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eCommerce Packages VS Bespoke Solutions

Sun, 04 May 2008 19:17:26 +0000/

Probably one of the first hurdles you'll come across when first looking to start an online store is whether to go for an "off the shelf" package or for a bespoke, custom solution. Both options have their merits and pitfalls...

Off The Shelf Package

With an off the shelf solution the hard work is done for you. They come with many features and have usually been tested by all the users who have used them before. Installation is usually straight-forward and quick, giving you a working online store within minutes. This will save you a lot of time and usually money too.

Before getting too excited however, there can be complexities. Firstly, you will no doubt want to change the default template to your own custom design to suit your needs. Some packages can be extremely complex when it comes to editing templates, some will be limited a great deal as to what you can change, and some will come with template coding languages built in giving you an extra learning curve to deal with. It's essential you have a good look at the templating abilities of a package before comitting to it. See what you can do, what you can't do, and what's going to be difficult.

Secondly, packages will be limited somewhat in what features they offer you. If there is a feature you really want to include, but is not available with your chosen package, you may run into difficulties editing the package's code and extending it to suit your needs - or it may not even be possible! Equally they may offer a lot more than you want to have. Be sure to check that a package has all the features you need, the ability to disable features you don't want, and see how easy it is to add your own features or "extensions" if you want or need to.

Bespoke Solution

Your other option is a fully bespoke solution just for you. Whether you develop it yourself or commission development company, you can be sure it will fill your needs, look how you want it to look and operate just how you want it to.

There are disadvantages though. Custom solutions take time to develop, and therefore money too. If you commission the work you will find the cost a great deal higher than an off the shelf package. There may also be some security issues if it is not thoroughly and vigorously tested - as at the end of the day you will be dealing with people's personal information and taking payments (either on your own server or via a payment gateway), you do not want to have to deal with missing orders and angry customers!

What Should I Go For?

Your best bet is to ask yourself if you have the budget for a custom solution? (Or indeed the ability and time). If you do not then an off the shelf package is the only option really. Even if you think you do need a custom solution, I would take a look at the software available anyway to see what it offers. A quick search on google and a poke around hotscripts.com should provide you with plenty to whet your appetite.

Personally I think the majority of store owners are better off working with an off the shelf package. Even though I am yet to find one that I can say is a great product, I don't think it's worth re-inventing the wheel with your own solution if you can pick up a package that already does it immediately.

Be Different From Your Competitors

Sun, 04 May 2008 19:14:39 +0000/

In competitive markets it can be difficult to come out on top. Some of it is down to the amount of promotion and type of promotion that you do, but if someone has found your site along with 3 or 4 others offering the same thing, why should they choose you? The key is to be different, here are a few ideas.

Better Offers
A good example of this is Play.com. Selling DVDs and CDs is a competitive market, and by offering low prices and free delivery they have had huge success. Obviously there are business considerations when reducing costs (I'm not suggesting you don't make a profit!) so it may not be an option. It does not have to be so drastic though, periodic special offers, discounts on bulk buys, offering discount codes to previous customers. Even if its not much, if its more that your competitors you have the edge.

Competitions
Running competitions on your website is a good way to attract attention, especially if the prize is good. Whether you partner with somebody else to get a prize, or offer a voucher for your store, if its attractive to people you'll find you will get a lot of entries. Another thing you can do is provide a "send to friend" feature within the competition. So when someone enters they are presented with a number of boxes to send details to their friends.

Running competitions not only gets attention and raises the profile of your site over your competitors, but also gives you a base of email addresses to market products to down the line (make sure they are aware they'll recieve mails though!).

Be Useful with Blogs/E-Zines
Content is a great way to add value to your website. Starting a blog is a good way to get content online. If you blog about things related to your products, it will tell people you are not just an online shop, but you know what you're talking about and have a face. It could be product reviews, product "how to" articles, discussions on events within your market or even product announcements as you get new stock in.

Enhance Customer Experience
If visitors enjoy their time on your website they will stay, and come back again. Make your website a nice place to be and offer good features to help your customers. Make your ordering process as simple as possible. Have a help section full of expected questions and answers. Make sure its clear where to find everything. All this helps, and at the end of the day if people don't like being on your website they'll look elsewhere.

