Fanatical Solutions

Gone are the days when the Internet was only for the geek labs and university libraries. With the emergence of accessible connectivity and affordable technology, ecommerce and online business are not futuristic concepts. Websites like Amazon and Ebay are the prime examples of successful online business ventures.

If you are planning to start your online business or an ecommerce website, you need to be careful about where you host your website. There are two things that are very important to run an ecommerce website: a well-designed, content-rich website and a host that supports seamless hosting. Remember that your ecommerce host is the backbone of your business. Imagine what would happen if there are hundreds of customers eager to pay you and your website is down or certain sections are inaccessible. Or for that matter, some mischievous hackers steals your important customer and sales database and wrecks havoc with your business. Choosing an ecommerce or an online business web host is not as simple as choosing a web host for a normal website.

As it happens with any brick and mortar business, you need to take many things into account before choosing your ecommerce web host. How many other online business websites are they already hosting? What has been their track record till now? What do the other ecommerce entrepreneurs think of them? What all tools do they provide when you purchase their ecommerce web hosting package? Along with these, let us discuss in points what makes a host good for your ecommerce or online business website.

THE HOSTING PLATFORM FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE WEBSTIE

If you yourself are not developing/coding your website then your developer should be able to advise you what business hosting platform you require for your website. You may need Windows environment or Unix/Linux combination according to your website’s development environment and tools implementation. For example, if your developer is an experienced ASP (active server pages) programmer, he/she would prefer a Windows web hosting environment, but if he/she prefers PHP, then you’ll have to go for Linux/Unix business web hosting. Although different people have different issues with both the web hosting types, it all depends on personal preferences.

THE UPTIME OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEBSITE

This is the bane of countless webmasters. Millions in revenues are lost because when customers arrive at the websites, the ecommerce websites are down or some of the critical pages are not available. The customers arrive with the intention of making a purchase but there is no facility available…this is the worst nightmare for an ecommerce entrepreneur or a business person. Make sure your ecommerce web host manages parallel servers so that if one server goes down, the others can take over. Your business web host should give you the guaranteed security of your critical data.

THE BANDWIDTH OF YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST

An ecommerce website requires lots of traffic in order to generate business because, as it happens with every business in this world, not every visitor is a buyer or a customer. 10 or 20 people do business if 1000s of visitors come to your website. You have to make provision for lots of traffic, and that too, targeted traffic.

THE STORAGE SPACE OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEB HOSTING PACKAGE

Ecommerce websites take up more space compared to normal, non-commercial or semi-commercial websites. First of all, you need an online database to maintain comprehensive inventory details. Then, you may have tens of flash files or hundreds of image files if your buyers would like to view the images or if they want to go through some sort of an online catalog. Keep your future server space requirements in mind while negotiating for an ecommerce hosting package.

THE NUMBER OF EMAIL ACCOUNTS YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST OFFERS

Some business web hosts offer a limited number of POP3 email accounts that you can manage through software like Outlook and Firefox and some offer an unlimited number. Some don’t provide a POP3 email account at all and you need to manage all your emails through a web-based interface. Make sure what your email requirements are going to be and go for an ecommerce web hosting package accordingly.

OTHER TOOLS WITH YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOSTING PACKAGE

Some other tools you may want to check out are: Autoresponders: most ecommerce hosts these days provide free autoresponders. * Multiple FTP accounts: You may need multiple FTP accounts if you have a big team of programmers. * FrontPage extensions: FrontPage is shipped with lots tools for an easy and fast assemblage of a basic ecommerce website but these tools need some extensions installed on the server. If you are getting your business website developed using FrontPage, you’ll need the extensions available on the server of the web host. * Secure Socket Layer (SSL): SSL can be used to collect sensitive data from your site visitors, to ensure that your emails are not intercepted online, and to provide a sense of security for your customers. * Shopping cart software: Some business web hosting packages are shift with a shopping cart.

About the Author

Rodel Garcia is a freelance programmer and web developer. Owner and webmaster of http://web-hosting-service-directory.com/ecommerce-web-hosting.html

In our small article well consider Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains Sales Order Processing module as eCommerce backend. Plus well cover what is possible and impossible in eConnect and why. Microsoft Great Plains is one of the most popular ERP in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Middle East, Latin America, UK and South Africa. Due to the MBS strategy  Great Plains Dynamics was pulled from other markets, such as continental Europe (Germany, France, Russia)  where Navision and Axapta are the promoted and recommended solutions. If you have Navision or Axapta  please read our publications on these products on Alba Spectrum Technologies publication site.

