E-commerce portal

Ecommerce Fundamentals
eCommerce can be VERY complex. To offer a world class customer experience, retailers must incorporate technologies and functionality that exceeds rising customer expectations.

On the flip side however, site fundamentals still play a very large role in converting visitors into customers. Many retailers surprisingly lose sight of these site basics and leave significant sales on the table. This brief examines 4 quick ?fundamentals? every eCommerce manager cannot afford to lose sight of.

Think Fast

Speed has become less of a problem due to the penetration of broadband, but don?t forget that a significant number of people still shop by a dialup connection. When creating a site framework, designers and e-commerce teams should ensure that the site is developed with pages loading in less than 9 seconds (over a dial-up connection).

Our recommended page size is within 60-70k in bytes. At that amount, sites will likely load within the maximum wait time of 9 seconds. Online retailers should avoid flash at all costs within their transactional site. Flash?s artistic aspects may help you establish a brand presence ? but it will likely lose potential customers before they have even searched within your store.

Image is important

Images are a very important aspect of selling online and are often neglected. All product images should be of the highest resolution possible, be much larger than the product page original, and have

multiple views. Dynamic imaging capabilities can improve the user experience to an even higher level by increasing interactivity (zoom & rotate). At a minimum ? retailers should have at least two additional views outside of the product page image to help build emotion.

Be my guest

Shoppers do not like being forced to do anything, especially when they are ready to open their wallets. Forcing a shopper to register on your site before purchasing is a sure way to drive a portion of your traffic to your competitors. Too often, shoppers do not have the time or the inclination to fill out a lengthy form explaining what types of information they desire.

Always offer the ability to checkout as a guest. You will see less customer leakage within the checkout process and can still offer the option to register when the sale is completed.

Make sure it?s ?above the fold?

Your homepage is the most important page within your eCommerce store. It sets the initial tone for the shopping experience and offers your best promotions and products to your visitors. Users typically visually scan a web page from top to bottom and then from left to right. All critical content and navigation options should be obvious to the shopper without having to scroll down. If you have your best promotions ?below the fold? ? you can bet that a large percentage of browsers are not scrolling down to see it.

Craig Smith is the founder and managing director of Trinity Insight LLC. Trinity is a consultancy that helps online retailers sell more products within the eCommerce marketplace. <a href="http://www.trinityinsight.com" title="http://www.trinityinsight.com" target="_blank">http://www.trinityinsight.com</a>

Honest Money Making Strategies to Boost Your Online Sales
Finding honest money making programs products and services can be a bit of a challenge but if you do your research you will find the honest legitimate programs

<p><b>How to Be a Ticket Scalper When You Grow Up</b></p>

Americans value an entrepreneurial spirit as highly ancient Romans valued a strong chin. Few children look forward to a cubicle, six bosses and a lawn full of brown grass. Instead, imagination and vigor characterize the nation s youth. Pre-adults in the U.S. collect cans, rake leaves and open lemonade stands by the thousands to earn a little scratch.

Unfortunately, this creative chutzpah is pounded out of many boys and girls by the time they enter the work force. They are forced into an office job, with all of its attendant unhappiness, just to earn a steady paycheck.

However, not everyone chooses this path. Some men and women decide to blaze their own trails, one of which is the glamorous world of ticket scalping.

At the most basic level, fledgling scalpers sacrifice their time and effort to stand in lines for hot events. Buying tickets from the box office for the Super Bowl, a Billy Joel concert, or the opening night of a Broadway show, scalpers know that they ll be able to resell their tickets for more than they themselves paid. On the day of the event, the scalpers stand outside the venue and sell their tickets to passers-by or people who arrive at the event without tickets already.

As the operation grows larger, a scalper may pay several people to stand in lines for various events, buying more tickets and reselling them for more money.

While this basic strategy works reasonably well, laws and technology have changed the business. The act of scalping tickets at the venue has been outlawed in many states, though the exact terms of those rules vary. Fortunately, the Internet s increasing prominence as a marketing medium has allowed scalpers to move off the streets and into cyberspace.

