Make Your eCommerce Site Failure-Proof

Posted by Nowshade Kabir

Often companies while developing their eCommerce business from ground zero tend to make similar mistakes. They don’t have specific business objectives, don’t plan site promotion well ahead, and most importantly forget that eCommerce like any other business requires to have some key advantages over the competitors.

Building an eCommerce business is not an easy job! The chances of making mistakes in selecting the right solution for your specific business are quite high as there are way too many options around. If you are not ready to spend big money on your Internet venture in the beginning, there are online systems that allow you to create and run eCommerce site for a small monthly payment. Advantages of these solutions are that you can build a site for a very short period of time and you don’t need a major initial investment. However, these solutions provide limited functionalities, which could be a big inconvenience. Yahoo, Rusbiz, and Bigstep are examples of this type of systems.

Another way of building an eCommerce site is to get an off-the-shelf solution. This is good if you have some knowledge of programming or you have enough time to learn technical aspects of these solutions.

The third option is to hire a developer to build your eCommerce site. The good thing about this approach is that you can design your site reflecting your company image and give your eShop unique look and feel. But the problem here is that for every minor change on the website you will need to contact the developer which makes site support pretty expensive.

The best but more expensive solution is to use site development companies. If you are working with a professional company, depending on the size of your web project a professional team of people will be taking care of it. Namely: your account manager, lead programmer, web programmer, designer, content editor, database programmer, web promotion specialist, and web administrator. If you are serious about your eCommerce website and planning to hire a professional company you should consider building your site with dynamic pages holding an administrative capability. This means you will be able to edit contents of these pages yourself without requiring any help from programmers.

If you already have an eCommerce site but sales are still low as the site is not popular yet and few people visit your site, you probably need a web promotion specialist. Search engine optimization has become the primary aspect of your web promotional efforts. Studies show that over 80 percent visitors come through the search engines. If you end up in the top three positions of a search result your chance of getting visited increases dramatically.

Your eCommerce site is not just another sales channel! For many companies after launching their online shop in a very short period it became the primary sales channel. In most cases after opening an Internet shop the sales of the company increase from 20 percent to 100 percent within first year.

Although, to have a professionally built high-quality eCommerce site seems like an obvious choice, majority of the eshops available today are not even close to the required standard. Apart from the functionalities of the website, its design and usability, content, offered products, their variety and specifications are also important factors.

Often vendors forget that it is always better to focus on a niche market rather than trying to sell everything to everybody. It is easier to promote several products rather than thousands of unrelated goods and services. Especially, since key word marketing is becoming outrageously expensive. For example if you are in cosmetic and perfume industry it is difficult to compete with big merchants when you are not focused in a single type of product line such as cosmetic masks. Keep in mind that you can become a major player in your specific niche if you are one of pioneers in the field.

In many aspects of Internet shops, Amazon still sets the standard. You should study this site carefully. Any eCommerce site can adopt wonderful ideas from this industry behemoth. Look at how their search system works. Although, it is a huge site with hundreds of thousands of products, you can find any product you are interested in virtually immediately. The second important thing you should notice is that every product carries enough information so that customers can take immediate buying decision. Another thing is the simple but attractive and clear design of the pages. The contents are also segmented and presented thoughtfully.

Around 76 percent of all of your visitors are looking for more information on the product or service they are planning to buy. Only 44 percent know what exactly they are going to buy but there is no guarantee that they will buy from your site. That’s why it is very important to have enough content that can influence positively on their buying decision.

To build an effective online shop you should try to avoid the following common mistakes:

Building a site without professional help

If you are just experimenting than it is a different thing. But, if you are serious about your prospective Internet business, you should hire professionals to do this. Gone are the days, when you could build a site and people would come any way! Now you have to build professional sites. A visitor takes less than a second to decide subconsciously whether he is going to stay on this site or move on. Design plays a key role on this. If your choice of colors and page layout along with the pictures are not effective enough, you simply loose clients not even knowing about it.

Forgetting about the functional mistakes that annoy visitors

These are wrong links, slow page loading, bad site navigation, unclear marketing message, pop-ups, and a huge number of products on one page.

Trying to sell everything to everybody

Better concentrate on few vital products from your industry. You should become the expert for the products and services that you sell.

Don’t forget that like offline world, service is important on the Internet as well. It should be simple for buyers to find products, check out and delivery should be easy and prompt. After sale support should be of high standard.

If you would like to avoid failure, define your business objectives, figure out the system functionalities needed to achieve these objectives, and add necessary information requirement to system functionalities.

Nowshade Kabir is the CEO of http://www.rusbiz.com, a leading B2B portal with facilities like Marketplace, Aggregated Electronic Catalog and Sales and Procurement Management, where buyers and sellers come together to communicate, collaborate and conduct business. More information on eProcurement and Sales are available on http://www.rusbiz.com/deal_manage.html

To Drop Ship or Not: What You Need To Know About Wholesale Dropshipping

Posted by Ahmed Nassar

As ecommerce grows everyday, people are looking for ways to benefit from the great potential the internet has to offer. For newcomers to e-commerce or ebay selling, the hardest step is to find legit and reliable wholesale products suppliers. Drop shipping is a quick and easy solution that can get you up and running fast, but you have to do it right or you can easily fail. In many cases, ecommerce start-ups fail miserably for lack of research and planning. My goal in this article is to explain how drop shipping works. I’m also going to explain the pros and cons of dropshipping, What you need to do before even contacting your first supplier, and how you can avoid the most common mistakes that beginners make.

But what is drop shipping anyways?

When you dropship products, you essentially have an arrangement with your wholesale supplier where by they ship your orders directly to your customers. In most cases, they will include your company name on the shipping labels instead of theirs. Some wholesalers provide this service for free while others charge a nominal fee for it. So, what does dropshipping mean for your business? Let me tell you!

Why Drop Ship Products?

