February 26, 2008
Online Affiliate program: Why Most People Fail In Affiliate Programs
alt="Online Affiliate program: Why Most People Fail In Affiliate Programs" class="ImgBorder">If you search the internet you�ll find millions of free and also paid online affiliate programs.
Most people have signed up in these online affiliate programs and tried to make money from them but failed miserably.
They don�t know why.
Are you one of them?
If yes, read on to find out how to locate the right top affiliate program and how to promote it to start making money.
All affiliate programs are not created equal.
Some will make you money if properly promoted and others will not, no matter what you do.
Why?
Below are some reasons why.
(1) The Right Affiliate Programs To Promote
Most people are under the mistaken notion that just because an affiliate program is free that they can promote it and get rich.
Nothing can be farther away from the truth.
The bitter reality is that if an affiliate program is free, then most likely thousands of people will want to sign up to promote it.
Since thousands of people are promoting it, competition will be stiff and so the likelihood of getting rich from it will be slim because there will be more people promoting it than people who wish to buy it.
When supply is greater than demand, profitability will nose dive.
This is economics 101.
So stay away from free online affiliate programs which hundreds of thousands of people are already promoting!
The best online affiliate program which will likely make you rich will be the one that very few people are promoting and which is in great demand. The demand MUST be greater than supply.
Most likely, such an affiliate program will not be offered free!
You will have to pay for it to promote it.
When people are required to pay to promote an affiliate program, then most people will not sign up for it, so only few people will promote it.
This will then guarantee that the demand for it will be greater than the number of people who promote it and this means that the profitability for it will skyrocket.
This is the kind of online affiliate program which can make you rich!
There are few people online who are getting rich from online affiliate marketing and this is one of their sacred hidden secrets of success!
(2) Build Landing Pages For Your Online Affiliate Programs
You must create a landing page at your website for any affiliate program which you desire to promote.
At the landing page, you will then include a short introduction of the affiliate program, preferably, your own personal experience of using the program or a short review.
Then at the bottom, include the link to the affiliate program website.
This affiliate program landing page must be optimized also.
If you don�t know how to optimize a website, please contact us for a free Seo e-book which will reveal the hidden online millionaire webmasters Seo “SECRETS” to you.
You may also add Google Adsense ads and other pay per click ads as well as Clickbank products on this page to monetize it.
This way, if your customer doesn�t click and go to the affiliate program, they may click on any of the pay per click ads such as Adsense or Clickbankbuddy or pay per click ad and you�ll make money.
If you don�t know how to monetize your website with Google Adsense, Clickbankbuddy ads and pay per click products and ads, please contact us for free help.
By having a landing page for your affiliate programs at your website, you have the advantage of not losing all the traffic you�ve built up if the affiliate program is stopped.
If the affiliate program which you�re promoting is discontinued, you may replace it with another similar affiliate program and continue generating income from it.
(3) Secret To Promote Your Online Affiliate Program
Online marketing has become more difficult than rocket science.
During the past couple of years, most affiliate marketing strategies which used to work 6 yrs ago don�t work anymore.
E-mail marketing has been dead for many years now.
And the ISPs have added salt to the injury by creating so many filters which filter away your e-mail offers and so they don�t reach their destinations.
Besides, most people don�t read their e-mails anymore.
Most people have been bombarded by thousands of spams and offers and they just don�t have time to read these offers anymore.
So e-mail marketing is completely dead.
Free For All, FFA promotion is dead too.
Banner advertising is dead too, unless you have thousands of dollars to promote it at highly trafficked sites.
Search engine marketing, SEM doesn�t work any more because the search engines are constantly changing their optimization rules.
It takes both Google and Yahoo several weeks to even index your page and include it in their system.
You may optimize your website properly and attain a top ten position in a few keywords.
But they never last long.
In a few months when they update their search ranking, all your positions may likely disappear and your traffic will be gone too.
You may try to promote through Google Adword campaign.
