Tips on Selecting an Online Store

One of the most rewarding ventures one can take is living out the dream of an entrepreneur. While navigating new territory of starting a home based business or growing an existing brick-and-mortar business you may need to master new responsibilities. Coming face to face with the challenge of creating an online store should not be a road block along the way.

There are many shopping cart systems out there, but the goal is to find the one that fits the needs of your business and have some basic functions that are important when considering an online store. When you are ready to select an online store here some essential store features to look for:

Is there a limit to the number of product and categories?

This may or may not be an issue for you, but it is worth checking into especially if you have a lot of products to offer.

What are the available shipping calculation methods?

This could be an import factor not only for you, but your customers as well. Check to see if the store offers the ability to calculate shipping rates either by weight-based formulas or at least interfacing with UPS OnLine® Tools. It would be useful to see if there are options to offer free shipping like during a promotion.

What are the options for payment?

Making a payment is the final step for an online customer to do. While trying not to overstate the obvious, you should find out what payment gateways are supported and if there are other means for customers to make payment arrangements, such as phone/fax orders.

Does the store offer reporting?

Probably the most common report is a sales/order report.

What is the procedure for updating or adding products to the store?

You should look at online stores that offer a web-based administrative section. The ability to upload images, update products, and check orders from anywhere in the world via the internet can be extremely valuable, especially if you are traveling and away from your office for long periods of time. Most of these sites offer wizards to help the adding of products making it easier to have control.

As mentioned, there’s a lot of shopping cart systems available today. Make an effort to look at the big picture of how long it takes for you to develop and populate your store, have customer-friendly features, and easy-of-use for maintaining your store.

Increase Sales by Avoiding Them

This sounds so off base at first glance. I've stumbled across some different marketing sites that are pushing a strategy of building the relationship of web visitors first before the sale. This is different than beating your potential customer over the head with "Buy Now or Else" strategies. Sure, that may produce results, but most are steering away from that and turning to a different strategy.

The biggest part of the sales relationship is giving something of value away. It does not have to be everything , rather a portion - something that still has value. Why? Most visitor trending will show that new visitors may not buy on their first visit. We've all done that. We'll jump around from site to site to see the differences. If you had the chance to try out the product first before you buy, would you? I think it is safe to say that most would try then buy.

I am doing some personal testing on this theory and hope to elaborate more on this subject. It seems to make sense and very well could be that determining factor to set you apart from the competition.

Squidoo On The Brain - Good for Web Traffic

Hello everyone. If you are a newbie you may not know what what a Squidoo Lens is. If you have poked around on the internet you may have come across a Squidoo Lens without knowing about it.

So what is a Squidoo Lens? Well, Seth Godin, founder of Squidoo, has developed a site where you post information specific to a topic. Sounds simple enough, and it is that simple. You see the "lens" is supposed to be just that - a focused place to highlight a topic, website, product, or service. It's kind of like a mini blog, but the idea is to keep it central to one theme.

I have a few Lens pages (yes, you can have more than one). You can check it out at: http://www.squidoo.com/EntrepreneurExposed

Visit other lens pages while you are there. This can be a powerful marketing tool for your business or organization. Share with people about a core product from your business. Discuss the how-to information, share the advantages of the product. Be the expert on that "lens".

Here's the deal - give people what they want. If you have something to share, then share it. Don't make people jump through unnecessary hoops just to get to the information. This helps you look better to people when searching. Yes, you can post links from your Squidoo Lens page to your website. Actually, this would be a fairly painless way to build traffic to your site. Squidoo pages usually rank pretty well on Google. So people find the Squidoo page, and then they find you. Nice.

What's a domain name?

Talking to newbies here... Domain names are text names given to I.P. (internet protocol) addresses. In other words, it's basically your address location on the internet.

e.g. www.239Creative.com - my personal website

Often times people may refer to a domain name as a web site name. Domain names can be .com, .org, .net, and so on. This is typically the first thing that you would "secure" when you are ready to get a web site.

When you acquire a domain name you typically are not buying the name, rather leasing the name since domain names require to be renewed. Some Domain Name Registrars offer one, two, three, five, and up to ten year plans.

Domain Name Tip #1:

When searching for a domain name try to capture a .com domain name. The reason is simply that .com domain names are the most recognized and easiest to remember. I would say .net would be the second choice.

Domain Name Tip #2:

Try to find a domain name that has the best and most keywords (while keeping it short) as part of the domain name. Let's say you are a water filter company looking for a domain name. Well, waterfilter.com is probably already taken. Maybe add some keywords to see what domain names are available like, cleanwaterfilter.com, healthy-water-filter.com, allhomewaterfilters.com, and so on. Search engines love domain names that are rich in keywords - matching content in the domain name and what you post on the website.

Hope this helps.

Search for a Domain Name now

Let's get this ball rolling...

As I get ready to post some stuff I have to tell you that I am going to share may be a little basic. Meaning, I may talk about stuff for newbies. I don't want to presume anything. It's my hope that this blog will challenge and possibly inspire you to think like an entrepreneur. Maybe the first step is learning how to spell entrepreneur. :)

I am anxious on sharing some of the stuff that I have learned on my own and stuff that I have going on and possibly get feedback or point the way on getting started in small business. Here we go.