Businesses-Online:Ecommerce

2005-10-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

7 Tips To Increase Sales With Your Ecommerce Web Site

Ecommerce is just exploding right now on the Net. More and more people are doing their shopping online. Some Internet retailers are even beating out their offline counterparts. So what does this mean to you? It’s important that you are taking full advantage of your web site to get your share of the billions of dollars spent online every year. In this article we are going to cover 7 tips that you can put into practice immediately to increase your sales and revenue with your ecommerce web site.

1: Introduction
Make sure to have a brief introduction on the homepage of your web site. Your introduction should be concise and clearly identify the benefits of your visitors shopping at your site.

2: Navigation
Make sure that your site has clear and easy navigation, such as a visible search box on the top part of your web site, clear categories to browse through, a FAQ page that clearly explains your shipping and return policy, and etc.

3: Gift Certificates
People love getting gifts at certain times of the year, so make sure that you have gift certificates that your visitors can purchase right on your web site.

4: Customer Loyalty
Instead of just focusing on getting new customers why not take advantage of repeat business? Why not give your customers an incentive to come back and do business with you again? You can easily do this by offering coupons and special discounts to ones who have already purchased something from you. This is a lot easier than acquiring new customers since they already know you and feel comfortable shopping at your site. You can also add more value to your customers by adding live customer support to your site.

5: Special Offers
Make sure to have a section on the top part of your home page devoted to featuring your current special offers and sales items. In fact if you happen to have a lot of special offers you can just feature the most popular ones and then make a separate web page that shows all of your sales items.

6: Shopping Carts
People want the checkout process to go as quickly and smoothly as possible, so make sure that your visitors are always just one click away to checkout. Try to reduce the checkout process to as few steps as possible. Make sure to offer multiple payment options such as credit cards, Paypal, online checks, mail orders, and such. When you no longer have a product in stock make sure to either remove it from your site or clearly mark it as “out of stock”. There is nothing more irritating for a customer to go through the whole checkout process only to find out that you no longer carry the item they ordered.

7: Affiliate Program
Do you have your own affiliate program? The most successful web sites have one and you should too. By starting your own affiliate program you will develop an increasing online sales force where you only pay them when a sale is made. There is really no risk and it is one of the best low cost effective advertising methods that you can use.
If you put these tips into practice you will notice a drastic increase in your sales and web site revenue.

About The Author
Jordan Williams is the Owner of WebCashLink.com which gives you the resources, tools, and software to succeed with an online business.

2005-10-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

My Top 7 Favorite Ecommerce Tools

When you make your living on the Internet, you sometimes forget that the resources you use every day (and take for granted) might rate an incredible discovery to anyone who doesn't already know they exist.

Whether they help you make money, save time, save money, or avoid frustration, these ecommerce tools and services rate my highest recommendation for anyone who conducts any form of ecommerce online.

ClickBank.com -
If you sell a downloadable product such as an ebook, report, or software, you can't beat ClickBank for processing credit card payments. Not only do they take the payments and send you a check twice a month, they also plug your product into an existing network with tens-of-thousands of affiliates who can sell it for you. Also, unlike a traditional merchant credit card processing account, ClickBank assumes all the fraud risk and prevents many of the "horror" stories you hear in connection with online credit card processing.

MySiteSales.com -
Since ClickBank only allows the sale of downloadable products, MySiteSales.com comes to the rescue for anyone selling a physical product or service. Offering a suite of integrated product catalogs, follow up autoresponders, advertising tracking, a secure server, and even limited-time coupon offers, this tool rates a "must have" for setting up and integrating a professional ecommerce solution on virtually any size website.

Aweber.com -
If you need an unlimited number of follow up autoresponders and the ability to send an email "broadcast" to all your contacts at one time, Aweber offers an excellent managed solution. Specializing in helping small to medium-sized Web businesses implement an effective email follow-up strategy without complicated software, Aweber gets our highest marks for service and dependability.

GoDaddy.com -
Cheap, reliable, easy-to-use domain name registrar that only charges $8.95 per year for each domain name you register. Godaddy rates cheaper and just as, if not more, reliable than any other domain registrar. They also offer a "private registration" option that allows you to keep your identity as the domain owner a secret from unscrupulous people who exploit domain name records to compile mailing lists, spam databases or worse.

FrontierPowerHosting.com -
Any successful ecommerce endeavor begins with a solid website hosting service. Nothing shuts you down faster than an unreliable web host because, the second they go offline, your business goes offline. I host one of my servers at FrontierPowerHosting.com because of great customer service and guaranteed up-time.