But the truth is that not all programs can succeed in getting traffic from Google Adword or any other pay per click advertising.
If you try to promote an online affiliate program, which hundreds of thousands of others are already promoting using Google Adword and pay per click advertising, you�ll end up squandering thousands of dollars! This has happened to many people already.
So stop squandering your money in pay per click advertising.
(There is a better way. To learn more contact us for free help.)
You may also try to use article writing to promote your affiliate programs.
But very few people know the “SECRET” on how to write a highly optimized interesting article which will attain top ranking in the search engines and therefore produce traffic and sales for your online affiliate program.
To succeed in doing this, you must know how to optimize the article, it must be interesting and you must post it where many people will read it.
If you write and post an article but it can�t be found in the search engines when people search for the affiliate program which you�re promoting and if people are not reading it at the article directories where you posted it, you�ll not generate any traffic or sales!
This is what many people are doing and among the TOP reasons why they are not making any money in their online affiliate marketing.
(4) Traffic Is The Lifeblood Of Success In Online Affiliate Marketing Program
There are so many na�ve people who have spent tons of dollars buying internet marketing e-books, programs and videos from so called internet marketing gurus and as if that is not enough, they have been suckered into squandering thousands of dollars attending seminars organized by these so called gurus only to find out that what they are peddling are outdated and archaic internet marketing strategies which don�t work any more.
These suckers never to think about the truth.
The truth is that no right thinking businessman will sell a secret on how to generate thousands of traffic daily to you for $50, when he knows he can keep his secret, use them to promote hundreds of affiliate programs and make millions.
The real truth is that these so called gurus have no secret that really work. But what they have is a large e-mail list which they have built through e-zine and newsletter publishing for many years.
So they make their money by marketing their e-books and affiliate programs to these mailing lists.
If you have 50,000-100,000 e-mail lists which you have generated over 6 yrs, you�ll always manage to make a few thousands of dollars marketing any program to them especially if it is about internet marketing!
In conclusion, there are still a few online affiliate programs which are easy to market and generate obscene income and there are still many jealously guarded traffic generating secrets which work and which can explode your website traffic and sales and so make you rich instantly.
But they are not free. They will cost you some money.
If you�re ready to pay to sign up in any of these few online affiliate programs, and to get the powerful traffic generating secrets of millionaire webmasters, then you�re serious about getting rich from online affiliate programs.
May these insights about affiliate program, best affiliate program, free affiliate program, affiliate marketing program, top affiliate program, free online affiliate program, best free online affiliate program, online affiliate program, make money with affiliate program help you to attain success in your online business.
Thank you.
Ikey is the creator of ASA Elite $50,000 Online Affiliate program, the most powerful + profitable online affiliate program on earth. Generate $100,000 monthly without any hard work or large investment: http://mscsrrr.com/elite-affiliate-program.htm
Related posts
Filed under Affiliate Programs by admin
February 25, 2008
Shopping Carts Solutions
Author: Rakhi Chowdhary
Shopping Carts Solutions an integrated shopping solution, a new way that lets your customers to make orders, purchase online, manage shipping…
Today every growing business tries to be customer centric and I am very sure that business entropy will increase if your customer retention rate goes low. In this article I will discuss all about shopping cart and shopping cart software solution. With plethora of internet, staying at the top of your field has become arduous and it takes a lot to remain or reach at the top position. Looking back at the decade of shopping, there were no online store and customers had to walk to the store, spend time there browsing through the catalogue, deciding products, and then the product was passed into the shopping cart (trolley), order was placed and finally checkout and payment processes were carried. Then everything was manual, all entries were made manually and pricing were calculated on hands. In present scenario - With online shopping cart you can shop from your home or your office; just need internet connection and all yours processing finalized in a minute. This online storefront with integrated shopping solution provides a platform for selecting and purchasing your favorite products.
Shopping Carts is selecting products online for purchasing. Ecommerce is complete online store for shopping where from placing orders, tracking orders and managing account all are maintained.
