In an interview with Jonathan Hedvat, President of FashionJobsCentral.com, Hedvat stressed the importance of a well designed payment page.
The payment page is where your customers pay. It is just as important as your homepage or any landing pages you might have. I see the same mistakes on different payment pages all the time. When designing the page, I think most people tend to forget that the goal of the page is for the user to pay.
K.I.S.S. Keep it Simple Stupid. You have already sold an item to all the people on this page, now let them pay! There’s no need for fancy graphics or animations, leave those on the selling page. You don’t want to sell your customer again, because that would be giving them more reasons to not pay. Any change in color themes, fonts, text size, or logos can also change how the customers see your product. Make sure you keep everything consistent.
PHONE NUMBER Depending on your customers, pretty often you will get one or two customers who do not trust the security of the internet and would much rather pay over the phone. Make sure you have a phone number visible on the payment page. Or better yet, get a 1-800 number if you want to look more reputable.
SECURITY As mentioned above, the security of a page is necessary for your customers to trust your payment page. Make sure your page is secured (URL begins with “https”). If you want to gain more trust from your customers, consider getting Verisign or TRUSTe.
DON’T LET THEM LEAVE Simple probability tells us that the more links you have on a site, the higher the chances of any one of them being clicked. But in this instance, you want your users to pay, so take out all your links except for the one needed to process the payment. If you have information on return policy or terms of agreement on a link, I would suggest you to put it in a text window within the payment page to avoid the users clicking anything at all except for the “Pay” button.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label paypal. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label paypal. Tampilkan semua postingan
Kamis, 16 September 2010
Rabu, 05 Mei 2010
Benefits Of Online Credit Card Processors
We have all heard of PayPal. PayPal is an online credit card processor that allows online businesses to securely accept credit cards as a form of payment. In addition to PayPal, there are additional online credit card processors.
Online shopping has dramatically increased in popularity and each day more consumers think about purchasing online. Online shopping is popular because it is generally easy and convenient. Online credit card processors help to make online shopping hassle free. Online credit card processors are used by large or small businesses. In additional to nationally known companies, online credit card processors make it easy for work-at-home individuals to successfully make a profit selling homemade or wholesale merchandise.
For individuals interested in starting their own online business, finding the perfect online credit card processing company make take sometime. Credit card number are valuable information and unfortunately many account numbers are stolen each day. In addition to protecting the assets of your business, obtaining a secure online credit card processor will also protect your customers. Consumers do not want to be shopping or handing out valuable personal information to an unsecured website or credit card processing company. The best way to determine the success of online credit card processors is by searching for customer feedback on the internet. Many times clients will post feedback when they have had a positive or negative experience with a company.
In addition to personal and business security, fully researching the various different online credit card processors is a potential way to increase your profits. For allowing you to use their services, you are charged a fee. The fee and rates will depend on the online credit card processor in question. For this reason, it is important to shop around and find the best value for your money. Although cheaper rates are nice, it is not always better. Go with your gut instinct, if something seems too good to be true it may be. Research is an important tool in keeping your profits intact.
It is not uncommon to come across online credit card processors that offer certain guidelines or restrictions on their services. For example, there may be a select few of online credit card processors that limit the amount of sales it processes. This limit may be monthly, weekly, or even daily. If your business becomes a success, this restriction could only hurt it and could cause you to lose potential profits.
Another restriction may include the type of business that you are operating. Although each online credit card processor is different and they tend to operate under different standards, some online businesses may be a violation of their standards. A few examples of the businesses that online credit card processors may refuse to service are gambling sites, adult sties, or pharmacies. Before entering into a contract with an online credit card processing company, it is important to read through their contract rules and guidelines.
Credit cards are used by consumers because they are a convenient and easy way to participate in online shopping. If you are operating an online business, whether it be large or small, consider accepting online credit cards. There a wide number of online credit card processors available to serve your needs and help your businesses grow.
Online shopping has dramatically increased in popularity and each day more consumers think about purchasing online. Online shopping is popular because it is generally easy and convenient. Online credit card processors help to make online shopping hassle free. Online credit card processors are used by large or small businesses. In additional to nationally known companies, online credit card processors make it easy for work-at-home individuals to successfully make a profit selling homemade or wholesale merchandise.
