The good news is, you can. The hard pill to swallow is that you will probably be using a CRM templated Ecommerce system that is dynamically driven, which won’t help you get found by the customers you want.
What do I do?
Find a shopping cart and design system that will allow you to found using static pages. Shopsite challenges the Web developer to do just about anything they need on the front end, PHP, ASP, CSS, FTP, MySQL,….etc. and ShopSite itself just does not care and plays well in the sandbox.
In reality, what will I end up paying for my Website? Just remember NFL (No Free Lunch), the more you set your self up with a good solid foundation, like with anything in life, the better the Return On Investment (ROI).
Search engine Optimization (SEO) is more challenging today than every before. Many Web professionals are taking advantage of SEO software to get the most out of their website, especially for their commerce stores and how visitors respond to the site.
There are many SEO solutions out there and more are fast approaching. These are all items you can bolt on to your Hosted ShopSite solutions with YourHost.com.
Beware when picking a commerce solution that will not allow you to FTP and interact with the basic page, checkout codes using CSS and other forms of tagging. You are basically screwed for SEO and natural search ranking if your source is closed to these options. Closed solutions will not allow you to get most out of your website in respect to ROI.
Web CEO offers a free edition of their SEO software, SmallBiz, and Professional Editions range from $199-$389 (one-time initial fee) . There are many others like RankSense, starting at $29.95/mo., and SEO administrator which range from $129-199 (i believe one-time initial fee). These are all one time fees and you can count on paying for future upgrades on most of the products or they will become stagnant.
LotusJump at $24-$49 per month is a robust SEO software solution that is generating some attention.
Most of these solutions are for smaller sites (What constitutes a smaller site? Many different factors so this is a general statement to be defined when your selecting an SEO solution) and the prices jump up considerably ($250-900/mo.) when looking for some Enterprise for larger websites. These Enterprise systems will allow you to do so many different critical functions, like granular testing and t is too much to mention in this article.
Manticore Technology, Web Side Story, and others like these, are very stable and robust, allowing the web developer to do some pretty amazing things. Be careful when you start mixing your email system with a hosted SEO tool, it can affect your internet email reputation if it is not well managed.
By far, your emails where they come from and how they are sent should not be overlooked.
Every time we turn around the cost of sending a letter has gone up. 41…42….44 cents. Bulk mailing has also increased in price.
More and more people have email on their phones and PDA’s, which helps you to keep your customer’s informed about the products and services you are offering. Email can cost as little as 1/2 cent per email to send, which is far less than postal fees.
How do you write a good email or newsletter? There are many factors that go into continuous successful email campaigns. It all starts with the email system that you use. ISP’s are keeping close track on who is sending junk and abusing the way they get mail. You want to find a host that uses a system that has a good solid ISP reputation.
Bounced emails? Most people gauge the quality of your sending email system by how counting many get successfully opened and how many get bounced. Now days most ISP’s , Corporate systems are filtering email that have bad reputations into a type of "Black Hole" that does not show up as a bounced email. They also build their own database of who does not play well in the sandbox, and make sure they are penalized for it.
So, how do you make sure your system is working properly? Test it. There is only one true way to test it how effective and safe your system is and that is by letting your hosting company send emails from different seed email boxes. Sounds complicated? It is not but it really opens your eyes to how successful your campaigns can be.
So, Don’t Go Postal on your Customers, use a good solid email system that uses best practices and has a good reputation.
We will talk more about Reputation, and sending.
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Trivia -
Question: How long does it take to make a solid email campaign from start to finish, not including testing?
With the expansion of the Internet, consumers all over the world can now have access to your business. They can now shop or learn more about your services from the safety and comfort of their own homes. There is only one problem, now consumers have access to all of your competitors as well. Products that people used to go to the a store to buy can now purchase products online with little effort. How can you stand out from the herd? Through well thought-out and intuitive web design.
Whether you are trying to get a visitor to your site to make a purchase or to call you, presentation is key. How would you present yourself on a first date, or perhaps a job interview? A homepage to your companies website is no different. The way you present your company will be how people view your company. A lot of care and consideration needs to go into the appearance and functionality of your site.
Do you already have a site up? Has it been up for many years? Just like in fashion certain styles of websites design themes will go in and out of style. It never hurts to update your look from time to time.
Function over style .
The way you may personally feel about this may vary depending on the nature of your company. A cutting edge technology firm will most likely want to have a website that mirrors their company model. For most of us simplicity is best. How does the navigation on your page look? More importantly how easy is it to use? Is it consistent throughout the website? In shopping online I have personally been to websites that were not easy to get through, and more often then not I can get the same product elsewhere. Not only will a well designed and easy to use site keep your customers interest but, it will also be much more search engine friendly.
Browsers:
Opera, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari. Which browser do you prefer? I personally am a fan of Firefox. Have you tested your site to see how it looks in different browsers? It’s always good to have a third party check things out in this regard. Keep in mind that most people around the world still use Internet Explore and that of all the browsers I.E. seemed to be the hardest one to please.
If you would like to know more about how to streamline your internet presence feel free contact me or any other professional designer. Good luck and Godspeed.
Tracking is key! In the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Stephen Covey used an analogy of a woodcutter who was sawing for several days straight but was becoming less and less productive. The process of cutting dulls the blade. So the solution is to periodically sharpen the saw. That same line of reasoning can apply to both brick and mortar and online stores.
Many companies will launch different campaigns when it comes to marketing. They will try sending out emails to their current customer base, They will advertise in different places, both online or in local areas, some companies will cold call to generate leads, and others will launch PPC (pay per click) campaigns. All of these methods are effective “tools” for the job done. “Tools” however can lose their edge.
Tracking tools a very important to any website in any spaces. When using tracking tools also known as web analytics you can find out information such as where your customers are coming from, or how they are finding you in the first place. You can find out how long they stay on your web page and what they do when they’re there. You can also find out how many people visit your site versus how many people actually make purchases on your website.
With all this knowledge any business owner or marketing director can find out exactly where your customers are coming from and can focus on making that aspect more effective. In effect “sharpening that saw”.
Marketing also takes time, money, energy, and resources. With these tracking tools companies also find out what just plain doesn’t work for you business and therefore know what is mot worth the extra time and effort.
I urge everyone to go online and try out Google analytics. Google Analytics is a free service with some tracking ability that all companies can benefit from. It is great for basic stats.After using a low end tool like Google analytics you should have an idea of what statistics are most important and from there you can step into a better solution.
In this industry knowledge is power and the know a company knows about their customers the better they will be able to serve them. Never forget to sharper your saw. It never hurts to have an edge.
