1,001 Deals and Steals: A Guide To Online Classifi

1,001 Deals and Steals: A Guide To Online Classifieds

by: Donald Lee

Some naysayers way back in the 1990s predicted that online shopping wouldn’t last. Sure, and they said television was a passing fad, too! As we all know, just the opposite has occurred. There’s a television in every household, and more than likely, the homeowner bought their television online—along with his books, music CDs, clothes, and maybe even his home.

Internet shopping is bigger than ever. You can find anything and everything for sale online. Many times, you can find it cheaper online than anywhere else. Internet shopping offers so much more than a discounted price tag, though.

Imagine a shopping mall where there are no lines, where there are no jammed parking garages, and no pushy sales clerks. This is no land of make believe. It is the Internet, where you can discover unprecedented selection, convenience, and opportunities. Online shopping gives you the luxury of browsing hundreds of stores from your living room, while saving on time and frustration. It provides you the chance to compare prices to your heart’s delight on a near limitless selection of brands and models.

For even more benefits, try your hand at classifieds and auction Web sites. These sites are like yard sales and flea markets rolled into one. Unlike retail shopping sites, they offer:

Access to super secondary markets. Take your pick of secondhand or brandnew wholesale goods at steeply discounted prices. The vendors at classifieds sites can get away with it because they aren’t paying high rent for a storefront or a warehouse. And in many cases, you’re not paying taxes.

Tools to locate unique and rare collectibles. Imagine a classifieds site to be like a sunken pirate boat, laden with cultural artifacts, hardtofind heirlooms, and priceless antiques. The Internet is your deepsea vessel, sonar, and oxygen tank all in one.

Reach beyond your neighborhood. Search through the inventory of a vendor from your home town, or if you don’t find what you’re looking for there, try that fellow in California, Texas or Canada for that matter.

Close relationships with vendors. You deal with real people—not big, impersonal corporations—when you buy on classifieds sites. They can provide more details about the product, which you can then use to bargain for a reasonable price.

Despite this bounty of benefits, you might still be hesitant to dive into Internet shopping. Don’t be embarrassed. You have good reason to take your time and weigh your choices. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Internet fraud tops the list of the thousands of fraud cases that happen every year. In some ways, WWW could stand for the Wild West Web, in that anything goes. Vendors can be villains in disguise, and there aren’t any online Wyatt Earps to protect you from these bad guys. You’re on your own.

But give yourself some credit. You have the common sense it takes to survive the WWW. It is the same commonsense that helps you make the most of your money on your standard shopping trips. Become familiar and comfortable with an online vendor before jumping into a purchase. Ask questions and do a bit of research.

After doing your research, you’ll feel more confident in searching for your online booty. To refine your findings and whittle your list to only the exceptional sites, look for these additional qualities:

A focus on local shopping, so you can feel more confident buying from neighbors.

Free education and advice on safe purchasing.

Nocost and easy browsing through available merchandise.

Search tools that let you prioritize items by category, location, and distance.

A straightforward pricing system that avoids the haggling and risk of auction bidding.

Quick price comparisons among different vendors.

Unbelievably, a few trustworthy, practical, and exciting Web sites exist that have all of these features. To find these websites, simply browse through Yahoo’s directory under the classifieds category. The best of the online classified sites offer these services free to buyers such as you. Some of these sites can link you at no charge to your neighbor selling the antique lamp that you’ve been hunting for or that retiree looking to unload an incredible piece of real estate—or the cowboy looking to sell his bigscreen television.

Copyright 2004 Donald Lee

About The Author

Donald Lee is a public relations manager at BSCCOM Inc. BSCCOM Inc. provides free online advertisement services for Canadian and U.S. regions. For more information please visit: http://www.buysellcommunity.com.

This article was posted on November 25, 2004

by Donald Lee

Five Step To A Successful Online Shopping Business

Five Step To A Successful Online Shopping Business

by: Linda Quinones

Before you set out to explore the online shopping market you should do some planning, take a piece of paper and pen and write down the steps that will help to bring in traffic to your website.

And once they have visited you must have something to entice them to remain and do some shopping, in our website: www.shopshopshop.org. We try to mix our affiliate, we have some highly recognizable name and some not so well known.

One frequent complain we get is the cost of shipping, people are willing to pay for convenience but they do not want to pay for shipping, so we use the free shipping banners when available.

And the great savings the affiliates are offering, this is a lure to catch their attention, after all when people are saving money and are provided with theconvenience of shopping from the comfort of their home they are happy.

Step (1). Mix your affiliates you want some well known names, but remember the well known retailer pay the lowest commissions and are the most demanding.

Don’t settle for the first affiliates that accepts you, you may start with a few, but if you build your site right some of the affiliates that turn you down will revisit your site and approve you.

Make sure to keep good records, and stay on top of the affiliate emails to be able to use the incentives they provide to induce people into buying the products your affiliates are offering.

Develop a program where shoppers will provide their email address so that you can inform them of future promotions and savings available to them.

(2). Links are a way to have search engines give your site a high ranking, reciprocal link exchange are a good way to get started , many businesses are in the same position you are in and are looking to link to somebody.

The more links you have leading to your site the better the search engine will rank you. You may choose to pay for links and here again make sure they are giving you good companies to link with.

If you a have a family oriented business you don’t want to be link to an adult site. You want sites that related your business or are complimentary.

A example would be if you have a site that sells only clothing you would like to link with a site that sells jewelry or footwear.

(3). Keywords: key words play a crucial role in your internet business, people must be able to find you. Keywords are what people search for on search engines.

People who have never heard of your company are not going to look for youby name but they go on the search engine and type in keywords to be let to a site that matches the keywords provided.