For individuals interested in starting their own online business, finding the perfect online credit card processing company make take sometime. Credit card number are valuable information and unfortunately many account numbers are stolen each day. In addition to protecting the assets of your business, obtaining a secure online credit card processor will also protect your customers. Consumers do not want to be shopping or handing out valuable personal information to an unsecured website or credit card processing company. The best way to determine the success of online credit card processors is by searching for customer feedback on the internet. Many times clients will post feedback when they have had a positive or negative experience with a company.
In addition to personal and business security, fully researching the various different online credit card processors is a potential way to increase your profits. For allowing you to use their services, you are charged a fee. The fee and rates will depend on the online credit card processor in question. For this reason, it is important to shop around and find the best value for your money. Although cheaper rates are nice, it is not always better. Go with your gut instinct, if something seems too good to be true it may be. Research is an important tool in keeping your profits intact.
It is not uncommon to come across online credit card processors that offer certain guidelines or restrictions on their services. For example, there may be a select few of online credit card processors that limit the amount of sales it processes. This limit may be monthly, weekly, or even daily. If your business becomes a success, this restriction could only hurt it and could cause you to lose potential profits.
Another restriction may include the type of business that you are operating. Although each online credit card processor is different and they tend to operate under different standards, some online businesses may be a violation of their standards. A few examples of the businesses that online credit card processors may refuse to service are gambling sites, adult sties, or pharmacies. Before entering into a contract with an online credit card processing company, it is important to read through their contract rules and guidelines.
Credit cards are used by consumers because they are a convenient and easy way to participate in online shopping. If you are operating an online business, whether it be large or small, consider accepting online credit cards. There a wide number of online credit card processors available to serve your needs and help your businesses grow.
Senin, 29 Maret 2010
Alternatives in Payment Systems
Every good business person knows that one of the best ways to boost sales and traffic to their product is to allow for multiple payment options. By offering many different methods of payment, you allow the masses to all be equal in the purchase of the same goods. This eliminates the upper scale clients from having this product while keeping the less than fortunate from going without. There are many fashions of payment these days that can accommodate just about everyone.
Anyone who limits the acceptable payment methods to a mere few can easily be losing business and in turn losing money. As word of mouth on the net is a very fast river, that mentality of limited payment options can easily break your success online. The bottom line is you must allow for convenient ways for your customers to pay for the product, or you will loose out on business. The method of paying by credit card is by far the biggest payment method going right now, with over 90% of all sales coming this way. It is clear and by far the most used method of payment, and a company would be ill advised to eliminate that fashion of payment from their options. It is not a difficult chore to set up your site to accept credit card payments; actually it is much easier than you think. There is a new contender in the payment option ring today; this payment method is the PayPal account.
This handy account has a completely revamped system that has eliminated all the quirks and bugs of its previous version, and is now very simple to use. This great tool is very safe for the transfer of funds to you, so there is minimal worry by the client. It also has a very good tracking system in place to protect you as well as the clients themselves. Again this is not the only contender in the ring, as the debit card seems to be gain momentum. It is said that this will be the vehicle of fund transfer for the future; clearly it is here to stay. It would not be advisable for any business owner to exclude these payment methods off their list. Toll free number and order forms still find their way into this option list of payment, as they have been reliable in the past and easy to keep track of. This is what is known as an offline transaction.
When it comes down to it, the idea of business is not to merely get by it is to succeed. If you limit yourself you are they opening the door for the competition to succeed and in turn shut you down. After all, a sale is still and always will be a sale.
Anyone who limits the acceptable payment methods to a mere few can easily be losing business and in turn losing money. As word of mouth on the net is a very fast river, that mentality of limited payment options can easily break your success online. The bottom line is you must allow for convenient ways for your customers to pay for the product, or you will loose out on business. The method of paying by credit card is by far the biggest payment method going right now, with over 90% of all sales coming this way. It is clear and by far the most used method of payment, and a company would be ill advised to eliminate that fashion of payment from their options. It is not a difficult chore to set up your site to accept credit card payments; actually it is much easier than you think. There is a new contender in the payment option ring today; this payment method is the PayPal account.
