As an online retailer, you absolutely need to have software for inventory management, shopping cart software, and at least a basic accounting software and shipping software.  Now, depending upon the size and type of you business, there are a few things you’ll want to consider:

• How tech savvy are you and your staff?
• How many websites are you running?
• How many warehouses are you shipping out of?
• How much do you project to expand over the next 2 years?
• What kind of user interface experience do you want to provide for your customer?

These are the first few basic questions to ask yourself before you go shopping for software.  In many cases, if the matter is relatively simple and straightforward, you’ll be able to get a general ecommerce software package with hosting and everything.  This is ideal, but if you need something more specified to your needs, then that is available too.  You just need to make sure that you know exactly what your needs are before you try to outfit your entire project with pricey software solutions.

The investment will not only keep you from pulling your hair out in the long run. It will ensure that you are an accurate business that has it together.  Most people won’t do repeat business if they think they’re dealing with real amateurs.  Not when they can find another retailer online quickly.  In order to be competitive, you need to arm yourself with ecommerce software that can handle your shopping cart, inventory and order management, shipping and accounting.

About the Author: Carolyn works for Ordoro, which makes business easier with order management software that integrates Shopify, 3dcart and BigCommerce.

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Strategy

Look at various aspects of your business and plan for the next year.

• Understand the online shopping behaviour of your customers and look at the traffic patterns that you have been able to generate. Superimpose the specific promotions that you have done to check on the response that you have had with each.
• Measure how much you are spending to acquire customers and make sure it is less than your customers’ lifetime value. Use this free customer lifetime calculator for help.
• Evaluate the sources from where the traffic came in and whether it was organic or paid in nature. Look at the sources that resulted in better conversion rates. Make sure that you define the conversions in the manner that you think is best.
• Look at the specific webpages that have caused a drop out of our site in order to ensure better conversions. Use this to modify your website and user experience.

Data mining for product research

A large amount of valuable data sits on your system. Take this time when there is less buzz in the market to plan for the coming quarter and the year. Look at sales register and evaluate specifics to understand your online store.

• See which categories and products and brands sold
• Look at the holiday season promotions and understand which ones worked best
• Spend some time on the products that did not sell
• Think of the new products that you should get in to your store
• Gather feedback from customers regarding products and service
• Look at how some products sell together and how you can create cross promotions

Increase repeat purchases

Evaluate what you are currently doing with your existing customer base. They are your most valuable asset and you should treat them as such. Are you providing valuable content or are you inundating them with ads? Evaluate the email campaigns that you’ve sent and which ones have been most successful.

This is extremely important after the holiday season because you may have had a new surge in customers and you know that you can lose a large proportion of these unless you measure what works and take some specific steps to retain customers.

New Look and Web Design

Creating a new look after the holiday season gives your customers something to talk about. Since there is nothing much happening in the market at this time, a new email format and a new website interface is a great idea. Take the insights obtained from the web analytics that you have done and create a new design. A|B test everything you do.

Socialize

Spend some time with your customers online. Evaluate tools that can help you become more efficient at interacting with customers online. Update your twitter post more often and build your presence in Facebook. Blog and blog some more, your traffic will improve significantly.

Although e-Commerce is growing rapidly in sales every year, it is becoming extremely competitive. As any other business would do, sit down and think strategy and how you can gain an edge at your competitors to increase sales and retain more customers in 2012.

About the Author:

Jaime is a Ph.D. in Statistics with vast experience in database marketing, focusing on using data to increase customer retention. Learn more about his customer retention marketing tool for online retailers at Mineful.com.

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Advantages of Mobile Websites

Zmags conducted a survey recently showing that only 4% of customers prefer to shop on a branded app on mobile and 4% on a branded app on tablet. The same survey showed that a more promising 14% prefer to shop via a website on a mobile phone and 8% prefer a website on a tablet. Essentially, quality mobile websites can provide the same (or better) experience as a mobile app.Mobileapps require a download and another icon taking up space on the mobile desktop.