If the keywords type in relate to the keywords on your site then you will getcustomer to come and visit your site, and hopefully buy something.

You will want to have as many combination of keywords as possible in order to drive web traffic to your site, Make sure you have the most popular search terms and use as many as possible.

Keywords is the key to traffic and traffic the key to sales, when your web page comes up near the top ten in response to a searches on searche engines , your traffic will increase and so will your sales.

(4). Contacts: everybody knows somebody so start using the those contacts to promote your business, but do so in a tactful manner so that people are not turn off by your aggressiveness.

Giving somebody a business card and asking them to checkout your website might be a very soft sell that might lead to conversation about your business and help you gain a potential customer.

Just think of all the people that you come in contact with on a daily basis, by themselves it will not be enough to make a fortune but added to the other marketing results it could make your business venture a profitable one.

(5). Incentives: Offer businesses incentives to continuously use your site for their purchases, businesses expend thousands of dollars every month on office products and other essential items for their businesses but get nothing in return, so offer them some kind of rebate or free items for purchasing through your site.

Offering a free gift for individual is also a good policy but make sure that it is contingent on purchases being made so that you don’t attract all the freeloaders.

Everybody shops the question is where? Your job is to make sure they do it on your site. Or preferably at www.shopshopshop.org.

About The Author

Linda Quinones has been active in promoting her own site while helping others to succeed in the Internet marketing field. Previously she was involved the financial sector for several years. Her website is: http://www.shopshopshop.org.

This article was posted on August 12

by Linda Quinones

ECommerce Is Back On The Fast Track

ECommerce Is Back On The Fast Track

by: Craig Neidel

How much holiday shopping did you do online this year? If you are reading this, then chances are good that you made at least one purchase online. Over 54% of all Americans did it [1]. A much higher percentage (>80%) of Internet users did it.

Not only did you do it, you liked it! Less than 7% of online shoppers reported a bad experience with 88% reporting they were satisfied or very satisfied [2]. It is clear that online shopping has come of age with such a high level of participation and satisfaction. It appears that past issues of trust, security, and bad ecommerce websites are replaced with good ecommerce sites, higher trust, better security, and just plain better execution and service by online retailers. Quick, easy, and convenient shopping overcomes the concerns people have had in the past.

With a whopping 35% increase in online holiday sales this year, up to $18 billion [3], one analyst calls it ขa fantastic season for online retailers.ข [4] This is the third straight season of record growth for online shopping. This year, 2004, is expected to follow the trend. US online sales are expected to grow from $55 billion in 2003 to $73 billion in 2004 [5].

In searching for some bad news, it was hard to find. The worst news was that 3.6% of online shoppers had a very bad experience where either the merchandise was not delivered on time or was delivered in poor condition. This is a small fraction even compared to traditional retail sales.

Can the news and trends about ecommerce retailing really be that good? The answer seems to be a resounding YES! Some of the more popular online markets have double digit penetration now. That means some online retailers are reaping over 10% of total market share in their industries with a rising trend. In addition, more online retailers are showing profits. In 2002, about 50% of online retailers showed a profit from their online operations while 70% did in 2003 [5].

So, if you are one of those 70% of online retailers making profits in 2003, sit back, breathe a big sigh of relief, and relish the moment. There won’t be much time to relax and enjoy your successes. New business is right around the corner.

If you are a business and don’t yet have an online sales presense, then itกs never too early to get started. To get ready for the 2004 holiday season, itกs best to start now.

Create ecommerce plan – 4/15/04

Select ecommerce software & consultant (NetSource can help) – 5/15/04

Build the website – 7/15/04

Put the website into operation, start selling 8/15/04

Create online marketing plan – 8/15/04

Execute the marketing plan 9/15/04

Ready for holiday sales – 11/15/04

It can be done quicker than the schedule suggested above, but, to do it right requires thought, planning, and time.

References:

[1] Nashville Business Journal, 12/4/03

[2] ASD/AMD Marketwatch ENewsletter, 12/24/03

[3] eSpending Report, Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive, Nielsen/Netratings, 1/5/04

[4] Abha Bhagat, Nielsen/NetRating, COMPUTERWORLD, 1/6/04

[5] ASD/AMD MarketWatch ENewsletter, 10/16/03

About The Author

Craig Neidel has worked for NetSource Communications Inc. for 6 years and has experience in web development, ecommerce solutions and web marketing. NetSource Communications creates custom ecommerce solutions and web applications. http://www.ntsource.com.

This article was posted on October 26, 2004

by Craig Neidel

Does Your Shopping Cart Have a Squeaky Wheel?

Does Your Shopping Cart Have a Squeaky Wheel?

by: Megan Corwin

Have you ever gone grocery shopping just before a holiday? The aisles are packed with people pushing carts, shelves need restocked, all the checkout lanes have long lines…not a fun experience.

Just like inperson shopping, making online shopping easy and painless is key to getting customers to purchase from your store.

Advertisement

Letกs examine the internet shopping process from start to finish exposing some places in the process that your store may have a squeaky cart.

Make the Product Easy to Find

Offer a search capability if your store has a large number of products. Most buyers don’t have the patience to wade through 20 pages of products to find what they want.

Share Availability Early On

Now that the customer has found the product, let them know that it is in stock and ready to ship. Right on the product page or when they place it in their shopping cart let the customer know their purchase can be on its way soon. Don’t wait until after theyกve placed the order to tell them it will be another 68 weeks.

Streamline the Order Form

Limit your order form to the basics. Shipping information, credit card or payment information, and the quantity and order number are all it takes. This isn’t the place to conduct market research or ask for loads of information. Keep the order form short and simple. For future purchases, keep the customerกs data on file so they can fly through the ordering even faster next time.