This handy account has a completely revamped system that has eliminated all the quirks and bugs of its previous version, and is now very simple to use. This great tool is very safe for the transfer of funds to you, so there is minimal worry by the client. It also has a very good tracking system in place to protect you as well as the clients themselves. Again this is not the only contender in the ring, as the debit card seems to be gain momentum. It is said that this will be the vehicle of fund transfer for the future; clearly it is here to stay. It would not be advisable for any business owner to exclude these payment methods off their list. Toll free number and order forms still find their way into this option list of payment, as they have been reliable in the past and easy to keep track of. This is what is known as an offline transaction.
When it comes down to it, the idea of business is not to merely get by it is to succeed. If you limit yourself you are they opening the door for the competition to succeed and in turn shut you down. After all, a sale is still and always will be a sale.
Rabu, 17 Maret 2010
Adsense That Works
People unconsciously ignore ads, not because they aren’t interested in the products or services that are being offered, but a natural instinct to focus on the material they’re reading and block out “distractions”. Remember: they’re on the web to look for information. That can be a particular song they want to download, an article on their favorite celebrity, or a chicken recipe they can cook for dinner. They’re concentrating on that issue, and their minds are quickly filtering out whatever seems to intrude on that search. That includes the background noise of the room they happen to be surfing in, and the visual noise on the web page.
Ads are said to be “visual noise”, and ironically, the larger (and more obvious) the ad, the more likely it’ll be ignored. That seems to go against all instincts of advertising—bigger should be better, right? That may work on a highway, when a looming billboard will catch your either whether you plan to look or not, but on the Internet, there are just too many ads. As a gut-reaction, the eye skips over anything that looks like the “traditional” advertising banners, regardless of the text contained in them. That’s why if you look at the studies, 468 x 60 ads, and the 728 x 90 ads, actually get the lowest click through rate.
But the challenge of Adsense is to make people read the ad, and click on it. How do you accomplish that if the brain automatically dismisses your message as “junk”? Simple: by not looking like an ad, and then inserting yourself at the point where people would be most interested in what you say. Then, website viewers not only notice you, but see you as a valid solution (or at least, a possible solution) to a pressing problem.
The Color of Money
Traditional graphic design principles will tell you to use bright, contrasting colors to get somebody’s attention (it’s also called the “bright neon sign” phenomenon). But for Adsense, you get better results when you take the subtle approach and blend into the page that you’re on. Instead of looking like an ad, you are seen as a valid editorial content: as informative, helpful, and credible as the article they happen to be reading.
That’s why your ad background and its border colors should be the same color as the web page on which it’s located. If your website’s white, then your ad assumes that color; if it’s blue, then you know what shade to pick. This isn’t sneaky, it’s reader psychology. Advertisers in magazines have been doing it for years—not copying the color, but the font of the magazine pages. Readers are then more likely to continue reading the ad text rather than skipping it over it because it’s “not part of the page”. By the time they realize that it’s an ad, they’re intrigued by the benefit being offered (and if they aren’t, at least they know about you—much more than what you would have accomplished if the ad had been dismissed). By applying this principle to your Ad Sense, you get better results.
Another trick: use the standard blue color for your links, but make the advertiser’s URL (the domain name below the ad text) in a very unobtrusive color and size. Combine this trick with making the rest of your website content a non-traditional color that is not as noticeable as blue (for example, a dark green), and you have a more subtle way of drawing attention to your Adsense links. Readers will gravitate towards the link, thinking that it is a neutral and objective way of finding more information, and click. And you know what that means for Adsense revenues.
Location, Location, Location
As they say in business, location is the secret to success: be where your market needs you (and in this case, reads you). For example, avoid placing ads on the left or right periphery of the page: people don’t bother looking there, since the webtext flow is from top to bottom. Unless a photo or other graphical element pulls their eyes to the side, there is no reason for them to look beyond those margins. Plus, Internet users are conditioned to look for content in the center— so you also have to be in the center to be deemed “valid content”.
This rule is particularly true for people who have a very specific question or concern and found the page by typing key words into a search engine. They are not interested in anything outside that query. To get their attention, place a large rectangular ad above your content (for example, the top center column) but below the title. Then, choose a message that is related to the key words that were probably used. For example, if it’s a website about “widgets”, and your article is a review on the latest “blue widgets” then Ad Sense on “Find Cheap Widgets Now!” would have a high percentage of clicks.
