Articles by Paulette

Deciding that you want to sell your products or services online is exciting. Trying to figure out what you need to make it happen can be exhausting. Finding the right eCommerce solutions company and Content Management System (eCommerce CMS) for developing your site can be frustrating and expensive. I experienced all of these feelings and more when assigned the task to create an eCommerce website for my employer.

If you sell a product or service developing an eCommerce site may be critical to the continued success of your business. Businesses today can no longer afford to think locally. Instead, businesses must think globally, and an eCommerce site expands your business into the global marketplace like no brick and mortar business ever could.

1. Your eCommerce solution must be easy to use for the company and the customer. Find a program that will create a storefront, shopping cart and will process credit card payments with little or no web development on your part. It is always important to select a firm that offers a complete one-stop eCommerce solution. This will ensure that everything can be integrated properly without compatibility problems or relying on several different services or companies to work together.
2. eCommerce Solution Providers must offer exceptional customer service. It is important that you can depend on the company to be there when you need them most, when you have a question or a problem. Find a company with a great track record for reliability.
3. Includes functions for inventory and accounting. You need this to be fluid. Do not make more work for yourself ensure that the program includes features to maintain inventory and offers the ability to export data for use with external accounting programs.
4. Ensures the requirements for SSL, Merchant Accounts and your Payment Gateway are met (critical elements to a successful site). There are several technical and critical components you need to have for a functioning eCommerce site. I recommend finding a company that includes setting up and assisting you with the steps for accepting your payments for goods or services rendered online.
5. Supports and establishes your overall design and menu structure of your site. A company that includes a web design team will take your vision and make it a reality. Also, ensure they take the web design and establish the template for creating your entire site. You should also have the ability to change or add to your menus without creating or editing programming code.
6. Helps you reach your eCommerce goals within your budget and have options for monthly hosting fees. You need options and the options should include different levels for hosting your eCommerce site. These levels should be in line with the size of your business, but would not restrict your growth. Find an eCommerce provider that will allow you to start out small or large.
7. Offers tools to analyze your site activity, i.e. #number of visitors, searched phrases, and # of orders. You will need to review your eCommerce site for enhancements or changes based on visitor activity. There are many tools available for monitoring your visitors. Make it easier on yourself and find a company that includes this data.
8. Includes customizing functions to use for different views based upon the type of customer, i.e. business-to-business, business-to-consumer, or business-to-employee. If you plan to sell your products or services to different groups of people with special prices for each; then you will need to ensure that the feature to set up this type of structure is included in your site development program.
9. Includes features for developing customer friendly information, i.e. image gallery, FAQ, store locator, and news/blog. These eCommerce features engage your customer so they come back more often. They should be easy for you to set up and maintain.
10. Find an eCommerce company that has a track record of short down-time (times when your site is unavailable due to technical problems or not enough band width.) Just remember that bigger and cheaper is not always better. Find the company that has the hardware and structure to support their customers and have plans for growth as their client base increases.

After researching eCommerce solutions providers, get fresh, found Web Design Solutions and their program Web Shop Manager! Not only did their program have all the eCommerce features we needed to easily create our site, but they also have a team with exceptional customer service. Web Design Solutions guided us through every phase of web development and ensured we were ready for our launch. Our site and the tools available to create all the features exceeded our original expectations. Without Web Design Solutions and Web Shop Manager, our site may not have been as dynamic, easy to maintain, and user-friendly. They provided web design, hosting, eCommerce solutions, and Content Management System to let us control as much of the website as we desired whether it's managing our products, the checkout process, or informational pages.

We found that eCommerce website development is quite simple when using the right tools. You can see the results for yourself. Check us out at www.getfresh.net, and then visit Web Design Solutions at www.webdesignsolutions.com to get started on your site today!

Paulette Palladino, get fresh

When I first heard that Web Shop Manager was upgrading to a one page checkout, adding to an already awesome eCommerce web software, I thought to myself, why? What is a 1 page eCommerce checkout? What does it do for my eCommerce business? What does a one page checkout mean to my customers? What makes it a revolutionary one page checkout? What the heck is AJAX, besides a cleaner for my house!? So I completed some research to find my answers and discovered why Web Shop Manger's one page eCommerce checkout using AJAX is a must have for anyone who wants to sell products online!

What is AJAX Single-Page Checkout Software?

We all know that you have to go through a checkout in order to purchase products. Whether you are in a brick and mortar store or online, this process is required. Can you imagine being at the grocery store and having to go to 3 different stations to checkout? The first station, to inform the sales clerk what type of customer you are (existing shopper, new, or a guest). The second station, to provide them with your billing/shipping information and to decide if you need help carrying your products to your car. Then, finally the third station, where you would provide them with the payment for your goods. If this was the case we would probably get fed up and not continue to shop there and see several shopping carts full of food that had been abandoned!

So why do we put up with all those stops when shopping online? Why do we go from page to page providing a little information at a time to get what we want? Well, not everyone does. In fact I found that abandoned shopping carts is a common problem for eCommerce sites. Several independent studies have corroborated cart abandonment rates of up to 75%, while it’s been noted that about half of all prospective customers bail out of their purchases sometime between selecting products and clicking the buy button. Also, research has shown that the longer it takes for a customer to complete a sale, the higher the shopping cart abandonment rate.

Well the great news is with Web Shop Manager’s revolutionary one page, one step checkout your customer’s no longer have to make all those stops. They will go from cart, to checkout/purchased in one step! Web Shop Manager’s one page checkout process allows you to close your sales quickly and easily.

What makes AJAX One Step Shopping Cart work?

You may think to yourself why is this one page checkout such a big deal…I’ve see other one page eCommerce checkouts! But believe me you’ve never seen one as dynamic as this one-page eCommerce checkout! What makes Web Shop Manager truly one page is AJAX!

To help understand AJAX I turned to Wikipedia. Ajax, sometimes written as AJAX (shorthand for asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The use of Ajax has led to an increase in interactive animation on web pages and better quality of Web services due to the asynchronous mode. Data is usually retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript and XML is not actually required, nor do the requests need to be asynchronous.

AJAX’s use on the one page checkout enables the checkout to function so your customers do not have to wait for a new page to load or the existing page to reload. The information is evaluated and processed behind the scenes, creating this seamless checkout process. This provides immediate customer feedback and error detection. Allowing your customer to quickly complete the checkout and their eCommerce purchase without stress or frustration.

Why do I want a One Step Checkout?

As an eCommerce site owner you will see a drastic increase in your sales and cart conversions with this enhancement. Effectively and significantly reducing your cart abandonment rates. Existing Web shop manager customers are already experiencing an increase in sales, decrease in shopping cart abandonment and more returning customers.

This revolutionary one page checkout is included when you use Web Shop Manager to maintain your eCommerce site at no additional cost. Also included are several eCommerce features for eBusiness owners. Offering you more tools to manage your orders, see additional information by customer, and advanced searching tools. You decide, based on the products, which fields you don't need. For example, if the product does not require shipping then the customer will not be asked for shipping information.

Combine all this with an already extensive list of eCommerce feature and you will never want to use anything else to manage your eCommerce websites. If there was ever a checkout system that was fun to use, this is it!

Would you like to see for yourself how easy Web Shop Manager's eCommerce CMS is to use? Sign up now for a personal CMS live demonstration.