Handling Your Shipping (and Handling)

One big reason many people don’t shop on the internet is that they have to pay for shipping. Offer a variety of shipping options to the customer so that she can decide how quickly she needs the item and what she is willing to pay to have the product delivered. Resist the temptation to add large handling fees to the shipping costs. What looked like a great online deal at $19.95 isn’t nearly as attractive when shipping + handling brings the total cost to $29.95.

Keeping your online order process simple and straightforward will enhance your customerกs satisfaction and the likelihood that they will visit your store again.

About The Author

Megan Corwin is an internet marketing coach who helps work at home professionals grow their businesses. Send an email to [email protected] to schedule a complimentary 30 minute coaching session. For more articles and advice about online marketing strategy and solutions, become a member of Megan’s online community for work at home women: http://www.wahwoman.com/membership.html

This article was posted on February 23, 2004

by Megan Corwin

Tips from Chicago Search Engine Strategies Part

Tips from Chicago Search Engine Strategies Part 2

by: Tanya Martin

The next session that I enjoyed was Shopping Search Tatics at Search Engine Strategies. Chris Bowler, Media Director and Search Practice Lead at Itraffic.com, Laura Thieme, President and Founder of Bizresearch and Craig Snyder EVP of Marchex were the speakers. Detlev Johnson, President of Technology, SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, moderated the Forum.

I have chosen to go over Mr. Bowler’s part of the session. This was by far one of the best speakers I had heard all day. Probably because it wasn’t as much theory, it was based on a client case. He gave detailed enough facts that you could understand and grasp the shopping engines potential.

Chris Bowler went over a client case ขBarrie Paceข. A little about Barrie Pace:

Barrie Pace offers women’s designer and exclusive career, businesscasual, and special occasion fashions

Sold $23+ Million in apparel online in FY2004

Barrie Pace uses customer email, search engines, online advertising/direct marketing and shopping engines to obtain sales.

Mr. Bowler then went over why you should use shopping engines. This is because you are placing the products in front of shoppers that are already transacting. He also provided this chart on shopping engines:

http://www.tanyamartin.com/shoppingenginestraffic.jpg

Source: Nielsen Netratings, October 2004

So far a pretty convincing case to why you should use shopping engines to promote your products.

Mr. Bowler then discussed the shopping engines that Barrie Pace partnered with. These were Amazon, Altura/Catalog City, Froogle, AOL Shopping and Shopping.com.

Next he went over some tips for the shopping engine newbie, these were:

Determine your financials

Crawl, Walk, Run!

Shopping Programs do not run themselves

Adjusting your feed is critical (a feed is a data file with your product details, product name, prices, product images all in one file, usually line by line .txt file)

Store Feedback is invaluable

Determining your financials questions you should ask yourself and analyze:

What’s your overall budget for shopping?

For Clickover Shopping Engines (pay per click engines):

What’s an allowable bid price:

By brand?

By product?

For Transactional Shopping Engines (engines that you pay per sale or percentage):

What’s an allowable commission?

Including returns?

Without returns?

How will returns be handled?

During the Crawl, Walk, Run part of the presentation, Mr. Bowler suggested you start with something easy to setup. Shopping.com he said were the easiest to setup, price and manage. Mr. Bowler stated if you can produce a feed quickly that setup could occur in a few weeks.

Mr. Bowler also suggested that Amazon was one of the hardest to setup. They require 29 forms to be filled out before you can begin. He also said it took 23 months to setup with Amazon.

Shopping engines do not run themselves Mr. Bowler now went over this giving more details, like if you choose 45 shopping engines to partner with it will take 12 hours of staff time a day. This is ongoing. Staff in charge of the shopping engines will have to daily go over the following:

Monitor feed upload and product display

Pulldown Store reviews / feedback

Resolve customer problems

Track Sales, Fulfillment, Returns

These shopping engines will all need to be monitored and adjustments will need to be made. He gave an example of some items using the same images. When you build a shopping site you can have several choices for size, color, etc. In shopping engines they list the sizes, colors, etc separately. So you have the same image for several items.

Mr. Bowler also provided a snapshot of feedback on Amazon. He stated feedback is invaluable and someone should be reviewing feedback often.

Mr. Bowler ended by giving some tips for succeeding:

Track results at the product level

Take advantage of operational and customer service emails

Shopping sites will buy your brand keywords in search – beware!

Advertising – more visibility

Partner with the newer engines

Notes: The following is a list of shopping engines that were mentioned during this session:

Yahoo Shopping

Shopping.com

Amazon.com

MSN Shopping

Froogle

MySimon

Nextag

Dealtime

PriceGrabber.com

AOL Shopping

Altura

InStore

Also mentioned were:

Bizrate.com and Resellerratings.com

About The Author

Tanya Martin, Director of Internet Marketing at Over The Mark, LLC http://www.overthemark.com has been involved in Internet Marketing for 7 years and who publishes a daily seo blog at http://www.overthemark.com/seoblog/ and has a Online Forum at http://www.dmof.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 23, 2004

by Tanya Martin

Guide To Safe Online Shopping

Guide To Safe Online Shopping

by: Randy Laduron

Online shopping can be a little frightening to people who are new to the internet,but as long as you follow a few easy rules you should have no problem shopping online.

What are the rules ?

First before buying from an online store find out what that online stores return policy is. If you wait till after the purchase of a product you make find out returning it is almost impossible.

Second ,now days itกs good to know what the privacy policy of any website you fill out forms on is.If you don’t want your information spread all over the internet.

