Intermediary step to wider merchant adoption

[amincd]

The current obstacle I see standing in the way of most merchants adopting bitcoin is that bitcoin has no reputation among consumers, so merchants would be afraid that putting a bitcoin payment option on their checkout page could reduce the credibility of their site.

New merchants could benefit from adopting bitcoin as the growing bitcoin community, looking for places to spend their currency, provides traffic to their site, but a good portion of established merchants would not want to jeopardize their existing revenue-streams in any way.

One possible bridge to mass adoption I thought could work is offering established merchants a 'bitcoin only' page that the rest of their website is not linked to. That way, they can advertise that page in bitcoin directories, but not risk reducing the credibility of their main storefront by displaying the mostly unknown currency as a payment option.

A possible business model could be a company offering to create this 'bitcoin page' for merchants, in exchange for a percentage of revenues produced through that page, and the company advertising that page on behalf of that merchant.

This might allow the number of merchants that accept bitcoin to increase to thousands, or even tens of thousands.

[bitcoininnj]

As an online business owner, I want to accept Bitcoins.
www.jgallerycanvas.com

But at this stage, Bitcoin is difficult to build into my pricing/checkout page,
due to the uncertainty of its value.

We are working on a solution, but at this time the best answer is to have
customers place the order over the phone or by email, and we send them
an invoice with the Bitcoin price and address to send payment.

Ease of use isn't there yet. Until it is, retailers will not adopt Bitcoin. There
definitely needs to be a trusted and simple system in place for both the
merchant and the consumer for Bitcoin to gain in popularity.

I think it will happen, but it is not there yet.

[amincd]

I believe there is already software that automatically adjust bitcoin prices to keep it at a fixed dollar value. You could also immediately cash out, by selling the bitcoins you receive on mtgox, to minimize your exposure to volatility risk. Here is a list of shopping cart software:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Shopping_Cart_Interfaces

I of course agree that it would need to be easier for merchants to integrate bitcoin payment option into their site for wider adoption to occur, by developing more software, or advertising them more.

[bitcoininnj]

Thanks!