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By Kevin Fleming | April 19, 2008
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We have recently been approached by two different companies asking us to fix the back-end of their E-Commerce solutions. Both of these online stores have beautiful front-end designs. However when you take a look at the back-end of these sites or “under the hood” you’ll notice that although it looks like they are driving a 2008 Ferrari, the car really has the engine of a 1975 Volkswagen. Obviously this car isn’t going to win a race, and it might not even make it around the track.
I want to compare the elements of these E-Commerce sites to that of a car because trying to run a successful E-Commerce business can be a lot like trying to win an auto race. You need to have a car that runs seamlessly with a minimal amount of time spent in the pit stop. You don’t want to have to pull in to the pit stop to have your tires changed every two laps. When you do need a pit stop you want to have a pit crew that can get you back out on the track fast.
In the case of an E-Commerce store you can’t have your employees bogged down with problems every day just to keep your store up and running. You need to have a strong, reliable back-end that delivers the same experience to both your employees on the back-end and the customers on the front-end every day of the week.
The Le Mans is a 24 hour race world class auto race that takes an amazing amount of persistence and endurance to win. Not only do you need a reliable car, but you need drivers with enough persistence to last 24 hours. To have an E-Commerce store capable of winning the Le Mans you need to establish a persistent and on-going search engine optimization strategy. This means that you need to be constantly analyzing visitor trends and analytics and making optimizations to your site based on this data. If you are persistent, over time you can achieve tremendous growth by using search engine optimization techniques.
With all of that said, to have a successful E-Commerce store you need to create a back-end and front-end that embrace both form and function and allowing these two elements to co-exist. Legendary cars like the Ford GT-40 (a car that won the Le Mans, pictured above.) aren’t by any means ugly. They were masterfully crafted so that form and function worked together. I think that architect and engineer Frank Lloyd Wright said it best “Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”
Filed under: Design, Information |
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By Kevin Fleming | March 3, 2008
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There are thousands of E-Commerce sites out there, however many sites are in desperate need of a redesign. To provide some inspiration, I thought it would be interesting to compile a list of some of the best E-Commerce store designs around. While compiling this list I found that there are quite a few smaller companies out there that have VERY well designed sites. This shows that you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to have a well designed E-commerce solution. Hopefully this list will inspire people who may be looking to jazz up their sites design a bit.
If you know of any well designed online stores that I missed be sure to leave a comment and I will try to include them in round 2.
Filed under: Design |
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By Kevin Fleming | February 29, 2008
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Lets face it, when you have an online business you’re constantly crunching numbers. Since I’m not a mathematician I’m always looking for ways to make my number crunching a little bit less time consuming. Any Ebay Seller will tell you that shipping calculators and Paypal fee calculators are a must if you do any sort of volume.
I have compiled a list of 20 great calculators (most of which I use regularly) that can save you time and hopefully a little bit of sanity.
Filed under: Guides |
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By Kevin Fleming | February 27, 2008
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If you have an online store, you probably accept Paypal and have a Paypal Merchant Account set up. Although you may use your Merchant Account daily there are a lot of great features that can be easily overlooked. Below I have compiled a list of 5 great services that can be used with your Paypal Merchant Account. You can find all of these services under the “Merchant Services” tab on the Paypal website.
1. Gift Certificates
I have found that a lot of online stores completely overlook gift certificates. Gift certificates can be a huge seller during the holidays, and Paypal offers an easy way for any online merchant to implement them into their existing website almost instantly. Through your Paypal merchant account you can even generate the gift certificate buttons as seen below.
Customers can then claim their gift certificates on your site when they go to checkout with Paypal.
2. Service Subscriptions
One of the best services Payal offers is a reoccurring billing feature called Service Subscriptions. This allows you to sell a service that may cost x amount of dollars each month, such as a membership to a community or club. This is probably the easiest way to implement reoccurring billing on your website and works great if you have a paid section of your forum or community. In fact Vbulliton has Paypal Subscriptions built in, so if you have a Paypal Merchant Account you can instantly set up paid areas of your community.
3. Virtual Terminal
The Paypal Virtual Terminal (available in the U.S. only) allows you to accept credit card orders over the phone, by fax, or by email. To process these orders you then enter the credit card number into the virtual terminal (on the paypal website) and Paypal then processes the transaction. The whole process is fairly straight forward and has a low per-transaction fee.
4. Multi User Access
If you have employees that deal with your billing and shipping Multi User Access allows you to grant them access to your Paypal account, but limit their ability to use certain features. These features include things like sending money, requesting money, giving refunds, and withdrawing funds just to name a few. This way your employees can handle the billing, and your company will remain protected.
5. API for Developers
If you are looking to integrate Paypal into your existing E-commerce system Paypal offers various API’s that allow developers to integrate Paypal’s functionality rather painlessly. Paypal seems to be embracing mobile commerce and even offers an API specifically for mobile websites called Mobile Checkout API. You can also get answers to any of your development questions at the Paypal Developer Center.
Filed under: Guides |
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By Kevin Fleming | February 21, 2008
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We are all looking to improve the leads and sales that our websites generate for us. One of my jobs here at FOS is to come up with new ways for our clients to attract customers and entice them to buy online. I thought some of these ideas would make an interesting blog post so below I present 7 ways that can turn your website in to a Lean, Mean, Lead Generating Machine.
1. Offer a Newsletter
This is one of the best things you can do for your website. If you don’t have a newsletter yet, get one now! Having a newsletter allows you to easily market to your existing customer base. A newsletter really provides a win for everyone because it allows visitors who are interested in your products or services to stay informed, and then allows you to continue to market to them.
2. Add a Blog or News Feed
Having a blog or news feed is a great way to increase your leads. In essence it works similar to a newsletter, allowing your visitors to subscribe and receive periodic updates about new products and services. Now that I’m thinking about it I really love anything that allows you to continue to market to people long after they’ve left your website.
3. Have “Website Only” Coupons or Deals
Offering customers “website only” coupons is a great way to give your website or e-commerce store a jump start in leads or sales. When people find out they can get a better deal on the website, they will flock there and will be enticed to buy. Having daily, weekly or even monthly deals only available on the website will definitely help attract more eyeballs.
4. Provide a Personalized Visitor Experience
You may have seen online dating ads in the past that said something alone the lines of “Find singles in (fill in your city)”. This is an example of an advertiser trying to attract your attention using an ad thats personalized to your location. Using something similar to this on your website such as “Great Deals for Philadelphia PA Customers” can increase your leads and sales. Implementing something like this on your website is fairly easy to do for a technical person.
5. Use Landing Pages
If you’re bringing traffic in to your website through paid advertising, using landing pages can drastically increase the number of leads and sales your website generates. A landing page is a page made specifically for selling products and services and usually includes sales copy or a sales letter. By sending your paid advertising directly to landing pages you may see a huge increase in your conversion rate.
6. Make Your Site Feel Human
No, I’m not talking about making your website come alive like in one of those crazy horror movies. When people visit a website they like to see the person or team of people behind it. Include pictures of yourself or your company to give visitors the impression that they are dealing with another human being. This can increase conversions by providing visitors with a sense of security.
7. Add Product Ratings or Testimonials
Although user testimonials can sometimes seem gimmicky, in most cases they actually do work. I’ve found it’s best to have a product rating or review system built in to your website or store. Having a system like this allows customers to easily and automatically add ratings and reviews to individual products or services. This saves you time because it eliminates the task of gathering these reviews and testimonials manually.
Filed under: Guides |
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