There are many advantages of using dropshippers when selling online. Here are a few of them:

• You essentially get customers orders before you order them from your suppliers. This means that your initial investment is minimal, and in some cases none. 
• No inventory to hold. This by itself is one of the big pros of drop shipping. You don’t have to pay for storage fees, or invest in expensive merchandise, that might stay around for a while before it is sold. 
• You can diversify your offerings as much as you want. You are only limited by finding the right dropshippers for the merchandise you want to sell.

Sounds good you say, but is there any disadvantages? Well this is life, and as any other thing in life you should expect some cons.

Why Not Drop Ship?

Obviously, there are also some cons that you have to consider. here is an idea about some of them:

 
• A lot of middle-men and scam suppliers. This is a big problem now, a lot of wholesaler wanna-bes are springing on the internet everyday. You have to watch out when choosing your drop shippers. 
• Inventory volatility. In some cases, you might get an order for a product that is out of stock. You have to either refund your customer or have them wait longer than usual if the wait is not too long. 
• Smaller profit margins. This is a major one as it directly affects your bottom-line. Like I mentioned before, many internet dropshippers are middle-men that are basically drop shipping to you! For that reason, they don’t have the best profit margins, if any. 
• Customer service issues and returns. Your customers don’t know your suppliers, they know you. When they have any issue or request such as a refund, they will direct it to you. In that case you have to deal with those issue transparently and professionally. This might mean losses for you at times. 
• You cannot control the quality, shipping times, customer service response of your suppliers. This might hurt your business at times, when you can’t do anything about it. 

What to DO Before Searching For Wholesalers

Well I didn’t want to make things look so gloomy for your future online ventures, but a reality check is needed before taking any serious steps. Now you might ask, should I forget about drop shipping? My answer is NO. If done right, dropshippping could be a very effective strategy at least for jump starting your business. My advise is, if you are just starting out, and you don’t have a lot of money up front, consider to drop ship your products. That doesn’t mean that you jump at the first drop shipper that comes your way. You need to do your homework and find good quality products and good reliable and most importantly legitimate wholesalers that offer drop shipping services.

Before you jump into finding drop shippers, decide which products you want to sell. Go to ebay.com, shopping.com, and pricregrabber.com, and search for those products. Study your competition and pricing. Look how your competitors are pricing their merchandise. Record a price range for all the products you might consider selling. Also, try to read some product reviews, and merchant ratings if available. On ebay look at how the sellers are laying out their auction pages, and who’s selling, and what kind of demand exists.

This is an essential step before even looking for wholesalers. When you do this you will also be able to see how popular different products are. On ebay you can tell by the number of bidders. On comparison shopping sites, you can look at their popular products sections, which will give you an idea about what consumers are buying.

In conclusion, study your market and choose your products before you begin selling a single item. If you are on a shoe string budget, then consider drop shipping your products using reliable and legit wholesale suppliers. If you have some capital to invest I would advice buy bulk wholesale. You will get better prices for actually buying the merchandise. On the other hand that also means arranging a storage space…etc. So, decide what you will sell carefully and test different products first, ad then move forward with an expansion strategy.

Good luck with your ecommerce ventures.

Ahmed Nassar is the founder of a wholesale products distributors directory that has great resources for ebay sellers and ecommerce website owners. http://www.wholesaleinone.com lists manufacturers, wholesalers and importers in 38 categories

What is Google Checkout ?

PayPal, a global leader in secure online payment solutions with over 100 million account members worldwide has just met their match. Google has just launched their new secure online payment solution called Google Checkout™, which will work very similar to how PayPal operates.

With Google Checkout™ you can quickly and easily buy from stores across the web and track all your orders and shipping in one place. Google Checkout™ is a checkout process that allows sellers to integrate with their website, enabling their customers to buy from them quickly and securely, using a single username and password. And once they do, the sellers can use Checkout to charge their credit cards, process their orders, and receive payment in their bank account.

Every online merchant has two goals: sell more and spend less. Google Checkout™ is a new way to process transactions that helps them achieve both. Checkout works with Google’s search advertising program, AdWords, to increase sales and minimize expenses throughout the online sales and marketing process.

Online shoppers often start with a Google search. Google’s search advertising program, AdWords, helps them find a seller through targeted text ads that appear beside Google search results. Now sellers can add the Google Checkout™ badge to their AdWords ads, which highlights their store and tells potential customers that shopping with you will be convenient and secure.

Lengthy checkout processes frustrate online shoppers who then frequently abandon their shopping carts. When a store accepts Google Checkout™, their customers needn’t be among them. The purchasing information of every Checkout user is stored in a single account, so they can buy from the seller by simply enter their username and password, rather than providing their credit card information over the Internet.

For every $1 a seller spends on AdWords, they can process $10 in sales for free through Google Checkout™. For example, if a seller spent $1,000 on AdWords last month, this month they can process $10,000 in sales at no cost. The more they spend to promote your business through AdWords, the more they save on transaction processing fees with Google Checkout™.

If a seller exceeds their free transaction processing for the month, or they don’t advertise with AdWords at all, they’ll only be charged 2% plus $.20 per transaction.

Google Checkout™ merchants can sell with complete confidence. Checkout proactively identifies and filters out fraudulent transactions, and under their Chargeback Resolution policy, Google evaluates all chargebacks they receive and, whenever possible, fights them on their behalf.

Some transactions are also covered by their Payment Guarantee policy: if a seller gets a chargeback on an eligible transaction and provides Google with all requested documentation and information within 10 days of the request, they will be reimbursed within a week.

Google’s new Google Checkout™ is that new service that makes online shopping faster, more convenient and more secure. Try it out today for free.

At Hudson Horizons, we provide automated product submission to Froogle for only $15 / month. We submit your products once a week to Froogle to ensure that they are always included in the search results.

Click here to have your products submitted today.

Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be “The New Light for e-Business.”

By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our clients, we provide better ways to run and operate their business online.

10 Easy Steps to a Horrible eCommerce Site

Posted by Jason Chance

As a frequent visitor to forums in which people ask for critiques of their new ecommerce sites, I have seen the best and the worst of small business Web development. For the first 1000 posts or so, I was helpful, kind, and supportive when gently pointing out each developer’s site issues and how he or she could make the site “the best it could be”.

