Some of you might already know the company Interspire from Australia. They are the makers of some very succesful webapplications that we at SFOLB.com like to use. These include products like SendStudio (advanced email marketing tool that is still easy to use), ArticleLive (blogging tool, you are looking at it right now!) and ActiveKB (a knowledge base tool).

Just to get something straight from the start. You might be wondering why we are talking about software that SFOLB.com uses for its customers. Would we not loose our competitive advantage this way? The reason is simple, we never sell our cusotmers a standard solution that they can obtain somewhere on the Internet, we value our customers so much that we will always add value to any product. If we feel that a product is great we should talk about it, creating more spin off for the makers of the software and thus establishing the grounds for future developments that will change the Interactive Internet world as we know it. Some products have been developed by such experts that there is no sound reason to develop something similar that will probably do less! Take that with you in your thoughts next time you are looking for a web development project, chances are your webdeveloper is doing the same but not telling you about it.

That said, you may understand why we are talking about a new development of a shopping cart solution that will have all you will need for creating your online shop online.

The Store Suite -  an INTELLIGENT e-commerce product in development by Interspire.
I think it is fair to state that most people nowadays have thought about selling products online, it seems so simple. Nothing is less true! Creating an online shop is just as hard as managing a shop in the real world.You will encounter many of the same issues as in the normal world, think about where do you purchase your goods you want to sell, how should you market your site, what will you do with return goods, how will you handle shipping and payments, what about taxes. There are many variables that you need to think about before starting. So what do we have available in the online world.

If you have done some research on shopping carts or e-commerce solutions you must have found 1000's of results and possibilities ranging from free solutions to 100.000 Euro's and up. All of those shopping carts have their strengths and weaknesses, that's just the way it is.
Personally I've never liked products like OsCommerce simply because they always needed major redesigning and they never seemed to do exactly what they need to do. The Store Suite from Interspire seems to be different, here is why:

The product is currently in development, and the developers are asking major input from their customers and from end users. All the inputs are taken into account during this very intensive development process. You see their product change almost every day as they post updates on their development blog. 
http://www.thestoresuiteblog.com

The Store Suite project has pretty much started by taking all the good things from other shopping solutions and creating them as the basis for their product. This means product listings running into product details, sorted by categories, taking the products into a shopping cart apply some discount if needed, pay for the goods and download or wait for shipment. Unfortunately this is just the very basic setup of an e-commerce site. The real value is in user experience, displaying the products according to your whishes on the fly, changing the look and feel /rearranging of the store every day as you would with a normal store, and maybe most important making sure search engines will find and index you!

There are always two important parts to an online project, the first being the contents located at your url address and the other being what is happening outside on the internet. If you love your store but no one is actually visiting you probably need to look at how you handle things outside of your store. Compare it to creating a store with the doors and windows sealed, no one knows what is inside and no one cares because there are a million others they can find. Also think about reviews for your store, are people saying nice things about your store?

The Store itself
Your store is what you make of it. As mentioned before in the real world you would rearrange your store all the time in order to get the best selling products in front of the nose of your store visitors, this is exactly the same on the Internet. Not only the products, but also the cash register, the news bin, coffee corner whatever you want to call the contents of your store. Take a look at one of the amazing features The Store Suite wil be offering: Click here to see the video.

Navigation
A store is all about clear navigation! get your paths layd out correctly and your customers will buy what they find. The Store Suite brings Web 2.0 functionality here as well, there has been a development of a tag cloud, navigation by importance instead of navigation by pre defined categories.

Customer contact
Your customers are your real assets if they are happy they will buy and if they buy chances are they will talk about it to friends who will in turn visit and buy. There is more you can do though, included in the development of The Store Suite is integration with one of the most powerfull tools you will ever use email marketing! Email marketing is more than just sending a bunch of newsletters to inform you customers about offers. Email marketing is all about making computers work for you. Think about auto responders. For example a customer is looking at a complicated product and requests information, you could set up a series of pre-defined emails that this visitor will receive from that moment on. A rule of thumb is that someone needs about seven contact moments before he/she will feel confident enough to purchase something from you. Perhaps first a teaser about the product, the next day automatically send him/her a more detailed description, two days after that send customer reviews, the day after perhaps even some more links to information on the product on the internet and finally blow him/her away with an offer they cannot refuse. Just an example of how you could use personalized autoresponders to communicate with your customer if you put in a little effort.