Search Engine Optimisation

Sun, 04 May 2008 19:03:39 +0000/

Getting a good ranking in search engines is essential. If you do well you'll be bringing in traffic, and most importantly sales - people who have searched for a term that you have the answer for. Whether you're selling cars, computers, teddy bears or garden hoses, the principles are the same. What follows is my advice for improving your search engine ranking.

Some Truth First
Many sites and companies you will find offer services saying they will get you to the top of google. Promises of #1 rankings and lots of traffic from it. All this, frankly, is untrue. They may well get you such rankings, but usually by means frowned upon by Google and other search engines. If you're caught you'll be banned or have your rankings punished - as simple as that. You will also find that some of these companies will get you to the top for keywords that are not exactly what you want to be aiming for.

Be The Best
The simple fact is, search engines want to offer users the best service possible. When someone searches for something they want to give to them the best website that is related to what they entered. The best deals or the best advice. Quite simply, if you are at the top of the rankings but your site is not what the user is after (ie they don't think you are 'the best') then they will leave - simple as that, they'll just go back and try the next result.? Therefore the best thing you can do is to 'be the best' in your field. Offer the best advice, the best deals and the best website experience. If your site is worth visiting then you'll see an increase in visits and sales, whether you're ranked top or not.

Choosing your Keywords
It is worth planning your keywords right from the word go. You'll want to target maybe 15 or so 'key phrases' of two or three words each. Some should be quite general to your field, others more specific and 'niche'. If you're struggling to get ket phrases it's worth using a keyword suggestion tool to spark some ideas.

Content Content Content
You want to sneak these key phrases into your content, page titles and content titles where you can. Try not to go over the top, but add them in where they can go. For example, instead of things like "Welcome to Sparky's" as a title, try "Welcome to Sparky's, The online electrical retailer with the best cables on offer" - notice how I got electrical retailer and cables in there without it sounding like they are just there for a search bot - Be descriptive and informative with them.

Content is King on the internet, and the more of it there is, the more a search engine can pick up and use for searches. You want to try and get as much information on your products as you can. Maybe write some articles relating to your field, adding extra value to your site at the same time.

Use Your Page Titles
Page titles are very important. I am talking here about what goes in your <title> tags and appears at the very top of the browser window. When reading a website, search engines value different tags with different importance - title is the most important. Make sure you have a different title for each page, and get the important stuff at the start. A good way to do this is instead of putting "Sparky's Online Store - Cables" put "Cables - Sparky's Online Store", making the word cables to most important thing on the page.

User Your Page Titles
Next down on the HTML tag importance list is header tags: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, h7. Therefore you want to give each page it's individual title within a h1 tag, and use the others for subheadings etc, placing your keywords in them where you can.

Meta Tags
Meta Tags are hidden tags in the head of a HTML document that describe a page for search engines to use. These have depleted in their importance over the years as they are open to abuse. It is still worth including a description and keywords tag just in case though.

No to Flash and Informational Imagery
Search engine spiders find flash files difficult to interpret - they are not mere text files like HTML documents. They struggle to access the text within if the even bother at all. Similar can be said to images. If you have text in an image a search engine cannot read it. Make sure you do not have important information in such images or flash movies. With images, make sure you always include an alt="" attribute describing the content of the image.

Backlinks
Backlinks are a very important part of search engine rankings these days. Search engines such as google will look at all the links it finds on other sites that point to your site, and look at the text that is used to link to it. The more incoming links you have, the more important your site is deemed. Equally, if the page linking to you has lots of incoming links, it will see that as a more important incoming link. It can get a bit complicated to explain, but put simply, the more people linking to you the better.

Good ways to get backlinks can be directories, related sites, blogs, social bookmarking sites or advertising. Remember that links from sites related to your site are far more valuable than ones from unrelated sites, so try and get quality over quantity. It also helps if you get keywords in the link too, instead of a link simply reading the name of your site.

Domain Name
Domain names can also play a part. If you can, it's worth getting a good one from the word go, and get a keyword in it. For example, www.sparkys-cables.com will do better than just www.sparkys.com.

Search Engine Friendly URLs
Some search engines struggle to read dynamically generated pages - typically with URLs that look something like: www.site.com/index.php?page=1. It is also helpful to be descriptive in the URL too, instead of using an ID to find the page, use a text based descriptive one. You can use mod_rewrite on apache servers (there is a similar thing on windows servers) to rewrite URLs to be friendlier to search engine bots, so you come out with something like www.site.com/page-name/

Well, there you have it, some tips for optimising for search engines. SEO is an ongoing thing, and takes time to get the results you want. Keep at it, try different things out with keywords and keep looking for those backlinks.