Funny thing though: I found out that this approach doesn’t really work. Maybe the developers think their sites are somehow different, or that the basic rules of good online commerce don’t apply to them for some reason. Site after posted site, I see the same errors in judgment and design. The following 10 tips now represent my standard advice to every budding Website entrepreneur.

1. Use your Ecommerce Software’s Default Layout

Whatever shopping cart you use, the “stock” or default look is fine. After all, if it wasn’t the best layout of all time, why would they distribute it as “stock” in the first place? Never mind that your site will look like every other lazy shop owner who decided that product presentation was overrated. Never mind that it has no flow, coherence, or style. And you might as well just ignore the fact that it makes you look like some high school kid in a basement trying to take their money and run.

You lack design talent? We understand. After all, if you could make nice Websites, you wouldn’t be trying to sell whatever it is you make online: you’d sell nice Websites instead. Sure, you could get a ready made, beautiful drop-in template from one of hundreds of sites that specialize in that sort of thing — some of them even custom-made for your cart platform — for less than $200.00. But hey, you picked a FREE cart, and darn it, this site is going to be free if it kills you (or your chances of success). Those people that say you have to spend money to make money are all full of garbage, right?

2. Don’t use Thumbnails

Why would you want to speed up load times for slow connections, or make your product shots look better? Good looking images are the sign of professionalism and class, and you surely don’t want your site to have either of those. Sure, successful shop owners say better images sell more products, but you don’t have to listen to those people. After all, what does a successful shop owner know that you don’t?

Forget the fact that every cart on the planet either has the ability to use thumbnail images built in, or a free and easy-to-install contribution that handles them beautifully. Keep posting 800k images to your site, and laugh at those people who talk about “site optimization” and “load times”.

3. Don’t optimize your Images in Photoshop

Optimizing your images in Photoshop or some other image editing program takes time — your valuable time. Leaving pictures at their original, huge dimensions and making the customer download 3MB of images for each page in your site takes time too — the pesky customers’ time. Everybody knows customers love to wait to buy your products. Play a game! See how big you can make your images, watch how your load time suffers, and then see how your conversion rates fare!

Challenge yourself to approach dialup speeds over your cable modem using your stellar layered, uncompressed image design. I’m sure your customers will love it!

4. Don’t smooth the Checkout Process

People love filling out 8 pages of forms before they can buy stuff. Better yet, add in a couple more pages to surprise the customer just when they think they’re finally through! You really do need the customer’s age, gender, and the name of his first-born son before you can sell him your hand-painted dishrags.

Whatever you do, make it as hard as you can for the customer to complete a sale and pay you money — that’s how you can tell if a customer is truly dedicated (or if they love pain).

5. Ignore the Market you’re “Targeting”

Sure, there are 50,000 computer stores online, but yours is going to be the best! Market research is for people who don’t know what they want to sell, right? You never researched for a term paper in high school and you passed. Why should an online business be any different? Don’t invest time or money in unique products or services, and don’t even think of developing some sort of unique selling proposition. Just bang out a site with the exact same products as your competition, only make yours more expensive, lesser known, and harder to deal with!

6. Don’t add an SSL Certificate

All that junk about customers “Caring about their privacy” and being “Worried about identity theft” is unfounded. Just ask my friend “John” from Indonesia. Hey, by the way, he has $30,000,000.00 he wants to send you. He just needs your credit card number along with your name and billing address.

Never mind that SSL certificates enable the 128bit encrypted tunnel between customers’ computers and your payment processor. All that stuff can just be sent plain text across the Internet. SSL certificates cost money, and you’re on a budget. Sure, the customer can sue you after your Website is found responsible for their identity theft, but that’s not very likely to happen. You treat your customers like they’re dumb and their personally identifiable information is worthless, so they probably don’t have the smarts to hire a lawyer to sue you all the way to the poor house. After all, $50 is a lot of money for security and peace of mind!

7. Don’t add Terms of Use, Privacy, or Conditions of Sale Statements

Some might say that customers like to know who they are dealing with, but those people are full of it. Customers don’t care about your return policies, what to do if they receive a broken product, or what to do if the size they ordered is wrong.

Likewise, they don’t care what you’re going to do with the personally identifiable information you collect. I know for a fact there are people who love SPAM mail: I received an email about it just the other day. Oddly enough, it had a link for cheap “V I AG RR A” in it too, whatever that is. Forget that mumbo jumbo about how providing privacy and terms of sale information is a legal requirement in most jurisdictions — like I said, your customers are hardly going to get a lawyer! Everybody knows that people don’t like to sue lazy, complacent companies for easy money, right?

8. Completely leave out Product Descriptions

All your customers need is a browser-resized, jagged picture of your product. They don’t need to know its features, limitations, or comparisons to other products. Hey, if they knew all that, they’d probably go buy your competitor’s widget right?

Don’t describe your product at all. Be sure to use your own arbitrary part number scheme too, so customers can’t search by the manufacturer’s part number to find the products they already know they want to buy. Oh, and use some random picture for the product with a note at the bottom that says, “Picture is a demo, actual product may vary” so the customer never really knows what they’re going to get.

9. Add Flash. Lots of it. Throw in some Java, too.

Flash intros rock. Add two of them, and make sure you don’t put one of those annoying “skip intro” links at the bottom. Heck, if you did that, nobody would get the chance to experience your Uncle Joe’s mediocre Flash skills. When you finally do let the three customers who are willing to sit through your tedious intros into your store, make sure you have a Flash product menu, a Flash header, and random Flash buttons all over the page. Page animations and moving text equate directly to quality and usability, and don’t you ever forget it!

Now, if all that Flash doesn’t slow your site down to a crawl, don’t worry: you can always add Java. Sure, most professional developers and customers refer to Java as “That Damn Dirty Java”, but your customers are different. Put random Java image switchers and scrollers on every page. Put that neat-o Java water ripple effect thingy on your homepage, because that wasn’t old and tired enough in 1993. And make sure you require users to have Java installed, along with Flash, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, Comet Cursor, and goodness knows what else, in order to use your site properly. Maybe throw in an ActiveX dialler installer for good measure — customers love to wait endlessly for compulsory ad-ware-laden downloads while trying to spend their money on your products!