The interface of online stores are designed for users and it is really easy to browse, collect, place orders and make payment but behind the curtain the scene is sophisticated, it needs round the clock maintenance for smooth functioning of your ecommerce store. The current study says that abandonment rate of shopping cart ranges from 25% to 75%. Being a SEO executive and strategist I have analyzed lots of ecommerce websites, studied its web analytics funnel visualization report, it shows that most of the visitors exit at the initial step (after Login or Registration), these visitors drop out at proceeding steps, and very small percentage reach the final checkout. I would say that funnel conversion rate is very low for these ecommerce websites / shopping carts if the funnel steps are not properly set.
I would like to share what all I have inculcated through my experience, reasons for shopping cart abandonment are:
High Shipping Cost: This can be inversely managed by increasing product cost and reducing shipping cost.
Security and Privacy Problem: Providing very transparent privacy statement and high level security for payment gateway.
Lot of essentialities and billing formalities: Non essential information should be not be made mandatory, other formalities can be filled at the after checkout.
Poor Navigation: Your shopping store should respond quickly, check that your site does not take enough loading time. Search should be simple and checkout process should not be very lengthy. Clients should be notified after payment is done and visitors who wish can easily navigate back to make more shopping without time wastage.
Remember, your ecommerce website should be simple so that it entices your customers to come again for shopping. All the shopping cart segments should be integrated and should be streamlined for its smooth running. Elements of consideration are: a ecommerce shopping cart (storefront with shopping cart), a merchant account, a database server (this stores all information about customer and all your storefront products and services), a web server (hosts your website and provides all information about your product at the web browser’s request), a catalogue, legacy system, control inventory, reporting tool and secure payment gateway. Hosting of your online storefront or ecommerce website is of first consideration. Depending on your storefront hosting you choose shopping cart software, all depends on the software and your website hosting compatibility.
There are different shopping cart software available for your storefront from which you can choose. Either you can Buy a shopping cart software product, or join a service (template service build your store).
Choosing shopping cart software is the key business requirement for online shopping business solutions.
Every ecommerce site has its shopping cart and thus needs a merchant account and payment gateway. I believe these two are basic necessities of any online store for allowing credit card payment. Let be brief the main points that you should know before proceeding to shopping carts.
Merchant Account: This allows to process credit card information. Different types of merchant accounts are available to suit your business needs. Most popular merchant accounts include wireless, telecheck, mail order or phone, e-commerce. Ecommerce is the fastest growing transaction segment.
Payment Gateway: payment gateway processes this credit card and shipping information and real time information over a secure network connection.
A company that validates your credit card information in real time is electronic gateway or payment gateway. Few most widely accepted gateways are: Paypal (Globally), Verisign (Globally), 2Checkout (Globally), WorldPay (Gloablly), Authorize.Net (US), CyberSource (US), Moneris (CA), Protx (UK), EWay (AU); some others are Chronopay, Westpac, BluePay, viaKLIX, eMatters, plugnpay, eway, goemerchant.com, skipjack, MiraPay, netaxept, DirectOne, nab, NETBANX, Network Merchants, Nochex, DeltaPAY, eProcessing Network, protx, egateway, SECPay, paymate, Gotmerchant, ANZ, beanstream, Payjunction, TECHNOCASH, MiraPay, GoDaddy.
Payment gateway main motive is to provide secure channel for credit card information transfer. Basically the credit card information is encrypted and sent to respective bank for verification, these are of highest priority, no detail is stored in between.
You may be having now in mind how to create your merchant account and have your payment gateway??? Not mandatory to have one’s own, you may use merchant service providers’ shopping cart solutions for your ecommerce websites.
Type of Gateways:
Currently there are 3 main gateway interfaces available:
COM based gateway interface: Most of the COM based gateway company requires installing the DLL software on your hosting server, and also checks for your SSL certificate.