Great Plains Platform  Great Plains Software Dynamics is written on GPS proprietary platform in Dexterity program language. Dexterity is based on very shrewd application development philosophy  ERP application will stay decades if it is independent from the graphical computer environment and database platform. Back in 1992 C programming language was believed to be the rescuer and be cross-platform.

Great Plains Architecture. Here we need to give you highlights on Great Plains Dynamics initial design. General Ledger (GL) was intended as core module, then you see modules, posting directly to GL: Receivables Management (RM), Payables Management (PM), Payroll, Inventory Control. The next level  modules, posting to GL through other modules: Sales Order Processing (through Accounts Receivable), Purchase Order Processing (through Accounts Payables), etc. The second principle  Great Plains would never allow you to post the batch of transactions behind the scene  only via the user interface  checked and approved by the user.  eOrder  this IIS ASP application was initially available for all the platforms: MS SQL Server, Ctree and Btrieve (later on Pervasive SQL 2000), in 1998 Great Plains Software made it available for MS SQL server only. eOrder was predecessor of modern eCommerce sites and all the attempts to customize eOrder were dubious in the version upgrade. .Net paradigm. Instead of inventing and making you use standard eCommerce solution – .Net gives you the choice to select from variety of products available on the market. This means that no more eOrders  you just need the connector which will allow you to address Great Plains objects from your eCommerce application. As usual you are free to use your language of choice: VB or C#  eConnect. Yes  exactly  it was initially developed for eCommerce programmers. Later on eConnect was extended on the majority of Great Plains modules, including distributions  Restrictions. As you see above  Great Plains allows you to address work tables only  this means that you can not post transactions using eConnect. Other reported issues were related to Sales Order transfer to Invoice/Backorder  Custom Stored Procedures. Right  you have to use these custom SQL scripts to post transactions, created with eConnect.

If you want us to do the job – give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

About the Author:

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies  USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) Source: www.isnare.com

Drop shipping is not for everyone. Even though it is pitched as a cure for everything from starting up withoutmoney to being able to sell without investing in inventory, it does not cure the main problems that want to be drop shippers have. Want to be web entrepreneurs are lead down the path of finding products that they can sell before they buy them. And to do that, they are lead into buying all sorts of things from web sites to on line stores and lists of drop shippers. They get set up with what they need to sell. And they spend a lot of time and money in the process.

There is no doubt that they are, at the same time, given advice that they are starting a business. They are definitively told that they must comply with all those rules for success on the web. They are not misled.They mislead themselves. They get so excited and so tied up in their ideas that they are going to make millions that they do not stop to plan. They forge ahead with the plan to plan in the future. So they plan after their plan is already a failure.

The people supplying the drop shipping industry are not obligated to turn away customers. They have no way to determine who will or who will not fail. So they cannot be faulted for selling to people who run when they should be walking. There is no doubt that some of these people do succeed and do very well for themselves. But 90 to 95 percent of them fail. A good percentage of them could have survived had they planned. But they fail because they chase the quick money. Having said that, drop shipping is an excellent way for a small business to expand. If use properly it has many advantages.

Let us take a simple example

Anna wants to sell amber and silver jewelry and exotics crystal pieces at home parties. And she wants to be able to vary her offering so that each time she attends a home party she has the opportunity to present other products. She also wants a wide variety of products. Now amber and silver jewelry is both expensive and there are many different pieces that can be offered. So if she were to maintain an inventory she would have to tie up several thousand dollars in jewelry, many pieces of which she might not sell quickly.

Now if she get some samples so that her customers see the products and the quality, she can take orders and have the ordered pieces shipped either directly to her or to her customers. Actually, she is better off to have the pieces drop shipped to her so she can visit her customers and possibly make additional sales during the delivery process.

About the Author

Gary Granai is the Director of the Poland Chamber that maintains the drop shipping portal that has complete information about drop shipping.

Ecommerce has opened the door to many small businesses and individuals to compete on a global level with their products and services. Basically sellers look for buyers to purchase their goods online knowing that the choices and convenience it affords will tempt customers to buy.

