Evolving the marketing of an eCommerce store can seem like an expensive and troublesome task for many small online businesses.  Often times WebCart customers say "I am paying for a shopping cart software solution, what I can do with it to increase my current business?" There is a lot WebCart shopping cart software customers can do with their existing carts without spending a fortune on customization and marketing.

Analytics - Pay close attention to which products or services are receiving the most clicks. With WebCart's built in analytic tools discovering which pages receive the most hits is a snap. Additionally, pay close attention to which products are being sold the most.  With this data in hand I recommend putting the popular products up on the first page so they are in clear view to anyone coming to your site. The data collected from the page views I recommended adjusting and researching why the page received so many clicks, but not as many sales. Perhaps a competitor is selling the same product at a lower rate, or the product description, image or title is not clear.
 
Product Customization - It's no marketing secret that making your customers feel unique is a great way to increase sales. The same concept can be applied to your products.  For starters, it's a good idea to enable a wizard for online shoppers to use in order to find the perfect gift. Let me give you an example, using selling shoes online. An online visitor would first click the wizard, and a page would come up asking them what type of activity they are planning on using shoes for. It could be things like running, basketball cross training etc. The next screen could have a list of more specific questions like what color style or brands they want. The process would continue until the online visitor receives a custom recommendation based on their styles. This tool alone has been proven to increase conversation by leaps and bounds.

A common overlooked usability technique within eCommerce site design is the ability for customers to print product, category and/or content pages.  With a majority of shopping cart software incorporating fluid design with CSS it's vital to make certain that online visitors will be able to print your site pages. There are many benefits to having online pages printer friendly. For starters it's part of good usability standards, but more importantly it can lead to an increase in sales and exposure. Often time's people print products to show relatives who otherwise would not be able to view them because of not having a computer. However, what tends to happened more often is people print products and articles with their PDF writer for later viewing. Therefore, it's imperative that users have the option of printing web pages within your site.

Making a site printer friendly usually requires adjusting html, css, div or table code. Often times no matter how much a person tweaks the code the pages don't adjust or the design takes a dramatic change. The answer to this type of situation is creating a separate printer friendly page which can be formatted in simple text, and works beautifully in any printer. Although this may seem like a simple solution it does come with hazards that need to be addressed before creating a separate printing page.

The major issue with a second printing page is duplicate content. Even though no one can say for sure what search engine algorithms penalize for duplicate content, it's safe to say that they don't like it. In fact I have personally seen sites dropped in ranking because of duplicate content, and once the duplicate content was removed their rankings came back. The method I recommend to my shopping cart software clients is to add a simple no follow tag in to the print page link. In addition, to add an extra layer of protection I suggest putting all the "printer friendly" pages in to a designated directory, and restrict search engine spider access via the robots. By following these simple rules your eCommerce site will keep the look you want without sacrificing usability or ranking. 

1. Are there integrated up-sell modules?
The more products you sell the more money you are going to make.  Not every person that makes a purchase will buy something when you offer additional related products.  However, there are many times that you can make additional sales by up-selling to customers.  This feature in some shopping cart software can make you a lot of money.

2. Are there integrated sales reports database?
To eliminate the hassle of having to print off sales reports and enter them into a database, it is extremely convenient when you find shopping cart software that comes with a sales and prospect database.

3. Can it work with multiple websites with no extra charge?
Many online business owners have multiple websites that they promote various products from.  It can be expensive if you have to get separate licenses and separate merchant accounts for each website.  Most carts today run on their own servers, so there is no expensive installation and set up is almost immediate.

4. Does it have a pop-up box builder?
Although annoying, pop-ups can still reel in customers from time to time for your ecommerce business.

5. Are there printable off-line order forms?
In a time where people are becoming more and more knowledgeable online, identity theft is something on many people's minds that shop online.  Because of this, many people are still afraid to disclose their credit card numbers into a website.  This is an extremely important feature to look into with shopping cart software.

6. Does it offer customizable Thank You pages?
The more personal you are the more customers feel you are reaching out specifically to them.

The shopping cart software that you purchase for your ecommerce business may make or break your business.  The better your shopping cart is set up and the easier it is to get around, the more business you will generate.  Here are 4 questions you should have answered before purchasing shopping cart software.

1. Will it calculate shipping and tax?

2. Does it offer customizable return to shopping pages
The best way to make a lot of money from your ecommerce business is through follow-up sales.  Many standard shopping carts send customers back to the main page after they make a purchase rather than sending them to related products that they are most likely to purchase next.

3. Does it deliver receipt and confirmation e-mails automatically?
After purchasing something from your ecommerce business, customers want to know that their purchase did in fact go through.  The better shopping cart software on the market offers this feature telling customers immediately that the purchase went through.

4. Does it have a web-based administration page?
This is important because it will allow you to work on your cart from any computer that has internet access.  There is nothing more frustrating then being stranded from making adjustments to your shopping cart just because you're not near your computer.