Why does placing Ad Sense underneath the title work so effectively? Because there is an immediate association with content. Your website title summarizes the topic or concern, the text expounds on it, and your Ad Sense is sandwiched within those two very important elements. You would not get this kind of click through if you placed it above the title, where it’s perceived as literally “outside” the topic and hence, irrelevant or secondary.
Since Google allows you to put three ad blocks, where do you put the other two? At the end of the content, preferably above the Author’s Box. This reaches the educated, and perhaps slightly more cynical reader, who had preferred to read up on the topic and is now ready to make an intelligent, informed decision about what products or services to buy. You can place a third ad block at the side if you have a short article or are concerned about cluttering the site. Otherwise, put it within the content, catching visitors who may be quickly bored with the article and may not reach the end of it, and is willing to “click away” from the site (and hopefully to the advertisers).
Ads are said to be “visual noise”, and ironically, the larger (and more obvious) the ad, the more likely it’ll be ignored. That seems to go against all instincts of advertising—bigger should be better, right? That may work on a highway, when a looming billboard will catch your either whether you plan to look or not, but on the Internet, there are just too many ads. As a gut-reaction, the eye skips over anything that looks like the “traditional” advertising banners, regardless of the text contained in them. That’s why if you look at the studies, 468 x 60 ads, and the 728 x 90 ads, actually get the lowest click through rate.
But the challenge of Adsense is to make people read the ad, and click on it. How do you accomplish that if the brain automatically dismisses your message as “junk”? Simple: by not looking like an ad, and then inserting yourself at the point where people would be most interested in what you say. Then, website viewers not only notice you, but see you as a valid solution (or at least, a possible solution) to a pressing problem.
The Color of Money
Traditional graphic design principles will tell you to use bright, contrasting colors to get somebody’s attention (it’s also called the “bright neon sign” phenomenon). But for Adsense, you get better results when you take the subtle approach and blend into the page that you’re on. Instead of looking like an ad, you are seen as a valid editorial content: as informative, helpful, and credible as the article they happen to be reading.
That’s why your ad background and its border colors should be the same color as the web page on which it’s located. If your website’s white, then your ad assumes that color; if it’s blue, then you know what shade to pick. This isn’t sneaky, it’s reader psychology. Advertisers in magazines have been doing it for years—not copying the color, but the font of the magazine pages. Readers are then more likely to continue reading the ad text rather than skipping it over it because it’s “not part of the page”. By the time they realize that it’s an ad, they’re intrigued by the benefit being offered (and if they aren’t, at least they know about you—much more than what you would have accomplished if the ad had been dismissed). By applying this principle to your Ad Sense, you get better results.
Another trick: use the standard blue color for your links, but make the advertiser’s URL (the domain name below the ad text) in a very unobtrusive color and size. Combine this trick with making the rest of your website content a non-traditional color that is not as noticeable as blue (for example, a dark green), and you have a more subtle way of drawing attention to your Adsense links. Readers will gravitate towards the link, thinking that it is a neutral and objective way of finding more information, and click. And you know what that means for Adsense revenues.
Location, Location, Location
As they say in business, location is the secret to success: be where your market needs you (and in this case, reads you). For example, avoid placing ads on the left or right periphery of the page: people don’t bother looking there, since the webtext flow is from top to bottom. Unless a photo or other graphical element pulls their eyes to the side, there is no reason for them to look beyond those margins. Plus, Internet users are conditioned to look for content in the center— so you also have to be in the center to be deemed “valid content”.
This rule is particularly true for people who have a very specific question or concern and found the page by typing key words into a search engine. They are not interested in anything outside that query. To get their attention, place a large rectangular ad above your content (for example, the top center column) but below the title. Then, choose a message that is related to the key words that were probably used. For example, if it’s a website about “widgets”, and your article is a review on the latest “blue widgets” then Ad Sense on “Find Cheap Widgets Now!” would have a high percentage of clicks.
Why does placing Ad Sense underneath the title work so effectively? Because there is an immediate association with content. Your website title summarizes the topic or concern, the text expounds on it, and your Ad Sense is sandwiched within those two very important elements. You would not get this kind of click through if you placed it above the title, where it’s perceived as literally “outside” the topic and hence, irrelevant or secondary.