Third,Now for the purchase itself,When filling out a form to order something make sure all your information is correct,email adress must be right itกs important,your postal address must be right and your credit card info must be correct.If any of the above is wrong your order may not go through.

Fourth,Most online stores will send you an order confirmation email to confirm your order was received,this is very important file it away if you ever have a problem with an order you will need the information contained in the email to get it corrected

Finally, Most stores will let you know when your order has been shipped

What if I have a problem with something I ordered at an online store ?

If you have a problem there are a few easy steps to having it corrected if you followed the rules above.

If you want to return something,if you checked what the online stores return policy is ,refer to that and follow thier instructions

If you have a question about your order look for a link to either the online stores customer service section where in most cases you can find a form to fill out or an email address

If you find a form fill it out completely,the more completely you fill it out the better your problem with your order can be solved

If you find an email address send an email explaining your problem with a copy of your order confirmation either attached or the information from it added to your email

Remember to be polite in your email,it doesn’t help to be rude it only will make the person who recieved it mad and less likely to care about your problem.

About The Author

This Article was created by the Webmaster of Ultimate ShopThe ultimate online shopping directory directory with over 600 online stores listed on an easy to use directory of shopping http://ultimateshop.us

This article was posted on March 01, 2004

by Randy Laduron

Shopping from your cell phone with Froogle Wireles

Shopping from your cell phone with Froogle Wireless

by: Jakob Jelling

Many surfers already know about Froogle, Googleกs shopping portal that is still in beta testing. Google has now expanded their Froogle service so that it is available on WMLenabled cellular phones. Most newer cell phones that can connect to the Internet have this capability.

Users just need to enter wml.froogle.com in their cell phone browser, enter their product search terms, and scroll through results to find what they’re looking for. The biggest advantage of this Froogle Wireless feature for consumers is the ability to comparison shop, no matter where they are.

Most people who have shopped on the Internet know you can often find significantly lower prices online if you are willing to wait for shipment. The problem in the past was that it was difficult to comparison shop between virtual merchants and brick & mortar stores.

As an example, when most of us are shopping at our local computer store, and notice they have blank CDs on sale, our first instinct is to stock up because the price looks so good by comparison to their regular price. But with an Internetready cell phone and Froogle Wireless, you would be able to search Froogle right from the store, and compare blank CD prices from online merchants with the sale price at the store. Taking into account shipping costs, whether you need the CDs immediately, and local sales taxes, you can then make an informed decision as to the true value of the sale price.

Since Froogle and Froogle Wireless are both in beta testing, some nicetohave features such as sorting by price aren’t yet available. This can be a problem when using a slower connection over a cell phone, but keep an eye out for improvements Froogle Wireless will likely help you save money in realtime very soon!

By Jakob Jelling

http://www.sitetube.com

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on September 29, 2004

by Jakob Jelling

Maria’s New Lifestyle: Short Story About The Benef

Maria’s New Lifestyle: Short Story About The Benefits Shopping On The Net Has Given To A Dedicated Artist

by: M6.net

I’ve got this strange friend; her name is Maria. Maria’s always been a little weird but now things have gotten unworldly altogether. You see, Maria’s an artist; she’s into sculpture in particular, of which she specializes in the manipulation of Perspex with a blowtorch. Lately I haven’t seen too much of her as she’s hooked up the Internet. Actually not many people at all have seen her recently; she says she’s working on a big project.

Now that she’s got the Internet she reckons she can focus a lot more on her work without distractions. She doesn’t ‘waste’ time doing grocery shopping anymore. Now she orders all her food and household items. She says if she’s extremely busy, her weekly list is saved into the computer, and she just clicks on ‘order’ and the usual stuff is delivered to her door every week. No more driving, parking, searching for stuff, standing in line, dealing with bored and under slept cashiers. I’m starting to think it’s not such a bad idea. Maria is pretty proud. She’s now organizing for a local greengrocer to deliver her fruit and vegetables too.

Maria has always had a ‘thing’ for Donald Duck. On the Net she’s found all these rare collectable dealers like Ebay. When she’s not warping Perspex into postmodern configurations representing the need for a more spiritual existence, she’s thriving in the consumerist world of finding and bidding for Donald Duck comic books from the 1950’s. Last I heard a friend said she’s actually starting to look like a duck herself!

All this Internet shopping is pretty new to me, it sounds like it really could help a lot of people out. However for recluse artists it could be the final straw for friends and family who may never see their buddies again! Nah, its coolI just hope Maria’s new project isn’t a giant Perspex Donald Duck. I don’t think the world needs any more Donald Ducks!

I just got back from Maria’s place. You’re not going to believe what I saw. She was actually having a party, and I wasn’t invited. Maybe she thinks I’m boring compared to her new friends. She says she met them on the Internet, a whole bunch of people into Donald Duck! One guy was actually dressed up like Yosemite Samgun belt and all! It seems I’m the odd one out.

Before I left her place she showed me her new sculpture. I underestimated her newfound love. It’s a giant computer; inside it is filled with the heads of all her friends (me included). Of course none of us had human mouths, smiling duck beaks adorned all the heads, a definite sign of the Internet’s powerful influence, and of the collective warping of today’s society!

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a human hoping to show his fellow Earth citizens the beautiful opportunities the Internet is making available for all our lives.

