| |
By Donna Gunter
Copyright 2006 Donna Gunter
I've been doing business online since 1999. In that time, I've looked at several different options for ways to sell things online, and finally, in 2003, decided that I had wasted too much time in doing things the old-fashioned way (having customers call me with credit card numbers or mailing me a check), and that I was long overdue to finally use an online shopping cart as a way to sell products and services online.
But, there seemed to be so many options out there. Where should I start?
The first thing I had to do was find a merchant card provider. Since I do little face-to-face business, I chose a provider who deals almost exclusively with professional coaches, consultants, and speakers, Practice Pay Solutions., http://www.profcs.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=127926 I generally advocate that you need to be processing at least $1000/month in credit card charges to make a merchant account financially viable for you, as you will be charged a setup fee, a percentage per transaction fee, as well as a monthly statement fee. Merchant Warehouse, www.merchantwarehouse.com, is another option for your merchant account.
Practice Pay Solutions also provides a virtual terminal to permit you to go in and manually enter transactions via an online interface, as well as a secure payment gateway, which allows your customer's credit card data to be secure as they place orders. The other aspect I love about Practice Pay Solutions is that fact that I can do a batch upload of transactions. For example, I have a number of clients who pay their fees monthly, outside of the shopping cart system. All I have to do is maintain their information in an Excel spreadsheet, and update it on a monthly basis (changing the invoice description or amount, as applicable, for example), save it as a tab delimited file and upload all of my charges at once. This is a wonderful time-saving feature over manually inputting 10-15 charges each month.
After securing my merchant account, the hunt began for a suitable shopping cart system. Several friends tried to interest me in some open-source shopping carts, like OS Commerce, www.oscommerce.com or ZenCart, www.zencart.com, but I found the learning curve too steep for these carts. I like to be able to go in and tinker with my products and not have to call a programmer every time I make a change. Additionally, these carts lacked some features that I had seen in other shopping carts. Ultimately, I decided to go with Kickstart Shopping Cart, http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?pr=31&id=59401
Here are the money-making features you'll want in a shopping cart:
1. Calculate shipping and tax. Make sure you have several options for calculating basic shipping, including overnight shipping.
2. Sell hard or electronic goods. If you sell physical items that must be sent to a consumer as well as electronic items (audio files, ebooks), your shopping cart should be able to handle both types of products in the same transaction. In addition, when your cart is delivering an electronic item, it should generate a webpage for the downloadable file that disappears within a certain time-frame so that the purchaser doesn't provide the download link to 100 of his closest friends.
3. Special offer management. A full-fledged shopping cart should be able to offer discounts for multiple purchases, a "free when you buy 3" type of promotion, or other similar special offers.
4. Receipt and confirmation emails. An email confirmation of purchase to the customer as well as a receipt for you as the business owner to place in packages that have to be shipped are a great convenience for both you and your customer.
5. Web-based administration page. An online interface should be provided so that you can log in and add products, change prices, generate special offers, etc. from anywhere in the world.
6. Affiliate program compatible. Instead of buying a separate piece of software to create an affiliate program to help you sell your goods and services, your shopping cart system should have one that is integrated and permit you to manage it from your web-based administration page.
7. Upsell modules. Good shopping carts will have the ability to suggest related products to the shopper based on what they have already purchased, or what's already in their checkout cart.
8. Coupons and discounts. The ability to offer coupons and discounts can mean a tremendous boost in your sales. A good shopping card will enable you to offer percentage and fixed discounts when selling your products.
9. Multiple website capability. Shopping cart systems that can handle products from a variety of websites (various one-page sales websites you might have, for example) will save you tons of money and aggravation.
10. Integrated autoresponders. Sequential autoresponders can be your best online sales tool. Autoresponder systems can send follow-up messages to your customers automatically to ensure they're happy with their purchase and to tell them about special offers and promotions you have for them. Or, you can use the system for those who don't buy your product and offer them an e-course, for example, that will give them a small taste of the product you're selling.
To integrate all of the features that I mention above using stand-alone applications could run into many thousand dollars. I like the one-stop shopping concept, and want my software to be a workhorse and fulfill as many functions as it can. Let the features of your full-fledge shopping cart regularly earn you money in your online business!
About
the author
Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed professionals make more profit in less time online. To sign up for more FREE tips like these and claim your FREE ebook, TurboCharge Your Productivity: 50 + Tools To Help You Automate Your Business and Make More Profit in Less Time Online!, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizCoachingCompany.com .
About
Top Traffic Wholesaler
website
On the Internet, targeted traffic is king. Without enough targeted traffic to your website(s) nothing ever happens. Here, Top Traffic Wholesaler has compiled a listing of excellent services to bring you the targeted traffic you or your company needs to survive in the highly competitive environment of the web.
Purchase website traffic and get targeted visitors sent to your web site starting today!
Other Useful Articles
| |
Some may disagree with me on the importance of Exactseek. After all, Google,
Yahoo, and MSN are the top three sites (not in that order), and then we jump to
Exactseek, which is ranked in the top 2000.
However, in the search engine game, Exactseek is a major player with some pretty
cool tools and some great stuff to help you
market your business online.
Whether you choose the free or paid version, you'll get great results, and it's
easy to submit your site.
Exactseek is also an excellent way to help you get into the top three because of
their spiders. This site gets spidered, and it also gets a lot of traffic. These
are two of the reasons for its high rankings....
Read
this article
E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.
...
Read
this article
While the web designer has an important role to play, the success of a website is not up to the web designer, but up to the person in charge of the business, or the marketing of the business. It's crucial for the success of a website that the website owner realises this.
Search engines are very important. But there are other ways in which you must promote your site. It is not enough to create a site and hope that your prospective clients will find it: websites must be actively promoted.
How much traffic your site gets, through whatever promotion technique you use, will improve your search engine ranking. A higher search engine ranking will, in turn, bring you more traffic.
Note that it can take months for a new site to get into Google...
Read
this article
|
TopTrafficWholeSaler.com
Greatest Place To Choose - Lowest Price To Get
Contact
us
Online Web Site Advertising
Website Targeted Traffic Service
Search
Engine Submission Service
|