Also sending out weekly or montly offers about your store, new products, unique product offers etc will get the brain position in your customers mind that you need. Think about it, ask questions on how you would like to be treated and do it to your customers. Another thing you need to think about it is easier to keep a customer than to get a new one. Use all your communication skills and tools to establish and retain a good relationship.

Recommend products and product reviews
As you probably know and are used to by now before people buy something on the internet they will look for product reviews, or maybe even store reviews to make sure they are buying something that fits their needs. Who knows better than you what cross selling products should be for certain offerings. The Store Suite allows you to recommend products based on the products that are being viewed or purchased. Now the best feature in The Store Suite is that it will give recommended products in real time! Based on what other customers ordered, you know the thing you find on Amazon... people who bought this also bought... great feature if you don't need to worry about it, and that is what it all should be about, creating an online shopping experience that is intelligent, not only for the visitor but also very much for the store operator!

Comparing products
You like anyone else needs to compare different features of a product to come to a desicion about what product to buy, take a look at the comparison example from The Store Suite, this is something you will most likely only find in expensive shopping cart systems. But is is such a necessity.



Shipping
Shipping is always an issue for webshops. Think about how cheap it is to operate your webshop against the costs of running a real world store. The costs most shop keepers are forgetting about though is shipping! The customers are mostly not coming to you to pick up their goods, you need to bring the goods to them! This means that cheap products are a hard thing to sell online simply because shipping costs are to high compared to the products. So think about different channels to distribute your products, get value shipping services, offer your customers an option to pick up their goods at distribution points etc. Experiment! Luckily the integration of shipping options is very easy in The Store Suite. A lot of though has gone into this mostly forgotten part of the webshop and this has resulted in an excellent way of adding and or removing shipping options and shipment providers.

Technical stuff for developers on behaviour and looks
If you are a developer like me you will love the fact that Interspire creates all its products in such a way that you can modify the source code! So if you have clients that need modifications, additions or whatever to the core script, you can easily do it yourself. Every bit of their product has been coded in modules and it has proven very easy to modify the code the way you want it to look or behave. For the looks of the site, don't worry every bit is template based, code is seperated from content and even better also the layout is seperated. So from the administation area you will be able to modify looks and feel, css and even the basic coding all from seperated parts. If that isn't flexible I don't know what is.

If you are looking for more information, you can contact us, or go straight to the creators of this amazing development of shopping cart software at Interspire.

If you have ever looked at shopping carts to start your online business with, there is always something missing. At least this is what I came acros. You could do two things. One you decide to purchase an expensive shopping cart that is custom designed and does everything you want it to do. Or you find the open source shopping cart that will meet most of your needs and take the missing parts for granted.  

Navigating shopping cart reviews and making a good decision

in order to run a successfull online store, you need the best ecommerce software for your business. You are well aware of that, and you're ready to review a number of different programs to see which one might be the best fit for you.

Unfortunately there is a lack of objective shopping cart reviews in IT publications and small business magazines or Web sites, and you are often left with the only option of obtaining information from the vendors themselves.

I tried to put together a few tips that you might find helpful when reviewing and comparing shopping carts. Here they are:

(1) Focus on what's most important to you

This is key given the overwhelming amount of information that you can be bombarded with. Shopping carts look similar, but they are not. Focus on the features that will be most important to you. Start filtering out the programs that don't match your needs. Then, compare the remaining shopping carts by testing those specific features using the demo storefronts that they often provide.

(2) Look at live stores

Most software vendors will provide a partial list of ecommerce Web sites that use their application. For example, we do so on this page. Here are two things to focus on when looking at live store using a specific shopping cart:

Different graphical interface. Look at a few stores to get an idea of how well the shopping cart merges with the Web site. Make sure the transition from static pages (e.g. About us) to dynamic pages (e.g. search, view basket, browse by category, etc.) is smooth. Make sure there are stores that look completely different from one another. This will ensure that you will be able to make your store look exactly how you want it to look. 