M6.Net http://www.m6.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 09, 2004

by M6.net

Choosing the Right Online Shopping Cart

Choosing the Right Online Shopping Cart

by: Evan Stevens

Are you a website owner or a web designer/developer?  If either applies, I would venture to say that eventually youกll need an online shopping cart for one of your websites. In fact, almost all new websites today need some sort of ecommerce builtin, for the purpose of selling goods and services in the online marketplace.
The greatest challenge is to find the perfect ecommerce shopping cart solution for yourself and/or your client. This task can be very overwhelming, considering, if you type กshopping cartก into Google.com, this search alone returns over 14.4 million hits! Most of us don’t have the time to sift through more than a few pages of a search engine to find what we’re looking for.
For the last 3 months, much of my time has been devoted to researching as much shopping cart technology as I could get my hands on. In general, shopping cart software ranges in price from free to over $2000 for a single license and web hosted carts range from $5 to hundreds of dollars per month.  The studied carts cover the spectrum of all web programming languages (ASP, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, Flash, Java, JavaScript & Perl shopping carts) and provide limitless features as a whole. The problem is that locating YOUR perfect cart with YOUR specific features can be a big task.
But no fear, just follow this guaranteed stepbystep guide to locate it:
The Top 10 Steps to Finding the Best Online Shopping Cart
Cost
How much money do you have to spend on an internet shopping cart? The nice advantage is that there are shopping carts with hundreds of features and they don’t cost you a dime.  They are generally open source products.  The only problem is that these same กfree shopping cartsก can take hours of installation time and be fairly difficult to configure. For a monthly fee, web hosting shopping carts are made for users with little programming experience and allows them to have an online storefront presence in no time.
Hosting vs. Software
There are two options in selecting your overall shopping cart solution. Either you get shopping cart software, download it, install it on your web server, then configure the shopping cart OR you get an online storefront (aka a hosted shopping cart) where the configuration is very basic and the required setup time is minimal. If you have some programming skills, I recommend buying a script and installing it on your own. The nice thing is that you pay a onetime fee for shopping cart software and the license is good for a lifetime. Itกs approximately the same price to have a hosted solution for a year compared to most one time shopping cart license fees.
Supported Gateways
What do I mean by gateways?  Gateways give shopping carts the ability to connect and securely process credit card orders in realtime.  Not all shopping carts are created equal. Make sure that your clientกs merchant account is supported by the cart you select. I have found that almost all carts support the larger online payment processing companies, such as Authorize.net, PayPal and Verisign.
Shipping Options
Will you be shipping physical products? If so, there are shopping carts that have builtin realtime shipping options through DHL, UPS And USPS. Often times, the cart gives the user the ability to view tracking orders and order status all from within your secure shopping cart web interface.  Also, there are shopping carts with options to ship digital goods as well (files, programs, pictures, music and others).
Technical Support
What kind of technical support does your shopping cart offer? If you choose to purchase a script, be sure to also subscribe to the shopping cart creatorกs newsletter, so that you can stay on top of future updates to the software. Be aware that technical support is generally available on a payperincident basis, as a yearly fee or in the rare case, free. Be sure to know what kind of customer support guarantee the shopping cart comes with.
Security
Please, only buy a shopping cart if it supports SSL (secure socket layer), with 128bit encryption. As an online storefront, remember that you are responsible for the safe transfer of sensitive information (credit card and bank account information) that is processed through your store. If any of the sensitive information is accessible (stolen) from your website, you could be liable. Be sure that you’re purchasing a secure shopping cart solution.  Ask the creatorกs of the shopping cart what they do specifically to protect the secure transfer of sensitive information.
Style Compatibility
Can you customize your shopping cart to look like your website?  There needs to be a seamless transition between your website and your shopping storefront or your customers might get hesitant in purchasing your products.  There should be similar colors and style layout to look professional and believable.
Extra Features
I just wanted to mention some of the other features that I have discovered, which might be a critical point in determining the shopping cart you want.
Affiliate Program Offer your own customized affiliate program through your shopping cart software. Quickbooks Integration Many carts allow direct integration with Quickbooks.
Newsletter & Mailing Letter Managers The ability to stay in touch with your current customers and keep them returning to your online store.
Custom Taxing Options Create taxable or taxfree products and have the ability to add various global tax options at checkout.
World Languages & Currencies Shopping cart language translation and support for world currency might be a necessary feature for your cart.
Error Free
You mean shopping carts can have errors?  Of course. A private UKbased web testing firm found the following, after studying a large group of UK online shopping carts for a period of one month (24/7):’the majority of UK web sites are guilty of leaving econsumers stranded at the checkout empty handed, once they have already spent valuable time browsing and selecting goods to purchase. This is due to erratic functionality within shopping carts, at a critical step in the online purchasing process."
"Econsumers are prevented from making purchases on UK web sites for 9 hours and 30 minutes a month on average, (115 hours a year)." "80 per cent of web sites perform inconsistently with widely varying response times, timeouts and errors leaving consumers at best wondering what to do next and at worst unable to complete their purchase successfully. This is potentially costing eretailers millions in lost sales from consumer frustrations." (http://www.scivisum.co.uk/report/ecommerce/)
Be sure to see what other users are saying about a shopping cart that you might be interested in purchasing.  Any shopping cart errors could cost you thousands of dollars in sales.  Get a stable and secure cart.
Shopping Cart Directory
The following is a link containing a directory of shopping carts that are categorized according to each of the abovestated steps. Make shopping for shopping carts a breeze!
Shopping Cart Directory
If you have any questions or comments about this article, please contact the author.

About The Author

Evan Stevens (http://www.evanstevens.com) is a professional web developer. This article reviews ecommerce online shopping carts.

This article was posted on June 28, 2004

by Evan Stevens

Shopping Carts For The Weary

Shopping Carts For The Weary

by: T. Oก Donnell

To choose the means whereby we put our products on the worldwideweb, we proceed by a process of elimination.

