Ecommerce Shopping Cart Blog by InstanteStore » best free shopping cart software

Secure Ecommerce Shopping Cart Product Selection Tips

desmond — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:27:03 +0000

Christmas is just a few months away. It’s that time of year when people start deciding which secure ecommerce shopping cart to set up shop with. But choosing a shopping cart is just one of the many decisions that entrepreneurs have to make. Everyone wants to jump on the secure ecommerce shopping cart bandwagon but not many know what to do once they are on it.

In previous posts, we have covered how having the services of a drop shipper can make life very easy for ecommerce newbies. But drop shippers have many diverse items in their inventories. So the question still remains, “Which product should I sell?”

In this post we shall present a simple guide that will help you choose what products to sell.

Many web store owners attend to their stores from the comfort of their homes after their 9 to 5 jobs are done for the day. Many of these people do not have the time or the resources to keep abreast with or capitalize on the latest market trends or fads. Here are some of the best free shopping cart software suggestions for what to sell on your store:

Accessories

The hottest thing on the planet right now is the iPhone 4. Since only Apple and AT&T can sell the iPhone 4 (for now), the next best thing is to sell iPhone accessories such as bumpers, cases, headsets, speakers, docks, wallets and other accessories linked to the product that some people claim embodies the current zeitgeist.

Do you know of the shoe brand Crocs? What about those little accessories kids used to decorate those shoes with? In cases like these, accessories are hotter sellers than the actual “main” items.

If you look around, you’ll notice that there are accessories for everything. Here are a few examples:

Running shoes – antimicrobial insoles, quick tie laces, gators, arch supports and quick dry socks

Bicycles – Aerodynamic handle mounted water containers, camelbaks, car racks and cargo trailers

Motorcycles – Tank protectors, GPS holders, steering dampers and side hardbags

Vanity

Products that appeal to a person’s vanity are usually hot sellers. Anything that suggests that it can make people look younger, appear slimmer and fairer, build bigger muscles and grow more scalp hair seems to have an ever expanding market.

However, be careful when selling products with chemicals. Many products on the market claim to be hypoallergenic but there have been cases that involve adverse reaction to these products. One shopping cart tip you should take is to be sure you include a disclaimer on your website, especially on the check out page, to protect yourself against lawsuits if you choose to sell such products.

Performance

While vanity products may attract more women than men, vehicle related performance products seem to attract those with higher testosterone levels. Guys can’t seem to get enough of rings of Saturn sized rims, road roller wide tires, deafening exhaust and audio systems, mouse pad thick sport bike seats and of course garish stickers with slogans that are pretty much incomprehensible to those not in the know.

Vehicle performance products can be broken down into various niche categories. These niches can range from performance parts for (different varieties of) bicycles to muscle cars, and are potentially a very lucrative market.

Summary

I once read that if you can’t sell fish, then sell fishing nets. You might actually end up making more that way.

Well that’s the end of this edition of Secure Ecommerce Shopping Cart Product Selection Tips. Let us know if you have any ideas on how to pick products to sell. We’d love to hear from you.Recent Posts:

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Ecommerce Solution Shopping Cart Software Tips For Merchants

desmond — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 02:29:08 +0000

There are a lot of stores out there which offer products at really low prices. Some are so low they border on the ridiculous. These low prices, although attractive, can have a detrimental effect on how visitors perceive a store. If you have a store which boasts very low prices, we’ve got a few ecommerce solution shopping cart software tips for you to counter any negative notions visitors might have of your store.

Discounts and sales are a great way to attract visitors but visitors will only make a purchase if the store meets certain criteria: not least of which is security. In business it is often said that if something appears too good to be true, it probably is. If the price of a product seems a bit too unbelievable, then potential customers may have doubts about the legitimacy of the whole deal.

To avoid this situation, follow this simple shopping cart tip – make it known upfront and right away how it is that you are able to offer your products at such low prices. Some have suggested that merchants explain the “hows” on the About Us page. Although we do think that the About Us Page should contain a more detailed explanation, we suggest that merchants place a simple explanation the main page as well. “We source direct from suppliers” would be a good example.

Another concern among customers when prices are low is quality. Are the products rejected goods? Have they been re-manufactured or refurbished? Are they pre-owned? Are they stolen? A simple statement such as “We sell only new products of quality” will help negate those fears.

To further enhance your store’s reputation (aside from using a reputable ecommerce solution shopping cart software like ours, of course), you should display product reviews as well as customer testimonials at your product pages and perhaps on selected other pages like your front page or checkout pages. You could even place outbound links to (positive) independent reviews of your store.

We hope you will derive some benefit from our latest ecommerce solution shopping cart software tip. As usual, we welcome feedback so leave us a comment if you wish. Do look up our past blog entries; you might come across a few gems as we hope to provide some of the best free shopping cart software info available.Recent Posts:

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Online Shopping Cart Tutorial – Hot Product Search Methods

desmond — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 03:47:56 +0000

Merchants need a lot more than just a feature-filled website shopping cart and the best free shopping cart software available to succeed. They need an edge when it comes to products. An edge could mean better pricing, a more accommodating return policy, better customer support, more efficient after-sales service and, of course, the latest item in demand for a particular niche.