Another downside to an app is that it requires extra marketing. Unless there is a promotional campaign, people will assume that your website is the only mobile experience being offered. Even if the app is free, you cannot assume that people will come across it without marketing efforts. Another consideration is which platform to create the app for. Most mobile phones are using Ios and Android. Creating extra versions will require extra development time and therefore extra cost.

Advantages of Mobile Apps

On the other hand people are spending more time on apps compared to mobile websites. A study by Flurry has shown that on average, people spend 94 minutes every day on mobile applications per day compared to 72 minutes on mobile websites. Access to popular brands such as Facebook through apps has exposed the mobile users to the possibilities of using apps as well as websites. Apps have the advantage of being able to make better use of hardware, which can result in a much faster and more powerful user experience.

Conclusion

Taking the above into account, at this stage mobile websites certainly have more advantages than disadvantages for ecommerce. If you have particular requirement of providing a more intensive experience, it may be better to consider an app. Although with advancements of new technologies, in particular html5, mobile websites will eventually overcome any currently existing deficiencies.

Guest Author:

Mitchel Xavier is an expert in mCommerce and Magento Mobile commerce in Sydney, Australia.

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If you have already purchased Thesis theme and spent hours to get the professional look for your site without luck then you should get a custom made Thesis skin. Thesis skins simply overlay the Thesis frame work so you get a professional looking website without loosing any benefits of thesis.

There are many Free and Premium Thesis skins available. In this post I have hand picked some cool looking Thesis theme skins so you can easily choose a skin that suits your need.

My Product Skins – Thesis Skin by Thesis Awesome

If you want to create a sales page, landing page, squeeze page or a launch page for your product without having to code or design anything yourself then you should try “My Product Skins”. “My Product Skins” has the perfect layout that a Product Sales page should have and it is the best Thesis Skin available for selling or launching products.

The whole front page layout of this skin is built with widgets so you can easily drag the sections up and down and place them where ever you want.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

Silver Skin – Thesis Skin by Thesis Awesome

“Silver Skin” looks very professional and if you are giving away free stuff online to build your email listing for Marketing or any other purpose this is the perfect Thesis Skin for you. “Silver Skin” has social media, Multi Author, Advertising and Opt-in options including other general features. Footer Widgets are also available with “Silver Skin”.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

Blog Skin – Thesis Skin by Thesis Awesome

If you want to have an easy to manage blog to run your advertisement campaigns, list building or simply promote your services or products then this is the Thesis skin you must have. “Blog Skin” has Social media, Multi Author, Advertising and Email Opt-in options including other general features. Footer Widgets are also available with “Blog Skin”.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

IBlog Skin – Thesis Skin by Thesis Awesome

If you want a simple, clean and cool looking blog then “IBlog Skin” is the perfect Thesis skin for you. “IBlog Skin” has built in social media, Advertising options and other general features. Customisable Footer Widgets are also available with “IBlog Skin”.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

Serious Business – Thesis Skins by THESISREADY

There are only two decent portfolio thesis skins I have come a across. “Serious Business” is the best one. If you want to setup your business website by displaying your current works on the front page then you will love this Thesis skin. The front page has fully customizable grid layout. Among other skin features: Fully featured options panel, 5 built-in color schemes, large post slider on front page, Easily manage your social media links and many more.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

Analogy – Thesis Skins by THESISREADY

“Analogy” has been designed to promote business or products as well as running a blog alongside. The design of this Thesis skin is very sleek. The skin comes with Built-in Social Media Buttons, Advanced jQuery Slider, easy showcase featured posts across all pages, full widget-ready footer and many more.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

Secret Agent – Thesis Skins by THESISREADY

If you want to keep your site strict to blogging but looking for a stylish clean Thesis skin then “Secret Agent” is the skin you should get.  “Secret Agent” also has a one-of-a-kind post-author info box that allows individual writers to include their bio, and social media links right from the WordPress dashboard. This is a must have thesis skin for multi-writer sites, and anyone looking to build their personal brand, and connect directly with the audience.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

BlogSkin – Thesis Skins by THESISREADY

“BlogSkin” is another clean professional looking Thesis skin by THESISREADY with list building capabilities. E-mail opt-in boxes come with the skin so you can focus on blogging without worrying about coding.