So, what is it that sets your business apart from others? You might be lured by so many product choices to stock your store. There are many claims to gaining quick and easy guarantees to top spots, but maybe you need to wake up and smell the coffee. Let’s assume firstly that you are at least showing up in the search engines. That way, visitors will start trickling in to your site. But what do you have to make them stay? These are the factors I see affecting most new ecommerce businesses.

Target Market: Who is your target market?

Marketing 101-, you do not have to be a guru to realize that people must have a desire in order for you to fill it. My first site was made to accommodate everything-from a pin to an anchor; but no visitors. With such a wide product base, I was targeting no specific customer group one and got no response. That strategy also spells commercial suicide for many small ecommerce sites on the web. When you are small, how can you hope to compete on the same level as the big boys? What you need to do is to develop a niche, one that has enough customer base, are hungry for your product offerings and have the ability to purchase. Niche Marketing is one of the new buzzwords on the net as small businesses attempt to differentiate their goods from others to create value for their own products.

Website Design-  How appealing is your website? The cleaner the look, the simpler the concept, the better it works for most ecommerce sites. Are their exceptions? Sure! However, for the majority of customers, they do not and will not spend time wading through pages of worthless info to find your product. Make your products stand out. Quick and easy links from the front page directly to the product with ease of ordering. I have gone on sites and have decided to buy only I am not able to find where to order. That, my friends defeats the process of setting up a sales site, after all if the order button is not prominent to whom or what sales are you hoping to achieve. Make sure all sales pages have a clear order button as sometimes having it more than once increases the likelihood of making a sale. If you cannot design your own website to be commerce friendly, even though you might need to cut costs, consider at least investing into some straightforward hosting package that gives ready made templates that are easy to customize even without HTML knowledge. If you do have the money, hire a professional, the money will be worth it.

Product Choice-  For any product, you can think of there exists a niche for it. However, you need to define clearly what your product line is going to be before you begin. This has an impact on the domain name you choose to buy. Research has shown that domain names with the name of the product or service, adds additional relevance to site and improves ranking and aids in faster listing of the site on the search engines. Therefore, if I am selling shoes for people with small feet then I can buy a domain name like www.smallfeetshoes.com. It does not sound pretty but guess what, right away you would have included probably your three most important keyword in the domain name and this will help in site listing and ranking.

Ecommerce is not really rocket science, but it does take a few hours of research in order to be fully knowledgeable about the process. If you are planning to get into ecommerce, try reading today, there are many places on the net with relevant info. Who knows it might save you from a future headache and lost cash.

About the Author:

Kimberly Valentine is a Business Consultant for over 9 years who blogs about internet business interests. She also offers business resources and advice at http://www.freeblogsites.net and hosts websites at http://www.webhostsvalue.com. Source: www.isnare.com

Blocking and Tackling” - A quick take a some eCommerce fundamentals

eCommerce can be VERY complex. To offer a world class customer experience, retailers must incorporate technologies and functionality that exceeds rising customer expectations. On the flip side however, site fundamentals still play a very large role in converting visitors into customers. Many retailers surprisingly lose sight of these site basics and leave significant sales on the table. This brief examines 4 quick “fundamentals” every eCommerce manager cannot afford to lose sight of.

Think Fast : Speed has become less of a problem due to the penetration of broadband, but don’t forget that a significant number of people still shop by a dialup connection. When creating a site framework, designers and e-commerce teams should ensure that the site is developed with pages loading in less than 9 seconds (over a dial-up connection). Our recommended page size is within 60-70k in bytes. At that amount, sites will likely load within the maximum wait time of 9 seconds. Online retailers should avoid flash at all costs within their transactional site. Flash’s artistic aspects may help you establish a brand presence – but it will likely lose potential customers before they have even searched within your store.

Image is important : Images are a very important aspect of selling online and are often neglected. All product images should be of the highest resolution possible, be much larger than the product page original, and have multiple views. Dynamic imaging capabilities can improve the user experience to an even higher level by increasing interactivity (zoom & rotate). At a minimum – retailers should have at least two additional views outside of the product page image to help build emotion.

Be my guest : Shoppers do not like being forced to do anything, especially when they are ready to open their wallets. Forcing a shopper to register on your site before purchasing is a sure way to drive a portion of your traffic to your competitors. Too often, shoppers do not have the time or the inclination to fill out a lengthy form explaining what types of information they desire. Always offer the ability to checkout as a guest. You will see less customer leakage within the checkout process and can still offer the option to register when the sale is completed. Make sure it’s “above the fold”

Your homepage is the most important page within your eCommerce store. It sets the initial tone for the shopping experience and offers your best promotions and products to your visitors. Users typically visually scan a web page from top to bottom and then from left to right. All critical content and navigation options should be obvious to the shopper without having to scroll down. If you have your best promotions “below the fold” – you can bet that a large percentage of browsers are not scrolling down to see it.