Tips for building a CSS & XHTML compliant store

Sun, 04 May 2008 19:01:40 +0000/

This article follows on from my Why have a CSS & XHTML compliant online store? article. In that article I discussed reasons why your store should be built using CSS and XHTML, in this article I am going to give some advice on actually building it and putting that advice into practice.

Tools for the Job
First off, some handy tools that will help you achieve your goals, free of course.

Text Editor
You'll need a text editor. I prefer to use one that has code highlighting abilities, and my personal favourite is AceHTML. Nice little editor with toolbars to do lots of different things. I don't use any of them myself, but you may find that they useful shortcuts sometimes.

FTP Client
Next up, an FTP client. My suggestion, again from the makers of AceHTML - AceFTP. Again it's freeware and can also integrate with ActHTML to speed things up.

Browsers
I would suggest using Firefox for development work, as there are a few add ons (see below) that will help you a lot. It is sensible to have different browsers for testing too, so go ahead and get Netscape and Opera too, and if you have a mac to hand grab Firefox for mac as well (and of course Safari).

As for add ons, there are a lot of extensions for Firefox, and I suggest installing the following;

The Web Developer Toolbar This is invaluable. It will do so many jobs and helpful things for you, like putting boxes around elements, turning css and things off, showing ids and classes, providing information on forms and page sizes. The list is almost endless.

Firebug This great little tool allows you to examine the DOM at a glance, and also helps with Javascript debugging.

Adsense Notifier This one is only if you have Adsense on your site really, it just sits at the bottom of your screen telling you todays earnings/impressions/clicks etc. Great to check at a glance.

Clean Code
OK on to the actual code. Here are a few tips for you to keep in mind.

Keeping the code as clean as possible - only using what you need is essential. Rather than having tables or transparent spacer gifs positioning things you should use CSS to give elements padding and margins instead. A good tip is to place the following code at the top of your CSS file:

* {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

This will set everything to have no padding or margin before you begin. This gives you a level playing field as some browsers have different defaults as standard.

When writing the code, imagine you are writing a word document. So obviously the title of the page will be in a <h1> tag, and paragraphs will be in <p> tags. You want to give your content this kind of hierarchy so it reads properly on unstyled pages and text only browsers (Mobile Phones too). It will also help with Search Engine Optimisation (see below).

Try and keep all your styles separate from your HTML. You want to have a master CSS file with everything in, and not cluttered in with the HTML or at the top of the file.

This kind of thing could go on for a while, so I feel a more detailed article on coding an example page would suffice - watch this space!

Accessibility
The point above about using the proper tags where they should be used applies here to. This allows the pages to be accessible to unstyled browsers (and search engine spiders) plus makes it easier on screen readers.

A good tip on font sizes, you should not be using exact sizes for text (for example, pt or px). Doing so means some browsers (IE) cannot enlarge the text for anyone who wishes to do so. If you use the unit 'em' they will be able to. When working with ems you will want to set the default to the same as 10px:

body {
font-size: 62.5%;
}

This will set 1em to be equal to 10px, and so 1.1em will be equal to 11px and so on.

Search Engine Friendliness
Take care with your text, especially on product detail pages. A few extra minutes spent getting the right keywords in place without it sounding like you're spamming will pay off in the long run. You also want to be giving each page (expecially product detail pages) unique page titles in the <title> tags and <h1> tags.

Optimising Images
This can make a difference too. Good quality product photos give a better impression for users. If you get them from the manufacturer you may be blessed with profession photography, but good results can be achieved with a digital camera, a daylight bulb (available from hardware stores or hobby shops) and a plain white backdrop. Simple and cheap to set up and you'll have decent looking photography. Furthermore you can play around with the levels, contrast and colours in photo packages such as Photoshop.

When saving images for use on your site there are some things you should consider too. You want your image to be set at 72dpi and usually no larger than 500-600 pixels wide (maybe around 100-200 pixels for thumbnails). If you have Photoshop you can use the "Save for Web" facility and play around with the compression with JPEGs and GIFs. The smaller you can get a file without losing quality the better.

Well there we have some tips for building a XHTML/CSS compliant store. If you have any of your own please do share them below.

Top 10 ways to market your store online

Sun, 04 May 2008 18:59:39 +0000/

Here are my suggestions as to the top 10 ways you can market your store online. Some are free, some have costs.

