We started life on the web back in 1999 as total novices, with just one product, the Hi-Tower. Our website was intended to be an information-only site to promote and support our mail order catalogue.

Initially, we displayed an email address and contact phone number so that our customers could call in and place their orders over the telephone or via email. We decided to process all of our transactions manually using our PDQ machine so that we could keep control over the transaction process. This was important to us because it meant that we could maintain good customer relations directly with our clients.

As our business grew, the shopping cart Actinic helped us to develop a better quality site, able to relay orders to us via email to be processed manually through the terminal. This development was aided by our web designers Made You Look and our mail order system Khaos Control. However, the mail order side of the business grew so fast that we had to outsource the telephone order taking as a result (paying by the minute on the phone).

We soon realised that outsourcing telephone orders was becoming too expensive. It was also a slow and laborious process that caused undefined errors which at times upset our customers. We also found the PDQ machine technique for taking money almost impossible. We got a huge proportion of CV2 and AVS failures, but the bank did not offer a telephone Code 10 service for Mail Order, so we could not work out what the problem was.

What we needed was to process credit card payments securely, simply and swiftly.

We therefore made the decision to accept orders directly from our website. This would reduce the cost of trading, and deal with the security issues involved in taking mail order payments. We needed to find a payment service provider that would allow us to process our payments online and via an electronic PDQ for mail order and telephone orders.

Khaos Control recommended that we work with Protx in order to make our payment processing more efficient. Our bank also recommended Protx for its fraud screening capabilities. Protx would allow us to process payments both through our website, over the telephone and via mail order.

The first thing we needed to do was set up an internet merchant account. As soon as we received our merchant number from the bank we then signed up for a Protx account. We decided to use the Protx VSP Direct system, so that the order process would be seamless and the customer would remain on our site throughout the entire transaction process. All card numbers are encrypted in our shopping catalogue software when the order is placed, and our customers are reassured that their personal information is treated very carefully, as if it were our own.

The Protx system is now fully integrated with our site and has cut our processing time to a fraction. This means that we can spend more time on fulfilling orders rather than processing payments, which has cut our time significantly. Using Protx has enabled us to process both our website and mail order/telephone order payments through the same system. This means that we no longer need our old PDQ machine, and all of our order reconciliation and reporting is managed from one central Admin area. We even use Protx to take telephone payments from within Sage 50 Accounts, allowing us to reconcile payments directly into our accounting software.

We are delighted with the added security of The 3rd Man service, which we use everyday in addition to Protx. Fraud screening has always been an important issue to us – the hype around internet fraud was clearly overblown, but we had been hit by credit card fraud over the telephone and we were concerned that the risk would be worse without direct customer contact.

However, when we migrated over to Protx, our level of control over fraud actually increased. We now use a deferred payment method, and look at both the AVS/CV2 checks as well as The 3rd Man results to identify potentially fraudulent transactions before they are accepted. We know of no documented cases of fraud experienced while using the Protx system.

Overall, I would certainly recommend Protx. We have saved money in processing time, and a considerable amount. We have also cut out manual errors and massively improved the fraud checking system. We have now grown into a thriving business, selling a range of over 500 products thanks to the growth of our ecommerce wing, which accounts for 50% of our sales.

To visit the Big Game Hunters website please go to http://www.gardengames.co.uk