About the author: http://www.trinityinsight.com

One bright spot on the economic horizons around the world seems to be continued consumer spending and ecommerce is clearly a part of this, with sales estimated to be in excess of $9.9 Billion in the next three months according to ACNielsen. But, there is a dark cloud hovering over this landscape called poor ecommerce web site design. Lets explore some of the reasons why consumers are not reaching for their credit cards after perusing an ecommerce web site.

There is a huge knowledge gap about how the web is really driving online and offline commerce. A recent eCommercePulse survey of more than 33,000 surfers conducted by Nielsen/Net ratings and Harris Interactive indicates ecommerce sites are driving more purchases offline (phone, catalogue, retail store sales) than online. Consumers are using the web to effortlessly compare features and pricing  then, calling the company or visiting their local retail store to make a purchase. Clearly many companies need to factor this information in when they analyze their online and offline marketing expenditures and related ROI.

Unfortunately many firms have allocated a disproportionate amount of resources for advertising and not enough on good web site design and back end infrastructure. Its critical to make the market aware of a site, but if the potential customers are not presented with the right navigation and menus (read information architecture) they will not buy. Case in point, according to recent Dataquest surveys (and others) between 20-40% of most users dont purchase because they cant figure out how to easily move around the web site.

Many companies fail to properly integrate their ecommerce components with the overall site design. The in-house developers or outside design firm concentrate on the sexy parts of the web site design process (the graphics, branding, look and feel) and only focus on the ecommerce process after the primary web site design is completed  making ecommerce an afterthought.

Many ecommerce web sites dont even list a phone number, arbitrarily forcing people to contact the company electronically  this is a real problem, as many people dont want to use e-mail or forms as their primary means of communicating, they want the immediacy of the telephone. It’s surprising, but approx 30% of ecommerce sites dont have a search capability that actually works  in many cases it just returns gobblygook. This is a real irritant for many online shoppers who want to find goods and services quickly and efficiently  the need for speed should be the ecommerce merchants marketing mantra and a good search capability gives users a way to quickly find products.

One of the most important parts of any web site is the home or index page, as it aggregates the design elements and information architecture. So many index page are cluttered and poorly designed, loaded with poor graphics, bad menu structures, oddball words or my absolute least favorite, 30-60 second Flash animation sequences which force the user to sit and stare at a blank screen while the animation loads.

According to a recent Zona Research and Keynote Systems Report released earlier this summer over $25 Billion (USD) was lost in ecommerce due to users abandoning the web site prior to a purchase being made or during the process. The users just gave up because the load times (how fast it takes a page to be displayed in a browser) were painfully slow. Todays online shoppers arent a real patient group, they want information presented in 12-18 seconds, or they are off to another site that works.

Privacy statements are about as exciting as filing taxes (unless you know your getting a refund)  they are out of necessity filled with legal terminology that needs to be addressed succinctly and in a way that makes a consumer feel comfortable about doing business with an ecommerce web site. Unfortunately, many ecommerce web site privacy statements look like an afterthought or are so attorney driven (three pages  who has time to read this?) people are turned off by them. Its very important that a privacy statement be a compromise between legal and marketing.

We are a full service ad agency so I dont mind shooting arrows in the direction of my peers  too much attention is being placed on web site advertising metrics (clickthrough rates, certified traffic to substantiate ad rates, etc.) and not enough on how people find and use an ecommerce web site. The industry standard web site analysis tool is Web Trends, but one of the least understood aspects of this product is tracking how people find and move around a web site via reports which can be pulled from the server log files; i.e. where did the visitors come from, what pages do they visit, how long do they stay, what are their traffic patterns, etc. Ecommerce companies should be analyzing these digital customer tracks to better understand how to improve their front end marketing processes and back end web site design.

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience He is the co-founder of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based, privately held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services to small to medium sized companies that need strategic and tactical marketing services. He can be reached at Lee@intelective.com

Just as putting up any other business, e-commerce has also its own trade secrets. Not applying those trade secrets could detrimental to the survival of an e-commerce site. While many webmasters believe that content is king, if you only depend on this one aspect of e-commerce, it is not the only factor that one should concentrate on. The uniqueness of the content of a site could attract visitors and for other sites to link to your site as well.