1. PPC (AdWords, YPN etc)
Probably the most effective way to market your site is through contextual PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Programs such as Google AdWords and Yahoo Publisher Network. With PPC advertising you pay a certain amount for every click on your link, but because it is contextual it is targetted to people actively searching for your keywords. The amount you pay depends greatly on how competitive your market is, but if you make your targetted keywords more specific (maybe regional or specific products) you'll find the cost might come down. I'll be covering these programs in more detail in a future article.

2. Price Comparison Sites
Price comparison website such as shopping.com and Shopzila (off the top of my head - there are a lot of them out there) is another option. Again with these services you are usually paying per click and attracting people actively searching for your products. You have to be careful with your pricing down this route however as if you're more expensive than competitors you won't get many clickthroughs.

3. Regular Advertising
In some cases other online advertising methods may be quite successful. Banner advertising sees a low percentage of clicks these days, but there are other options such as text link advertising or even video ads.

4. Search Engine Optimisation
This one should go without saying, but it goes unnoticed a lot. Optimising your pages and writing your content carefully considering the keywords you want to be targetting is a step that costs little or nothing at all, and if you get it right you'll see hundreds of visitors coming from search engines every day. At the end of the day "Content is King" - you should have as much information about each product as you can write, and you could even consider including other pages offering articles that a rich in keywords and linking through to products or sections.

5. Affiliate System
Having an affiliate system is one of the best ways to get selling products. People join and become an affiliate for your products, you provide them with banners and links for them to put on their websites, and for ever sale they bring you give them a percentage of the cost. With an affiliate system you are effectively getting other people to do the selling for you and providing you with customers, and you don't have to pay them anything until you have the money from their sales. There are many sites that will let you run an affiliate program, although some will come with a cost. There is no harm in setting one up yourself however, and many eCommerce packages come with the functionality built in.

6. Mailing List
Having a mailing list or newsletter on your website is a good marketing tool. The recipients will either be previous customers, or visitors who have joined up willingly. You know the recipients will be interested in your products as they have asked you to send them information about them. A well constructed newsletter can be very effective in bringing more sales. There are some services out there that will let you send newletters for next to nothing, my recommendation would be Mail Chimp. Equally, many eCommerce packages will come with a newsletter feature.

7. Word of Mouth
Word of Mouth can be underestimated. There is common thinking that if someone likes your product, they'll tell their friends and colleagues about them. While this might be true sometimes, its worth giving them a helping hand. Having an "Email to Friend" feature is one example of this, it's right there in front of them to quickly send information about a product to someone before they forget about it. Other ways could include using branded eCards on special occasions or running competitions.

8. Blogs
Blogs are all the rage (heck you're reading one now!) and it is likely there is a blog out there talking about your market. Getting such bloggers to post about your products, maybe reviewing them, is a surefire way to get their readers directed to your online store.

9. Signatures
This is an old favourite. Signatures in emails, forum posts and anywhere else you may be posting information. Generally, if you have something genuinely interesting and valuable to say people are likely to click on your signature links.

10. Freebies
Finally, this is common with software these days, offering a free version of your product(s) with reduced features, or free trials of them that expire after a set time limit will get more people interested. It may also open up other avenues to market (in the case of software there are a number of directories just listing free software downloads).

Well there we have it, my top 10 suggestions. It is by no means a definitive list, if you have any suggestions or think I've missed something feel free to post a comment letting me know.

Why Have a CSS/XHTML Compliant Online Store?

Sun, 04 May 2008 18:59:32 +0000/

Modern web technology has evolved over the years, and is indeed still evolving. The w3c has introduced standards for XHTML and CSS code for coders to follow to aid accessibility and attempt to have one central standard that all sites should follow.

Traditionally websites have been coded using HTML - a language intended to be used for displaying simple data. Over time people have found ways to make it do more interesting things and make sites much more visually appealing. In doing so, code became bloated, poorly accessible and greatly unnecessary. With the introduction of CSS and XHTML standards, it is now possible to leave this behind. Below are a number of advantages to switch to (or indeed start out with) these modern standards.

Cleaner Code
In the past HTML site were largely based around tables. Tables within tables within tables - which becomes very complex to look at in your text editor, and it's the same story for browsers trying to interpret it. You would find blank images here and there creating space on the page where needed. It's not a pretty picture. XHTML/CSS code is much simpler. The styling is separated out and controlled totally by CSS, meaning there is nothing cluttering up your HTML. Tables aren't required to make things display correctly, and the end result is code that is a lot leaner, quicker and easier to work with.