Shopping cart software is obviously not the end all of eCommerce success. If fact if you have been reading some of my previous posts you will find a wealth of information about different strategies and tips to achieve success. As I understand it the criteria for shopping cart software is more then just a shopping cart, but rather a collection of marketing, software and risk taking which if done correctly will yield unimaginable success.  In this post I will discuss the importance of choosing a strong business name. Often overlooked, a business name is the first thing customers associate a business with, therefore, it’s important to take special consideration when choosing one.

It’s kind of comedic when new business owners believe they found the perfect name only to discover that the .com and / or the .net have been taken. I can’t stress this enough before you finalize a business name make sure the .com or .net is available because customers  will most likely associate a business name with a  domain name.  It’s unreasonable to expect online customers to remember two sets of names 1) your business name and 2) your domain name. Therefore, if the name you want is unavailable move on to the next step.

Determine if your name is a band or a business name. The way to decide what type of business you have is simple. Ask yourself am I selling a product made by someone else or is my product unique to me? Often times an online business provides a service like computer repair, web design, internet marketing just to mention a few. In these cases it’s ok to use a personal touch like J&F Design Solutions or Sean’s Computer Service. It’s a high probability that names like J and F design will be available in .com and .net.

Have you ever visited a website and saw the all too familiar message “this page is under construction” or something like “this section will be available soon”? Unfortunately, coming soon pages are a fact of eCommerce life. Webmasters tend to use these pages for two big reasons. One, these categories or pages establish a method in which a shopping cart software owner can market a new idea which might still be in development.  One company who uses such a method is the magazine subscription company usubscribe.com. On their website they have a tab for “single copy and back issue magazines’ to the surprise of many usubscribe.com does not sell single issues, but instead offers a message that says

“Thank you for clicking!We are currently researching what types of products our users are interested in. By clicking on the link that brought you to this page you have effectively cast a vote in favor of this section. Nothing is more important to us then user feedback. If you would like to make an addional comments or suggestions about our site please use the form below.”

This is a great way of doing a little bit of market research to find out if a new product or service is desirable by your customers. The second reason many webmasters use under construction pages is to start the SEO ball rolling. By inserting specific keywords in to your new page the search engines will begin to know that you are adding a new section. Once the new product or service launches the keyword  process will become a lot easier because Google would have already indexed your page. 

Let me ask you a question: What good is shopping cart software if you are not able to completely configure personalized options? Well the simple answer is, not very good. Part of what makes a shopping cart solution so popular is its ability to mold in to almost any eCommerce industry. The area of configuration remains in the hands of the shopping cart software developers.  For every eCommerce solution the options are different and in some cases absolutely unique. This brings me to my next point of what makes the WebCart configuration panel so unique? For starters it's very easy to use, and that is not mentioning the fact that almost every option imaginable is configurable. Let's take a look under the hood.

The WebCart Configuration interface is very unique. Our developers didn't just copy the look from osCommerce like my other eCommerce solutions do, but rather created an entire new system. Within the configuration page you will find:

Shipping fees (shipping and handling) - Here you can specify how much to charge for shipping and handling in addition you are able to
specify different parameters for things like weight, price and shipping method.

Packaging - This option allows you to define custom packages which could be used when customers are purchasing items.

General - This area is all about your information like email. Address etc. The information here is vital because it will be used by your shopping cart software to send emails and related information.

Inventory - Active and define options for the inventory manger which comes pre-built with WebCart 11

Messages - I love this option because it lets you customize the error messages you customers get. For example: A webmaster has the option of inserting a custom message if the password or user name doesn't match. Another example could be an invalid gift certificate could get a custom error message without breaking in to the code.

Payments - Here Webmasters are able to configure their authorize.net, VeriSign and / or PayPal account.

Taxes - The taxes page allows you to add custom tax information for specific states.

User Controls - Here you can modify the user name and password for logging in to your WebCart shopping cart software's back end.

Contact - This page allows you to create custom contact forms which can be customized for different areas of your eCommerce website.

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.

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.

Every WebCart hosted solution shopping cart includes Ecommerce Hosting. WC uses dedicated servers that are engineered specifically for E-commerce to provide you with an unparalleled ecommerce hosting environment.
By using the best technology and state of the art Linux systems we provide guaranteed 99.9% uptime.

Our protected servers are dual 3.0 GHz processors, with 2.5GB of memory each, sitting on top of a superfluous, multi-homed, dedicated network.

We understand that reliability is a big concern for online store owners; therefore, WebCart pays our hosting supplier to make sure that packets of information are delivered to the end user’s eyeballs. This can offers significant advantages over simply peering with the major backbones. Peering agreements hardly ever include Service Level Agreements (SLAs) so no one is responsible for lost packets at crammed exchange points. Because we actually have SLAs with all our providers, we are able to promise that all packets will leave our network at full speed.

Since security is a big threat too many small online businesses WebCart’s data center is inaccessible from everyone except four technicians. Unrestricted access is strictly forbidden. Admittance to the floor of the data hub resides on is restricted to those holding military-grade pass cards.