Another factor to consider is optimizing the pages of a site. Optimizing these pages include putting the right title tags, the right pictures, making these pages searchable by the spiders of the different search engines, putting the right navigation tools, and many more.

Marketing your site is also a critical factor to consider. This is your way of driving traffic to your site. Driving traffic refers to bringing in more visitors to your site – that is to let other people know what products or services you have from your site.Driving traffic may take in many forms. Most webmasters compete for a particular keyword in the search engines. As of this writing, the three most popular search engines are Yahoo, MSN, and Google. Therefore, it is important that your site could be found by these search engines.

Submitting your site to the different portals is also a good factor to consider. Your presence in these portals is also important. As a reminder, marketing your site means making your site presence in as many sites as possible.Many other important marketing strategies do exist. These include linking exchanges, opt-in email marketing, viral marketing, and many more. It is important to note that you know the details of how to engage in these strategies to avoid being penalized. Most importantly, DO NOT SPAM. Spamming can only make your site banned by the internet service providers (ISP’s) and the search engines. Spamming can only make all your efforts useless; your time and money spent worthless; and most of all, your site may no longer exist.

While e-commerce has created some millionaires, not applying e-commerce strategies correctly has also made many broke. E-commerce has become a very highly competitive field of business. It takes time to make your site well established. E-commerce is not a quick-rich-scheme. On the average, it takes four to six months or more to make your site well established. Should anyone try to venture in e-commerce, the most important virtues one should have is patience and persistence. Now that we have spilled some beans, it is up to you to make it in the world of e-commerce.

About the Author

VMT Singuillo is a freelance writter and has written articles for www.zeusmarketingrobot.com, www.grandfatherclock.biz, www.cheaphotelsforyou.com, www.sellrealestatenotes.org and more.

As a site designer myself, I realize how much time and effort goes into registering, setting up, and designing a site; not to mention the creation of content and seamless navigation. But it is unbelievable how complicated and expensive this process has become! Let’s face it, very few entrepreneurs and small businesses can afford to spend hundreds of dollars to set up their dot-com presence without knowing how successful it will be! We’ve seen the results of high expectations and over spending with the demise of many well-known companies as reported in the news recently. It doesn’t have to be this way!

Are you planning to sell products or services?

You do NOT necessarily need expensive shopping cart software or merchant accounts to sell your products or services. You can begin your online venture by setting up a few of your most popular items or services that can be purchased online. Once a customer has made a purchase, you can then follow up with details on how to purchase additional items. There are low cost ecommerce solutions that can help you start conducting business online without breaking the bank.

First, determine exactly how sophisticated your ordering process needs to be. Then decide which of the following options best suits your business needs.

Option A - PayPal Set up a Premier Account with PayPal. PayPal is a stable and secure company that has been around long enough to establish a credible reputation. I can personally vouch for them, I use them consistently.

Benefits:

• Doing Business As: You have the option of using a business name or your personal name, regardless of how your bank account is registered.
• Low Cost: There are no monthly fees and no set up fees. Thats right – its free. A small fee is with-held each time a transaction (purchase) is processed.
• Hassle Free: They process all orders and notify you when payment is received.
• Referral Bonus You can earn a small cash bonus for qualified referrals you send to PayPal.

Features:

• Shopping Cart Premium members can set up a shopping cart that links directly from their site to PayPal.
• Send an Invoice If your services or product prices vary, you can send customers an invoice from PayPal once the purchase price has been established.

Option B - eBay Consider selling your products or services through eBay. You can accept checks and money orders by postal mail, or you can accept credit cards and checks using PayPal, or eBays version of PayPal – BillPoint. You can provide links to your site with each item you list for auction. You can also set up a reserve amount – the least dollar amount you will accept for your service or product. Ebay also offers an affiliate program.