Through the Internet, scalpers have been replaced by brokers, who operate legally within the regulated secondary ticket market. The secondary market, consisting of all tickets available for resale, has grown rapidly in the past few years. So how can you break into the industry?

An internet presence is an essential part of forging a successful business as a ticket broker. While it is possible to earn some profit using the basic strategy described above, you will always be limited by how much you can buy and sell yourself. Also, a lack of advertising results in fewer potential buyers and less competition for your tickets, resulting in lower chances of reselling tickets for a higher price.

The Internet allows you to reach a large number of people who are looking specifically for tickets. A website is an extremely useful tool, as it allows you to display all your tickets in a way that makes it easy for shoppers to find the ones they want.

Your business can really take off when you list your inventory through one of the major exchange networks. These networks are large databases of tickets from many brokers. Shoppers looking for tickets are drawn to these sources because of the wide selection, and listing your inventory in their databases increases your exposure dramatically. Additionally, broker exchange networks can quickly and easily eliminate sellers with phony tickets. Such sites are able to more easily manage fraud by dealing with a more limited group of larger sellers, rather than a site like Ebay which has to manage a huge number of small sellers.

Some networks, like TicketNetwork and Ticket Solutions, allow multiple web sites to display the entire inventory in a database. By paying a premium for this service, you can make money two different ways. First, you can display your tickets at a more favorable price than those of other brokers, making your tickets more attractive and increasing your sales. Second, you can charge a service fee if customers choose to buy tickets on your site but from other brokers. This allows you to make a profit on any ticket bought on your website.

The secondary ticket market is trending toward these sorts of technological advances, rewarding brokers with lower prices, better websites, and superior knowledge of event popularity. While the industry has developed beyond the solitary scalper standing outside Madison Square Garden, it is still very much a business of entrepreneurs, limited only by ambition and imagination rather than the gray walls of a cubicle.

<p><b>About the Author:</b> J.B. Hooper is a consultant for <a href="http://www.ticketliquidator.com">TicketLiquidator.com</a>. He has been an authority on <a href="http://www.ticketliquidator.com/sports.aspx">Sports</a>, <a href="http://www.ticketliquidator.com/concerts.aspx">Concerts</a> and <a href="http://www.ticketliquidator.com/theater.aspx">Theater</a> for more than twenty years.</p>

Business Phones Keep Up With Changes In Technology
The basic premise that defines a business phone has been simple and well stated for many years. Business phones, unlike home telephones, need to be able to handle a large call volume and provide functionality that is useful to the end user. This usually includes the ability to field several calls at the same time, put people on hold when necessary, and direct phone traffic to wherever it needs to go. Business phones have accomplished these tasks with flying colors going all the way back the earliest models. Even more impressive, however, is the ability business phone manufacturers have shown to incorporate new and expanding technologies into their products.

Technology has grown by leaps and bounds, especially in the last two decades. From faxes to cellular phones and the dawning of the computer age, changes that have affected phones in general, but particularly business phones, have been varying and abundant. Looking at other industries where technology has influenced design and protocols, one can easily see that not all manufacturers share the same competitiveness that business phone manufacturers share in relation to keeping their products as current as possible. Digital telephones were available before the digital alarm clock, digital wrist watch or the digital thermostat.

While it could be argued for the digital alarm clock or the digital wrist watch that this is simply a matter of function not really benefitting form, I doubt that anyone would dispute the exclusion of the thermostat in that description. Like the digitalization of the telephone, digitalized thermostats offer options that were not possible prior to the conversion. From the ability to adjust temperature settings based on time to the increased level of accuracy, digitalization has offered great benefits to this particular product. Why then, were products such as these so much slower than the business telephone to adopt digitalization?

It is more a testament to the dedication of telephone equipment manufacturers than it is a knock on other product manufacturers. The telephone business is highly competitive, and the ultimate beneficiary of this competitiveness is the consumer. Whatever changes lie ahead for technology, you can be certain that business phone manufacturers will incorporate those changes into their products.