10. Never post your Address or Phone Number

Customers never want to get a hold of you: that’s why they buy online! Plus, if they have a complaint, they have no way of getting in touch with you other than email, and we all know how easy to ignore that is. Just think — without them knowing who you are, where you are, or how to contact you, your customers can never send product returns, make complaints, or cause waves. It’s brilliant! You can claim customer satisfaction is 100%, because nobody will ever be able to contact you to tell you otherwise.

Sure, this might put off about 90% of your potential customers, but don’t let that stop you. That still leaves you 10% of the Internet, and trust me, the Internet sure is big. Make sure you ship your items from the shipping store or the post office so there is never a return address on the box. When the credit card company calls you about a chargeback, make sure you tell them the customer never called and complained, and you never received a return.

How Horrible is your Ecommerce Site?

While these “tips” were written in good humor, the above pointers cover serious advice that is not so much related to the technical nature of an ecommerce site as it is to product and company presentation.

Sometimes, the negative aspects of not taking certain actions have more impact than extolling the virtues of doing it right. This article is not designed to be a punch in the face to those diligent, passionate store owners who really care about the service they provide, but as more of a wake up call to future and existing shop owners and developers.

Jason is the Online Product Manager and manages the day to day business operations of numerous ecommerce sites and consults to small businesses on developing online selling strategy. He posts advice and discussion for SMB business owners and developers on his site at www.jccommerce.com.

ECommerce Usability: The Homepage Interview

Posted by Kimberly Krause Berg

It’s easy to overlook important information that your website visitors may need when they first arrive to your homepage. While landing pages are helpful in guiding searchers to your site, eventually even these folks will find themselves on your homepage. Everyone has the same basic questions.

These questions revolve around Who, Where, What, When, Why and How. Answering them is fun, and not as obvious as you might believe. Using them as guides for credibility, trust, persuasiveness and desirability is an added bonus for your overall conversion rates. Don’t settle for a brief welcome statement that offers no guidance or spark of interest. These six words can help you add some zing!

Who

Firstly, who are you? This is a basic question. It’s often answerable by a logo. A logo is not that exciting, nor is it likely completely descriptive. Just ask Google. Add a descriptive tagline, which contains keywords and explains the purpose of the site or points out a valuable detail.

“Who” is found in your business address. Evaluate whether it is important to your business to provide an entire business, office or headquarters address, or simply a whittled down version. Many websites offer no clues about their country of origin, language and whether or not it targets a global or local target market. Search engines benefit from finding a zip code and town, in text, on your homepage. This increases your page’s chance of coming up in local searches, or whenever a search engine determines a local result fits someone’s search criteria.

Who you are is not enough, however. Who are you selling to? Men, women, old, young, here, there, and yes, if you offer senior citizen discounts, don’t hide this fact. Who would benefit from your products and services? Who is on your staff? Who is your sales representative? Your visitors want to know who you are. You are much more than your website or company name.

Where

Your location is important. If you place “Call our toll-free phone number” on your homepage, it’s helpful to know what country, at least, your company is located in so that somebody from half-way around the world understands when to call. If you run a local business, targeting local sales, is this obvious from your homepage? Is your site a headquarters with offices worldwide? What is the native speaking language? This may be important for those who are uncomfortable doing business outside their own country.

Some site owners know people will not buy certain products, such as medical supplies or drugs, from outside the USA, for example. Therefore, they pay for fake addresses, or display addresses that are nowhere near the company’s true home base. Determine if you need to offer a map to validate an address, or register with places such as the Better Business Bureau, to improve credibility.

Small businesses, if you work from home, rent a postal box, or explain that your home-based business is located in a certain country or province and leave it at that. There are other ways to prove your credibility and authenticity, without losing your right to privacy.

Included for “Where” is addressing where your target market is coming from. There may be instances where your content can address people from certain towns, cities, countries or schools. This information offers instant validation to your homepage visitor that they have arrived at a place that is intended for them.

What

This may be the most obvious point to address on your homepage, and the most challenging when you truly understand the real question. ‘What” is more than just what your product or service is. That’s the easy part.

What also pertains to what action do you want them to take once you tell them what you do? I’ve been to sites that spend so much time explaining what they’re about, but forgot to say if you could order it online. Remember, this is the homepage we’re focusing on. It’s not helpful to make anyone click around to figure out what services are offered, or what ways they can buy the cool products displayed on the homepage.

What credit cards do you accept? What award did you just receive? What do customers think about your services?

“What” is also where you can offer the value proposition, features and benefits. Do this by understanding and then addressing the one big question your visitors have – “What’s in it for me?”

The more you describe what you do or sell, the more information someone has to base decisions with. You aren’t wasting their time with this one. The value and benefit of your “What” may be greater or more substantial than the competitor’s site, who forgot to include this part or can’t offer a better deal.

When

This is easily an overlooked element on homepages. Everyone has a “When” question. It may be “When I call you?” List office hours or store hours, or when your “live help” person is on duty. When can orders be taken? When do you ship? When is the sale over? When is the clearance sale going to start? When will the next shipment of your hot items arrive? When can they order? That one is easy, and one reason you should use an “Order or Buy Now” button in some cases. (There are reasons for its sister button, “Add to Cart”, too. You may discover you need both.)

I recommend that you walk around your whole site and ask each page the “When” question. When can they print a page? When does the confirmation email arrive? When does the next news update occur? You can go nuts with this one, but the more you answer this question, the more confident your visitors will feel about you or the company.

Why

Related to “What”, is “Why”. This is where you lay out the value proposition and marketing content, in more detail , but be thoughtful and precise. Do you want a homepage that scrolls forever about why your product or service is the best there is? Or, can you nail the top-level benefits and link to more of them inside the site, where additional information and call to action prompts are?

