Tips for Selling Online ECommerce Articles | March 6 Harold Landry Hat , 2009 One of the most important things to do is have all of your products categorized in a way that is easy to understand. ?Read more for tips on selling online.
Once you have a website created you are ready to optimize it for shoppers. One of the most important things to do is have all of your products categorized in a way that is easy to understand. Simple category names are important, like electronics, home goods, furniture, and the categories should be easy to find. Usually Kevin Byard Hat , listed on the side bar of the site to the left works best. The side bar should be visible on every page of the site so that customers can easily navigate to a new category should they decide to do so. An integrated search engine within the site is important, too, if you are selling more than two dozen or so products. You want customers to find what they are looking for quickly and easily because the faster they find the product they want the more likely they are to buy it.
Keep in mind that designing your?ecommerce site?like the big sites isn?t going to get your site lost in the shuffle. Instead, it?s going to give customers a feeling of safety and security because your site is well designed and looks like the other trustworthy sites. You don?t want to stand out, necessarily Derrick Henry Hat , in your site design. Instead, you want it to feel good to customers, comfortable, familiar even, so they are willing to buy from you.
Remember Jonnu Smith Hat , too, that despite how great your site looks if you make it difficult for customers to complete their purchase they will look for another website. Most of your shoppers will want to pay with a credit card, which means you must accept credit cards. MasterCard and Visa are the most common, but you will have shoppers who want to use American Express, Discover Corey Davis Hat , and even Diner?s Club. You will need top process cards in real time to keep customers happy. To do this you will need a merchant account. Some websites use PayPal as it is an easy option although others choose to have a dedicated merchant account. It really depends on your website and what makes the most business sense. When you accept credit cards you will sell significantly more products and services than otherwise so in almost all cases it is highly recommended.
Another important tip is to have excellent content on your site. What this means is the content on your site is well written, there are no grammatical mistakes, and it is obviously written by a native speaker. Nothing is a bigger turn off to online shoppers than websites that look like they were written by a five year old kid or else someone who doesn?t even speak the language. This will turn customers away, which is the last thing you want to do.
Another step to keep in mind is to start out small. Starting small and growing gradually will allow for more success than starting out offering everything under the sun like some of the bigger sites. If you are new you can?t possibly accommodate all those productsservices, so start slowly and you will be able to grow at your own speed.
Google Has An Achiles Heal - Will Their Competitors Notice? Internet Articles | June 7 Rashaan Evans Hat , 2005
Even though Google Revenues continue to soar, the hidden problem that may stifle growth and may even allow Yahoo or MSN to overtake the paid search market in the future lies in two critical phrases: Customer Support, and Customer Training
Approximately 40% of the small businesses we have surveyed have tried Adwords in the past and failed, and some of them have tried multiple times. In some markets the percentage is closer to 60%. Why? because the program was designed by Google engineers, and heavily favors companies with the type of resources that most small businesses do not have. Unlike MSN and Yahoo who have programs that are much simpler in terms of use for small businesspeople Delanie Walker Hat , Google favors a technology driven solution that relies less on customer support, and expects users of their system to become more sophisticated.
The problem with this is that it is working quite well for professional internet marketers and search engine marketing companies employed by big corporations, but many small business people who are not web-savvy are by and large left out of the mix. This is unfortunate because this is a huge segment of potential income that is left "up for grabs" and may be scooped up by MSN and Yahoo who are developing simpler, easier systems with better customer support.
All the major search engines recognize this problem, and getting those "offline" advertisers online is a high priority for all of them Marcus Mariota Hat , but so far there has not been great success. It is a knowledge and training gap, and neither Yahoo, MSN, or Google has so far been able to address it adequately.
Google's recent acquisition of urchin, a web analytics program illustrates the problem Google is trying to solve. Big Companies getting involved in paid search will still continue to drive big revenues Amani Hooker Hat , but the new internet is about verticals and niches, and Google simply isn't making the grade in terms of training their customers well enough.