Faster Loading Times
XHTML and CSS is much leaner that HTML was previously. Less code is needed to make things work, and browsers can interpret the code much quicker. Ironically as connection speeds increase (as broadband becomes commonplace in homes) websites are getting smaller in size. This is great news for those still on slow connections though, as they will notice a big increase in the loading time of your site. Attention spans are shot with internet users, if your site doesn't load for a few seconds you'll be losing potential customers!

Accessibility
XHTML/CSS pages are a lot more accessible to people with disabilities or limitations. Because there is no unnecessary code, software such as screen readers (commonly used by users with visual impairment) can understand your page better and relay the content back. Users with small screens (such as PDAs) or text only browsers (common on linux and search engine spiders) can access your content easily.

Search Engine Friendly
One major advantage of XHTML and CSS is the benefits for search engines. They are smaller, easier to understand, and quicker for them to look through. Search Engine Spiders love XHTML/CSS sites. Using code properly will help your rankings considerably too.

Faster Development
You will also find that developing your site will be quicker too. Because the code is cleaner it is much easier to put together to begin with (as there is less to write). Also, when coming back to it to change or fix things, there is less of it to look through and find what you need.

Bragging Rights
Finally, you have put in the effort to make your site compliant and accessible. Many sites proudly place a link to validators confirming that they are using compliant code, and you'll find that some visitors will have more respect for you doing so.

Resources
w3c Validators
w3schools
SitePoint Tutorials

eBay Stores and e-Commerce Website Choices - Build It In-House or Hire a Professional?

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:16:50 +0000/

When you have made the decision to get your products online via eBay and/or your own eCommerce website, what is the next step?

First Question: Build it in-house or hire a professional?

Yes, you can build your companies eBay store and website with talent already existing within your organization.

Website design is taught at most high schools or community colleges these days so, chances are good that your employee pool may have budding web designer talent. Are you ready to trust your company marketing and image to that in house talent is the real question?

eBay provides numerous tools and a great deal of information for anyone to accomplish the task of getting a store up and running. The question is... does eBay provide these tips and tricks to help you as a business or to help their business? Obviously, if you are a seasoned business professional you will soon realize that a company such as eBay does nothing without a reason.

eBay Stores

Most of eBay's teaching tools and to a certain extent, eBay's entire growth strategy is based upon making the process of setting up an eBay selling account and consequently an eBay store easy for home based businesses. eBay wants mom & pop to go garage sale shopping with an eye towards making a few extra bucks for the cookie jar. To that end they want to get mom & pop up and running with an eBay store as soon as possible (and funneling fees into eBay).

Just because eBay has based a majority of their marketing focus on home based businesses does not mean that an eBay store is not a valuable asset for any established brick and mortar retailer or other "real" business concern. eBay is simply going after the largest number of potential users of their products. Unfortunately this also leads to numerous eBay store failures...

These home based eBay store owners do not have the prior background, sources or resources to take advantage of the world wide marketing giant and revenue producer now known as eBay. Therefore, while getting your company eBay store up and running may seem to be an easy in-house task for any intern, or kid just out of college with a great computer science degree... the real nuts & bolts set up and operation of an eBay store or e-commerce solution or both in tandem (the best option) is better left to professionals who work with eBay and e-commerce each and every day. If you are reading this because you are interested in moving your business more into an Internet sales based program you should consider the wisdom of hiring eBay and Internet marketing professionals to help you and your company get a head start toward those goals.

Still Thinking About Doing it yourself?

Building an online business requires ability in several completely different arenas: graphic design, programming, database development, Web design, copywriting, photography, and online marketing. This is just a short list of what is required to start from scratch or to add Internet marketing to your sales operation. If you have these skills in-house or if you plan on learning them yourself, please take this advice to heart.

Make a list of your employees' available skills as well as which skills they can learn. When you have a choice between learning a skill that will directly translate into making more money for your company or learning a skill that will let you do cool stuff on the Web, make a careful choice. Decide how much time you really want to devote to learning and doing things that really don't help you sell more products. Do you want to be an online retailer, or do you want to be a Web developer? The highest and best use of your available time & resources probably isn't learning the ins and outs of XHTML, but taking care of customers, finding new products, and promoting your business.