Why will this product make someone smarter, thinner, richer? Why do 3 billion people around the world use it? Why are you so smart, thin and rich? Why is your book on the New York Times best sellers list? Why are the gems in your necklaces so special and will rose quartz really heal? Will being rich make life better, really? Why are the parts on this product better than the parts on a similar product sold by the other company? Why are your qualifications important?

Why did you name your website what you did? I have a friend whose online business has a good reason to answer this question. The site (and company) name cover two unrelated topics, but the company has combined them into something unique. Customers want to know what inspired this.

This is not an excuse to go on an ego trip. It’s an opportunity to show your passion. It’s how you define your offer. Do the homework for the many people who are still comparison-shopping, and convince them you have what they want and need.

How

Finally, how do offer your product or service? If there’s a shopping cart, strong identifiers are a login and cart icon at the top of an eCommerce website. Other clues are links to “Track your order”, “Your account” , buy buttons and order instructions.

In addition, your visitors have Time concerns. Timing is vital for sales. In addition, it communicates your readiness and ability to stay current and up to date.

Are they limited time specials? How often does your blog update? How often do you send your newsletter? How many clicks does it take to get to pricing? You may not address this one via content, but your navigation or embedded links to “Price Comparison Chart” or “View our prices” conveys how long it takes to get to vital information for comparison shoppers. How many products are in inventory? This may express expertise, for example. How many people subscribe to your newsletter? This may indicate popularity and length of time in an industry.

The purpose of interviewing your homepage may seem more practical to you now. Answer the six questions by providing focused content, navigation links and descriptive labels, bullet points, and small size instructive text.

They all contribute to your web site’s overall credibility, which is the next topic in this series.

Please stay tuned to the Cre8pc Blog for Part II - Convincing Website Credibility

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (http://www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (http://www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development.

How To Transform Your Web Site Into A Persuasive One

Posted by Ingvar Grimsmo

People buy because they are persuaded to buy. This holds true on or off the web, you can have the best and cheapest product in the world, but unless you have a persuasive sales approach no one is going to buy. Period. Cool web sites do not sell. That’s why over 90% of web sites do not produce results.

Persuasive web sites sell products. Amazon.com, Dell.com and the others are using proven influence and persuasion strategies to coerce you to buy. What makes a web site persuasive? It used to be that selling on the web was a “show me” kind of thing. The cooler the site - the more people reacted. The novelty has worn off, today the web has become a “touchy-feelie” thing. Visitors now have to “feel good” about the buying process.

The basic premise of persuasion is emotions. People buy for emotional reasons and justify it with logic. You have to give them both, stir up their emotions and justify the sale with facts. Works every time. Has for hundreds of years.

Here are five basic steps toward a persuasive web site:

1. You have to make the visitor like YOU.

People buy from people they like. They don’t buy from companies or web sites. They buy from people like you and me. Small businesses often make the mistake of pretending they are big companies by saying: “We offer…” and consultants say: “Mr. Jones has been a consultant for 15 years……” STOP THE INSANITY! Get personal. Put your picture up on the home page and say: “I am Joe Blow and I am here to help you……” Develop a personal relationship with visitors as if you were standing right there talking to them. The web is a one-to-one relationship thing, not a mass media. Make’m like you.

2. Know their problems.

Selling is a “HURT’EM and HEAL’EM” process. No matter what you sell. After you make them like you, make their HURT painful. Say” I know it’s frustrating to find the right car for your family because I have been through what you are going through many times and failed. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made.” Make it hurt. Then you offer the solution: “That’s why I am here, to make the process smooth and painless - and, I’ll show you how you can get the best price on the car you want.” Oh What A Relief It Is!

3. Prove it.

Now you have the visitor interested. He or she feels the problem, and you claim you are the healer. The protective shield comes up - “All right…. How do I know I can trust you to heal me? I really want to get healed, but I don’t want to get hurt by a scamster.”
Unless you are brand new in business, this is where you invoke the powerful “Social Proof” influence strategy. People react favorable to your proposal if they know other people just like them were healed the same way. So you say” I know you are doubtful, but read what others say about…….” You want them to say to themselves “Hey, that’s me!” Or better still, say “845 of people with the same problems you have don’t have them any more. They got their car without being pressured.”

4. Make it scarce.

One of the strangest things in the world of persuasion is the “SCARCITY” factor. People will always want things more if they feel they might lose the opportunity to have it. I have always found this to be weird - why do things increase in perceived value because there is only one left? It must have something to do with the built in need for freedom. If you take away my freedom to choose….I want to exercise my rights and buy it. Right Now. Faster if possible. Make your product scarce. For a limited time, exclusive to certain people, make them qualify to get it are all proven strategies to make people act.

5. Make it easy to buy.

You never know when a visitor is ready to buy. Make sure they are only one or two clicks away from the BUY button. On your ‘CLOSE’ page, re-establish how you are healing them and the guarantee, then ask for the order. Don’t be afraid. If people want to buy, they will. If they don’t want to buy, it doesn’t matter what you say anyway. So ask for it.

Put these basic influence strategies to work - and you’ll sell more.

Copyright, August 2006, Ingvar Grimsmo, Chief Ideasmith of InfluenceTactics. Ingvar closely scrutinized thousands of web sites, successful ones and not so successful ones. Ingvar then created a matrix of what makes a site compelling and persuasive. http://www.influencetactics.com

Three Steps To Success In Online E-commerce

Posted by Genesis Font

Getting your e-commerce site to sell for you is going to be a lot of hard work, but you don’t have to learn lessons the hard way. In this article I’m going to talk about a few important pointers that will make your road to e-commerce success a lot smoother.

1. Having Shoppers Find You

Search engine marketing and placement commonly referred to as search engine optimization is an import factor that should be considered hopefully before you build your next e-commerce site. The successful application of search engine marketing can lead to huge rewards in gained traffic, and hopefully shopping carts being checked out.

There are many things you can do to get your website well placed in the search engines. Many search engines a high value on the quantity and quality of links you have coming into your website. This will be important for your e-commerce site. You will want many links directly to your main category pages, and product pages.