The chief criteria for judging a shopping cart is the number of credit card processors and shipping services it supports, and the number of people that support *it*.

Why? Because credit card processors and shipping services mutate all the time, and thus your cart will require updating. Which service works today may go out of business tomorrow, and leave you with the orders piling up.

Other important criteria are how easy it is to set up, and add products, and how easy it is for the customer to use.

(May I say parenthetically that I was introduced to Perl programming unwillingly by an early version of one of the carts below; it had a bug, and I had to learn some Perl to fix it. A shopkeeper should not have to learn bricklaying in order to open his store, therefore a bit of research is time well spent. )

When you set up your shop test it using a wide variety of the oldest and buggiest browsers you can find. If your web store works under them you’re home and dry.

So, having taken all the above into consideration, what are the options?

Having gone though twentyplus different sub $500 shopping cart software solutions, I now present, in order of preference, the cheapest, simplest, and most effective solutions:

1. Oscommerce (free) http://www.oscommerce.com

A very good, fullfeatured, cart. Uses Php and MySQL. Not easy to set up for a กnewbieก. Cookies are used to track the order. If you have PhpMyAdmin installed in your web account, itกs easier. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Supports a wide range of creditcard processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Technical support is limited to the Oscommerce forums, which are not helpful to newbies. You may need to pay a few bucks to an expert via a freelance site like Scriptlance.com, if you run into difficulties.

Also, it may be a while before an update is available to a payment module. These are done by unpaid enthusiasts.

Good point: Oscommerce is supported by thousands of unpaid enthusiasts; this means updates do eventually arrive, and itกs less likely to go out of business, unlike a commercial cart.

2. Xcart (commercial) http://www.xcart.com

Similar to Oscommerce. Commercial. Requires a customer to register before they can make a purchase. Lots of features and addons. Supports a wide range of creditcard processors and shipping services. Has an affiliate program addon, and lets others sell products though your cart.

3. Dansie Cart (commercial) http://www.dansie.net

A well specified cart. Supports a wide range of creditcard processors and shipping services.

Bad point: Apparently the Perl code is obscured, to make it harder to copy, which is annoying if you want to customise it.

3. Interchange (free) http://www.icdevgroup.org

A version of the old Akopia / Minivend carts. Complex product with lots of files and a lot of setting up to do. A complete solution, and includes the option of third party creditcard realtime order processing. Encrypts orders.

4. Agora (free) http://www.agoracart.com

A WebStore/Commerce.cgi hybrid.

5. The Commission Cart (commercial) http://www.siteinteractive.com

A cgibased shopping cart which also functions as an affiliate program. Other webmasters earn commissions by signing up and linking to your site.

6. ShopFactory (commercial) http://www.shopfactory.Com

Has a nice little wizardbased setup. If you have a lot of items in your shop, this is an option worth checking out.

This is a very valuable feature. A person whoกs set up cgi scripts before will get the most out of this. Supports a wide range of creditcard processors and shipping services.

Bad points: Itกs ugly, awkward, and uses JavaScript too much.

7. WebGenie Shopping Cart Pro (commercial) http://www.webgenie.com

A simple, wizardbased option. Uses Javascript a bit, but the main work is done by cgi scripts. It saves the credit card information on your server.

Itกs for someone who hasn’t set up a cgiscript before. Expensive for what you get, but it works. Option to buy it on hirepurchase.

8. Actinic Catalog (commercial) http://www.actinic.co.uk

Most suitable if you have lots of items in your store. Itกs a กwizardกbased PC program; you type in your information, and the program sets up the store.

You should set up the default store asis, then customise it later.

Supports a wide range of creditcard processors and shipping services.

A little complicated for an internet newbie; thereกs quite a lot in it.

9. Order Maven (commercial) http://www.briggsoft.com

A clever little program. Itกs a standalone Windows executable, which the customer downloads. The customer starts it up, chooses the product, enters their details, and sends off their order like an email, with the credit card details encrypted. It costs $29.00 at the time of writing. No secure server or order page needed; itกs all done on the customerกs pc at their leisure.

You need to customise it, naturally. This isn’t hard. Make sure you write your mail server URL into the code.

For the customer, the order module is a 160kb download. Not too bad at all.

11. Selena Solกs Web Store (free) http://www.extropia.com

The mama of them all; the first internet shopping cart of note. Allows orders to be encrypted via PGP if you have PGP installed on your server. Very complex for an ecommerce newbie.

12. PerlShop (free) http://www.perlshop.org

PerlShop is a simple shop to set up. One of the first shopping carts.

NOTE: Try to avoid carts that use cookies and javascript only, or that tie you into only one secure server and creditcard processor.

Also avoid webbased services that you lease only.

Having read the above you should have eliminated quite a few programs from your shopping list. They either won’t work properly with all browsers, or they won’t encrypt your order, or they want to tie you into their manufacturersก secure order system at $40+ per month.

Another option is to get a bespoke system set up for you by a specialist company. These cost thousands of dollars. Aren’t you glad you read this far?

About The Author

T. Oก Donnell (http://www.tigertom.com/webdesignerlondon.shtml) is an ecommerce and web site design consultant in London, UK.

COPYRIGHT: You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. You must publish the article AS IS. Do not modify, alter or edit it.

You are allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display in your website or ezine, so long as the text, hyperlinks and paragraph breaks are not changed or deleted. If presented in a HTML document, any hyperlinks present must be active, clickable, and go direct to the websites they represent i.e. no redirects.

Notifying the author is not required, but doing so is appreciated, at http://www.tigertom.com/contact.htm.