Making it Happen

Anything you can do yourself on a website design or to a eBay Store can be delegated or outsourced. You can hire eBay Stores Certified design professionals to design your eBay store from the ground up, create a custom logo, develop a corporate identity with unique colors and fonts, build your store product database, take product photos, write sales copy, perform search engine optimization on your site, custom-build XHTML templates that do almost anything you want them to do, and even manage your orders and perform customer service. It all depends on your budget.

After you've decided that you need help, you have lots of choices to make. The first decision is the size of your budget, which determines who you can hire. You can find prices for "building a eBay Store" that range anywhere from $300 to $5,000 and up. You can get a bargain using offshore designers (working anywhere from eastern Europe to India), college kids, or even professional designers moonlighting out of their basement. If you want a more "professional" experience, expect to pay up to $15,000 for a complete branding, marketing, and design package from top-drawer eBay store and Internet marketing firm. Both your web e-commerce site and your eBay store should present your branding and image as you expect them to. Getting the eBay image and your website image to mesh almost seamlessly is your goal, this can be quite difficult for even experienced web designers.

Using a CMS or Content Management System type of website design can significantly reduce your web design costs. There are a huge amount of new and exciting options available for web development, do not think you must use a "hand coded" html site to get your branding and image in front of the public. Some companies are even using simple blogging platforms like Wordpress or Typepad as the basis for corporate websites. These blogging platforms are very inexpensive to set up and the software is free. These CMS or Blogging platforms may also be used in conjunction with an eBay store or a with an eCommerce plug in (or both) to craft a unique Internet marketing funnel for your company.

You get what you pay for...

eBay store designs can run between $2,000 to $5,000 from a qualified eBay Stores designer. eCommerce website designs sometimes run in the tens of thousands of dollars with continual maintenance costs and webmaster fees. If your budget makes you choose between the two options, an eBay store is the more economical and faster route to success when managed correctly. Subsequently an off eBay eCommerce site can be developed for your best selling items. This allows you to use the power of eBay for marketing and SEO purposes while saving eBay fees on sales made through your own eCommerce website.

The best part of an eBay stores set up is that once it is installed as you want it, you have very few outside maintenance costs. Your company will have complete control of the products presentation (with the use of a template) and the inventory management is a simple to learn affair on eBay. Advanced tools are available to help with the management of large inventories and to help you create a listing just as you would within a word processing program or text editor.

When you get a quality eBay Stores design, sometimes the results are more than just superficial. Qualified designers improve the shopping experience, which can dramatically increase sales from your existing traffic by increasing your conversion rate. Also, many designs, when set up correctly improve the way your site looks to search-engine spiders, too! (This is the power of an eBay stores "me" page and other exclusive features and benefits of eBay stores packages).

After you determine what parts of the store building process you can do and what you can't do or would rather not do, you're ready to look for some help with the heavy lifting. First, you have to decide what type of vendor you want to work with because there's a big difference between working with a freelancer or independent consultant and working with a large design company or eBay Stores certified design specialists StoresDesigner.

eBay Stores certified design specialists - eBay Stores Designer

eBay Stores certified design specialists (certified eBay stores designers) provide the best overall experience. Your company will get the personalized attention it deserves and you will know that the design is based upon eBay marketing principles. Look at the portfolios of these certified eBay stores designers and decide which firm best represents your companies' image. Stay away from home based eBay stores designers with frilly eBay templates and flashy bouncing mouse pointers. You should be looking more for a corporate image that sells product and more importantly, cross sells more products for your company.

Look at the online stores you frequent in your daily life, think about the type of image and features you would like to emulate for your eBay store. Look at the designer's portfolios and or ask them if the features you think are most valuable are available in their design packages? Some eBay stores designers can deliver very advanced packages designed to promote more than one primary product at a time. If you are looking for growth in your Internet sales segment, these are the designers to contract with. Talk with several designers to find the one you are most comfortable with and the one who you think will represent the image of your company best with an online design. If the same designer can also develop your off eBay website e-commerce design, you should place that designer high on your list of candidates.

Having a web presence for your company which flows from eBay to your own website with the same "look and feel" is very important. Your goal should be to make your customers feel confident in your products and your company. If you (and your design company) have made an effort to create a nearly seamless shopping experience between eBay and your own e-commerce website, the confidence of the buyer will increase and your conversion rate will as well. Drawing eBay shoppers to your website from within eBay is not only possible, but very probable with a eBay store design done correctly.

