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

Good Free Shopping Cart Software Trial To Do List

desmond — Sun, 09 May 2010 10:35:30 +0000

There are many ecommerce solution providers out there who provide good free shopping cart software program trials. The free shopping cart software program trial duration varies from 15 to 30 days. Many, especially newbies, might find 15 days a tad too short to get the feel of a solution so if you need more time to try out all the bells and whistles, just ask for an extension; most good free shopping cart software trial providers would be more than happy to oblige.

So now that you’ve signed up for a 30-day good free shopping cart software trial, what do you need to do? Well, try the easiest stuff first. Here are 5 things you can do in just a matter of minutes with your free shopping cart store software 30-day trial.

Upload Your Store Logo

Chances are, you already have a store logo ready and just can’t wait for it to be uploaded. But if you don’t, no need to worry, you can always upload it later whenever you have your logo ready. Some merchants might choose to create their own logos but most would prefer to employ the expertise of a professional logo designer to give their logo that extra edge. Mind you, those who sign up (for a paid package) with InstanteStore get US$40 credit at Logo-Design-Studio.com or LDS for short. The guys and gals at LDS have been around for ages (in the good sense) and are quite familiar with our template specifications so you might say they have an upper hand when designing for our merchants.

Select A Template

A template includes the masthead or top section, and side sections of a page. InstanteStore offers over 200 choices of free templates which come in different colors and designs. Select one that suits the products you intend to sell. For instance, an online flower shop would probably need a bright colored template with a flowery theme. Alternatively, you can also choose to get LDS to design something unique just for you. For those in a rush, they only take 2 business days to come up with design concepts.

In terms of appearance, you can also choose if you want a full screen template or one with a fixed width. If you’re wondering what the difference is between the two, well it’s simple. If you select a full screen template, the template width will fit the screen dimensions of the user’s browser and the content will also stretch to fit, so page appearance may not be consistent. Many merchants go with the fixed width option in order to maintain a consistent appearance across different screen sizes.

Choose A Page Layout

In order to determine how your products will appear on your store, you need to choose a product page layout. Before you make your selection, we suggest you browse around and take a look at different page layouts on sites which sell similar products. Pay attention to how the products and information are displayed. Layouts that catch your eye or tempt you to click for more information are the ones that work best.

Create Categories

Most merchants would probably have more than one item to sell. It is safe to say that these items in turn would fall into a few categories and in some cases, sub categories. It’s always a good idea to organize your products and logically so that customers can locate what they want easily and quickly. So before adding products to your store, you should have all your categories in place. Creating categories is a simple process with our solution. We suggest you create a couple first just so you have a somewhere to place your products. You can easily create more categories later.

Adding Products

A store isn’t a store without products. Again, we suggest you populate your store with a few products first just so you can see what your store would look like with some products on display. Once you’ve got this process down pat, you can try bulk uploading. This is an easier way to upload a massive number of products with their details as well.

Once you’ve completed these 5 steps, you’d probably be wondering what else can you do now that you have another 29 days and (maybe) 23 hours left on your free shopping cart store software trial. We’ll leave that for another post.Recent Posts:

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Cheap Shopping Cart Software vs Free Shopping Cart Store Software

desmond — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:15:05 +0000

Business people are always looking to get stuff at good value. In terms of shopping carts, they prefer affordable and cheap shopping cart software, especially those who are just starting out in ecommerce. Free shopping cart store software would be even better … or would it?

A business is an investment, and sometimes we need to spend just a little to make sure that our business is secure. We can never guarantee how our business will pan out but we need to do everything we can to make sure it has a chance of doing well. One of the ways of doing that is to sign up for a reliable as well as cheap shopping cart software solution from a reputable ecommerce solutions company (us, of course) that is feature-rich and established.

There are a few differences between a cheap shopping cart software solution and a free shopping cart software program, aside from the obvious point that one is free and the other isn’t. There are many free shopping cart store software programs that are feature-packed with almost everything a merchant would need to run an online business. If that is the case, then why would merchants still fork out US$50 a month for a cheap shopping cart software solution?