This article was posted on April 16

by T. Oก Donnell

5 Ways To Super Saving Internet Shopping

5 Ways To Super Saving Internet Shopping

by: Prasad Kopanati

5 ways to super savings when shopping on the internet. Save at least 200 dollars for 1000 dollars of shopping– that is 20% of the total money spent. With common sense and little prudence you can save hundreds of dollars on your holiday shopping bills. From my past experiences, I have chosen the five best practices that will give you the maximum savings. Peruse them, put them into action and email me your numbers on savings.

Comparison Shopping:

Gone are the days when there was no easy way to compare the price of a product at different stores other than visiting the stores. In this new era of cybershopping, there are numerous options to compare the price of a product at different locations of the globe. With very little effort, internet would find the best and right price, at the right store for you to save big bucks.

A few days back, I was shopping for a Mini DV camcorder in the price range of $500 to $700. An ardent internet shopper, I researched on brands, their prices and decided to buy a JVC GRD200 Mini DV camcorder. It is (may be ขit wasข) my belief that Amazon.com delivers the best products at the lowest prices (It does sell the best products, but not at the cheapest prices – at least in this case). As always, I was poised to buy the product from Amazon.

The comparison on the price of this product (via www.shopping.com) revealed that the product was sold as low as $299.00. With further research I understood that the price was indeed 299 US dollars. Delaying no more, I bought the camcorder from this seller instead of my first option – to save only $400.

As I look back, it still perplexes me how I saved $400 on a single buy. Does it not surprise you when you cut down 400 dollars on a single item? Perhaps the most important thing I did was comparing the prices for this product on www.shopping.com. It paid!

Cognizant Shopping:

As a customer, your goal is to buy the best product at the cheapest price. Right?

You agree with me that it is not an intelligent idea to buy a product for 10 dollars when it is sold at 3 dollars less at the near by store. Neither do you accord it a savvyshopping, to buy a product for 50 dollars when its price can be reduced by 10 dollars via the special store discount/coupon for the product.

Many of us do not realize the power of coupons. They hold tremendous potential for huge savings. Depending on how you use them, a coupon for 10 dollars for every 50 dollars would save 40 dollars over a period of month, assuming shopping once a week. Extrapolating, it is a 200 dollars savings over a 1000 dollar shoppingmoney. A typical Christmas shopping would amount to these numbers easily.

Although the example seems to be ideal, it resonates the ideas of retails stores like JC Penny or Sears, whose holidayshoppingplacards read ข$10 off for every $50 shopping – JC Pennyข, ข$35 off for every $250 spent on electronics – Searsข. Get into the habit of using the coupons whenever possible to appreciate the savings accumulating into your pockets.

Selective Shopping:

Depending on which state you buy the product from and which store you buy it from, you may or may not be charged a sales tax. If the sale is exempted the sales tax, it is a savings of 6 percent to 9 percent of total sale amount. Each seller clearly indicates if a sales tax would be applied on the sale in the geographical location. Thus, a little cautiousness would translate to a savings as high as 9 percent.

On the downside, you may have to pay for the shipping for the product which in most cases would compare less to the total of sales tax. And, by the way, due to the immense competition among the internetsellers, you may end up making a bargain by not paying the taxes and not paying for the shipping either. Free shipping – as it is called, is common on many internet sites these days. For an item priced at $1000 you would save as much as $90 as sales tax savings – all you do is pick the right seller.

Early Shopping:

Planning on shopping near the beginning of the season will give you ample time to compare the prices on the product at various sellers. During this process, you will form a ballpark estimate of the item.

Let me remind you that the variation of the price can be any where from few dollars to few hundreds of dollars depending on the original price of the product, which makes it necessary for you to do this homework as to know the kindof best price before you finalize on buying the product.

In addition, sellers usually hike the prices as the holiday season approaches so that they can display higher discountnumbers on their saleadvertisements. The higher discounts not only attract more customers but also compensate and compete the prices for the similar items at other stores. The fact is, even when you see greater discounts, you would not realize tangible savings around the holiday season unless you end up getting an early bird discount. I am somewhat reluctant to say this is true all the times, but is the case in several occasions.

Team Shopping:

Like in a workplace, collaborative shopping produces amazing results. You are not mandated to go to a shopping mall as a team, but exchanging ideas and information as a team would be advantageous.

Talk to your friends about their experience buying a similar item in the past. Gather information about the quality of the product, prices at different stores, seller reputation, etc that play a vital role on your buyingdecision. Moreover, ask your friends and relatives if they could share any discount coupons. If preferred customer, they would share the coupons with you, which in turn would give you the opportunity to cut down on the final price. Beware that some sellers distribute nontransferable coupons in which cases you need to be creative to maximize your savings.

So finally:

These ideas only scratch the surface of the iceberg. You can get innovative and creative to find the best deals on the market. Websites like www.techbargains.com, www.ecoupons.com, etc are some of the few sites that gather information about the greatest deals of the day. Internet has many such great moneysaving ideas.

Armed with this information, I am sure you would be able to craft a good plan which would save you many dollars each shopping trip. If you are meticulous enough, you would save at least $200 for every $1000 dollars spent. I guarantee it. If you deny my proposition or have a different opinion write to me and I will help you see the potential of putting the above facts to work.

About The Author

Prasad Kopanati is the Vice President of XemanteX Inc. http://www.xemantex.com, an internet company offering language related services. You can reach him via email at [email protected].

This article was posted on January 02

by Prasad Kopanati

Effective methods of doing business online!

Effective methods of doing business online!

by: Nowshade Kabir

With all these dot com failures so rampant, you may question, is it still viable to consider an online venture? The truth is: while spectacular rise and fall of many dot com companies have been overly publicized, sales through Internet are still increasing by 20 – 25% each year. Even economic down turn of the recent years has not hampered this growth.