Many shopping cart applications have web addresses with question marks and special characters which could potentially hinder your pages from being indexed properly. This is common for sites that use some type of dynamic programming language like php and asp. It’s important for site owners to stress to their web masters that they want static urls, with .html file extensions.

Adding in keywords and meta tags to your pages will only add emphasis to the search engines that these particular words are found on your site, and it should refer people to your site looking for this type of content. One thing that you can do to be sure your pages will be easily readable by any search engine is to make sure that it uses valid XHTML.

2. Making A Strong Presentation

Getting visitors to your site is only part one. They still need to take the action that you want them to, whether that is adding something to their shopping cart and checking out, or signing up for a newsletter you are offering. Whatever action you want them to take can be accomplished if you are presenting you website visitor with an eye pleasing website, that is clean and well laid out.

You will probably want to have a graphics artist work on your site, so that he or she can help you to materialize your great ideas into an eye-catching piece of web art. The professionalism of your site, and overall look can be the deciding factor on your web visitor turning into a satisfied shopper. Be sure that your visitors can find of the necessary trust factors that will put them at ease.

Trust factors can be things such as a visible SSL graphic, a link to your support or customer service department. Your site visitors will feel more comfortable if they know they can get help if they need it.

3. Having Just The Right Products

Many people only have a limited stock of items to sell. It’s important that you market your products well, and feature them in a way that adds value to the shopper. If you have hundreds or even thousands of products, then it’s important that you create categories and sub-categories for your products to be easily browsed through.

Having a search on your site will only enhance your potential web shopper’s experience. Helping them get to what they need quicker. Helping your visitor get their products into their carts faster can only translate into more checkouts, and a pleasurable shopping experience.

If you have an affiliate site, or are an Amazon Associate, you are in a great position to make a great product offering. Because Amazon offers everything you’d find in a Wal-mart, Home Depot, Bed Bath n Beyond and even more stores, chances are you will find the right mix of products to offer. Amazon make commissions on the products that they sell. For the entrepreneur, this can be like standing in a department store all day long making sales commissions, except that you do this from the comfort of your computer desk, and your site works for you 24 x 7.

For an example of a well done shopping site taking all of these recommendations into play, you should point your web browser over to www.livewebshop.com . This site is very search engine friendly having thousands of pages listed in Google. It makes a strong presentation for the visitor with nice graphic headers that actually change for each category. Lastly, this site would be considered a super mall offering everything that Amazon offers. It’s incredible the way the site is laid out. Visit the site for some pointers. I hope this article is helpful to everyone interested in setting up or improving their existing shopping sites.

I hope I’ve opened your eyes to some important considerations in e-commerce. Internet retail can be a rewarding and exciting venture. Be sure not to lose focus, and always make sure that you view your site in the eyes of your customer, the most important point of view.
Genesis Font is an experienced web developer with a passion for php development, web marketing and systems administration. Genesis begun his I.T. career back in 1996, when the web was still in it’s infancy.

Ten On-Page Website Credibility Builders for Your Customer

Posted by Chris Le Roy

The Internet has become a haven for crooks, pushers, thieves, and many more terms I can not think of at this exact moment in time and it is no wonder that many people who use the Internet have become wary of doing business online. Personally, I do not blame them; however that does not help those of us who want to provide a product or service to the billions of people surfing the net so I have devised a list of ten elements you should have on your website that will help build credibility with those people who are visiting your site.

I am quite sure you will know some of these ten on-page elements but there are others you may have thought about but never done anything about. So let us begin …

#1 - Have a Clear Guarantee

Every Internet marketing guru or business coach will tell you that you must have a clear guarantee. Essentially a guarantee is simply you stating to the customer that you standby your product or we will give you your money back. Many internet websites have guarantees, but very few in my experience will actually standby the guarantee but I will talk about that in element number 10.

One other element about a guarantee is to make it believable. If it is not believable then nobody is going to buy from you. Let me explain …

A few years ago I ran a campaign through my training company that our training program would get you a job within one month or we would hire you ourselves. Now I want to say, I standby that guarantee, but in reality the campaign was a total flop because nobody actually believed we were serious. In fact what happened was that most of the recruitment agencies actually called us asking us what positions we had available and could they fill them for us. These guys totally missed the point.

The bottom line is that if you are going to have a guarantee then it must be believable. If it is not then you have absolutely no hope of making a sale.

#2 - Verifiable Testimonials

Testimonials are everywhere on the internet. Just about every single sales site has at least one testimonial but most of them are non-verifiable. What I mean by verifiable is that there is no mechanism to prove whether that person really exists or if they really do support that product. In fact, when I started thinking about this article, I found five websites on-line and contacted them to verify their testimonials. That is I rang them and asked them how I could get into contact with the people giving their testimonials. Guess what, most of them said they no longer stay in contact with those people or the testimonials were not real. The word … BUSTED comes to mind!

There are few ways you can create Verifiable Testimonials. One is to have the person do a video on your website and then host that video. Lots of companies do that now. The second way is to ask the person who is giving you the testimonial if they will put a single Testimonial on their website. That’s right. Their testimonial is confirmed by you providing a link to their website. This means you can check to see if their site is real and if they are the owners (which you can check through whois) you know that the testimonial is fair dinkum (Real Aussie Slang Creeping in their).

#3 - Join Your Local - Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau

Remember, if you are looking for credibility then join the local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. Most Chamber of Commerce actually have programs now where when you join as a member then you are allowed to show their logo on your website to prove you are a member. One of the reasons this is a good practice is because most organisations like the Chamber of Commerce have a Business Code of Practice that they follow and they do enforce that code of practice. If you do not follow it, you can find yourself booted out as a member and on a banned list on their website.

A word of warning, do not put a logo onto your website were you are not a member, especially the Better Business Bureau. Whilst I was going through the research for this article, I wanted to check out a few sites and see if they really were Better Business Bureau members and guess what, they weren’t so remember, the key advantage to you as a member is people can verify that you are a member and legit. Remember the downside is that if you are not a member they can also verify that as well.

