Robert Blaise

What is Magento Commerce?

If you are asking this question, you must have heard of the magnificent open source ecommerce platform that makes it easy for manufacturers and buyers to meet each other’s requirements.  Magento platform offers flexibility and control.  Flexibility and control benefits both the products source and the consumer in many ways.

How is Magento eCommerce Platform beneficial to the storeowner?

Magento ecommerce platform offers an advanced catalog and shopping cart price rule system.  It allows the storeowners to customize the storefront and all other features including pricing, colors options, and offers right in one screen.

The storeowner may likewise manage the storefront to meet international markets.  Changing the storefront into different languages, and customizing it to cater to different nationalities is done in only a few clicks.

The catalog is designable in whatever way the storeowner pleases.

Magento eCommerce Platform likewise offer SEO features that will help storeowners to edit metadata and search engine optimization easily.  Social shopping tools including reviews and product-related contents are easy to create with the built-in features of Magento.

To top it all, Magento offers an easy to navigate Admin Dashboard to help you check reports with ease.  You control how the storefront will look, how it will be easy for customers to navigate and ensure social marketing is in place.

Creativity is your only limit, but of course, if you do not feel creative, you can always take advantage of the templates available in the Magento system.

How is Magento platform beneficial to the customer?

Magento platform offers a single page checkout that enables customers to view and edit their orders easily.

There is also a multiple shipping address option where the customer need not make other transaction for shipment to different addresses.  Simply click the multiple address option and type in the address and you are ready to ship the products you need.

Navigation is easy and therefore purchasing products will be less tedious.  Customers can make use of their time in other more important tasks, rather than for multiple transactions as compare with other open source platforms.

Pricing is easily changeable to meet currency requirement with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Catalog browsing is likewise a breeze in this system.  Consumers do not see products alone, or products and price alone, they will be able to see it complete with reviews and contents that will help them compare products.  They can therefore buy the best easily.

Magento is an open source ecommerce platform that promises to revolutionize the industry.  They are delivering this promise and more.  Thus, if you have products to sell in the World Wide Web, Magento eCommerce is for you.

Tags: Shopping Cart, Solutions

5 Easy Ways to Earn More from Your eCommerce Website

How can I increase conversion on my product pages? How can I maximize my site search? Why isn’t anyone using my 800 number? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself when trying to fill the gaps that your eCommerce website may have. In order to increase your revenue with the same amount of traffic, you’ll need to make a few changes to your existing content and/or design (nothing major, we promise!). In no particular order, here are 5 (relatively) easy fixes to increase revenue on your eCommerce site:

1. Create a “No Search Results” Page
2. Add a 3rd Party Trust Certificate to Your Site
3. Make Your 800 Number more Prominent
4. Make Your Store Policies a Global Setting
5. Add Contact Forms to Your Product Pages

More

Tags: Marketing

Planning your eCommerce project

Do you want to succeed in business?  Do you have product or services you want to offer?  If so, you can increase your bottom-line by taking advantage of ecommerce.  If you are afraid because you do not know a lot about internet and ecommerce, it may help you to know some basic information on planning the development of your ecommerce website.

Do not fret; the idea will surely make you feel like there are butterflies in your stomach.  However, there are tools and helpful information on the internet that will help you not just in planning the development of your ecommerce website but the information you may get will help walk you through succeeding on the internet commerce.

What are the things you need to know?  There are a lot and you may read some of those in this article.

Steps you need to take

First, you will need a marketing plan.  How do you do this?

•    Know if your competitor is online or other products and services similar to what you offer.  You will learn a lot from them.
•    Know what products they offer on the internet and how their products are positioned.  You will need to know a different way of offering the same product to the market; this is what is called the unique selling proposition.  Flaunt your USP by sending articles about your product to article syndication websites and directories.
•    Create materials for your products, the first and the foremost is a sales copy.  A strong sales copy is the one that will make your customer open his wallet and make a purchase.
•    Apply for a merchant account so that you can accept credit cards.
•    Design your catalog and insert some reviews to help customers choose your products over others.

Next, design your ecommerce website.  This is the challenge, there are templates on the internet, and ecommerce service providers will be glad to assist you.  However, if you do not have a deep wallet, you may ask some friends if they can recommend a person to design your website.  If you are unlucky with your friends, go back to the internet.  Search for reasonably priced ecommerce service provider.

Because you already have an idea of how you would want your website based on what you see with your competitor and other websites, you may be able to have your website designed properly.

Of course, your designer will have some ideas in mind and considering them may be advantageous.

A professional and user-friendly website is a good start in succeeding in the ecommerce era.  In addition to this, you will need an affiliate program, newsletters and offer promotions.  You ecommerce provider may give you the help you need.

Before you contact an ecommerce service provider, ensure that you have the blueprint on hand.  This will be your guide, having this marketing plan will help you in the process of planning the development of your successful ecommerce website better.

Tags: eCommerce

How to judge success of your ecommerce website

Ecommerce is the exchange of products or services through the internet.  It works the same as a regular store, except in the ecommerce arena, you do not see your customers eye-to-eye, you do not see their body language, all you see is their click and their purchase if ever.  Wait, yes, you see them abandon your page as well.  You think it is a lost sale, may be not.  It may be an untargeted or wrong click.

Anyway, if you are an ecommerce website owner, you surely want to know how you can judge the success of your ecommerce website.  Read this article to have an idea of how ecommerce success is usually measured and how you can improve the numbers as it appears.

To give you a clear understanding of how you can judge the success of your ecommerce website, it may help you to know what the going rate is.  Knowing the going rate will help you gage your performance.

For sales conversion, 1% to 2% sales over unique visitors is an acceptable rate.

For page abandonment rate, 10% is the most acceptable.

Now, how to you measure your sales conversion rate and your page abandonment rate.  Your website design should include a site’s analytic package, this is the only way you can measure your success.  Sales of course are another measure but then, your conversion rate may not be measured if we look at sales alone.

Before I move on, you may also want to look at the site’s analytical package because stickiness of your website may also be a gage of your ecommerce site’s success.

What is stickiness?  Stickiness is the ability of your website contents to keep visitors from staying or reading the sites contents.

If a visitor stays and returns often, the stickiness works well.  Your contents are effective and you only need a little more tweaks to make a sale out of those browsers.

How to improve conversion rate?

As mentioned, 1% to 2% conversion rate is already good but other business make as high as 9% conversion rate and I am sure this is what you want.

To improve your conversion rate and lessen the page abandonment rate; you may need to do the following:

•    Keep visitors browsing your website by including helpful tips on how they can use your products and service more advantageously.  You may publish a regular how-to article helping them improve the performance of the products they purchase from you.  It will keep them coming back for more information.
•    Dependability - If purchasers know they can depend on you for assistance about the product you sell to them, they will trust you and would try other products in your portfolio.

Knowing how to judge success of your ecommerce website should not stop by knowing your conversion rate, you should also know what page visitors abandon.  If they have stayed in one or more pages, chances are the visitor is a targeted audience.  You should improve that page and ensure you answer some of the possible questions they have.

Do not just improve conversion rate, improve your site and sales will surely follow.

Tags: eCommerce, Marketing, Planning