Free shopping cart programs are usually available as open source software or through companies who offer freely-hosted shopping carts but charge for upgrades and additional features. In most cases for open source shopping carts, users need to be well versed in programming in order to be able to tweak features to their liking. Open source software depends on contributions from programmers who do not get paid for their efforts so unlike with a paid solution, future upgrades are not always guaranteed.

Apart from charging users for updates and patches, free hosting shopping cart providers usually overload their servers with websites to save on cost. This slows down server performance and can lead to downtime. Some companies even place banners on web sites as part of the free hosting agreement.

Support-wise, both sources of free shopping carts are lacking when compared to paid solutions. Users of free solutions will likely have to depend on forums where they’ll need to hope that other users have experienced similar issues to theirs. Solution developers may be on hand to try to provide answers, but free solutions lack dedicated support staff.

To avoid all this hassle, why not invest in a paid shopping cart host and software? For just US$50 a month, users – especially new merchants – will have access to a reliable and cheap shopping cart software solution that’s loaded with features, is secure and is constantly updated (almost always at no additional cost). There’s a time and place for free stuff, but when it comes to your store, a small investment is the right one for your ecommerce success.Recent Posts:

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Can Viral Marketing Work For You?

desmond — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:05:08 +0000

Viral marketing, just like any type of online marketing campaign, aims to drive as much traffic to a site as possible. It actually leverages on the numbers game: the more traffic that ends up at your site, the higher the possible number of conversions.

Of course a viral marketing campaign has to work hand-in-hand with other aspects of the page in order to convert visitors. Read more about that here.

But what actually is viral marketing and how can you formulate a campaign yourself to help drive traffic to your store?

Even a problem free shopping cart web store powered by a reliable yet simple shopping cart needs help in the marketing department. It takes a bit of effort to let people out there know that your store exists (and is worth visiting).

Online Marketing

Online marketing has a lot to do with content. And so it has been said that content is king. But the content has to fit the medium in which it’s used and it has to capture viewers’ interest in order to be of any value. The subject of an online marketing campaign does not necessarily have to be a product or service or something that is already being sought-after. It is possible for ad campaigns to create interest about new products as well as improve brand awareness for existing ones. The good news is that an online marketing campaign need not cost you an arm and a leg. Which brings us to …

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is not a difficult concept just as long as you know what you are doing. Viral marketing makes extensive use of existing resources on the Internet. This potentially include micro-blogging sites like Twitter, social networking sites like Facebook, video sharing sites like YouTube, and of course e-mail to get the word across. All these resources can get “interesting or worthy” news out fast at an exponential rate. Take the viral marketing campaign for the movie Cloverfield for instance. The marketing team opted for an indirect approach by producing teasers and micro sites instead of just a traditional movie trailer. That created such a buzz that the marketing practically took care of itself after just a few weeks. Mind you, the campaign was spread out over a year. Every few months bits of information were released, rumors were spread and theories suggested for the sole purpose of raising awareness and keeping people hooked. Obviously, the strategy proved to be a success.

However, this road may not be for everyone. You need to know your target market and what would appeal to them.

What Makes News Or Updates Worthy Of Being Repeated?

Traditionally, people like free stuff and they also like heavy discounts. Needless to say, these free or discounted items should have a high perceived value among the masses for your campaign to garner any interest at all. Let’s say you want to announce a mid-year sale for your online ladies shoe store. You need to remember that many other stores might be doing the same thing as you. You could use the resources mentioned above to promote your sale, while always making sure your titles and descriptions are SEO-friendly. Now, women love shoes. And I would guess that they love free shoes even more. Why not come up with a contest that challenges people to guess the size or weight of a certain pair of shoes. The first 10 correct entries will be given gift vouchers worth $100 each and the next 50 correct entries will be rewarded with a 50% discount coupon. Done correctly, word of mouth about your store and its offer can spread quickly to more and more potential customers.