Since Google allows you to put three ad blocks, where do you put the other two? At the end of the content, preferably above the Author’s Box. This reaches the educated, and perhaps slightly more cynical reader, who had preferred to read up on the topic and is now ready to make an intelligent, informed decision about what products or services to buy. You can place a third ad block at the side if you have a short article or are concerned about cluttering the site. Otherwise, put it within the content, catching visitors who may be quickly bored with the article and may not reach the end of it, and is willing to “click away” from the site (and hopefully to the advertisers).
Kamis, 25 Februari 2010
A Guide To Online Payment Processors
‘Free’ Accounts or Merchant Accounts?
Anyone who does business online (and actually takes money from other people) must, at some point, bite the bullet and choose a credit card processing company – this can be quite an expensive decision.
There are effectively two different ways of going about this; you can either go for the free accounts or the specific merchant accounts.
But what is there to distinguish the two? After all they both allow you to accept a payment from a credit card holder right?
Well yes, they both allow you to accept payments from people with credit cards – but there are some underlying and fundamental differences that you should be aware of.
Lets have a look at merchants accounts (ICann, WorldPay or 2Checkout – just as examples), when you register with one of these guys you will have to provide information relating to your business and prove that you are actually a registered business.
You will also have to pay a setup fee, from personal experience I know that this can be in the order of several hundred dollars, you will also pay a yearly subscription or support fee – again this is typically a couple of hundred dollars a year.
You might think that this is OK – but don’t forget you are also paying a percentage of the transaction value, this can be anything up 4.75%.
From this information alone we can see that for the little guy this is quite a high cost – especially if you’re just starting out and you don’t even know if your product/service is going to take off.
There are also other things that you need to be aware of when looking at professional merchant accounts, for instance 2Checkout will, from time to time try and actually call your customers (a selection of) and verify that the goods have arrived – if they can not do this then they will potentially refund ALL currently held sales.
I mention this as I was made aware of 2CO’s operating policy (this morning) by one of my fellow online marketers – this guy lost $5,000 because 2CO phoned the wrong person and lets face it, once you’ve delivered the products and given a refund how many people are going to say ‘Yes, here are my credit card details again’ – not very likely – and then cancelled the merchants account without so much as saying sorry.
So in other words make sure you read the fine print – there is typically stuff in there which is not really in your interest.
Anyway, that’s enough about merchant accounts, now lets consider the free accounts – and the first thing to be aware of is that there is no such thing as ‘free’. With the free accounts you typically don’t pay a setup charge or even a yearly charge – you do however pay a percentage of the transaction value, this can be anything from 1.5% up to 4%.
The two main suppliers of free accounts are PayPal and StormPay. It should be noted that although they both provide pretty identical services there are advantages and disadvantages associated with each of them.
For example, StormPay typically charge slightly more per transaction then PayPal – however PayPal charge more to get your money out then StormPay. PayPal is also VERY quick to respond to allegations of foul play (whether it exists or not) and typically very slow to do anything about it (besides locking your account).
PayPal also has some bizarre habits when it comes to money laundering rules, for instance my younger brother plays on Ebay and makes a few dollars here and there – nothing suspicious about that right (especially seeing as Ebay owns PayPal) but for some reason when his balance went past $50 they locked his account for a couple of weeks and sent him mails requesting proof of ID and wanting an explanation of where the money had come from.
No such problems with Storm pay, they validate you when you sign up by effectively linking you to your credit card to your address – any suspicious transactions are followed on a more gentlemanly basis. As of the time of writing I have not heard of anyone using Storm Pay having their account locked for questionable reasons.
In terms of signing up for the service StormPay is by far the quickest and in terms of market saturation is also on the up and up (PayPal is the established norm but StormPay is catching up quickly).
One thing to remember no matter which type of payment processor you use is that if a customer demands a refund 9 times out of 10 they’re going to get it – unless you can satisfy your processor that you have done everything that they require (so for PayPal if you’re sending tangible goods you need proof of postage that identifies what you’ve sent and in the case of allegations of ‘no delivery’ proof that it has been received – and then there’s still no guarantee that they’ll rule in your favor).
One important distinction between payment processors will relate to geography, i.e. where in the world they accept payments from. Most of the free services do not accept payments from central Africa or south East Asia, this is purely to do with level of fraud (Just think Nigeria).