Customer experience. Pick a few live stores that you particularly like (or that are in an industry that is close to yours), then browse the store, perform a search, add items to the shopping cart, etc. Are you experiencing what you would like your customers to experience on your own online store?

• Different graphical interface. Look at a few stores to get an idea of how well the shopping cart merges with the Web site. Make sure the transition from static pages (e.g. About us) to dynamic pages (e.g. search, view basket, browse by category, etc.) is smooth. Make sure there are stores that look completely different from one another. This will ensure that you will be able to make your store look exactly how you want it to look. 
• Customer experience. Pick a few live stores that you particularly like (or that are in an industry that is close to yours), then browse the store, perform a search, add items to the shopping cart, etc. Are you experiencing what you would like your customers to experience on your own online store?

The bottom line here is that the ecommerce portion of your Web site must seamlessly integrate with the rest of the pages. If it doesn't, the online store will not look professional, and customers will not buy. It's that simple. So make sure to choose an ecommerce application that allows you to easily merge the shopping cart with the rest of your Web site.

(3) Understand the "Total Cost" of running your store

Some of the software that you are reviewing may be provided to your as a service (a hosted shopping cart solution, software is not delivered to you), and some may be sold to you as a product (not a hosted solution, software is delivered to you). Take some time to estimate the total cost of running your online store, not just in the short run, but also in the long run.

Let's first look at hosted solutions, and assume that your store will operate for at least 2 years:

Set up fees + (Monthly fees * 24) + (Commission on sales * Total Sales) = Total Cost

Assume the company you choose charges a $50 set up fee, $40 monthly fees, and a sales commission that is 1% of your sales, which you estimate will average around $20,000 a month over the course of the 2 years. The total cost becomes:

$50 + ($40 * 24) + (1% * $240,000) = $3,410 (or ~$142/month).

This calculation assumes that technical support and updates are included in the "monthly fees". If they are not, you will need to take those into account as well.

If you are not looking at a hosted solution, but rather at a software program that will be delivered to you, the calculation is normally easier. The total cost for the same 2-year time period would be calculated as follows:

Software License + Technical Support Plan + Software Updates = Total Cost

For example, if you purchase ProductCart, the calculation would be as follows:

$695 + $0 + $0 = $695

This assumes that you are already paying for a hosting account for your Web site. If not, then adding hosting to the equation normally adds between $10 and $20 a month.

(4) Review store management tools

Imagine yourself managing the store that you have built after picking any of the ecommerce programs that you are reviewing. Here are few things to focus on:

• Store administration. How easy will it be to manage your online store? Make sure that the shopping cart you end up choosing offers an intuitive administration area where you can manage every aspect of your store. Many low-cost ecommerce systems have very limited administration features, especially when it comes to adding/editing multiple products or categories at once.
Order processing. Think about when your store is active and accepting real orders: can the shopping cart accommodate real life scenarios? For example: can you edit an order after it has been placed (e.g. customer wants to modify the quantity purchased)? Can you authorize, but not capture funds during a credit card transaction (e.g. you want to make sure the order is accurate and legitimate before processing it)? Does the system automatically notify the customer at every step of the process (order received, order processed, order shipped, etc.)? Can you batch process multiple orders at once or will you have to handle each order one by one? Many shopping carts have a weak order processing module.
Offline vs. online shopping carts. There is a difference between ecommerce software that runs entirely on the Web server and software that needs to be partially installed on your local computer. Make sure you choose the system that best fits your needs. 

(5) Review payment & shipping components

Since they directly affect the checkout process, the payment and shipping components of any shopping cart are crucial to the successful operation of your online store. Pay attention to the shipping options that the various shopping carts that you are reviewing offer: do they dynamically connect to shipping providers such as UPS or FedEx?

Can you choose which services to show/hide? Can you set a shipping service to be free for certain orders (e.g. UPS Ground free for orders > $100)? Then look at the payment systems that they integrate with, and whether or not you are able to create your own, custom payment options.

(6) Look at documentation and response time

You're now down to just a handful of ecommerce programs. Which one should you pick? Download the technical support documentation that is available for all of them. Look at the table of contents for all the manuals that you have downloaded. Make sure that whatever solution you end up choosing has good support documentation.

