A few weeks ago WebCart was approached by a local pet shop who wanted to create a basic online pet store which could potentially compete with heavy hitters like petco and pet smart. Once the WebCart team analyzed the competition we realized that most online pet stores are not using a css navigation within their shopping cart stores.

The first thing we decided to do was implement a good looking css navigation bar that didn’t rely on images to make it look good. The reason we decide to use CSS rather then good old images is simple. CSS doesn’t eat up bandwidth which means a lot less load time for your web pages. Second, since everything is done with basic text it’s extremely easy to insert keywords in to your navigation which will result in better ranking though the major search engines.

Below is an example of code used for a basic css rollover navigation bar

ul#list
{
margin-left: 0;
padding-left: 0;
white-space: nowrap;
}

#list li
{
display: inline;
list-style-type: none;
}

#list a {
padding-top: 3px;
padding-right: 10px;
padding-bottom: 3px;
padding-left: 10px;
margin: 0px;
}

#list a:link, #navlist a:visited
{
color: #000000;
background-color: #CCCCCC;
text-decoration: none;
}

#list a:hover
{
color: #fff;
background-color: #369;
text-decoration: none;
}

Html

<div id="sample_div">
<ul id="list">
<li id="active"><a href="#" id="current">Shopping Cart Software </a>
</li>
<li><a href="#">Criteria For Shopping Cart Software </a></li>
<li><a href="#">Php Shopping Cart Software </a></li>
<li><a href="#">eCommerce Store Front </a></li>
<li></li>
</ul>
</div>

Start an Affiliate Program

When starting an affiliate program it’s important to keep in mind that you are essentially recruiting the assistance of other webmasters to promote your business. It’s the most cost effective way of advertising because it will only cost you money if someone buys a product within your eCommerce store.  Generally, affiliates use a number of methods to drive people to your site, mostly through coupons, advertisements, links, referrals, etc. For each referral that becomes an actual sale, you pay the affiliate a percentage of the sale. The more affiliates you accumulate, the more opportunities you have top generate a nice income with out taking risks on advertising.

A rather interesting tactic many shopping cart software owners make use of is encouraging their affiliates to bid against them on their keywords via the pay per click search engines. I know this can sound strange at first, but it really assists you (the merchant) in obtaining a pike in traffic from organic search results. Instead of your being up there next to your competitors, you’re up there next to your affiliates, who are also sending traffic to your Web site!

Many eCommerce merchants overlook the importance of email marketing. Although, receiving potentially unwanted emails may bother some people, many of your online customers may actually be delighted to hear from you. I personally suggest that you ask your clients permission before you send them emails. Once a customer has made a purchase online, it’s a great idea to ask them whether they would like to opt in to get updates via email on sales and other company news. The most difficult part is writing an email that captures your reader’s attention. One little trick is by providing a value statement rather than promoting your products or services is a great way to launch an email marketing campaign.

To illustrate my point, offering your customers tips on how to install a hard drive while promoting your large collection of hard drives, or letting readers know about upcoming computer show in their area while announcing your computer special deals, can persuade your online customers to look forward to your emails. Look, if you know that a computer show will be in town why not let your clients know, while promoting your own computer products? Potentially, someone who may not have thought about buying something from your store right away might see your email and think, “I really want to go to this computer show, but I want to make sure I have the latest system so I could utilize all t he features.”

Magmall.com, an eCommerce storefront that sells magazine subscriptions to consumers and businesses. What makes magmall unique is it’s ability to build online storefronts using private labels which are powered by WebCart 11,  that allow resellers to keep a portion of the proceeds from the subscription sales, and the rest of the money will go to magmall.com.

The way it works is simple; pages are built using WebCart’s private label function,. and customized to emulate the look and feel of affiliates organization’s web site using it’s personal logo and navigation. An astonishing twenty percent of the profits made from the sale of magazine subscriptions goes to the site owner.

The service and development of the Web pages is done by WebCart 11, which offers a clear and easy top use private label function. This leaves the technical aspect of private labeling taken care of.

For the most part, participating companies include a links on their Web site that leads to magmall.com (private labeled) virtual newsstand web page and they announce the site in company newsletters. One of the many classic success stories with private label is the relationship magmall.com had with USPS.com

the relationship was simple, USPS offered magazine subscriptions to its employees at a discounted rate. The offers would show up on employee portal pages, newsletters and employee bulletin boards. When an employee visited the posted URL a full featured newsstand would show up with the USPS logo and colors. Essentially, the site was a private labeled site for usps employees to purchase magazines, but magmall.com controlled all the ordering and processing.

The reason private label is so valuable to any marketing campaign is its ability to duplicate your site for any affiliate. This creates a personal look and feel for each affiliate. This could mean more affiliate traffic which translates in to  an increase of overall sales.

Creating a customizable shopping cart software can be a difficult task since it’s vital to preserve the carts functionality while providing a great deal of freedom to the end user who usually desires to personalize it to there specific needs. WebCart 11 was engineered to meet the criteria for shopping cart software by allowing the user to really get in to the nuts and bolts of of their shopping cart. In this post I will go over how easy it’s to change the actual product box within any WebCart store.

