http://www.bjysxy.com Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:13:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 http://www.bjysxy.com/grow-your-business-with-an-e-commerce-website.cfm http://www.bjysxy.com/grow-your-business-with-an-e-commerce-website.cfm#comments Sat, 04 Sep 2010 06:53:44 +0000 admin http://www.crawbot.co.cc/?p=2187

If you are a small or mid size business owner, you can benefit in number of ways by building an e-commerce website for your company. It is therefore important to build your e-commerce website in such a way that it is able to improve relations between key trade partners and at the same time generate good revenue for your business.

Building up an e-commerce website or selling your goods and services online has various advantages over traditional methods of selling. You can save in set-up and operational costs as you don’t have to pay shop assistants, rent for premises or answer any queries. It helps to reduce order-processing costs as orders will come directly to your database from the web site. Online shop ensures that you receive payments quickly. You can also use your e-commerce web site as a catalog for existing customers and attract customers who would not have otherwise investigated your street outlet. At the same time, you can compete with larger business by being able to open your online shop all the time. In a nutshell, e-commerce web site can expand your business and improve your profits at the same time.

But, to benefit from e-commerce web site, it is important to build a good web site. A well designed e-commerce website attracts the visitors, makes them buy your product or services and increases your business revenues. Therefore, you must keep some important tips in mind while building an e-commerce web site.

l Decide the purpose of building your e-commerce website. You must be clear as to who are your target visitors and what do you want to achieve from your website.

l Make sure that your e-commerce website contains all the relevant information. Do not make it over-crowded. It might make the visitors run away from your site.

l It is really important to design your website carefully. A well-designed website attracts the visitors. Also, keep updating your site from time to time.

l Make your e-commerce website design user-friendly. Do not include files or images that are difficult to load. As this may waste user’s time and they may prefer to visit some other site.

l Lastly, make use of Internet marketing and Search Engine Optimization. This helps in improving the ranking of your e-commerce website in various search engine results.

So, get a well designed e-commerce web site that will increase your business revenues by attracting large number of users to it and compelling them to browse through it too.

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When it comes to FREE open source e-commerce solutions, OS-Commerce and Zen-Cart are the first names that come to mind. They were and still are the standard for shopping carts and online stores. But like everything else, things change and evolve over time. And one software almost nobody ever mentions is rising up to become the new standard for the next generation of e-commerce platforms – Magento.

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be a big difference between Magento and Zen-Cart. They are both FREE to download and use, they are highly functional, integrated, and customizable solutions. Both have sophisticated shopping carts, product catalogues, and pricing features. Both support multiple languages and currencies, secure payment gateway options, and newsletter marketing campaigns. So why choose a new software if Zen-Cart has been around for so long and made so many people happy?

Well, the truth is that Zen-Cart has not undergone a major change in recent years to make it user-friendlier and to modernize the interface. So other programmers have jumped in and created a similar software but with better features and more modern interface. Magento was designed to be much more intuitive when it comes to setting up your products and prices, etc. It allows for easy bulk upload of your products, something you have to do manually in Zen-Cart (or find a working plugin). That becomes a vital time saver when you have more than 20 products or are creating lots of new products each month. The Zen-Cart interface was designed to be highly functional, but you really gotta be careful what you are doing and without programming skills you’re almost doomed. Magento not only looks more modern, but the user interface is also much more user-friendly and easier to use.

There are other subtle differences that make Magento stand out from the crowd. First, you have more options in customizing your product search categories. Very important if you want to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for fast. Second, if you have a small business and need to integrate your data with say QuickBooks or your ERP Software, Magento will allow you to do that. Next, Magento’s one-page checkout beats Zen-Cart’s 3-page checkout any day. Finally, Magento has a built-in CMS (Content Management System) that lets you customize your static pages with ease. Sure, Zen-Cart has the “EZ Pages”, which are nice but you still have to put HTML code in there. With Magento you have a bult-in editor that allows you to style your page without having to write HTML code. All in all, it just seems like Magento is more up-to-date and uses technologically advanced features.

There are of cause downsides to it. Magento, being a relatively new software on the market, doesn’t have as many extensions and plugins as Zen-Cart has. To customize the software to your liking you might have to hire a programmer or web developer. Zen-Cart’s Banner Manager makes it easier for you to track your advertising campaigns on your site, and there is no current lightbox feature included in Magento, if you’re a big fan of lightboxes you should use Zen-Cart. But then you are probably a web designer and know what you are doing. Magento was designed for people who have little HTML or php knowledge, which of cause doesn’t mean web designers shouldn’t use it ☺

Whether or not Magento will become the new standard for Online Stores remains to be seen. I have been in the web design business for over 5 years and have seen many new things come and go. And one thing is certain; Magento gets me excited and motivated! These guys have taken steps into the right direction and with more people catching on (spread the word!) and developing open source extensions for this software I have no doubt it will ultimately succeed. If nothing else it’s good to see that some people still believe in a good cause and allow you to use their product for FREE. Just think how many hours or painstakingly programming, troubleshooting and testing they have put into this software, just so you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars elsewhere. Isn’t that nice?! Be thankful!

]]> http://www.bjysxy.com/magento-the-next-generation-of-e-commerce-platforms.cfm/feed 0 http://www.bjysxy.com/embracing-e-commerce-in-your-marketing-plan.cfm http://www.bjysxy.com/embracing-e-commerce-in-your-marketing-plan.cfm#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:05:15 +0000 admin http://www.crawbot.co.cc/?p=2183

The pro’s say that to keep your business going in this economy takes drastic moves. You have to reach farther than your local market. It is recommended that you go global to stay competitive. If you are hooked up with a worldwide market then the local economy won’t be so devastating to your business.

The idea of going global means that you have a safer customer base. There won’t be anything that could possibly effect all of your customers at once if they are spread apart. You have to start up a web side to your business and make it simple for customers to shop from you online. This will give you the ability to take orders from all over the world and ship there too.

Building up a web business to go hand in hand with your storefront company is a great way to open up to a whole new bunch of customers. It will take your company out of the neighborhood and out into the world. The way that you approach marketing for the site will be different. Because you will be sending things through the mail you have the opportunity to use that packaging to promote.

You can use many items to promote your business. Getting customer enthusiasm from across the globe can be as simple as stuffing a cute mouse mat inside the package that you are about to mail out to your customers. Some things are great for adding to packages, like flash drives and key chains. Small handy items are the best. And remember to use something on the outside of the packaging too. Promotional mailers or even stickers are perfect to grab attention as the package is being mailed.

The best way to keep plenty of customers is by using many different forms of advertising. You will open you business up to a much larger group of possible customers if you spread your business out globally. Going global is a good way to let the whole world know about your product.

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