ClipArt.com -
Ever pulled your hair out searching for that perfect image, photo, or piece of clipart for your website? Once you exhaust the Microsoft collection on your computer, the next stop (if you want to find something fast) is Clipart.com. With thousands of images searchable by keyword, you can always find the perfect image in less time and without the worries of copyright infringement if you just pull something off the Web.

Google.com/Adsense/ -
Website got traffic but no making much money? Open a free account with Google AdSense and earn a commission any time someone clicks on any of the targeted ads. An excellent way to earn extra cash on virtually any website.

Copyright 2005 Jim Edwards

2005-10-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

eCommerce Web Site Building: Where Do I Start?

Building a web site isn't something that is really cut and dry.
There's a huge variety of products and services that can either help you
get your web site where you want it or simply confuse you. It's also
important that you make the right choices upfront so that you don't end
up having to restructure your whole web site because of some problem in
your design layout. The level of time investment neccessary for mastery
in a lot of these software packages can range from little to a VERY
significant amount. Because of this I feel it's important to be lead in
the "right" direction to make sure you don't spend time in the wrong
areas, or learning some software that might not be all that useful for
you later on (*coughs* Frontpage *coughs*).

Where you should start greatly depends on what you plan on attempting
to do, and how deep you're going to dive in. For a moderately
professional, clean looking web site without a lot of automation or
intensive animated graphics you can probably get by with some basic
knowledge of html, ability with a good WYSIWYG editor, and an image
editting program. On the other hand, if you're someone that's looking to
build something that will really wow your audience then you might
consider spending some major time and developing some animation skills
with a program like Macromedia Flash. I personally always spring for
what I believe will bring me the greatest amount of profit with a
minimal amount of effort, and because of this I usually end up spending
all of my time diving in deeper with ONLY my WYSIWYG HTML editor, and my
image editor.

## What is a "WYSIWYG" editor? ##

A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor is what allows
you to get by with minimal knowledge of HTML. Yes, that means you don't
have to know EVERYTHING about HTML to have a decent looking website.
When you use a WYSIWYG editor it interprets what you're doing (inserting
an image for example) as being a certain series of HTML tags with
attributes, and does it for you... Thus, what you see on your screen is
what you get. Instead of seeing a bunch of HTML code in text format,
you'll mostly see what will actually show up in your browser once your
web site is up WHILE you're making it. I highly recommend using the
latest version of dreamweaver -- it is well-known as one of the best
HTML editors by general consensus. Dreamweaver's interface is very
friendly, has a built in FTP client, and is specifically built to be
flexible enough to suit both the coder and the everyday amatuer
webmaster.

## Image editing? What do I need that for? ##

Okay, let's be realistic here: If you're going to make a professional
*appearing* web site it's important that you can make some basic, decent
looking graphics. There's a lot of graphics problems that can truly get
the job done, but as far as power and flexibility goes I recommend Adobe
Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop definitely takes some time getting used to,
but in the end it's VERY rewarding. I've ended up using my knowledge of
Photoshop to make not only graphics for multiple web sites, but also
touched up portraits, made business cards, flyers, and other online
advertisments such as banners. Infact, I've used it for everything
except animation... But it also comes with Adobe Imageready which is
very good with animation. This software is amazing, and if you're going
to learn ANY image editing software I recommend you start with Photoshop
because of it's widerange of overall... usefulness!

## Let's get me some sales! ##

Kick off your new web site you've gotten up from your knowledge of
webmastering and image editing with a few new sales... Sounds like a
plan? Well a great way to do that quickly is with pay-per-click
advertising. BUT WAIT! Doesn't that cost money? Well... Yes. But with
the tools brought to us by some of the biggest pay-per-click advertisers
out there we should be able to make a good evaluation of how much profit
we're going to make without much investment upfront.

The big question behind pay-per-click advertising is whether or not
it's worth the cash when you can simply get traffic from regular search
engine ranking (otherwise known as organic traffic). Afterall, there are
plenty of companies out there that promise to help get you all the
traffic you need through optimizing your web site for organic ranking.
The answer to this question is quite simple: profit is profit. Through
conversion tracking tools such as those offered by Yahoo! Search
Marketing and Google Adwords anyone can calculate exactly what their
profit is after cost of PPC advertising is taken out. In my opinion,
Google Adwords has the most user-friendly interface among the PPC
advertisers. Google Adword's interface makes it very easy to see which
keywords are pulling you in the most sales, and which ones aren't even
worth your advertising money.

Let us not forget, however, that in order to make those conversions
we're going to be needing a shopping cart! There's a lot of diverse
software packages out there you can use, but I've been using Mal's
E-Commerce Free shopping cart for a number of years with great success.
The cart's server is hosted on their machines so that means you not only
get away with not having to pay for the software itself, but you get out
of having to buy an SSL security ticket too! Nothing's a better bargain
than free, eh?