To order a small business phone or phone system visit http://www.ineedtelephones.com To read other article visit http://smallbusinessphonesystems.blogspot.com/

Finding The Best Web Hosting eCommerce Solution For Your Business
Trying to get eCommerce facilities So many times when trying to find a webhosting eCommerce solution it can be a difficult solution to find

Starting Low and Ending High in eBay Online Auctions
It is the often said that 0.99 no reserve auction are the best way to encourage bids and lead to higher prices. In fact Auctioning4u eBay Drop Off Shop lists most of its items using this pricing strategy. However up to now this theory was more anecdotal than based on actual data.

A recent paper by Gillian Ku of London Business School, Starting Low but Ending High: A Reversal of the Anchoring effect in Auctions has investigated the effect of starting price on the final value of online auctions and discovered that it is indeed the case that low starting prices increase ending price. Ku et al have discovered that three effects of lower starting prices lead to higher ending prices:

* Lower starting prices reduce barriers to entry, which increases bids and generates higher prices
* Lower starting prices entice bidders to invest time and energy, increasing their commitment to the auction
* The extra bids generated by lower starting prices infer value in the item, encouraging more traffic

These findings are at odds with previous research on negotiations which finds that ending prices were highly related to starting price. In the more social environment of auctions (especially online auctions such as eBay), this trend is reversed. Ku performed six studies to investigate the effect of starting price on ending price, several of which were related to eBay (these are studies 2, 3 and 5 detailed below).
Study 2: Starting low and ending high on eBay

The results of eBay online auctions were analysed to establish the relationship between staring and ending prices. For this study, two types of auctions were identified:

* Independent value auctions. These are highly individual auctions where the price is difficult to predict e.g. collectibles
* Common value auctions. Auctions of common items where there is a market price.

For the independent value auctions they choose to analyse Tabriz Persian rugs and for the common value auctions Nikon digital cameras. The following results were found for both types of auction

* Lowers starting price auctions were more likely to be successful
* Lowers starting prices auction results in more bids and more unique bidders.
* Lower staring prices resulted in higher ending prices

Study 3: Escallation of Commitment on eBay

This study set out to investigate the effect of escalation of commitment on prices rises. Is it the case that once the bidder has placed a bid they have invested time and are more likely to bid again?

Ku et al focused their attention on a particular eBay seller, Browncow, who sells Hawaiian shirts starting at $9.99 and $24.99. Analysing the results of 89 auction produced the following conclusions

* Low staring prices bring bidders into the auction early
* Low starting prices encourage bidders to accumulate sunk costs into the auction. Low starting price winners have spend more time in the auction and make more bids than low starting price losers or bidders in high starting price auctions.

Study 4 Inferring value from Traffic and Current Prices

Test subjects were asked to judge the proper value of an mocked-up eBay item (holiday package) with which they were presented. It was found that the number of bids which the items had lead to higher valuations.
Study 5 Starting Low and Ending Low on eBay

This study found that for auctions where there were less bids, the starting price did have an effect on ending price. By comparing the outcome of similar items where there were misspellings in the titles, it was found that this created a barrier to auction traffic, reducing final prices
Lessons from research

The results of this research will not come as much of a surprise to eBayers, but it is nevertheless interesting to have analysis to back up commonly quoted conceptions. I think that the following lessons can be drawn from the paper:

* 0.99 NR auctions work well for popular items with plenty of search traffic and lead to higher prices
* Less popular items (rare) are not suitable for this kind of auction strategy.

I think that the results of this research are most relevant to individual sellers, selling in low volumes with using simple sales strategies. When selling in large volumes, the market prices will drop if too many items are listed and it is therefore necessary to increase starting prices or use fixed price auctions to compensate.
Comments on the Research

There are many factors affecting the ending prices of “eBay Online Auctions” such as starting time, ending time, seller feedback, postal rate etc. There is no indication in this paper that these factors have been taken into account.