View Live Demo/Download Skin

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Yet, there are some areas that aren’t as intuitive as others when it comes to online store optimization. Things like security and aesthetics often get set aside as more overt and obvious concerns take hold. If you’re not creating a comfortable, secure experience for your buyers, you’re going to lose sales.

Here are a few hints to help optimize your online store and get the most possible conversions:

Create a truly secure transaction environment

A secure online store not only protects your customers from fraudulent transactions, it prevents you from dealing with chargebacks. More than that, however, a secure online store increases customer confidence and thereby boosts sales.

Here are some of the advanced security measures your online store should have in place:

• SSL – Your customers know how to check whether a website is using SSL. Yet, you’d be surprised just how many online stores aren’t using SSL today. SSL pays for itself a thousand times over in increased sales.
• Advanced verification – There are a couple of verification services worth using – Address Verification Services (AVS) and CVV (card verification value) services. These insure that the person making the purchase really is the cardholder.
• PCI compliant cart - Most cart software or plugins are PCI compliant. Make sure yours is. If not, your merchant account is in jeopardy of cancellation and penalty fees.

Let your customers know your online store is secure

All of that security doesn’t help nearly as much unless your customers know about it. While they know to watch for “https” in the address bar, they won’t know whether your shopping cart is PCI compliant. Create a privacy and security page, and link to it as a pop-up from your shopping cart and payment confirmation pages.

Use buyer-friendly aesthetics

There are some important things you should do in order to convince your visitors to buy, beyond simple graphic design. These include:

• Watch for visual noise - If you have pictures in your catalogue page, consider keeping pictures to a minimum in your header or sidebars.
• Make buying visually intuitive - The biggest buttons and links that draw the most attention should be the purchase and add-to-cart buttons.
• Make buying clear – Label all of your links and buttons appropriately. There are plenty of opportunities to be clever (such as with your copywriting or image choices). Don’t let your button labels be the time you decide to get creative and obscure.

Ultimately, your online store’s success is driven by the customer’s experience. Provide an experience that’s clear, secure, comfortable, and interesting, and your site will achieve maximum customer impact and maximum sales.

Guest Author:

David Rodwell is a seasoned writer in business and economics, taking a particular interest in credit card processing. You can find more of his articles located at CreditCardProcessing.net.

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The way internet ecommerce is booming everyone is trying to grab their piece of share. All the small and medium size businesses are using WordPress to set up their online store to sell products and services online. WordPress is easy to use, cheap to setup/maintain and tons of functionalities. WordPress Shopping Cart Plugins provides all the features to sell any products (Digital/Non-Digital) or services from your own WordPress blog by turning it into an ecommerce site.

There are many free and Premium WordPress ecommerce Shopping Cart plugins out there. I personally prefer the Premium plugins because of the support and the functionality they provide. Free Plugins do not get updated very often and do not provide support when you need it the most. Its simple, you get what you paid for. To run your business smoothly you will always need support just like anything else you use in life. If your hot water system is broken you need to call a plumber to get it fixed. If something goes wrong with the Plugin whom would you ask for help? Also when you are dealing with customers’ sensitive information like Personal details, payment history etc, the plugin have to be very reliable.

WP eStore is the top ecommerce shopping cart plugins in the market at the moment to sell any digital products like Digital Downloads, Music (MP3), Videos, Digital arts, Photos, Online tutorial (PDF) etc and Services. For the last two years WP eStore team have added new features continuously and the plugin have become better than ever.

No other WordPress Shopping cart Plugin offers the some of features that WP eStore offers for selling digital products.