Option C - ClickBank Sign up as a merchant with ClickBank.net. There are some fees involved, plus you have to determine what percentage of each sale that you will allow the referring site to earn. Affiliates with ClickBank can choose merchants they like (higher commission percentages do better) and then place links on their sites. There is a setup fee for merchants, but you’ll also be providing your site a great deal of exposure. Plus, ClickBank allows you to accept credit cards and other methods of payment. You’ll be setting up your own affiliate program! ClickBank also offers an affiliate program: http://zzz.clickbank.net/r/?abelle

Option D - Find a Host that provides Shopping Carts Many hosting packages are set up with shopping carts with a buy feature. Do your homework. Check on the setup fees and the monthly fees. Make sure its a reputable company so you arent worried about your money transactions. These are just some of the options that are available for setting up shop without going broke. I’m sure that there are many more options available – it just takes some net research.

About the Author

Sandra Cobb is a work at home site designer and homeschooling Mom. Visit her website for free resources at http://www.designsbyabelle.com, and sign up for her monthly ezine – Comets4Him at http://www.sandracobb.com.

You can convert More of Your Traffic into sales without having to spend a lot of money. There are hundreds of ways to improve your conversion rate and the persuasiveness/stickiness of your website, many of which can be done very quickly and most will cost you close to nothing to implement.

1. Use real customer testimonials with authentic customer photos… no stock photography. Shoppers can quickly tell the difference.
2. Make sure your marketing effort attracts qualified traffic. Example, if you sell Digital cameras, dont advertise that you sell macro lens just to get more traffic to your site. This may drive more visitors, but they are visitors with no intent to purchase, thus decreasing your conversion rate.
3. Get a toll-free number and make sure the placement of that number on your site is prominent and consistent.
4. Include points of reassurance at every point of action. Example  if you are requesting that a viewer provide you with their e-mail address, clearly state that privacy is very important to you and that you will not share that information with any other party.
5. Use SSL (secure server certificates from a well known SSL authority) and make sure that the user knows you are using it. Display a prominent “Secure server” note at the top of the page.
6. Build trust, subscribe to a service like VeriSign, Thawte or ScanAlert and Prominently place these logos to reassure your customer that you care about the security of their information.
7. Have a clearly defined privacy policy and link to it from all pages.
8. Include a physical address on your site.
9. Dont always concentrate on just making the buy now buttons the most prominent on every page, but rather concentrate on styling the primary action buttons the most prominently on every page. Example  you sell books, and you provide the customers with the ability to select a few related books and compare them before they can buy now. Make that compare button/link the same style as you would the buy now button/link on a page in which the buy now button exists. This will help herd customers through your sales funnel.
10. Clearly Define your return policy.
11. Make sure to include an About Us section on your site. The majority of my customers will visit or look for that section before making a purchase.
12. Make your site load fast, easy to navigate and user friendly. No need for horizontal scrolling, excessive vertical scrolling, large animation files or intrusive pop-up windows.
13. Keep your buy now button consistently and prominently placed on all product pages. The closer to the top of the page…the better. Above the fold if you want it sold & 2. Eye level is buy level.
14. rovide clear good quality images of your products with an “enlarge image” option.
15. Make your checkout process as usable, intuitive, reassuring and simple as possible. Losing a shopper during your checkout process is a CRITICAL loss.
16. Dont make people type their e-mail address twice. Get the site to remember and do it automatically.
17. Dont force people to install crazy plug-ins just to make a purchase from your site. Stick with JavaScript, Flash and the other breads & butters.
18. Read your copy, make sure its compelling, yet not exaggerated and too loud.
19. Identify your unique selling proposition and exploit it. If you are the only seller of medium-sized green widgets in the UK, clearly state that and be proud of it.
20. Implement a site search box and make sure it is accurate. Not only it will allow users to find what they want quick, it will give you an insight as to what they are shopping for and what terminology(keywords/key phrases) they are using so you can tailor your copy (and ad campaigns) accordingly.
21. Dont just focus on the many features of your product, but rather on the benefits those features will provide you customers with. Dont just say folding ladders, say Our folding ladders will save you valuable garage space.
22. Display your prices, shipping charges and tax clearly BEFORE the checkout process is completed.
23. Dont use a drop-down for the “country” or state  list over your order form. Many people are using scrolling mice these days, many are sure to accidentally scroll off of their correct state.
24. Let customers copy their shipping info to their billing info if they are identical, with one click.
25. Remove distractions as much as possible from the final checkout process such as the main navigation that existed during the shopping portion of your site.
26. Clearly provide a checkout process indicator. If your checkout process has 3 steps, clearly indicate at the top of the page what step they are on and how many steps there are to complete the order.
27. Clearly identify what info you really require during your checkout process. Eliminate unnecessary text fields/questions.
28. Use easy to understand, friendly error messages. No INCORRECT USER INPUT IN STATE FIELD! messages.
29. If your checkout error messages occur on a page other than the page with the errors, preserve the information that the user has already input and get the site to input it automatically.
30. Double check the spelling on your site. And the spelling on your error messages. “Ers in input filed” would look very unprofessional.
31. Try and get good reviews from shopping authority sites (shopping.com, epinions.com, bizrate.com, etc) and from previous shoppers.
32. Dont use complex formulas for shipping price calculations, Example – ‘if you buy 13.5 kilograms worth of x”, then multiply that weight by y shipping rate. Get the site to do the calculations and show the shopper the price.
33. Consider shipping the product free. This is often a very good selling point with online shoppers.
34. Display the stock status of the selected item and do so BEFORE the user puts the item in their cart.
35. If you dont sell or run out/discontinued an item, remove it from the site.
36. If you are offering a lot of products, users should be able to sort them by important criteria…price, size, color, etc.
37. Provide an easy way for shoppers to compare details of similar products.
38. Use a custom 404 not found page to link people back to the important areas of your site
39. Give a clear estimate of the delivery time.
40. Accept a wide variety of payment options and clearly display those options.
41. Important information should not look like ad banners. There really is such a thing as ad blindness and people will automatically skip over this important information.
42. Make sure you have a first-time visitor  page. This is where you are going to explain why and how you are different from your competitors.
43. Update your copyright statements on page footers. Make sure that the current year is displayed….fix that 2003 copyright statement.
44. Let customer make a purchase without having to register with your site.
45. Consider making every link the last part of the statement I want to…. Dont just have a link that says the privacy policy, but rather read the privacy policy. Do you get it… the shopper wants to Read the Privacy Policy.
46. Dont use too clever names for your shopping cart like widget basket or widget box. Call it “My shopping cart” or “My shopping basket”.
47. Dont make the shopper specify select an option when there is only 1 option. If the product only comes in red, dont make the shopper select the red radio button or choose red from the drop down. Get the site to do it automatically.
48. Provide clear shopping instructions in an empty shopping cart. Dont just say your shopping cart is empty.
49. Provide a “special sale or “special clearance section. This will attract the budget-conscious shoppers.
50. The most important golden rule…you must portray a lot of trust and credibility to instil shopper confidence and get them to make a purchase. Make sure you do.