Consider this:

According to an annual study of Internet trends by marketing research firm Ipsos, almost two third of Internet users in the United States have by now purchased a product or service online. That’s a dramatic increase from only 36 percents of respondents in 2000. Studies show that more than 35.5 million U.S. Internet users made shopping trips to web shops during the week ending November 3, 2002, which is roughly 14 million more than almost the same time period in 2001.

While the hype over the new economy is maybe over, one thing is for sure that Internet has revolutionized the way we do business and positioned itself as one of the biggest and most unique sales channels. Many companies, finally, started to realize that their very existence may get jeopardized if they are slow in integrating Internet to their business model.

But the question still remains is there any effective method of doing business online?

Below I have outlined some components crucial to any online venture. While these might not be the only vital components of web based business, understanding them correctly will significantly improve your chance of doing online business effectively.

Business Plan

Business plans are like road maps. Imagine, you ended up in a unfamiliar town and you have to find an address without a map! How would you feel? Definitely, you would have been much better off with a map of the locality! The same thing goes for business plan. Though, many successful ventures may have been started without the benefit of a formal business plan, a good business plan improves your chances of success and help you avoid many mistakes.

A recent AT&T study of successful entrepreneurs shows that businesses are more successful if they have a written business plan than the ones which don’t. With a written business plan you get a better picture of your planned venture. So, before starting you online venture, take some time and write down what are you planning to do.

Product or Service

If you are a brick and mortar company merely trying to expand sales of your products or services on the Internet your task is easier! You at least don’t have to mull over what to sell. But, what an entrepreneur who decided to start a new venture should sell on the Internet?

Actually, you can sell virtually any product or service through the Internet. You may say, กWait a second, you can’t sell big ticket items over the net, right?ก Wrong! The car and part industries alone forecast to generate US$ 274 billion in revenues from online trade by 2004. There are incidents of consumers buying corporate jets online!

If you are serious about starting an online business, finding a product or service that suits you should not be very difficult.

Knowledge base products like ebooks, howtoreports and hard to find information and data sell quite well on the Internet.

Dropship items are bountiful on the Internet.

Thanks to global reach of Internet finding manufacturer for any item that you plan to import to your country or export from your country became lot easier.

If you have expertise, online services similar to web design, travel arrangement etc. are also good sales.

Internet users are paying readily for various types of online contents. Global online content market will add up to 50 billion US$ in 2003. You can consider this too!

Website/ Web store

Since you customers take their decision, whether to do business with you or not based on what they see on your site, it is critical to have a professionallooking website with good related content.

You can choose your website according to your need from a vast range of choices. Starting from a completely free website you can shell out thousands of dollars for a decent ecommerce website. The choice is yours!

There are various quality portals that allow you to have products and services displayed on a single page web site for free. Many business to business portals provide with this kind of services. However, for real time transactions you will still need ecommerce web stores.

If you are not good at design or don’t want to spend a fortune on you web store, you should think about getting an ecommerce stores from web enablers like Yahoo, Bigstep, etc.

For a nominal monthly fee you can have the facilities required to run a full fledged electronic storefront and build it yourselves from easy to use templates.

If you go for this type of services, compare and see who has most of the features for lesser price. Some business to business portals along with your ebusiness web store will furnish you with necessary features to carry out over the Internet many important parts of buy and sale processes.

Shopping carts

The integral part of ecommerce sites, which allows you to accept product purchase orders for multiple products or services, is called a shopping cart.

The term กShopping Cartกis taken from real life shopping terminology to help users understand the actions available to them. Like in a supermarket a user can add products to shopping cart, remove products from the cart or adjust the quantity of the products as per requirement before checking out and making payments.

While looking for shopping carts for your ecommerce store, you should consider the following aspects of a powerful and functional shopping cart:

Access to the shopping cart should be clearly visible. There should be several entry points to the cart.

Add, remove and adjust quantity of the product features should be prominent on the cart page.

The item name should have a link to the description of the product.

There should be a way of saving items for future purchases.

Shipping and other costs should be clearly stated before the check out process starts.

Order forms should be simple and clear.

All payment options should be explained clearly.

Ordering process should be done through secure server. You know you are on a secure server when the URL of your browser indicates กhttps:ก. The s at the end of http stands for กsecureก.

Merchant Account

90 percents of all online retail sales take place through credit card transactions. According to industry statistics, the average credit card sale is $40 versus just $9 for the average cash sale. To offer the credit card payment option to your online clients, you need to set up a merchant accounta bank authorized account established by your company to receive the proceeds of credit card purchases.

Even if you already accept credit cards for your offline transactions, that may not be enough. Although, you can take many precautions to reduce online credit card frauds, credit card companies still consider Internet transactions to be riskier than offline transactions. That’s why finding a right merchant account provider could be a little bit more complicated than you might think. Things could be even trickier if your business is located outside of the United States.

There are many middleman merchant account providers on the Internet. Do some comparisonshopping before you sign up with any of them as conditions that they offer vary significantly.

Although, it is definitely good to have a merchant account that does not mean you can’t sell products or services without having one! There are numerous other payment options available on the Internet. Most popular of them are paypal, egold, ebullion, etc.

If you would like to have an effective online business, remember that old values still count. Proper planning, uncompromising customer service, integrity, hard work and persistence eventually will make your business successful.

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business ecommerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated catalog, emarketplace, trade leads, internal messaging system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor to government projects and has over 12 years experience in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business related articles; he publishes a biweekly Ezine for online business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter free of charge from http://www.rusbiz.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 11, 2003

by Nowshade Kabir