To summarize, for the brand new business who has little or no client base and has no idea if their offering is going to be picked up by the market it is better to start with a free account, my personal recommendation being Storm Pay. If your business later grows and requires specific merchant account functionality then you can always upgrade or pick one from the market.
If you would like a StormPay account use the following link: http://www.stormpay.com/?2430996
Anyone who does business online (and actually takes money from other people) must, at some point, bite the bullet and choose a credit card processing company – this can be quite an expensive decision.
There are effectively two different ways of going about this; you can either go for the free accounts or the specific merchant accounts.
But what is there to distinguish the two? After all they both allow you to accept a payment from a credit card holder right?
Well yes, they both allow you to accept payments from people with credit cards – but there are some underlying and fundamental differences that you should be aware of.
Lets have a look at merchants accounts (ICann, WorldPay or 2Checkout – just as examples), when you register with one of these guys you will have to provide information relating to your business and prove that you are actually a registered business.
You will also have to pay a setup fee, from personal experience I know that this can be in the order of several hundred dollars, you will also pay a yearly subscription or support fee – again this is typically a couple of hundred dollars a year.
You might think that this is OK – but don’t forget you are also paying a percentage of the transaction value, this can be anything up 4.75%.
From this information alone we can see that for the little guy this is quite a high cost – especially if you’re just starting out and you don’t even know if your product/service is going to take off.
There are also other things that you need to be aware of when looking at professional merchant accounts, for instance 2Checkout will, from time to time try and actually call your customers (a selection of) and verify that the goods have arrived – if they can not do this then they will potentially refund ALL currently held sales.
I mention this as I was made aware of 2CO’s operating policy (this morning) by one of my fellow online marketers – this guy lost $5,000 because 2CO phoned the wrong person and lets face it, once you’ve delivered the products and given a refund how many people are going to say ‘Yes, here are my credit card details again’ – not very likely – and then cancelled the merchants account without so much as saying sorry.
So in other words make sure you read the fine print – there is typically stuff in there which is not really in your interest.
Anyway, that’s enough about merchant accounts, now lets consider the free accounts – and the first thing to be aware of is that there is no such thing as ‘free’. With the free accounts you typically don’t pay a setup charge or even a yearly charge – you do however pay a percentage of the transaction value, this can be anything from 1.5% up to 4%.
The two main suppliers of free accounts are PayPal and StormPay. It should be noted that although they both provide pretty identical services there are advantages and disadvantages associated with each of them.
For example, StormPay typically charge slightly more per transaction then PayPal – however PayPal charge more to get your money out then StormPay. PayPal is also VERY quick to respond to allegations of foul play (whether it exists or not) and typically very slow to do anything about it (besides locking your account).
PayPal also has some bizarre habits when it comes to money laundering rules, for instance my younger brother plays on Ebay and makes a few dollars here and there – nothing suspicious about that right (especially seeing as Ebay owns PayPal) but for some reason when his balance went past $50 they locked his account for a couple of weeks and sent him mails requesting proof of ID and wanting an explanation of where the money had come from.
No such problems with Storm pay, they validate you when you sign up by effectively linking you to your credit card to your address – any suspicious transactions are followed on a more gentlemanly basis. As of the time of writing I have not heard of anyone using Storm Pay having their account locked for questionable reasons.
In terms of signing up for the service StormPay is by far the quickest and in terms of market saturation is also on the up and up (PayPal is the established norm but StormPay is catching up quickly).
One thing to remember no matter which type of payment processor you use is that if a customer demands a refund 9 times out of 10 they’re going to get it – unless you can satisfy your processor that you have done everything that they require (so for PayPal if you’re sending tangible goods you need proof of postage that identifies what you’ve sent and in the case of allegations of ‘no delivery’ proof that it has been received – and then there’s still no guarantee that they’ll rule in your favor).
One important distinction between payment processors will relate to geography, i.e. where in the world they accept payments from. Most of the free services do not accept payments from central Africa or south East Asia, this is purely to do with level of fraud (Just think Nigeria).
To summarize, for the brand new business who has little or no client base and has no idea if their offering is going to be picked up by the market it is better to start with a free account, my personal recommendation being Storm Pay. If your business later grows and requires specific merchant account functionality then you can always upgrade or pick one from the market.
If you would like a StormPay account use the following link: http://www.stormpay.com/?2430996
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