Social Networking Profiles for Your Ecommerce Site

Are you interested in how your ecommerce site can benefit from the many social networking sites? If so, take the time to find out how to set up a profile on the most popular social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook. Keep in mind, however, that to be truly successful with marketing through social networking you will need to have profiles on as many social networking sites as possible. This is the best way to reach the most possible customers so take advantage of it. The following tips will help you create your profiles for social networking sites.

Create a Profile
The first thing you need to do is create a profile. This should be done at MySpace and Facebook first. Later, you can add other social networking sites that are popular but these are the two most important to begin with. Your profile should be as complete as possible. Provide contact information, your web address, phone numbers, addresses, and other important information customers might look for. Be sure to create an awesome profile, first, and then begin to seek out friends so that when they arrive they see your site as the way it was meant to be, awesome!

Seek out Friends
It would be awesome if as soon as you created your profile you had a hundred or more people friend you. However this is unlikely to happen so you need to friend others. If you have a contact list of past customers you can search their email addresses and see if they are on Myspace of Facebook. If so, friend them and see if they accept you. More than likely they will and you will have your customer base growing. The friends of your friends may even check out your site and choose to friend you! Make an effort to seek out as many friends as possible because they can help you with your customer base!

Updates
Whether you have a thousand friends or two you need to send out regular updates. Providing regular updates and making your profile worthy of visiting is important because it will let friends know you are serious about offering good products and services. You should provide updates to your site just as often if you have two friends as you would if you had five thousand. That may seem difficult if you don’t have a lot of friends, but with social networking when you provide an awesome site then more people will want to become part of it.

Photos
People love to look at photos so it makes sense to add as many as possible. Consider adding a raffle or competition for a particular item from your website and then honor the winners with a photos session. Add those to your site to show others that you are for real. The more often you add photos the more often your friends will visit your profile to check them out. Keep this in mind because it can affect your sales significantly.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Social Marketing for Ecommerce Shops

Every ecommerce site knows that more customers equals more sales and more income. So, what’s a good way to generate more customers? For one, social marketing! There are many social marketing sites, like Facebook and Myspace, that allow for ecommerce sites to garner attention and “Friends”, which hopefully results in more sales. The benefit of social marketing for ecommerce shops is that the website owner is able to market their business to thousands of potential customers in a format that is friendly and easy to access. Expanding online businesses through social marketing like Myspace and Facebook is a great idea and one that many ecommerce websites are taking advantage of. There are thousands of potential customers on social websites and these are customers just waiting to be tapped by new businesses.

Profiles
It’s important for websites to have profiles on social networking sites. The two most important are Facebook and Myspace. Fans of the ecommerce site can become friends and gradually the friend list will grow and expand. Many things may be offered on the site including news, updates, products, services, even news about sales and discounts! The more interactive and informative the more potential customers you can reach. Offering specific deals for new “friends” is also a great incentive. Ecommerce sites will benefit the most from updating their profiles frequently, daily even, to remain active in the minds of their potential customers.

Make it Easy
For example, on Myspace there are many bands that update their fans and friends of new music, songs, and the like, that may be purchased. Friends can purchase the most recent singles and CDs from their favorite artists right from the Myspace page. This is incredible, fast, and right in the customer’s face. Other ecommerce sites make it easy for customers by posting photos of new products and services as they become available, deals of the day, and the like. The more posts that are made and the easier it is for friends to become customers then the more likely the ecommerce site is to become successful.

Ecommerce and social networking is relatively new, but as more people become members of social networking sites and become accustomed to using the site to network with friends and businesses the importance of having a profile for your ecommerce site grows.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Shopping for Shopping Carts

There are several steps to create a successful ecommerce website. First of all, you need to know what you are doing or your success is going to take a long time if it comes at all. If you don’t know anything about web design, Internet marketing, and the like, then it’s best to outsource some of the jobs to have the end product you have been dreaming of.

First of all, you want to make sure your website is well designed and mimics the bigger ecommerce sites like Amazon and Buy. The reason why is because you want to create a sense of familiarity with your customers and if your site looks much like some of the bigger sties then they will feel more comfortable and more likely will buy your products or services. Don’t worry about getting your site confused with any of the big sites. In fact, this might even work out to your advantage! A lot can be learned from the big sites in the way they arrange content and products on their pages as well as the way the shopping cart process works. The reason why is because these big websites have done a great deal of research to find out what works for online shoppers. Take this research and use it to your benefit without having to spend a dollar!