The paper talks about auction traffic, referring to the number of bids on an item. I think that another interesting study would be to compare the number of views of an auction with starting price to establish if there is a relationship.

Trevor Ginn is head of consulting at Auctioning4u eBay Drop Off Shop ( http://www.auctioning4u.co.uk ). Just bring us your Stuff and we'll sell it on eBay, No sale No fee.

Taking keyword research to a new level
Get Rich Quick Scams Revealed Read this article before you consider paying for a “get rich quick” program. From: Projectx Everybody would love to make lots of money quickly, working from home, and only doing a few hours of work per week. I’ve spent the past two years trying to find a great way of doing this. Only over the course of the past few months have I found any “get rich quick” programs worth buying. I’ve been trying to make money online for a long time. I had a few small websites, but they never made much more than a few hundred per month. It was easy money and didn’t require much work on my part, but I knew there were people out there doing better than I was and I knew I could do as well as them. Now, I’ve seen a lot of “get rich quick” programs. Most of these people make claims about earning $2000/day with Google or something similarly insane. Almost all of these people are complete liars. Even if they were making $2000/day with Google AdSense, it’d be because they had high- traffic websites with a lot of quality content. I’d know, because in one whole month, I never even made half of what they promised I’d make daily with their programs. Maybe you’ve already been scammed by one of these fraudsters. Anyway, I finally got sick of what was being offered. I decided I’d look through the all of the “get rich quick” programs I could find and see if there were any that were actually legitimate. I found that there were owners selling their programs for well over $100, but the information in them could be found almost anywhere online for free. Additionally, they all contained out-of-date information, had no e-mail support, no money back guarantees, and broken links in the downloads section. In conclusion, almost all of the programs I found were completely useless. The owners knew it, but they couldn’t care less about their customers since they didn’t offer refund policies! Amazingly, while looking through all of the programs, I actually did find a few legitimate programs. They were run by ordinary people like you and me, and they had found some great methods of making money from their home by doing very little work. I spent some time working with those programs, and my income is now ten times what it used to be. These programs provided a large amount of great information on how to make extra money on your computer doing very little work. Numerous customers had provided great feedback and reviews for their products. Many of them have started to make money just days after buying! Their programs have excellent prices, and the authors have a group of paid staff who are dedicating to helping you or providing assistance if you need any. I must say I was amazed! If you do decide to purchase any of the programs listed below, I recommend you join quickly. Most of the owners tell me they are getting an overwhelming number of sales and plan on raising prices in the near future, so order while prices are still low! To Your Online Success, Projectx http://swastech.projectx.hop.clickbank.net

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Digital Currencies
The very idea of individuals being able to exchange values electronically using a digital currency seems impossible, how could the physical component be removed from the exchange of currency? Yet this is already happening, in small ways, and has been for some years. For example, certain public facilities accept coin like tokens mass transit systems in particular, but also many toll collecting authorities. Some mass transit systems require the use of fare cards that store value in a magnet strip, instead of coins or tokens. Some toll road authorities place tags on your car that can be scanned at low speed so a complete stop at the booth is not required. Prepaid telephone cards represent another digitized currency. Digital currencies are differentiated from electronic payment systems on two very important ways. 1: Digital currencies can be used to maintain the anonymity of the customer in an online transaction, whereas users of online payment systems are usually identifiable, at least to the service to which they subscribe. 2: Digital currencies themselves can support an actual transfer of value by themselves, without linking to some third party credit provider or financial institution for authorization to complete the transaction. The use of standard encryption and digital signature technologies make it possible to safely and reliably transmit payment information between customer and merchant, or between customer and online payment service provider. Encryption, particularly public key encryption, makes the contents secure from prying eyes, while digital signature techniques ensure that forgery in not possible. However, both encryption and digital signature need to be a two way process. If Julie and Ron are to exchange encrypted messages, they must identify each other with an encryption key. More critically, digital signatures work only if you can trace the public key of the person signing.