Customizing how products are displayed was the one feature; I received the majority of phone calls and emails for. It wasn’t so much that people were not able to modify the product display properties, but rather the steps that needed to be taken were often complex and time consuming. Therefore, when we developed the WebCart 11 backend our programmers paid special attention to the product display category. These are the basic features we incorporated:

- Easy to use configuration page to customize shopping cart software products
- Easily specify product box width and height
- Ability to alternate product row colors
- Easily specify the amount of products displayed on each row and page
- Easily specify sort order for storefront, category search, price search and any other product page.
- User defined message when no products are found in any given category (great for SEO)

These are just the few simple features every eCommerce owner has at their disposal with WebCart’s software. In addition to the above list, WebCart come pre-built with an advanced section where users can customize specific tags in order to get the product placement they desire.

If there is one solid thing eCommerce store owner could do to convert a casual web browser (who is browsing your site) in to a customer; it would be creating a website which instills a high level of trust when visited. These days trust and security are of high importance to every day web surfers because of the high risk of fraud. To meet the criteria for shopping cart software I have outlined a few points that online store owners should pay attention to.

Keep Your eCommerce Site Looking Professional and Clean
With so many sites competing for a single customer, small things like clean and user friendly navigation become extremely important to incorporate. I will list a few design tips to keep in mind.

1) If you’re going to use a template make sure you edit it enough so it doesn’t look like someone else’s site. There is nothing worse then having a potential client believing your site is fishing another because it looks like the same.

2) I have said this before, but the pictures on your website play a huge role in how potential customers perceive your website. Keep them outdated and low quality, and watch your conversion sink.

3) Maintain a solid color scheme though out your site. It’s important to keep online shoppers reassured that they have not left your site. Often times I find sites that look completely different within each of their category pages.

In my next will continue to discuss more methods of securing the trust of your online visitors.

The internet has seen huge growth with the advent of online community sites like myspace, friendster and face book. Now more then ever online users are able to connect with other people who share their similar interests. This result for the criteria for shopping cart software is a rich collection of priceless data for online merchants who are looking to capitalize on this new revolution in cyberspace.

Market research:
Small online businesses are able to get a better perspective about what’s hot or not by browsing through social networking sites, and reading what people in a specific industry are talking about. The best way to understand this is by giving an example from the real world.  If your businesses sold comic books, you would probably want to attend comic book events to better understand the needs and wants of your customers. In cyberspace, your events are social networking sites where you can gauge a perspective of options and discussions from around the world.

Targeted Advertising:
Sites like myspace facilitate a meeting place for online users who share similar positions, inclinations, and even purchasing habits. For an eCommerce store owner social networking sites make it ideal to use targeted advertising because you know exactly what kind of people are going to be viewing your ad.

Present Several Payment Options

To many this may seem like a given, but you would be surprised by how many eCommerce store owners don’t offer multiple payment options. Due to the fact that numerous online consumers are still afraid to use their credit card online. PayPal has become an option many people are comfortable with, because it allows people to use their credit cards or their debit accounts without providing you, the business owner, sensitive credit card information.

Another great idea is offering people a “bill me later” option. This feature could be as simple as sending your customers an email once they have checked out, asking them to send you a check or money order for the products, or services they have used. It’s important to let them know that you’ll ship their order as soon as you receive payment in the mail, and highlight an expiration date to ensure you aren’t waiting for months on unfulfilled orders.

Shopper Testimonials

Having customer testimonials is a great way of adding unique content to your eCommerce site while adding an extra layer of trust  to first time customers. An honest and well written testimonial has been shown to boost sales from first time customers.
Many people ask me.. “how can I get people to write me testimonials?”  I usually tell them to just ask their customers. Think about it if you offer an excellent service or product at a great price why wouldn’t your customers tell the rest of the world about their experience.

The criteria for shopping cart software requires specific requirements to be met for an eCommerce merchant to be sucsfull online. Although I have written extensively about this before, there are always new methods of getting the edge. In this post I will outline a few more secrets I use for eCommerce sucesss.

Online Marketing

There is no shortage of eCommerce websites in cyberspace competing with each other. However, the good news is that there are also millions of customers who are just waiting to buy your goods or services. In order to attract the right traffic it’s vital to have a good marketing strategy in place.   Which should incorporate search engine optimization; pay per clicks and online advertising.
Some Products and services should not be sold on the internet.

Not all products were meant to be sold online. If you think about it some products are too much of a pain to be sold online.    First, shipping costs for large items can became extremely costly.  Food is another product that you should probably shy away from online because of the probability of  the food going bad while shipment

These are just two of the many areas a person should look at before investing in eCommerce.

In order to meet the criteria for shopping cart software, practical ecommerce magazine put together a checklist of features to look for when shopping for a eCommerce solution. I will go over several of the features and give my own prospective on them.

Shopping Cart Functionality
Within your cart it’s important to look for functionality, here are some things to watch out for

- Does your shopping cart have built in search engine friendly pages?
- Can you configure discounts or coupons?
- Does your shopping cart have the ability to manage an affiliate program?
- Can you tack your inventory?

Shopping Cart Payment Processing
It may not seem like a huge deal, but m any people are supirused ot learn that their shopping cart does not support paypal or offline payments.

- Obtain a list of all supported payment gateways
- Can the shopping cart support offline payments?

Technical Concerns
To many eCommerce new comers the last thing they want to think about is technical issues, but if you’re hosting your cart on a Linux machine you will not be able to run an ASP.net based shopping cart. Therefore, it’s important to know the basics

- Can the shopping cart run on a Windows or Linux machine?
- What was the programming language used to develop the car?
- What are the database software necessities?

All these features should become questions every eCommerce merchant should ask before making an investment in a shopping cart software solution.