Then, contact each company. You will likely not be able to contact their support staff, since you are not a customer yet. Try contacting the sales staff, or just submit a general enquiry. How fast did you receive a response? Was is a generic response or did they take the time to answer your specific questions?

(7) Look up reviews for the shopping carts that you are most interested in

There really is a lack of objective shopping cart reviews both in online and offline publications. We recently found one Web site that does not seem to take any advertising dollars from shopping cart vendors, and therefore should be rather objective. It allows you to quickly compare different shopping carts. Here are some google results:

http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=shopping+cart+reviews&meta=

• User-submitted reviews on ASPIN 
• User-submitted reviews on HotScripts 

There are many others of course and this is not even touching on the custom developed or free shopping carts. In the next episode we will talk about a new development in shopping country, The Store Suite a product from the other side of the world, Australia.

Here is an interesting article that was written by An Internet Marketeer, which some may find useful and can get you thinking of innovative ways you look at PPC marketing.  It was found on a thread on a forum, however the person could not remember the make of the marketeer:“I have been using Google Adwords and other PPC search engines to generate targeted traffic for quite some time.
Although I get a lot of free traffic, I still buy as much PPC targeted traffic as I can. Here’s the reason. I have money sitting in my savings account making me 2-3% per year. My investment portfolio is making me anywhere between 5-12%. BUT I can put some money into Google AdWords and triple my money within a month. I can do this because I have tested the traffic and my landing pages and know that for every dollar I put into AdWords, I’ll get three back on average. Warning! Google Adwords should not be used as an investment vehicle. I’m using the comparison strictly to show why I personally buy AdWords.
When I have told some marketer’s about why I buy PPC traffic, many times they remark, “That’s great, but I can’t afford to pay for traffic now then wait a month to get check for the profits”. I know what they are talking about. Many marketers processing companies hold onto their funds for several days or even a month. So if a person wanted to spend $1,000 a day on Google AdWords, they would be out of pocket several thousand dollars before they saw a check with their profits.
Then one day I was having lunch with a child-hood friend who is also a partner of mine in some real estate investments. I was telling him about AdWords and he said something that made a light bulb go off in my head… BAM !

He compared Google AdWords to flipping real estate. The faster you get your money back the faster you can re-invest. I then saw a way to do this with instant results. I went straight home to put my plan into action.
Here is what I did:

- I have a PayPal MasterCard debit card attached to my PayPal account. If you don’t have one you need to get one to use this strategy. I logged onto AdWords and changed my credit card billing info to only charge my PayPal MasterCard and I set my daily spending limit to $100.

- Next I changed my landing pages to only accept PayPal as payment.

- I went ahead and increased my bid on traffic to pump in a little bit of extra traffic.

- I funded my PayPal account with $100 and sat back to watch what happened.

-
Because I was now paying a little bit more for my keywords and only accepting PayPal, my profits were down to only doubling my money on AdWords, BUT it was instant.
Here’s what happens now. Automatically, AdWord traffic comes rolling in and all sales go immediately into my PayPal account so the money is there any time Google charges my card. If Google Sends me $50 worth of traffic, at the rate my landing pages are converting, I’ll have an almost immediate $100 going instantly into my PayPal account. As the balance in my PayPal account increases, I’ll adjust my AdWords daily spending limit upwards. For instance after a few hours if my PayPal balance is at $200 then I’ll adjust my daily spending limit up to $200.
This system would work even if you are buying $1,000’s of dollars worth of traffic and you are essentially only risking the initial $100.

By using this simple strategy you can buy all the traffic you want as long as it’s converting.

Limitations: This system will only work if you have landing pages that are making a
profit. I don’t know why anyone would be buying traffic that is not making a profit, but I feel the need to point this out. So test your pages first.

The hardest limitation I’ve found on this system is that I can’t find enough keywords to bid on. But as I branch out into other niches and markets, I’m finding that there are almost an infinite number of niche keywords to bid on. I have not crossed the $1,000 per day mark, but
have come close.

Tips: This method will also work with other PPC engines. Yahoo’s PPC engine even
has a maximum amount they will charge your credit card for each time (in addition to a daily limit), so that builds in an extra layer of protection.