## Getting those sales leads you've been building up to BUY! ##

Once you've scored a few sales it would probably be a good idea to
start using some kind of lead management services. I highly recommend
the use of autoresponders for this purpose. Autoresponders are,
essentially, a newsletter sign-up that allows you to strategically
determine what you want to send each lead after a certain alotted amount
of time. For example, let's say someone visits your web site and you
offer them a free newsletter. If you were selling an ebook on some very
complicated topic, you might consider sending them only information on
the most basic concepts at first to get them interested. Slowly but
surely, you can turn those visitors that might have left your web site
and never have returned into some serious revenue!

As far as autoresponders go, I highly recommend the use of Aweber.
Their customer service is superb (seriously, these guys really know
their stuff!) and can be contacted at any point during the business day
via online chat or phone. They also offer tons of free information, and
guides on making the most of their services. Check out their month long
free trial at
http://www.getaweber.com/.

2005-10-12T00:28:00.000-07:00

Accepting Credit Cards on Your Website

Most of the online websites you see nowadays are selling their products, services or their Auctions are accepting Credit Cards, which is making eCommerce, a Multi Billion Dollar Industry. This Article will tell you how you can do the same and join the other millions of users selling online and accept Credit Card payments online.

More users trust their computers now and use their Credit Cards for online Shopping. Computer Security is becoming more powerful and most of the transactions go smoothly which is a trust bond between the Buyer and the merchant.

Choosing a Online Credit Card Service
There is a lot of Credit Card Scam online these days, websites claiming to be large companies, serving millions of customers. Do a Google search on the Credit Card company name and domain and see what results come up and what other people have to say about the company. People usually leave their comments about the companies in forums or their websites which is accessible to Google and other Search Engines. If you are still not sure about a company, do a WHOIS search of the company domain. And see if their profile looks real enough to be trusted, you can do WHOIS search for free on www.Whois.sc
Before opening an Account in a Credit Card service, look at the company's rates. Some companies are good for Auctions, Some for Subscriptions. You have to count the transaction charges with your product price. If you are selling products online, or selling on eBay then look at the companies where you have to pay a low percent charge and your Buyer doesn't have to pay a lot, like: Paypal.

Paypal doesn't charge your Buyers and has a very low charge for Premium or Business Accounts. Most of the Sellers Bidpay, A Western Union company which is trusted but is designed for online Auctions. Bidpay also has a very high charging rate for Buyers which might cause you to lose Customers. If you have a very large budget and have more customers, then 2Checkout is the best payment system which accepts Credit Cards without any charges but does not accept payments from Paypal Accounts which might be a problem for some of your customers. It's always a wise idea to provide 2 or 3 payment services for your Customers; this will increase your sales.

Service Availability
There are many companies which only accept customers from specific countries, so always look at the Availability of the service in your company and your currency, which could help you save money by exchanging currencies. Paypal accepts most of the countries which serve Credit Cards or have a branch of International Bank. There are also many Alternatives for countries not Accepted by paypal to Accept Paypal Services for a fee. You also have to look for the time it takes to withdraw your money to your Bank Account or Credit Card. paypal, Bidpay, and other American companies can transfer your money with in 3-5 days to any major country, but if you are in a country where it will take days to weeks to transfer your money, you should look for another Alternative.

Credit card Service Integration
Integrating the Credit Card Service to your websites saves time for your customers and it's good for many shopping cart softwares which can calculate all the details the customer needs, like the shipping costs, charges, taxes, etc.

If you are selling large amount of products online and know that most of your customers will use Credit Cards, then 2Checkout is a service for you, It is just like a Payment Service your Customers would use in their daily life with Credit Card Machines. There are a lot of free and commercial Shopping Cart and Payment Service softwares written for the 2checkout system in all PHP, ASP, PERL languages, like: OsCommerce.

If most of your Customers are using Paypal, then you Integrate paypal for your website using al ready made scripts or design one yourself. If you are going to use a script for paypal, make sure you can trust the Script Company and the script is reliable. paypal system is easy to hack if you are not using Encryption. It's recommended that you contact a Paypal IPN Expert before integrating the service to your website to make sure the system is safe and integrated properly.
Most of the Shopping cart softwares support many payment services like: paypal & 2Checkout and are able to integrate more payment services. OsCommerce is one of them; it has secure payment and service and is used by thousands of shopping companies all over the world.