Another good example is a recent viral marketing campaign by an online camera store that is offering 2 very desirable cameras for free to participants at random. The catch: in order to be eligible for consideration, participants must first Retweet or publish on a blog the ad line containing a link to the store. A sneaky way to get links as well as get the word across, isn’t it?

Cost

You don’t have to create a teaser video like the one for Cloverfield to spread the word. Many artists and companies on a shoestring budget have produced successful viral marketing videos of varying degrees of quality. For example, The Blair Witch Project (whatever you may think of the actual movie) was a small-budget movie with one impressive viral marketing campaign. The bottom line is that if your marketing materials are compelling enough and you have fully utilized the channels we mentioned earlier, then you can look forward to a bombardment of visits in a relatively short period of time.

Viral marketing is great for marketing a new web store. Just make sure you have all your bases covered first. Ensure you’ve first signed up for a worry free shopping cart store software solution. A feature-rich, easy-to-use simple shopping cart like the one from InstanteStore is a good bet. Once you’ve got all your basics done and you have your store set up and tested, you’re ready to let the world know you’re in business. Good luck!Recent Posts:

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Why Choose a Paid Cart over an Open Source Shopping Cart?

desmond — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:52:21 +0000

It’s good to get things at a bargain. It’s even better to get it for free. But sometimes getting things for free actually comes at a cost.

Open source shopping cart software has come a long way in terms of features. The two major standout features that are offered by open source shopping cart software are:

1) FREE usage OR merchants need pay just a one-time license fee.

2) Can be hosted on ANY web server that meets the software’s server requirements.

So, given the availability of open source shopping cart software, why do merchants still flock to paid shopping carts like InstanteStore?

Here’s why…

“A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.”

- Henry Ford

Reliability and Customer Support

Things don’t always work like clockwork in the cyber world, which is why it is always good to have someone around on standby to help you out. It’s safe to say that many small online business owners aren’t very tech savvy. Most, if not all paid shopping carts tout the fact that their applications are very user-friendly and require little or no programming knowledge whatsoever. The software can be so user-friendly to the point that calls to the help desk are quite rare.

On the other hand, open source shopping cart software is usually geared towards more technologically-inclined users who usually have either lots of experience with shopping cart solutions, software development experience of some form, or a combination of the two. These are the types of users who are most comfortable with such solutions, as they are familiar with most of the quirks of shopping cart solutions, and have the expertise to be able to make their own changes if necessary. This doesn’t apply to most novice users who may have difficulty with the hands-on nature of open source shopping carts.

Paid shopping cart applications usually come with some form of customer support plans included in their packages, so users of these solutions will be able to turn to experts who know the ins and outs of their software if they have questions or need help. Open source shopping cart users will either need to spend money to purchase additional support packages if these are available, or they will need to depend exclusively on other users for help via discussion forums.

A store that’s down cannot garner sales so obviously downtime must be kept to a minimum. Paid shopping cart applications typically include some form of hosting and/or store monitoring so downtime is always kept to a minimum. For users that choose to host their shopping carts on their own, the responsibility of monitoring and keeping their stores up and running 24/7 rests on their own shoulders.

Updates

Paid shopping cart software providers are always working to improve their software and keep it updated with the latest features. The same can be said for open source software also but the speed at which this happens is vastly different. Paid shopping carts are more proactive and innovative in this sense whereas free shopping carts are more reactive.

Features

Needless to say, paid shopping carts come with lots of bells and whistles. The feature lists of paid shopping carts contain extensive features which are both useful and user friendly. And if you like certain things done a certain way, you can opt to have some custom work done for a fee.

If you are seriously thinking of running your own store, make sure you opt for an ecommerce software solution that is stable, reliable and up-to-date. Many ecommerce solution providers like InstanteStore provide a free trial period so that users can try out the various features and familiarize themselves with the software without any obligation. It’s not surprising that most people who sign up for the free trial end up signing up for one of the subscription packages.

What do you think? If you have had experience using open source shopping cart software, we’d like to hear your take on them.Recent Posts:

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