#4 - Register with Certified Companies like - Thawte, Alexa

Anything with the word Certified in it, will always make consumers more comfortable. For example if you run a website that does credit card transactions then it is mandatory to have a digital certificate issued by a reputable company like Thawte. Companies like this run a very strict Certification program where you can use a Certified Logo on your website to prove to consumers you have been checked out.

My organisation has used Thawte in the past and we went through a lot of checks and balances to make them comfortable that we were legit. This included having to provide information like our companies Certificate of Incorporate as well as the team at Thawte visiting Australian Government websites like the ACCC to prove we were who we said we were.

Companies like Thawte have put these mechanisms into place, to ensure that consumers can trust those they provide digital certificates for their ecommerce systems.

#5 - Use Trackable Shipping Companies

In some countries like Australia, using trackable shipping companies to ship overseas can be cost preventative. But where ever possible I recommend using Trackable Shipping Companies like Fedex, DHL, EMS, Australian Air Express etc. The reason for this is that your customers know that if you are dealing with companies like this then you must be legit and apart from that, if you tell them the con note number then they will feel more comfortable in knowing they are actually going to get the parcel and when.

#6 - Use Trusted Credit Card Handling Companies like PayPal

Some banks and credit card handling companies run a certification program for their merchants. For example the National Australia Bank in Australia ran a program that certified merchants who used their internet credit card processing system and it provided a program where the merchant could use their logo on their website to prove they were a quality merchant. Many banks around the world now run similar programs to this as well. I will say though that the costs to join this program was quite astronomical and when I first looked into it, the cost was around $300 per month.

Other ways to get this sort of system, with much less of the cost is to use companies like PayPal. PayPal now owned by ebay has become the sudo standard for credit card purchases and with their Customer Protection Policy it gives buyers a level of comfort in buying from you. The cool part about this service is that it costs absolutely nothing to join and their merchant fees are pretty much inline with most merchant facilities.

#7 - Provide Live Support Online

Live Online Support has been around for about 5 years now. I first purchased my online support system about 3 years ago and I can definitely attribute about 30 to 40 percent of my sales to this tool. Essentially the way the system works is that you have a logo on your webpage which states whether Live Support is available and when you click on the logo a small screen opens that allows you to talk to an operator. This allows you to check out about the merchant and talk to their operators.

From the consumers point of view, this gives them confidence in knowing that the service you offer is legit and there are people actually running the service. More so, they feel comfortable there is a way to actually contact you, which leads me to point eight.

#8 - Have your telephone number and contact details on every page of your website

Having your telephone number and contact details on every single webpage will build credibility. The reason is that it gives your customers the ability to call you easily. If you try to hide away from your customers you will loose sales. One thing to make sure also, in most countries they have a Free Call Number system like 1800 etc, which many overseas people cannot access, so you need to make sure that you also include your international number. Many times I have gone to ring a number in the United States from Australia only to find that I cannot do so because their 1800 number blocks overseas calls, which means if I bought something from this supplier, I would have now way of following up. I can assure you; these sites do not get my business.

One word of caution, there are some people out there who will simply ring you to say they hate your products and would never buy from you for any number of reasons. In those cases simply ignore those people. Everybody in business gets those calls, it is nothing unique (if you have a really crappy product then you deserve it) there are just simply some people who are just rude, so I do recommend growing a thick skin.

#9 - Have a Clear Privacy Policy

Privacy has become a big issue for everyone on the Internet. Having a clearly articulated privacy policy is a major benefit from the consumer’s point of view as it tells them where they stand when it comes to their privacy on information stored on your website. I have also seen a few pieces of information lurking around which basically states that having a privacy policy may help your search engine position. I do not know how true that is, it might be, but from a consumer’s perspective, it helps build credibility that you are a quality website provider.

#10 - Have a Returns Policy and Instructions on how to Return Items

Please put up your hands if you have bought something on the internet which does not work and you cannot find a way to send it back to the website owner or get a refund? As I look out my windows I see millions of people who have their hands up. This is one of my pet peeves at the moment. I recently bought some software to convert WMA audio files to MP3 format and when I purchased the software they did not tell me how to download it and there were no links on the page. When I did finally get the information, they told me in the email I needed a registration key which was issued during the purchase. Which of course I did not get?

Guess what else; they did not have a Returns Policy as well. In the end I gave up in disgust and lost my $70 USD which will work against them because I am telling all my friends and my 2000 client who they are and to stay away from them. I figure at $70 a transaction x 2000 that would be a total of $140,000 they have missed out on, simply because they were rude and were not serious about customer service.

Whilst you may not like Refunds or Returns (I definitely do not) it is a necessity to have a returns policy because it specifies to the consumer how you deal with a Refund or with a Return. In fact, all of my clients I work with online will actually include a link to their Return Policy where their Guarantee is specified. The Returns policy simply says theses are the steps you must follow in returning the products or getting a refund. By doing this, the customer has confidence that you are a legitimate business. One of the other elements you should include in your Returns Policy is your address, telephone number and contact email address for returns. Also specify in the returns policy how long it may take to get a refund.

The bottom line is this; these ten elements when specified on a webpage for a customer to see will help prove to them that you are legitimate and ethical business. Having these items on your webpage will certainly give them the confidence your company acts in the way they expect. Let me finish off by quickly reiterating the ten elements:

#1 - Have a Clear Guarantee
#2 - Verifiable Testimonials
#3 - Join Your Local - Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau
#4 - Register with Certified Companies like - Thawte, Alexa
#5 - Use Trackable Shipping Companies
#6 - Use Trusted Credit Card Handling Companies like Paypal
#7 - Provide Live Support Online
#8 - Have your telephone number and contact details on every page of your website
#9 - Have a Clear Privacy Policy
#10 - Have a Returns Policy and Instructions on how to Return Items

If you are looking for more information on Marketing an Online Business or if you are looking for quality material to help you with copywriting - Free Example of Sales Letters or you just want more info visit Your Online Marketing Business Opportunity

Wholesale List: Caution Tips From A 5-Year Wholesale Veteran

Posted by Joaquin Reveron

It is of sum importance to know the difference between a reliable wholesale list and the 1,2,3 by the 100’s wholesale list contacts online. Because of the market and wholesale business source confidentiality, many businesses have jump on to the wholesale niche selling outdated wholesale contacts that are found by the dozens in many Internet websites and in a vast majority of online auctions. Many start-up businesses begin re-selling wholesale information without permission from other sites, while others sell wholesale list confidentiality based on successful and profitable offline and online experience. There is a huge difference between as you see. There are online websites that need to sell information just to get a quick buck out of your wallet and there are real entrepreneur’s selling information because they want to and are aloud to do so based on ethics and their successful profitable experience.