XML Transport gateway interface: XML Transport gateway companies do not require DLL installation but checks for you SLL certification instead uses Windows server installed facilities.
Form based gateway interface: This is most common gateway as does not require any software installation, very few companies ask for SSL certification.
The main advantage is that COM and XML gateways are integrated with your store and thus no redirection to external server but the drawback also lies that since the transfer is over the internet to payment gateway makes this less reliable.
Types of Shopping Cart
Merchant Service Shopping Carts
Have you set up a new business, do not have merchant account and payment gateway??? Still looking…. There are merchant services shopping carts available for new businesses with very less queries at the initial stage. Once you start your business at the initial stage there are very less orders that increases gradually, so merchant will get you licensed . It proceeds somewhat like this: it collects and stores your client’s information and takes you to its payment gateway and merchant account.
The main problem is the fee that gateway company charges. Apart from the set up fee, transaction cost is also high making the over all gateway an expensive one. Another major drawback is that client’s credit card statements will contain merchant service not your company name. There is admin login section for all sort of updation – add, delete, edit, and manage products and other information. The HTML code generated by the cart is inserted in the respected pages, once the visitor clicks on the link (button), visitor is redirected to merchant site where visitor needs to enter card detail and personal details.
Hosted Shopping Carts
Small and medium sized businesses need not worry!! Yes, they can have hosted shopping cart for those not having enough resource to go with integrated shopping cart solutions for their ecommerce websites. The hosted shopping cart solution has an administration area for entering product information. The generated HTML information code is inserted into the product page. The website visitor is redirected to another site to fill a form with information that is CC to the website. There are certain carts that provide configurable user interface so that it looks as corporate website.
The most important point to be noted is that in hosted shopping cart solutions the website owner uses ones own payment gateway and merchant account; this provides your client with credit card detail with your company title not the title of merchant service. For increasing sale this shopping cart service becomes cheaper, this may be fixed transaction charge for higher sales compared to per transaction.
Fully Integrated Shopping Carts
Fully integrated (Trunkey - a comprehensive shopping cart solution provided by one provider) shopping cart provides completely configurable user interface and other interesting features. This needs some programming knowledge so that you can better manage and handle its modules and use the extra features provided. Provider of On the ecommerce provider server the software data and web pages are hosted. Examples: Yahoo Store, Bigstep, Merchandizer, etc. these include form based built in payment gateway.
Which shopping cart to go with?? Points to ponder – Costing: The investment you put in, hosting
Shopping cart software is the common online storefront business solution. There are myriad e-commerce solutions available with varying features, design, security so that you can customize based on your requirements and specifications. With open source software solutions, osCommerce shopping cart solution there are slew of customizable shopping cart solutions available. The open source ecommerce software products are available that are very easy to setup, configure, administration. So before going with a particular solution Payment gateway or shopping cart just be clear about your requirements. There is another storefront solution, Watson shopping cart system (developed in Switzerland) is a new shopping cart or trolley that has unique database and uses audio advertising system of the internet for online shopping.
About the Author:
Rakhi, is a SEO executive, SEO copywriter, SEO strategist at Open source web design Development Company in India that offers shopping cart solutions, PHP application development, ecommerce shopping cart solution, B2B ecommerce website solutions, shopping cart solution, portal development, open source shopping cart web development.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ecommerce-articles/shopping-carts-solutions-367354.html
Related posts
Filed under Shopping Cart by admin
February 23, 2008
Choose Right Ecommerce Shopping Cart
When the business starts conducting transactions online, customer should be able to browse around-similar to how they browse for his/her product in a grocery store. He/ she might able to place, remove, modify (change there brand) there product items from there grocery basket according to their changing state of mind. In online shopping customer is allowed to have same level of comfort & flexibility with an ecommerce shopping cart.
The grocery shopping basket, an ecommerce shopping cart is capable of far more functionality. This article will provide you some quick tips that you should consider while purchasing a shopping cart for your online business.