Digital Product Delivery

• The plugin instantly deliver the Digital products to the customers upon successful payment. Customers receive Product download link in their email and also from the post payment page.
•  Product download links are automatically get encrypted so the real links to the products always remain secret.
• Encrypted download link or URL gets automatically shorten by using Google’s free URL shortener to make a complex URL look nicer and tidier
• You can control how long the Download link should be active (eg. 12 hours) so the link does not get passed around. 
• You can also control the number of downloads per link. So you can decided how many times the customer can use the download limit and the link gets expired automatically after that.
• The plugin allows multiple file downloads per product.
• Variation control for digital products (digital delivery of different files depending on the selection).
• You can also use the plugin to create a Squeeze Page that allows your visitors to download a free digital product after they fill in their name and email address. How to create a squeeze type page..

Amazon S3 Integration

WP eStore Shopping Cart Plugin can be easily integrated with Amazon S3 so you can store all the digital downloadable files on your Amazon S3 account and deliver them to your customers via secure encrypted download.

Pay per View Content

The plugin allows you to create pay per view content. You can redirect your customers to a web page that holds the content (for example streaming videos, audio) without revealing the page URL. How to sell a pay per view video..

Payment Security

Before the plugin delivers the product download link to the customers it validates the IPN sent from Paypal against your products database and Paypal so no one can scam the system by sending fake IPN.

Digital Product Security

The plugin always keeps the true location of your digital content hidden. This ensures the security of your digital product.

I like the fact WP eStore never claims to be what they are not. They have mainly focused on Digital Products and mastered the features. You can still sell physical or tangible products by using WP eStore plugin but their Inventory System, Shipping and Tax Calculation, Order Management features are not very developed to meet all your needs but for selling digital products WP eStore is the best WordPress Shopping Cart plugin and you will love their Amazing Support.

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Services are intangible that means you cannot see them, touch them or take them out of the box or demonstrate them. Because of that you need to make your services easier for customers to buy. To do so you will need to productize your services. Make your services tangible.

Aim of this article is to demonstrate how to sell services from a WordPress site but I couldn’t help but to share couple of techniques below how to productize your services.

• Turn your Service into a Product – Name your services. If you are selling services online, design a product box with your service name on it. Use the service name on all the supporting documentation, tips sheets, templates that are provided with your service.
• Create different Service Levels – If you can divide your services into several packages that are easy to buy and cater your customers’ needs and budgets then you will sell more services and your customers will keep coming back.
• Combine Services and Offer Special Bonus – If you are selling more than one service you can combine couple of them and offer special price or some kind of bonuses to your customers.

To sell a service from your own WordPress blog or site, you will need a WordPress eCommerce Plugin to collect payments, send payment confirmation and necessary email notifications or even generate tax/sales invoices. As Services are not tangible items so you won’t have to worry about shipping.

WP eStore Shopping Cart plugin is a top WordPress eCommerce plugin in the market. You can use this plugin to sell digital or non digital items including any type of services.  I will do a live demonstrating using WP eStore Plugin to show how easily you can sell your services from a WordPress blog.

For example you are selling Blog Setup Service. For a basic Blog Setup you will be charging $99.95. Your are also offering Premium Themes for extra $15 and Ecommerce Plugin Installation for extra $25.

To add the service select “Add/Edit Products” from WP eStore menu.

Add/Edit Products

Enter the name of the service in Product Name and set up a price for the service. I have put some brief information about the service in “Product description” and an Image for our Service in “Thumbnail Image URL”.

Product Description

Don’t forget we are also selling extras with the basic Blog Setup service like Premium themes and Ecommerce plugin installation. To set them up you will need to add these to the product variations.

Product Variation

Click “Save Product” button at the bottom to save the service.

You will need the product ID to show the service on your post or site. Select “Manage Products” from WP eStore menu to retrieve the product ID for your service.

Manage Products

Product ID for Blog Setup Service is 9 on my site. Depending on the number of products you already have your product ID will be different.

If you are placing your service on a Blog Post or Product Page then simply click the WP eStore shortcodes icon from the menu bar and select a short code to your post or product page.

Adding Shortcodes

Don’t forget to put the product ID in the short code and publish your post or page and it will show just like below.