Ask your prospective design firm the right questions and you will know immediately if you have made the best choice. Example Questions:

Are you a certified eBay Stores Designer?
Do you have examples of cross marketing designs?
Can you create an eBay stores design which matches my existing website or can you create an e-commerce design to match your eBay stores design?
Is SEO important for eBay?
How important is a eBay about me page?
Do your templates appear correct on all of the major browsers?

What kind of changes can be made to the design after your job is complete? (Can I offer a special sale item in my listing template?)

If your chosen designer is not informed in these questions you should look further. Not every eBay or Internet design firm has the necessary skills or background to help your company effectively cross-market your products. Find the right design firm which will give your firm a solid foundation from which to grow and prosper in the new world of Internet retailing.

Scott Pooler - Captain eBay
Article:
http://allbusinessauctions.com/blog/2008/01/23/ebay-stores-and-e-commerce-website-choices
http://www.allbusinessauctions.wordpress.com - eBay Trading Assistant Journal
http://www.allbusinessauctions.com/blog - All Business Auctions eBay Business Blog

Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Pooler
http://EzineArticles.com/?eBay-Stores-and-e-Commerce-Website-Choices---Build-It-In-House-or...

How Does Your Landing Page Measure Up?

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:10:17 +0000/

You managed to entice your email reader or web surfer to click your link or your ad. In today's cluttered web marketing world, that's quite an accomplishment. But don't start celebrating yet. It's what happens after the click that determines the success of your campaign.

And unfortunately, according to a recent SilverPop study, up to 50% of visitors leave your landing page within the first 8 seconds. So, what can you do to increase your conversions after the click?

First, don't panic, and don't feel too bad. A MarketingSherpa survey revealed that conversion rates for email campaigns average only 5.67 percent (11.31 percent for free offers). So you're definitely not alone in less than optimal campaign results. But if your conversions are significantly below these averages, you may want to take some time and implement a few of these changes:

1. Ensure that the text and promotional copy on your landing page match the text and promotional copy of your email campaign. Often times, the email message is written by a copywriter and the landing page is created by a web developer and the two messages are not in sync. One of the quickest fixes is to use the same headline on your landing page as you used in your email message.

2. Create a dedicated landing page for your campaign. If you are offering a widget on sale for $14, take the readers to the widget page. Do not dump them on your home page and expect them to crawl around looking for your widget.

3. Use the same look and feel in your email message or display ad that you use in your landing page. Landing pages that do not match the original ad end up confusing the visitors. They think they are in the wrong place and they end up clicking away from the page altogether.

4. Reduce your form fields as much as possible. Forms that require more than 10 fields result in significantly reduced conversions.

5. Eliminate navigation bars or other linking elements that might distract the visitor and cause him to click away.

Request a copy of my free report Discover The Secret To Generating More Leads With Your Free PDF Reports! for more information on coordinating your ad with your landing page. You can download a copy here: http://www.modernimage.com/freereports/pdfs.htm

Time to implement: The most successful landing pages are actually the simplest to create, so you will probably save time by implementing this tactic. You can reuse text, reuse graphics, and simply your page template to cut your campaign creation time in half.

Karen Scharf helps small business owners attract and retain more clients. Karen coaches and trains website owners on various tricks and techniques that have been proven to increase website conversion. She offers coaching programs and a Marketing Makeover to turn your ineffective advertising into a profit-pulling system. Grab your FREE checklists, whitepapers and reports at http://www.ModernImage.com You can also get a FREE subscription to Successful Site Secrets at http://www.SuccessfulSiteSecrets.com

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Closing the Deal - Ecommerce Tips

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:56:21 +0000/

Basically, e commerce can be defined as the buying and selling of products or services online. Ecommerce has many advantages over traditional "brick and mortar" companies. Consumers can quickly and efficiently browse through hundreds of products or services without ever leaving the comfort of their home, or compare prices and products with the click of a button.

There are also several advantages for the online vendor. For Example, the web provides world wide exposure for smaller companies that typically would not be able to reach a global market. Also, various web technologies allow you to gather statistics on your customers and create custom individualized marketing material.

Here are a few helpful tips for increasing your sites e commerce potential:

Promote Impulse Purchases

When a potential customer is searching for a particular item, it's a good idea to also show them related products. For example, if the item is a book you may also want to show your customer additional books written by the same author. This is a common tactic utilized by some of the most successful e commerce sites such as amazon.com.