Calculate your budget: first step while purchasing a shopping cart is figuring out how much money your business can afford to pay for a shopping cart because ecommerce shopping carts come in many taste and colors. Some shopping carts are extremely vigorous and offer lots & lots of functionality which you may never use. Other shopping carts come with no pomp & show, with just enough flexibility to start selling your products online. Your shopping lies somewhere in between them. Therefore your budget sets the number of flavor & colors you will be adding in your shopping cart.
Identify Your Needs: It is very difficult to predict how your business will react to transactions online in coming years, analyzing your current and future short-term needs is critical to finding the right shopping cart . If your business needs a simple low-cost shopping cart, many services exist that offer to provide you a hosted option for as little as $20-$25 a month. However, if you need a solution that is more complex than those offered by such services, you may need to purchase a shopping cart that is more vigorous (and costly).
Identify your options: Your business can grow rapidly by using lot of extra functionality which is available with ecommerce shopping carts. Unless you plan to simply sell a few products online, you should consider using these options to grow your business.<br />
Example:
• Creation of customized affiliate program through your shopping cart.
• Integration of QuickBooks accounting software.
• Other features include customized taxing options for adding tax rates for purchases made from various countries, the ability to send out newsletters, and support for different currencies.
Understand the options that are available to you and try to anticipate how your business can take advantage of them. <br />
Consider Your Gateway to Sales: Shopping carts use an online gateway to charge transactions to credit cards in real-time using a business’ merchant account. The problem is that not all shopping carts support all merchant accounts. So, you may find yourself integrating a shopping cart into your online business that refuses to process transactions using your merchant account. To avoid this, research which carts support which credit card order processing companies. An ecommerce shopping cart can allow your business to operate and grow smoothly online.
<br />
Considering these simple tips, you can make a knowledgeable decision and purchase the best ecommerce shopping cart for your business.
Steven is webmaster to Arete Consultants offers Offshore Product</a>, <a href=” http://www.aretecon.com/shopping-cart-solution.html “> Shopping Cart solution, Shopping Cart Online Ordering System, Intelligence Consulting, Business Intelligence Solutions, Sql Injection
This article is free for republishing
Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_705255_15.html
Related posts
Filed under Shopping Cart by admin
February 17, 2008
Ecommerce Application
Author: Hidden Brains
Mechanisms in e-commerce communication
Internet is the best mode of interaction between businessmen and customers in present times. Buying & selling of products through the mode of websites is popular due to various advance technology oriented concepts. Online business is growing rapidly through various software that help customers to ease the work of buying & selling activities. There are many mechanisms are working in the field of online business like:
- Shopping cart software
- Online e-telephony
“Shopping cart software” is the mode of online presentation of products for sale. Shopping cart software provides visualization of products to choose, online payment facility, joint selection of products in form of list, etc. Shopping cart software is the easiest way of doing shopping online by selecting all the goods in the cart and pay once for all selected items. There are many features provided by this software like:
- Credit card acceptability
- Easy navigation system for the customers
- Customer account facility
- Order management facility
- Web based administration facility
- Flexible shipping & tax options
- Built-in site optimization tools
- Inventory management facility
Online telephony is one of the best ways to communicate regarding business. It is the technology which is used to convert the voice signals into data packets then these packets are transported to data network which is running an Internet Protocol (IP). Simply it is the technology that let the customer to call by phone on the same line which they are using for internet connection. It helps in saving the cost of making calls on basic telephone line for business communication. This is online communication technology popularly known in the web world as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
Benefits of Online E-telephony
- User is able to differentiate the calls as business calls, personal calls, or customer service calls even they are on same line.
- User can direct the calls to respective departments and take automated orders.
- User can screen the callers without any information to caller.
- User can get forwarded calls from all over the world.
- No line busy problems.
- Voice mails can be received on computer.
There are many more facilities can avail by using e-telephony. That is how communication on the internet is providing lots of facilities to ease the business complexities and raise profits by reducing costs to business.