But how does one go about finding out about new products, fads and such? Are there any free tools available to help merchants keep abreast with current news regarding products and related industries? We shall attempt to address those questions in this online shopping cart tutorial installment.

The Present

Well, the first thing to remember is to always keep an open mind about things. If you can’t be the first to spot a potential best seller or hot-selling item then at least be quick enough to react and ride the wave before it crashes. A good example is the vuvuzela – a horn used widely at African and South American football events. The controversy surrounding it only increased its popularity among worldwide audiences resulting in massive orders for this “Made in China” instrument.

Many street merchants as well as a few online merchants had already foreseen that this plastic horn, with the ability to deafen a person when unmodified, would be a big hit during the World Cup. Not only did they stock these horns, they also made it available in various participating country colors, which makes it appealing to a wider market.

If you were running a sports store with a steady stream of visitors, and you found out about this instrument on the first day of the World Cup, you might still have had time to get a few of these wholesale and sell it on your site just to make a few extra bucks.

The Future

In fact, many online stores are already providing variants of vuvuzelas for countries that did not even make it to the 2010 World Cup. There are even designs for popular teams but I get the feeling some stadiums might not take too kindly to these noisy instruments and could end up banning it.

Fortunately, this instrument is not very expensive and, due to its current popularity, can fetch quite a profit.

Old Is Gold

If you are stuck with leftover stocks of vuvuzelas, fret not, just remarket them as World Cup souvenirs. You might even want to sell it with a nice display box to bump up their perceived value.

Tools

One of the ways of getting the latest information or news about the latest products within a certain industry is by subscribing to news portals related to the industry. Another way is by keeping tabs on what top competitors are promoting. Either way, you can use notify.me or Google Alerts to help you garner all the latest updates in just one place.

notify.me is great for sourcing information from specific sites while Google Alerts scrapes the Net for news related to search terms which have been keyed in and sends the updates directly to your Gmail account.

We hope you have found this installment of our online shopping cart tutorial useful. Give us some feedback on this article, and if you like, let us know what you’d like us to blog about in our next online shopping cart tutorial.Recent Posts:

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Best Free Shopping Cart Software Tip – Use Videos

desmond — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:08:19 +0000

Admittedly, videos may not be appropriate for all online stores but many stores can benefit a great deal from it. Apparel stores especially, can make use of one of the best free shopping cart software tools available.

Prepping

Before going out and make a video for your ecommerce solution shopping cart software powered store, we suggest you pay a little visit to Youtube. Check out some of the many product videos and note the ones that immediately get your attention and, more importantly, tempt you into buying the product.

Video Courtesy

You’ll notice that those videos need not be of great quality but they all contain certain standard elements that provide timely and useful information that would be sufficient to entice a viewer. Basic information like stating the length of video and outlining topics to be covered are greatly appreciated by viewers. Keeping videos concise is a key factor in keeping people interested in watching the video in full. Product videos usually range from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. Judging by today’s viewers attention span, 5 minutes might already be pushing it.

Keep It Relevant

The great thing about video is you can tailor it in a way so it comes off as an informative or entertaining element in your store. For example, many online sports shoe stores use videos to teach viewers about proper warm up, warm down, running, recovery and, of course, the right shoes to wear. This kind of videos help gain the trust of viewers, and as you might very well know, trust can lead to sales. Just don’t forget to leave a link back to your simple shopping cart store if you post a video on Youtube. You might not get any PR juice because of the ‘no follow‘ tag Youtube imposes but you’ll definitely get targeted traffic to your simple shopping cart store.

Free Video Editing Software

If you do a search for free video editing software, you’ll end up with a few SERPs. If you are on Windows Vista or 7, try Movie Maker. Its pretty simple to use and its FREE. You can download Movie Maker here.

Well, we’ve come to the end of this installment of best free shopping cart software tips. If it make sense to use videos to promote your store and products, we hope you give it a try and let us know how it turns out.Recent Posts:

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Useful Ecommerce Solution Shopping Cart Software Facebook Tip

desmond — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:30:28 +0000

So you have your Facebook page up and running. What next? How do you use it to promote your products or brand?

In this post, we will look at some examples of what the big names have done. We will explore a simple ecommerce solution shopping cart software Facebook tip. However, please take note that the strategies of big-name companies may not be suitable for your business so you may have to tweak this tip if you want to apply it to your business model. As always, we hope these examples will help inspire you to think out of the box and perhaps formulate an idea of your own and maybe inspire others in the process.

They say some of the best free shopping cart software tips are the simplest. The ecommerce solution shopping cart software Facebook tip we will be looking at has to do with promotions. This particular example is great for merchants who have physical stores or a chain of physical stores. If you do not have a physical store, do not worry. Just tweak this simple shopping cart idea slightly to suit your web store; more on that later.

Last year, a famous chain of coffee outlets used Facebook to great effect during their promotion campaigns.