Basic Blog Setup

Basic Blog Setup Features: Static Home Page Custom Plugin Package Initial Content

Price: $99.95

WP eStore Plugin supports PayPal Checkout, 2Checkout, Manual Payments and other payment gateways. You can setup your Payment option in “Settings”.

Check WP eStore Plugin?

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Create Coupon Code with Cart66

In Cart66 you will find the Coupon Code feature under “Promotions “. Cart66 Coupon feature is very simple and neat. You can create vouchers or Coupon codes based on the Money amount or the Percentage of the total cart amount. It also allows you to set the Minimum amount of purchase before the coupon can be used.

Cart66 Coupon Feature

The problem with Cart66 Coupons that you cannot limit the use of the coupons by number of uses or expiry date, activate or deactivate the coupons whenever you want. If you want to deactivate a particular Coupon code, you will have to delete it entirely and create it entirely again when you want to use it later. By default the Coupons are active when you create them in Cart66.

Cart66 official home page..

Create Coupon Code  with WP eStore Plugin

WP eStore Shopping Cart Plugin offers the best Coupon code features. The features might seems a bit complex but it gives you all the options that you need and full control of your Coupons.

WP eStore Plugin gives you the choice if you want to allow the Coupon code feature on the checkout page or not.

Activate Coupon Option

WP eStore have automatic shipping discount feature but Its totally up to you if you want to use it or not.

Automatic Shipping Discount

With WP eStore Plugin, you can create a Voucher or a Coupon Code with redemption limit, redemption amount and an expiry date. That means you can control how much discount you want to give, how many times a code can be used or how long the promotion is going to last.

WP eStore Coupon Code Features

WP eStore Plugin gives you more flexibility to apply conditions on the Coupons. You get to select if you want to use the coupon for Individual item quantity, total quantity, subtotal amount, total amount, Item name or Product category.

WP eStore Plugin official home page..

Create Coupon Code with WP e-commerce Plugin

WP e-Commerce Plugin has the coupon features under the Product Menu. Coupon features are pretty simple and neat as Cart66. Unlike Cart66 WP e-commerce plugin offers Coupon activation date and expiry date. Conditional options are very limited to item name, Item quantity, total quantity and subtotal amount.

WP e-Commerce Plugin Coupon Features

WP e-commerce Plugin official home page..

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If your site features any content – images, videos, music, etc. – that you want to protect from hotlinkers, there are a number of different methods that you can apply. The easiest and most effective anti-hotlink method can be achieved via HTAccess:

# always save a backup copy of your .htaccess file. Save it as .htaccess2 for example so if you run into problems, you can upload your backup copy to the server again. .htaccess file is in the main WordPress directory.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} \.(gif|jpe?g?|png)$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://([^.]+\.)?domain\. [NC]

RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g?|png)$ – [F,NC,L]

</ifModule>

Only thing you need to change in the above code is “domain” with your actual domain URL. Above code is set to protect the following file types: .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .gif, and .png. If you want to protect additional file types for example .avi then simply add the file type in line 5 and 6 with a vertical line.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} \.(gif|jpe?g?|png|avi)$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://([^.]+\.)?domain\. [NC]

RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g?|png|avi)$ – [F,NC,L]

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If you are using a WordPress site or blog there are many WordPress Photography themes available that are specially designed for photographers. Photocrati is one of the leading WordPress theme developers. They started with a general photography blog and only sell WordPress Photography themes for photographers. Photocrati is passionate about photography and have established Photocrati Fund that gives $5000 grants to photographers working on humanitarian and environmental projects. Photocrati works with some of the world’s leading photographers.

You don’t need to know any HTML, CSS or other code to use or customize Photocrati WordPress themes. Photocrati Photography themes offer all the features that you will need to setup your own online photo gallery or personal portfolio to display your photographs.

Polarized – WordPress Photography Theme by Photocrati

Darkroom – WordPress Photography Theme by Photocrati

F Stop – WordPress Photography Theme by Photocrati

Lightbox – WordPress Photography Theme by Photocrati

Vignette – WordPress Photography Theme by Photocrati

Homepage

Gallery Homepage

Check the themes at Photocrati….

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