About the Author:
Hidden Brains has been in the Industry since 2003 and provided solution using languages like PHP/MySQL & ASP.Net Application Framework. For more details please refer this URL www.hiddenbrains.com
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ecommerce-articles/ecommerce-application-440495.html
Related posts
Filed under Ecommerce And SEO News and Tips by admin
February 13, 2008
How to Create and Promote Your Own Affiliate Program
Author: Mitch Van Dusen
Depending on your service or product, this is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal: get other people to market your product. They promote your product or service in exchange for a commission that you decide upon.
There are many different ways to set up an affiliate program. You can give a fixed commission rate across the board. However, I recommend giving a good commission rate for the new affiliate, and giving a raise to those affiliates who drive a lot of sales. Most affiliate programs offer their affiliates a 2-tier system whereby an affiliate ears extra commissions if they refer other affiliates to your program.
First you have to decide how you are going to host your affiliate program. You can either promote your affiliate program through an affiliate network, or you can host your affiliate program on your website with your own software.
The advantage to using an affiliate network is that your affiliate program will be advertised in their databases. Marketers searching for businesses to associate with will search through these databases and choose products that they want to affiliate with. However, most of these databases are quite large, and the most popular affiliate programs with the highest conversions will be advertised the most.
This means that if you are just starting out, your program will probably only be found by people who are searching for a niche product or service to market. In order to get around this you have to market your affiliate program like you would market your product or service. Here is a list of possible affiliate network that can host your affiliate program:
1. www.clickbank.com (digital products only)
2. www.cj.com
3. www.reporting.net
4. www.linkshare.com
5. www.performics.com
6. www.websponsors.com
7. www.shareasale.com
8. www.clickxchange.com
9. www.clixgalure.com
10. www.fineclicks.com
11. www.fastclick.com
12. www.affiliatefuel.com
13. www.darkblue.com
If you are interested in hosting your own affiliate program, you need to do some research and decide what kind of affiliate manager solution fits your business or shopping cart system. You can do a side-by-side comparison of different programs at http://www.affiliate-software-review.com.
Promoting your Affiliate Program
As previously stated, you have to market your affiliate program just like you would market your product or service. Keep in mind that unless you find the “super affiliates” who are already set up to drive massive sales to your website, the overwhelming majority of the affiliates that sign up will never make any sales. This is normal so don’t be surprised.
Start by finding complimentary websites that sell products or services that are not competitive with what you offer, but are closely related. For example, if you sell plant seeds, you would want to approach a site that sells books on how to grow a garden.
You should approach as many websites as you can, but it’s wise to focus on the websites with the largest amounts of traffic. You can do this research by using Alexa (www.alexa.com).
When you enter a website address, Alexa will tell you their traffic ranking (the lower the better), how their traffic has fluctuated over a period of time, how many websites link to them, and what websites their visitors also go to. It also provides contact information, including an email address.
When it comes to these email addresses, I’ve found that they are not always accurate. Sometimes they are outdated, and sometimes they are email addresses for the website’s hosting company. To be safe, you should send an email to that email address along with any email address you can find on the website.
Another great option is to approach content sites. Websites that mostly post free content usually make their money through affiliate programs and advertising. If you have a good product or service, these could be your best champions.
However, the best affiliates are ezine publishers. If you can find an ezine publisher with a large subscriber base that will promote your product or service, you will find a huge amount of new sales coming in. The reason is that these publishers have an ongoing relationship with their subscribers.
There is usually a stronger loyalty-factor with ezines rather than content sites alone. And often these ezine publishers will also have their own content sites, so they can promote your product or service in both platforms.
It is a good idea to give your affiliates the right marketing tools. Most likely your best affiliates will have their own approaches, however everyone will appreciate getting help from you, especially since you know your product or service better than anyone else.