Now, do some research on the shopping carts the other sites use. Which ones work well and are fast? Customers want the checkout process to be fast and for all of their charges to be presented up front, including shipping, before they enter all of their credit card information. Buy being up front about costs you stand to sell more than by “sucking” the customer in. Many online retailers think that they will get the shoppers to enter all of their information and then they will simply finish the checkout process so they don’t have to go through the process again on another site. However, many shoppers get annoyed with this and will simply abandon their cart and move on. Don’t count on getting customers through forcing them through a series of pages in the checkout process and banking on them following through simply because they already invested so much time. Too many ecommerce retailers are finding out this is not the case and that many who do finish the process never shop with the site again to avoid the hassle. Return customers are important and alienating customers is not helpful so it’s definitely worth keeping in mind!

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Shopping Cart Software-Test it First

Before you buy any shopping cart software it makes the most sense to test out the various different software platforms you are considering in order to make an informed decision. Few people actually do this because they don’t want to waste their time. However, in the long run they are actually wasting their time by not testing out various software platforms to find the right shopping cart. The reason why is that it’s impossible to know what software will be right for your ecommerce site without testing a few out first. Many times you make the wrong selection by not testing out the different shopping carts and end up having to go through the process again later on. It’s best to do this up front to know what will work.

There are a couple of ways to go about this, but by far the best way is to find different websites that use the software shopping cart platforms you are considering. This may take some time and research, but it is worth your while to see how the software works in action. The best thing to do is test each shopping cart by adding a couple products, deleting a product, returning to shopping from the shopping cart, and the checkout process. You don’t actually have to buy anything because you can abandon the cart before you charge your credit card. Although, it is worthwhile to check out as much of the checkout process as possible to see what your customers would experience. This alone can provide enough information to help you choose the right software.

The reason why it is so important to have the right software shopping cart is that without it you could lose more customers than you make. This is huge in online business and customers are your lifeblood. Every one that you gain will tell friends and family members about you, but everyone you lose will probably take a few more customers with them from bad reviews and the like. That’s why it’s worth spending time, effort, and money finding the perfect shopping cart that fits your website, is easy to manage, yet is equally shopper friendly. There is no perfect shopping cart out there for every ecommerce site; however the Amazon shopping cart does seem to garner great reviews from many.

When you begin looking for shopping cat software take your time, do the research, and then make the decision that will result in the most success for your website. Taking extra time up front and choosing user friendly software could pay off exponentially in the future.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Shopping Cart Software Tips

When shopping for shopping cart software there are several things you will want to keep in mind. Many ecommerce website owners make the mistake of thinking that if they have an awesome website, plenty of advertising, and a high ranking in Google and other search engines that it will be easy to satisfy customers. However, this is a very costly mistake that many ecommerce owners experience to their own detriment. An occurrence well known in the ecommerce world as “cart abandonment” happens all too often to those who have shopping carts that are not user friendly, that require too much personal information, or that cannot be completed on one page. This is not something many ecommerce site owners consider at first, but once they realize the problem with cart abandonment, up to 50% in some cases, then they are more concerned with the shopping cart software they use. Instead of going through this situation it’s best to consider this up front and buy software that is user friendly.

The price of the software is also a concern. If you are a brand new website with little operating income then you don’t want to spend all you have on a shopping cart and then be unable to market the site or pay a designer. So, what can you do? The best option is to find a shopping cart that is affordable yet feature filled and user friendly. It may take some research, but you can find something that will work for you. If you plan on your business growing rapidly, however, then it may be worth spending the extra money up front knowing it will come back to you in the future.

Something you will definitely want to consider is what others have to say about the software. Before you buy any shopping cart make sure you read reviews from past users. See what they have to say about the software, the good, the bad, and everything in between. Many times you can glean enough information from these reviews to determine whether or not the particular software will work for your ecommerce site.