They got their page visitors to print out redemption coupons for free pastry with every purchase of a beverage within a certain time frame on a particular date. This resulted in an extraordinary spike in their page visits as visitors kept sharing the page link with their friends.

If you do not have a physical store, you could still spread a discount coupon code in this manner. You could also use Twitter for this purpose. However, this method is best used for short-term or limited promotions in order to create a feeling of urgency. This “rush” helps get the word out faster and creates the urge to buy on impulse. This method hinges on the psychological leaning that people are more likely to buy if they feel that it is an opportunity not to be missed or one that will not come around again in the near future.

That said, you can’t just keep dishing out promotions on your page. You need to space promotions out a little. Keep your visitors interested by posting interesting updates, reviews or related articles regarding your store and products. You can even use activities to improve your customers’ perception of your brand. For example, organizing environmental or charitable activities, and then posting pictures and articles of these activities on your page. Companies have been doing this for years in order to improve their public image.

We hope that you will put this ecommerce solution shopping cart software tip to good use. It has worked wonders for many merchants and it may work for you as well. We would suggest that you have everything planned out for the year before you go ahead with this so that everything will be in sync with what is happening at your store. Ultimately, all of these efforts should lead to better sales.Recent Posts:

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Make Recommendations The Clever Way

desmond — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:10:49 +0000

We’ve been posting a lot of articles lately on techniques to improve sales with the tools available with some of the best ecommerce solution software in the market. We’ve done so because the holidays are just a few months away and we want our merchants to make the best of this shopping season. We’ve touched on cross-selling and up-selling in earlier posts and we will take it a step further here.

There are certain things that even the best ecommerce solution or best free shopping cart software can’t help you do. This is because there’s a lot of psychology involved in getting a customer to buy a product, let alone buy or spend more than they originally planned to. Unfortunately, web hosting shopping cart technology hasn’t reached such an advanced state…yet.

Cross-selling and up-selling are great ways to expose people to more products they might be interested in but had not thought of. However, getting them to actually consider purchasing those products is a whole other matter. The way you go about persuading them is very important. In order to get customers to buy cross-sell and up-sell products, you have to choose your words carefully.

Here are a few suggestions:

Add A Personal Touch

Try to personalize your product suggestions as much as possible. Don’t just use “We recommend.” Instead, try using “We think you might like this/these.” This gives a much warmer feel. This phrase works great with up-sell items or items which are related (same category).

Create A Need

Instead of making outright suggestions, why not put it in a different way by actually asking the buyer if he or she needs something. If a person has just bought a digital SLR for instance, you could ask, “Do you need batteries?” or “Would you want this camera bag for your gear?”. This method is great for products with lots of accessories. This is why guys go into DIY stores looking to buy a $5 screwdriver but come out with $200 worth of power tools and equipment which will be borrowed by neighbors and never returned. Mind you, have you noticed how fast food outlets cross-sell? As soon as you order a soda and a burger, you’ll automatically be asked, “Would you like some fries with that?” If you agree, the ever-helpful staff will then try to up-sell the product, “Why don’t you try our large fries? It’s just 20 cents more.” Even if 3 out of 10 customers opt for the fries, regardless of size, that’s already an increase in revenue.

Everyone Wants A Bargain

No one likes to pay retail. If you want someone to buy something (extra) you need to make it worth their while. You need to express the value of the deal to them. Tell them exactly how much they will be saving and emphasize what a great deal this is. And it pays to choose your figures wisely here. For example, given a choice between “Save $1.99″ and “Save 30%”, which do you think would have a bigger impact?

Tell Them The Sky Is Falling

People usually react to urgency. Place some sort of limit or a condition to the items you cross-sell or up-sell. “Available at this price for 15 minutes only” or “Hurry! Last 5 units left” are just some examples of this. Some view cart and checkout pages even employ the use of countdown clocks to emphasize the urgency. This method is great for items that are low in stock or end life products.

Curiosity Killed The Cat, But Not The Sale

I read somewhere that you should persuade and not inform when trying to sell. However, Amazon has started using analytics as part of its up-selling function for some of its products. Lets just say you select item A to purchase. Amazon will list that item along with a few more similar items and state the percentage of people who bought them. Usually, you’d find that most people bought products that cost more than the product you selected. In fact, yours would be the only one not to hit 2 digits percentage-wise. You would then start to have doubts about purchasing product A and start browsing through all the other costlier alternatives. Genius, huh?

Have you tried any of these tips before? Let us know how it turned out.Recent Posts:

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Ecommerce Shopping Cart Blog by InstanteStore » best free shopping cart software

Secure Ecommerce Shopping Cart Product Selection Tips

Accessories

Ecommerce Solution Shopping Cart Software Tips For Merchants

Online Shopping Cart Tutorial – Hot Product Search Methods

The Present

The Future

Old Is Gold

Best Free Shopping Cart Software﻿ Tip – Use Videos

Useful Ecommerce Solution Shopping Cart Software Facebook Tip

Make Recommendations The Clever Way

Best Free Shopping Cart Software Tip – Use Videos