These marketing tools can include sales letters, articles, ebooks, special reports, solo advertisements for ezines, short advertisements for ezines and search engines, banners and graphics, and any marketing ideas you might think are key to your affiliate’s success.
Party Poker, the online poker site, gives their affiliates a poker dictionary to put on their website. This is a brilliant idea, because they are giving their affiliates quality content for their website, which their visitors will appreciate. And since their name is branded on the dictionary, the visitors will associate the quality content with Party Poker. If you can think of anything like this, you will find that marketers will be more likely to join your affiliate program.
About the Author:
Discover over 200 Internet marketing secrets from over 50 of the Internet’s most successful marketers: www.magarigroup.com. Just one of these secrets can mean thousands of dollars for your business.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/how-to-create-and-promote-your-own-affiliate-program-32752.html
Related posts
Filed under Affiliate Programs by admin
February 10, 2008
How To Minimise Shopping Cart Abandonment.
Shopping Cart abandonment is the process of a customer adding things to their shopping cart with intent to purchase then never finalising the purchase and if you’re running an eCommerce store it’s likely to be costing you lost revenue. Some online store see figures up to 68% abandonment, over three quarters of their customer who place products in their cart do not finalise pay. This article is going to look at how you can minimise the impact of shopping cart abandonment on your sales.
Like all problems, In order to tackle the problem we firstly need to know what causes it. There are a multitude of reason why people abandon their carts, speaking to online customer and store owners we have pin pointed what we think at the top ten reason people doing finalise a purchase and we’re going to give you some guidance on how to avoid each one.
<br />1. Cost of Shipping too high and not shown until checkout: Sticker Shock does not just happen on products, it’s as much a problem with the shipping costs on your store. Especially if you sell low priced items. The best way to limit this is to make sure your customer know how much the delivery is going to cost them as soon as possible. Make sure you shopping cart page has a good estimate of the final shipping cost, and if possible place estimated shipping cost on your product pages.
2. Changed mind and discarded cart contents: If your customer genuinely changes their mind and decides not to purchase there is not much you can do about that. But you can try and minimise the chances of them becoming distracted. Removing all unnecessary links from the checkout process stops customer from clicking away from the checkout process. This can include removing site navigation during the process. <br />
3. Comparison shopping or browsing: The popularity of shopping comparison sites is increasing all the time and there are really only two ways you can deal with this. The first is to undercut all your competitors and make sure you come up on the comparison sites as being the cheapest. Unfortunately this isn’t always possible and the only other solutions is honesty, explaining why your products are at a higher price help, also more and more sites are beginning to include price comparisons with their competitors on their own site, if you show your customer you have nothing to hide then they're more likely to trust you and purchase from you.<br /><br />4. Total cost of items is too high: Make sure that your customers are aware at all time of the value of the products in their shopping cart whilst they browse. Placing a simple running total at the top right of your store will make sure the customer is aware of the prices adding up and won’t get sticker shock when they click on the ‘what’s in my cart’ button.
5. Saving items for later purchase: Make sure your customer can do this easily, more current shopping cart software provides you with a facility to allow customers to save their carts and come back and checkout at a later date.<br /> <br />6. Checkout process is too long: Make sure your checkout process is as short as possible, and don’t ask for information from your customer that they don’t need. Don’t make then enter their postal address multiple times for shipping and billing if they’re the same. Also as stated above make sure there are no distraction in the checkout process.
7. Out of stock products at checkout time: Like shipping costs make sure you customers are aware as soon as possible that your products are in or out of stock as soon as possible. The best place to show this is in your product listings and on the product pages themselves.
8. Poor site navigation and long download times: There is nothing more infuriating than a slow loading site, make sure you work with your host to provide your customer with the fastest loading page possible, make sure you shopping cart software code is optimised and delivers pages fast.<br />
9. Lack of sufficient product or contact information: Information = Reassurance, the more information your site contains about your company and your product the more reassurance it provides to the customer that they’re going to get the products they want, and the products they ordered. Make sure that your product descriptions contain as much information as possible and they you include pages about your company including contact information. It’s always good to have a phone number, most online shoppers will never call you, but a large number will be reassured that you are reachable on the phone if something goes wrong.