Finally, consider the capacity of the shopping cart and whether or not it fits in with your website’s plans for growth over the next 2-3 years. If not, then you should probably consider different shopping cart. You want a solid shopping cart that is easy to use and meets your current business needs yet that has the capacity to continue meeting your needs, increased products, and the like, for at least a year or so into the future. It’s a consideration many forget and later regret.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

How to Choose Best Shopping Cart Software

You can have an awesome website and a high ranking in Google, but this won’t guarantee success or high sales. What will, in addition to these factors, is having top of the line shopping cart software. One of the best shopping cart software on the market is Amazon’s, and they certainly have experience in what works and what doesn’t after years of research and having a huge ecommerce website. Regardless of what shopping cart software you buy, however, you will need to keep several things in mind.

Capacity
Another important consideration is the shopping cart software’s capacity. This may not seem like a big thing to think about if you are first starting out and only offer 10-20 products. However, do you plan on growing? If so, at what rate? These are things you need to think about and plan ahead for. You don’t want to be constantly updating the shopping cart software due to poor planning. Instead, plan ahead and buy shopping cart software that will last you for at least a few years and the growth rate you project. If you haven’t done any kind of projections or made a plan for where you want your site to be in a couple years then you need to do so.

Ease of Use
Look for shopping cart software that is easy to use. This is really important because you want your customers to be able to checkout quickly and easy. Ecommerce sites are well aware of the problems with cart abandonment and that’s the last thing you want to deal with. It can largely be avoided by choosing a software that is one page and allows for guest checkout.

Price
The price of the shopping cart software should also be a consideration. You don’t want to buy the cheapest on the market simply because it is the cheapest. Instead, you want to buy a shopping cart that will offer you with what you need now in addition to some growing room. This is a business expense and it shouldn’t be skimped on because it can affect your business success significantly.

Reviews
Always read reviews before you make a decision on the software you are going to buy. You never know about certain things until you read the details of other shoppers’ reviews. Take an hour or two to investigate what others have said and you will find valuable information that will help you make a decision on the best shopping cart software on the market.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Tips for Creating an Ecommerce Site

Once you have your website designed after the big commerce sites and it is well categorized, easy to surf, and has a fast checkout process then you are on your way to success. Sure, you will still need to market your site and get the word out to your customers, but if you have an excellent website you shouldn’t worry too much about shoppers completing their purchases once they arrive. In most cases if they have a good experience they will complete their purchase!

One thing you should focus on when it comes to your ecommerce site, however, is your budget. Sure, running a website is considerably more affordable than any other kind of business. However, it’s important not to let that get to your head and make you think any expense is okay. Generally, ecommerce sites will cost about $100 a month to operate, sometimes more, and the revenue that they generate has no limit. Offline businesses have limits to the income they can produce and cost at least 10 times as much.

Remember, though, you will want to send a sign to your customers that your website is established and here for the long run. That means having a merchant account of your own, not PayPal, and paying for hosting service rather than using a free site. Keep in mind, too, that it’s unlikely your website will be an overnight sensation. That’s pretty rare so you should give yourself at least 6 months of hard work, a year is even better, to see if your website can be successful. You will want to use pay per click advertising and register with the search engines. Adding regular content to your website is important, too, and focus on how to get good free listings in addition to paid advertising.

Selling online is not just about having an awesome site. It’s also about marketing your site to get better back links, which in turn will increase your site’s ranking. Also, you will want to stay abreast of changes in the world of ecommerce sites to ensure your site is as up to date as possible and taking advantage of everything possible.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Methods to Sell with Your Website

If you are ready to start selling products or services on your website then you need to know how to get started. There are several tips here that will help you get started with your website and online commerce.

Step 1 Design a Website
The first thing you need to do is design a website. The website should be of high quality and mimic the design of some of the bigger and more popular websites. For example, check out websites like Amazon and Buy to see how they are designed. Look at the way the website is laid out and how the checkout process works. The bigger websites have spent millions of dollars in research to determine what design works best to sell the most products and services. Checking out those sites and copying what they have in common is smart and it will create a sense of familiarity with your website. This is important because if users feel comfortable on your site they are more likely to make a purchase.

Step 2 Easy Navigation
Remember, easy navigation is really important. You want web surfers to be able to find what they are looking for without having to look very hard for it. This means having easy to navigate categories that use short descriptions to define them. Also, if you sell more than 25 products it’s important to have a search engine for the website.