About the Author:

(c)2005 Gail Bellaiche. Gail Bellaiche is an Internet Marketing professional and webmaster at http://www.intelliwebtools.com as well as a number of e-commerce sites. Visit her website for articles and tutorials on Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and other great webmaster tools. Source: www.isnare.com

“If you build it they will come” is one of the memorable lines from the movie “Field of Dreams”, one of my favorite movies, by-the-way. An ordinary guy had a dream about building a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield. He carried through with his dream, and the players came, and the fans followed. Many people today have the dream of building their own ecommerce internet business, their own “Cyberspace Field of Dreams.” The problem is, in most cases, there is nothing to distinguish their web site from the thousands of other ecommerce web sites on the internet. They built it, but “no one is coming.”

The guy in the movie built something truly unique, something that really stood out. What could stand out more than a baseball field in the midst of a cornfield? If you want people to come to your “field of dreams”, you must make it truly unique just as the guy in the movie did. The guy in the movie worked hard building a baseball field that he, the players, and especially the fans, could all be proud of. That’s what you must do with your web site! Hard work paid off for him, and it will pay off for you as well. Bear in mind too that the work doesn’t end the minute the field is finished. The next phase starts as we work to let people know about our “field”, and why they should visit, participate, and buy. It pays to do it right. Don’t make the mistake of doing it halfway. Don’t just build an “infield”, build the whole ballpark, and make it a fun and interesting place for the “fans” to visit.

Make your dream stand out from the crowd! Your dream is yours, it’s unique! Put your personal stamp, your own “personal touch”, on it. After it’s built, keep it “mowed and watered” and make it a place that people will want to come back to time-after-time. So go, create your own “field of dreams” online, but know that when it’s built, you need to nourish and maintain it, and the rewards will follow.

About the Author

Lewis Poteet is a web designer/eCommerce business owner. Web Hosting, Merchant Accounts, eCommerce Solutions at http://www.eComAndMore.com. My eCommerce blog is at http://www.eComAndMore.com/blog.