For example: Go to eBay and make a search on the keyword: wholesale list. How many sellers do you currently see selling wholesale source information without even having one single tangible item in their other items to sell from this seller section, other than the so called- you are going to make millions with this get rich quick list? We pretty much can conclude with the same answer. There are hundreds of sellers trying to get a buck out of your wallet. They’re even by the 1,000’s both online and on eBay. Many are trustworthy and the majorities are not. How can I conclude with this fact? Well it does not take much to know the difference between an orange from an apple. Three quick important proofs I go through when making a purchase online:

1)In our wholesale scenario. Does the seller have wholesale proof with other items he is currently selling? If so, can you confirm it? You can confirm it by either watching his current auctions if for example on eBay, and you can be secure if he offers you a sample of one of his wholesale contacts.

2)Keeping the same wholesale case, can he offer any major financial proof of success if selling through an online website? This is very important. I’ve noticed many sites currently selling outdated wholesale information that can virtually dry your hard earned money. I would be very cautious if an online website can’t provide me financial proof. If they don’t offer it, I would dig up more information from the company from the who is online database.

3)Now this last one is very clear for our wholesale informational business. Is he selling his so called million-dollar list from $0.99 to $20.00? If I were you, I know that I would definitely think again- because I wont buy a supposed life changing wholesale source for such a bargain price. And believe me, I am saying this in courteous words, because I was scam in the past by the hundreds, but now thanks to my diligence and patience I am financially free and can laugh at many of those sites. In such business such saying is correct- we get what we pay for. But would a rookie buyer that does not do his diligence by reading from real entrepreneur’s get scammed? Yes in most cases, they will get scammed because of it, that is the unfortunate truth. You are now perhaps, one of the lucky ones that read this lesson or are sure a responsible person on doing your diligence. Either if you are lucky or responsible for your new home savings or wholesale business successful start-up- congratulations. You are reading an article from a successful 5-year wholesale veteran.

A reliable Wholesale List is now being offered thnaks to Joaquin Reveron. His focus today is on assisting people create wealth through the Wholesale Video Games business.

How to Set Up an e-Commerce Site

Posted by Colleen Happ

Want to know what is involved in selling your products online? This article will explain the basic elements that go into making an ecommerce site work.

E-Commerce opportunities on the internet are mind-boggling. Ecommerce transactions in the U.S. are projected to hit $198 billion in 2006 according to shop.org. According to eMarketer, Canadian consumers spent $3.8 billion online in 2004 and that number is expected to rise to $5.7 billion in 2006.

There are four main costs to setting up an e-commerce store:

1. Hosting costs/shopping cart software
   Hosting costs for an ecommerce shopping cart solution range from free to $79.95 per month or more. Before you purchase a shopping cart system, there are many things to consider.

   When choosing shopping cart software, you need to consider the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports. Credit card processors and shipping services can change, so the software will need to be easy to update and be well supported to keep up with the changes in the market. You will also need to consider how easy it is to set up and add products and how easy it is for the customer to use. Shop in some the shopping cart’s sample stores before you make your decision. It is also important to determine if it can handle the tax system where you are selling and if it supports your chosen method of shipping, whether it is by weight, fixed amount, or both.

   You also have to consider the company who will be hosting your site and/or shopping cart. If your shopping cart is going to be hosted by the same company that hosts your site, you need to ensure that it will be fully supported. You will also need to ensure that your order forms and shopping cart will be secure. Ask your web hosting provider if your hosting package includes the use of their secure server (SSL) or if it will cost extra. Most commercial shopping carts are hosted separately from your site, and the SSL is included in the montly fees you will pay for the software.

   Some popular shopping carts are:
   • X-Cart.com - A popular commercial shopping cart.
   • Oscommerce.org - This is an open source based online shop, (so it’s free!) but it is not easy to set up for a ‘newbie’. You will also need to find a host that supports it.
   • Zencart.com- Another free open source program that is maintained by volunteer efforts. It is based on oscommerce, and a little easier to set up. Like any open source program, however, it does not have support staff to help you if you are stuck. To solve any problems, you have to rely on forums and other users to help you.
   • Cartville.com
   • Paypal.com - Paypal offers a free shopping cart, but it does not work with many tax systems, like the one in Canada.

2. Development Costs
   Whether you hire someone to develop and customize your store or you do it yourself, there are costs involved. You will need to customize the color, logo, shipping, tax and addresses, just to name a few. You will also have to set up your products and product options.

    

3. Cost of a merchant account

   The next cost involves setting up a method of receiving credit card payments on-line.

   Setting up a Paypal account is the least expensive option (2.9% + $0.30 USD per transaction at the time of writing). Costs for your own merchant account are higher – there are usually set up fees ($500+), transaction fees (up to 3% per transaction) and a monthly flat fee as well. If you already have a merchant account set up off-line, an e-commerce account will be significantly cheaper.

    

4. Promotional Costs

   You should also budget for advertising and search engine marketing to drive consumers to your site. After all, what good is having a store if no one comes to shop?

   This article is by no means all encompassing, but it does cover the basics of selling online. An ecommerce site is an affordable way to sell your products to your customers. Compare the costs with setting up a physical store front – the cost of selling on-line is truly cost-efficient. But Beware! Even though opportunities abound in today’s market, if you try to run an ecommerce website on the cheap you will ultimately limit its potential.

   Good luck with your store!

   Colleen Happ provides insightful information about marketing and web design. She owns Happ Consulting, a successful Alberta web design company.