Website Securing & Licensing
Licensing your website and securing your payment service is required if you are going to be promoting your Business. Most people who want to purchase online prefer trusted and secure websites. Getting a license for your website is becoming a lot easier now. Online Credit card services like: Paypal offers easy to use Account Verification services; you can be verified just by entering your credit card information and putting the paypal verified logo in your website.
If you are considering to invest in a Secure license for your website then Verisign has the Solution for you. VeriSign Licenses are also another way to show your visitors how secure your website is and they are considered to be the most secure and recommended websites available by internet websites and Gurus.

Trusted and popular Payment Services:
Paypal 2Checkout Bidpay
Jack Freeman, DolbyDesigns

2005-10-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

E-commerce For Beginners

Online business owners need to establish a presence online. E-commerce marketing is very important for you to make it in today's economy. It will be very difficult to increase your sales if you are not willing to market your products constantly using the benefits of the Internet.
To be successful at E-commerce marketing, you must establish an online presence in the form of a web site. This web site should be professionally designed and contain as much information about your products as possible. Also, you must be able to allow people to directly purchase from your website.

There are many ways to get started with E-commerce marketing. Many web site owners use Search engine optimization (SEO) to drive traffic to their web sites. This search engine optimization involves creating quality content that will cause potential customers who first visit to come back over and over again until they buy from you.

I also suggest that you develop your own newsletter. An example of an online newsletter can be found at http://news.burkepublications.com. This way people will have a reason to visit the site and spend time there. As your traffic to your newsletter increases, your sales should increase as well. Another suggestion would be to find other newsletters about the product or products you are selling and write informative articles with the web site address stated. Over time, some people will come to depend on you as an expert and will want to visit your site.

Message forums are also a great way to market and promote. Not only is this a form of free advertising, but you can also pick up some useful information about running a business online. By joining a message forum you can place your website address in your signature. Remember, if you are able to answer questions posted in the forums, the forum members will start to trust and respect you and be more willing to visit your website and buy your products.

As you can see, there are many ways to succeed online as a web business owner, if you are willing to put the effort into making it happen. E-commerce can be very profitable if you do your research, plan your business and devote many hours to promoting it. Take the time to do the small tasks and your marketing efforts will eventually lead to big results.Some helpful resources may be found at http://burkepublications.com any many other helpful web locations.

Dr. J. Elisha BurkeBurke PublicationsCopyright 2005 Burke Publications All Rights Reserved
Dr. J. Elisha Burke, an educator and entrepreneur, has been involved in various business enterprises via Burke Publications. He is an educator, writer and motivational speaker on a variety of topics. Many resources to get your business from idea to profit can be found at Burke Publications websites: http://burkepublications.com or http://news.burkepublications.com

2005-10-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

Knowledge Processing E-Business

Overview:
Today's knowledge economy CEO's wanted companies all information on fingertips. Computer based reports are now become very old fashion. Companies wanted to access their all business reports anywhere from worldwide as well as companies also wanted to access their reports on mobile devices. Mobile commerce or m-commerce will run the business in coming future.

What is Knowledge processing e-Business?
Companies wanted information about production planning, flow and process management, inventory management, customer delivery, after-sales support and service, trucks and ships tracking systems and many other types of reports to run the business.
Currently companies using various types of software's for different different purpose. If any employee wanted information from another department then they need make various reports again and again.

Only few companies having ERP software's but huge number of companies don't have ERP but wanted to connect their all softwares together to access their all data.
Knowledge processing e-Business means synchronize data from your local softwares and store on web servers and access data through web applications or WAP applications.

What is Data Syncronization?
We are talking here about Data Syncronization means convert your Database into XML Data format and again convert XML Data format into your Database format.

Why Data Syncronization?
Generally regular Database takes huge space in your Data Storage. Data Syncronization can help you to synchronize your data into small XML data file.

1. Synchronize Data into XML
2. Fast Transfer of Small XML on web server.
3. Your another office can download XML format and synchronize into your Database of offline software.
4. Make Web or WAP applications to check your important reports from any location or mobile Devices.
5. You can make Data entry from online web applications as well as your offline software's also.
Opportunity to Software development companies.
Currently Software development companies having huge opportunity in Knowledge processing e-Business. Software developers can develop web applications suitable to companies offline software's so that companies can do the data entry from online as well as offline softwares also. This will help to increase e-business or e-commerce.
1. Payroll software
2. Point of sale or POS software.
3. Time and attendance software
4. Accounting Software
and many many types of software's having huge opportunity in Data Syncronization and related software developments business.

Summary :
Software development companies and software user companies both can take benefits of Knowledge processing e-Business.
Yogesh Ahire is e-marketing consultant from mumbai/india. you can visit http://www.e-marketing.co.in for free emarketing consultancy.