"Did you miss out on the on-line Christmas Buying craze? " Planning a winning Web Store!

Thinking of starting a web store? Or maybe you opened your web store too late to catch much of the Christmas season buying craze this year?

Well, now is the perfect time to start planning on making it big for NEXT Christmas! The longer your site has been live the better your search engine rankings are. So the WORST time to launch a new Web Store is right before Christmas. You want your site tested and live by mid May at the latest. And there is LOTS of planning to do and decisions to make! So let's get started.

Here is a checklist for planning Your Winning Web Store!

First steps in planning your site

1. Who is your target market? You can't sell to them if you don't know what makes them buy!

2. What do you hope to achieve online? What are your objectives for your site?

3. Do you have any current marketing materials (brochures, datasheets, white papers)?

4. Do you have a logo?  Do you have it in vector format?

5. Do you have any fonts and color schemes you plan to use?

6. Will you need any product photography? 

7. What kind of features would you like on your web site besides your Store Features?

   • online chat,
   • survey/coupon incentives
   • giveaways
   • forums or message boards
   • Visitor sign up for newsletter or mailings.
     
     
8. Do you have a privacy policy in place when collecting personal info on your site?
   
9. Content - Plan and gather information for your Web Site. The right content will boost effectiveness by establishing credibility, providing useful information, encouraging repeat visits, and building your business.  See our past newsletter on Keyword Analysis.

E-commerce considerations:

There are many shopping cart softwares available. Some you pay for a license, some are free, or Open Source. Regardless they will need to be updated regularly as security updates are issued sometimes several times a year and new versions come out that can be huge upgrades and take a lot to install and configure. So plan for that in your budget. I haven't mentioned yet, custom applications. Obviously if someone is writing custom software for you it will be not only expensive, but the web programmer will own it.

You really need to check out your competition and also larger web stores to find features you think will be important to your web business. Then your web developer can help you find the right software for you.

Have you decided how you will accept payments?  PayPal?  Or a payment gateway such as Authorize.net?  Don't sign up for a payment gateway until you have selected your shopping cart software because not all shopping carts work with all payment gateways. If you have a particular payment gateway you want to use, be sure to tell your web developer so they can take that into consideration.

Now, what else do you need to consider when planning a web store?

1. How many items do you think you will have?
2. Products – you will need item numbers and descriptions for each item.
3. Policies - What are your policies for the following:
   • Returns
   • Shipping and Handling
   • Pricing
   • Sale items
   • Larger items in terms of shipping
   • Privacy issues  - create a privacy statement regarding client information
4. Sales tax issues – for what states will you be collecting sales tax? Talk to your CPA.
5. International Orders – will you accept orders from any countries?  If so, makes sure your credit card company will allow this as there are fraud issues with international orders.
6. Shopping Cart Features - What features will you require? Here are some you many want to consider:
7. Shipping - most carts can calculate shipping on an order total, by total weight or on a sliding scale. What do you need?

What other features will you need? Remember, this is your on-line store! The more research you can do on the features you will need the happier you will be when your site is complete.

Customer Status Modes

• unrestricted shopping
• must register to view prices
• must register to view prices and merchandise
• showroom only

Global E-Commerce Ready

• multiple language support
• multiple state tax support
• multiple shipping methods
• multiple currency support
• multiple payment methods

Categories and Products

• unlimited categories and subcategories
• products can reside in multiple categories
• product options
• products by manufacturers

Promotions, Sales and Discounts

• individual special prices
• product recommendations - this product goes with that product
• global sale reductions
• category-wide sale prices
• discount coupons by item or total sale
• customer group discounts (wholesale, etc.)
• quantity discounts
• minimum and maximum purchases per product
• prices by attributes

Customer Retention Tools

• send newsletters from your Control Panel
• order status emails and records in the customer account
• wish list
• tell-a-friend or recommend this product
• gift certificates
• gift registration
• search products

Your Sites Administration Control Panel. Will you need all or some of these features?

• edit your static pages
• add, delete, move, link or copy your products
• create and manage your product attributes
• manage featured products, specials and storewide sales
• Coupon management
• shipping and payment methods
• price and taxation control
• newsletter creation and sending
• inventory control
• show in stock / out of stock
• exporting reports to .csv format
• export for Quickbook

Shopping Cart sites are database driven. Not all database driven sites produce .html links. That is not the only factor in search engine ranking, but it is better to have .html pages if possible.

Now that you have planned your site, it's time to plan your marketing for your site!

Now do you see why it's best to start now if you want to have a "green" Chrismas next season?

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Just for Fun or Useful Links!

Kitty Wigs

OK, I've seen everything now! If you have a cat, and WAY too much time on your hands, you're gonna love this site! For the rest of us, it's just plain funny!

http://kittywigs.com/index.html

Picasa Web Album

Help for Picasa users to upload their photos to the web and share your pictures with family and friends. By invitation only right now, you'll need to add your Gmail email address to their web page to get an invite.

http://picasaweb.google.com

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