Step 3 Fast Checkout
Finally, it’s important for shoppers to be able to checkout quickly. This means they need to be able to make the purchases they want with a credit card and with a page or two in the checkout process. Adding lots of pages to the checkout process or requiring that shoppers sign up for an account will only turn shoppers away. That’s why it is so important to make the checkout process fast and easy.

Step 4 Customer Service
Finally, your website must offer excellent customer service. Without top of the line customer service you will lose customers. However, if you offer excellent customer service then any problems can easily be resolved and customers may be retained.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Tips for Selling Online

Once you have a website created you are ready to optimize it for shoppers. One of the most important things to do is have all of your products categorized in a way that is easy to understand. Simple category names are important, like electronics, home goods, furniture, and the categories should be easy to find. Usually, listed on the side bar of the site to the left works best. The side bar should be visible on every page of the site so that customers can easily navigate to a new category should they decide to do so. An integrated search engine within the site is important, too, if you are selling more than two dozen or so products. You want customers to find what they are looking for quickly and easily because the faster they find the product they want the more likely they are to buy it.

Keep in mind that designing your ecommerce site like the big sites isn’t going to get your site lost in the shuffle. Instead, it’s going to give customers a feeling of safety and security because your site is well designed and looks like the other trustworthy sites. You don’t want to stand out, necessarily, in your site design. Instead, you want it to feel good to customers, comfortable, familiar even, so they are willing to buy from you.

Remember, too, that despite how great your site looks if you make it difficult for customers to complete their purchase they will look for another website. Most of your shoppers will want to pay with a credit card, which means you must accept credit cards. MasterCard and Visa are the most common, but you will have shoppers who want to use American Express, Discover, and even Diner’s Club. You will need top process cards in real time to keep customers happy. To do this you will need a merchant account. Some websites use PayPal as it is an easy option although others choose to have a dedicated merchant account. It really depends on your website and what makes the most business sense. When you accept credit cards you will sell significantly more products and services than otherwise so in almost all cases it is highly recommended.

Another important tip is to have excellent content on your site. What this means is the content on your site is well written, there are no grammatical mistakes, and it is obviously written by a native speaker. Nothing is a bigger turn off to online shoppers than websites that look like they were written by a five year old kid or else someone who doesn’t even speak the language. This will turn customers away, which is the last thing you want to do.

Another step to keep in mind is to start out small. Starting small and growing gradually will allow for more success than starting out offering everything under the sun like some of the bigger sites. If you are new you can’t possibly accommodate all those products/services, so start slowly and you will be able to grow at your own speed.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Steps for Selling Online

It has never been easier than now to sell your products and services on your own ecommerce website. Literally anyone can set up a site to sell their products today so there are no excuses. Unfortunately, many websites fail simply because they weren’t well thought out in advance and typical business practices were not used when setting up the site. A website is a business and should be treated as one. The following tips are helpful for getting started selling online and should be kept in mind for all who want to set up a website to sell products and services.

The overall goal for your website is to make sales, meaning the site should be geared towards buyers and making it easy to make purchases. A good way to get started is to check out what big online retailers are doing and what works. For example, check out Amazon and see what works about their site. The reason you should check out what the big competitors are doing is because they spend millions of dollars to find out what makes a great website and how to sell to online customers. That research is there for the taking in all their web designs, checkout processes, and the like, so it’s worth poking around and seeing what the big sites are doing.

Checkout the design techniques that all of the big sites use. What do they implement in their site design that you could, too? There is a reason all of the big sites have certain features and designs, which is based on lots of research to find out what works. Don’t reinvent the wheel with your website. Instead, take advantage o f the research the big sites have already completed and use it to your own advantage and success.

One design that works well and is incorporated by the big online retailers is displaying some popular products on the homepage allowing for customers to purchase them immediately. The faster you get the customer and the product together the more likely you will be to make sales. This has been documented and it works, that’s why the big sites use this method and you should too. You can’t put all of your products on your homepage, but you can display the day’s most popular products or some of the products that generate more cash. This is a great way to show customers what you have to offer and potentially make an immediate sale.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that your website is a business and as a result it must be formatted in a way that makes shopping and buying easy.

Learn how you can increase your Internet business with ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.