Douglas Adams is the owner of http://www.dougadam.com , a website dedicated to increasing knowledge of home based business issues. For Income Opportunities visit. http://www.shaklee.net/douglas_adams/distMain

Discover the 17 Ways You Can Get Free Traffic to Your Web Site
You re going to find 17 different ways that you can use to get free traffic to your web site. All of these are free and some of them have options that may cost a couple of dollars. That doesn t mean that they don t require any work on your part. First way - Link Exchanges A reciprocal link exchange, or link exchange for short, is a great way to increase traffic to your website. In essence, it s the exchanging of links of other websites; you link another site to yours; the website owner of that site links your site to his / her site. It s an equal exchange; one link for one link. Results are that some search engines like Google list sites that have more and better links higher in their rankings. In short, when people search for your keywords, they ll find your site listed near the top of the list with the more quality links you have to spider. How to Exchange Links You can exchange links any number of ways. However, before beginning to swap links, note that instead of focusing on mass links, though, it s better to focus on good ones or sites with good rank in the search engines. For example, it s better to be linked to one top site than 200 unethical, spamming, porn sites. You rank higher in the search engines plus receive better traffic to your website. Instead, exchange links with other sites using links with different text pointing to sub directories e.g. if site is about gardening and one directory is flowers and another is trees, get links to flowers with the appropriate text about flowers and links to trees with appropriate text about trees. An easy way to begin is to reach out and email webmasters of sites that you d like linked up with. Maybe you already have some ideas like sites that are in your industry, but not in competition with you; association sites, complimentary service sites, affiliate sites, etc. You can also find software to help locate sites for linking, then create, send and track your emails. Search these terms for help finding software, reciprocal links software automate link exchange or link exchange software reviews. There are also third party services that help with link exchange programs. For example, one at: http://www.articleaware.com/LinkSubmission can link your site up with about 400 directories, alternating up to five different profiles with your link included in them. This isn t free, but it will sure speed up the submission process. Visit forums or discussion boards to learn more, too, and to find recommended software and other third party programs, link partners and more. An example can be found at: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=53 . Learn more and locate link partners. Line up great links for your site and start getting more traffic your way at no extra charge! Second way - Get Traffic with Press Releases An excellent way to get more visitors to your website is by to write press releases and submit them to press release sites. Here are press release tips to help with creating your own releases. And then we ll take a look at some free sites out there where you can distribute them at no cost. Press Release Tips Keep in mind that a press release is a newsworthy announcement. It is not an advertorial or sales letter. A press release needs to be of interest to journalists and other media representatives. A press release itself follows a general format so that publishing media worldwide in all industries can handle the information quickly and efficiently. Main elements in this general format include: 1. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Write these words in the top left-hand margin of your document, capitalizing each letter. 2. Underneath the phrase above, write out your contact Information. List the name of the person to contact for more information on the release and include a phone number and email address for media to reach you in a hurry. 3. Grabbing Headline ” Study popular headlines in your own media on hand (newspapers, USAToday.com, etc.) Then write your own compelling headline to attract readers. 4. City, State ” Begin your first paragraph by listing your press release s point of origin to the left margin. 5. Cut to the chase ” Make your lead paragraph lead and not put people to sleep. Introduce all key points here: the five W’s (who, what, when, where, why). Don t make editors wonder what your piece is about. They re busy. Cut to the chase right off. 6. Develop Content ” Use the remaining part of your release to fully develop your subject of focus. Have someone read it and proofread it for errors and missing info. 7. Summary / Contact / Offer ” Power-pack your last paragraphs with solid reader information. Include a statement like, For more information, contact . And list at least a URL and phone number for readers who want more info. When possible, offer them something free, too: a free report, free ebook with tips, etc.

Discover the rest of the 17 ways and get a list of over two dozen free press release distribution sites visit <a href="http://www.ecompal.com/FreeTraffic.htm">free traffic to your web site</a>. Nick Hurd is the developer of <a href = "http://www.ecompal.com">eCOMpal a shopping cart on steroids</a> that can be set up in minutes. eCOMpal offers numerous options to track your advertising, improve your sales and fulfill your orders.