It's also important to associate related items to one another. If your customer is about to purchase a new digital camera, you would also want to show associated items such as memory cards, batteries, or other related products.

Another great method for encouraging impulse buys is to offer limited time only specials. A potential customer is much more likely to make a purchase if there is a limited time frame on the offer. This tactic may also persuade potential customers to shop from you, rather than your competition.

Provide In Depth Product Information

Potential customers want to see detailed descriptions and pictures about the products they are considering purchasing. Since your customer will not be able to actually view the item, it's a good idea to provide as much information as possible. However, you must be careful not to overwhelm your audience with a plethora of technical information. A good technique is to provide an additional information or product specification page for each item.

Make Shipping Easy

Make the shipping process as easy as possible. Expensive and confusing shipping charges are some of the largest deterrents when it comes to potential online customers making a purchase. It's a good idea to provide a shipping cost calculator, or allow your potential customers to view shipping charges prior to their actual check out. Another great technique is to offer free shipping on multiple item purchases. This not only encourages the customer to buy the product at hand, but the purchase of additional items.

Incorporate Good Design

Last, but certainly not least, a compelling website will create a sense of credibility. Customers don't want to make purchases from a website that is poorly constructed. This is especially true for e commerce sites, because sensitive data such as credit card information is exchanged.

Landon Wisser is a content developer and web specialist at NLI Media Group.

NLI Media Group is an Austin based web development and media firm that uses cutting edge online marketing and traditional advertising and promotion to create premium brand experiences for clients.
http://www.nlimediagroup.com

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Importance of Customer Feedback in the Online Shopping Scenario

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:46:08 +0000/

Customer feedback is a great way of improving your online business. While it is impossible to make every customer happy, feedback can help you develop best practices and improve your offerings. Generally, online sellers use questionnaires, emails or online surveys to gather customer opinion about their products and services. Few of the sellers offer online customer service (chat/e-mail) to the consumers thereby meeting their buying needs.Getting inputs from customers and gaining valuable insights from them is a sure shot formula behind successful improvements in any online business. It's in your control to identify the trouble areas, and poor performing products and services from the responses derived. While on the other hand, customer appreciation lets you know about the products and services that have so far been greeted with open arms!

Adding a feedback form to your online shopping site or a simple "mailto:" link will enable the buyers to voice their opinions. Posting customer views on your website will guide the other potential buyers in making a satisfactory choice of your products and services. Honest endorsements will surely boost the online sales performance.

How to Collect Customer Feedback?

There is a lot to keep in mind while developing an effective feedback gathering process and here are a few ways by which you can collect customer feedback.

Inviting customers through online chat support to tap customer service as well as to get their opinions
Having a feedback form on the website
Tracking comments from appropriate message boards, forums, and rating sites
Setting up an online customer research panel

Customer feedback is an account of usage based opinion left by a customer who has purchased or used your product or service. Once the customer feedback is captured online, it is routed to the appropriate manager who will be accountable for responding in a timely and appropriate manner. Therefore, customer concerns are answered and loyalty towards your services are improved - a thing that can be of solid benefit to you in the long run! Centralized management of all customer feedback would be easy to use and access. An effective customer feedback system can be the difference between repeat business and a lost customer!

Benefits of Feedback

Feedback surveys allow you to make improvements and fulfil customers demands
Guides and assists you in making positive changes to your service standards, product quality, etc.
Helps you discover exactly what you need to do in order to keep your customers satisfied and build a long-term relationships in turn
Reduces dissatisfied customers
Increases customer loyalty

It is always in the best interest of an online business to find out the likes and dislikes of its customers. Customer feedback can have a dramatic impact on product development, customer service and other areas of your business. The competitive advantage that you get over others in your field helps you grow a healthy business. Unfortunately, online retailers are often slack in collecting, managing or responding to customer feedback in a consistent manner.

Finally, taking no action on the findings of feedback can be a major step back in building customer confidence and respect. If you want consumers to believe you're really listening to them, then inform them of your findings and the changes you intend to model in keeping with their feedback. Let the customer know that you have implemented those suggestions. To be successful, feedback must be viewed as a part of an ongoing process of building and maintaining strong, effective relationships with customers. It's never too late! Begin now and provide quality products and services to your buyers!

To get all your online shopping tips and bargains, visit dealsdirect

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