10. Site unclear on delivery times: Just like the above point, make sure you have all the information about your delivery times visible and easily accessible at all times, in an age when customer can get all the information they need at the clicking of their fingers they increasingly want their real world products just as fast.
This article is free for republishing
Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_238010_81.html </p>
Related posts
Filed under Shopping Cart by admin
February 9, 2008
eCommerce Business Solutions Do Your Research First
Every where you look or go on the net you read how anyone can open an ecommerce business, online business and get rich easilly and do it overnight. Beware of these snake oil salesmen all they will do is take your money and leave in the lurch!
Now do not let the above scare you off from the dream of starting your own online business, because anyone with a home computer can open and run a successful online business, for VERY little money. There are lots of excellent ways for someone with little or no experience to open and run an Internet Store or specialty shop from home. Ther is plenty of low cost hosting deals, Internet Malls, etc. all exist for people who do their homework.
The hard part is finding products to sell without getting ripped off by the thousands of “middlemen” out there who are just waiting for you to come along and fall into their traps, scams and ripoffs. They have supper sales letters and are good at what they do, and they’ll rip you off if they can for every cent you have, then just leave you wondering what happened. The key to avoiding these scams and traps is having the right information available to you.
More and more people online are catching that desire and dreams of working at home. Dreams of being able to quit that day job, early retirement, or just being able to supplement the regular income. Everyone would love to run their own ecommerce business and sell on the Internet. All economic indicators, independent reports and government statistics points to the fact that ECommerce and online business ventures are getting bigger and bigger each and every year. Now this is a very good thing for you and me. The growth in ECommerce is in part the result of small, homebased Internet businesses carving out their own niche and their own chunk of the multi billion dollar ECommerce business pie. Ecommerce is riding a huge wave that won’t cease. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Right now there iS money to be made, and plenty of it to go around.
The thing is how to get started, even the seasoned computer user knows little or nothing about hosting, merchant account, shopping carts or even about building your website for an ecommerce business. Starting your own ecommerce business is the most rewarding thing you can do just do your due dilligence and watch out for the scams and crooks that are out there. There are good and honest people out there willing to help you in this adventure and you can succeed.
If you want to start your Home based Internet Business for very little cash outlay, you need Wholesale Suppliers who Drop Ship for you. Suppliers that drop ship send all the products you sell directly from their warehouse to your customers, with your business name on all the items sold. All you do is take the order from your customers and pass it to the distributor. You keep the difference between the wholesale price the distributor charges you, and the retail price you sell to your customer for.
The real wholesalers and dropshippers you can trust can be hard to find. They don�t market themselves as Internet Wholesale Supplier. They are established wholesale companies who have been supplying big chains like Sears and Kmart for a very long time. They Do Not charge you a membership fee to sell theior products, do not be taken in by these scams.
When looking for a legitimate drop shipper, here are a couple of things to watch out for:
1)Do Not trust any Company that tells you they will set up your whole site with products, these people will not make you successful. They get richer from the excessive set-up and hosting fees.
There are lots of legit sites out there that will setup your ecommerce store for you! So don’t get the above mixed up with real ecommerce hosting.
2)Do Not get caught up with what I call the “middlemen” they ask for a membership or a setup fee. Real wholesalers and dropshippers do not ask for these things!
3)Last but not least you can believe this old saying “If it sounds to Good It Is!”
Just Know you can and will succeed in ecommerce if you just take some time to look for the right people and business to be associated with!
Jack Phillips is the owner of LivelyNetSolutions.com and an author, for all your eCommerce Business Solutions and tips. Find Honest real Wholesalers, Dropshippers and do not get yourself ripped off starting your online business.
Related posts
Filed under Ecommerce And SEO News and Tips by admin