV partnership, good commissions, promotional support, ecc.)

The choice of the merchant(s) for the payment process is an important step. You can lose a lot of potential customers if you do not provide the payment process they have an account for. There are countries where Paypal is not accepted or others, especially in Europe, where people still prefer to buy through a bank transfer process.
There are many companies today that are offering services for the payment process. I would mention among these also those dealing with security matters.
I really suggest Verisign if you need to acquire a SSL certificate. They are a bit expensive but if you have a great business they provide you with a very great level of security and assurance.

If you are starting with a small business you can start with cheaper solution. They provide good solutions with cheap prices also for private people.
As far as the payment process I would mention the following companies/services:

- Paypal (it is free to join for buyers and you can transfer money with a simple click if you have the email address of the person that must have a paypal account in 55 countries, it is secure and accepts credit cards. Vendors can have secure transactions and they provide an easy solution to integrate their process to your web site)

- PayDotCom (it is free to join and they also provide a service for affiliates. They offer a market place where they take care of the affiliates, their commissions and provide you with the tools for your payment process. They also have paypal integrated. It is a great solution of integration of Affiliate Marketing with paypal account)

- StormPay (it is similar to paypal. They have restricted their services. Many marketers today cannot use this service any longer. They provide also a hosting service and have their Pay Per Click campaign)

- 2CO (2CheckOut is another widely used service, and today has become a reseller for many online businesses. Their service is very easy and similar to that of the others)

- ClickBank (it is the real service online. They provide many services: customer service when you purchase, acquisition of products in their 10,000 item catalog, selling of products at ClickBank, promotion of products - as a ClickBank affiliate - , promotion of ClickBank - as a ClickBank reseller - and track your sales)