eCommerce Solutions Guide For Beginners
For an EASY TO PRINT PDF version of this eCommerce Solutions guide click here.
This guide has suggestions from a number of people who are running successful eCommerce businesses in the UK. Even if you are a seasoned pro at running an eCommerce business there might be a couple of snippets of information in this guide that could make your business run more efficiently or more profitably.
Please do not ask the SiteWizard web site design team for more information on any of the products or services listed here. This information is a guide only, and may or may not be a suitable solution for your business.
Two MUST HAVE’S for businesses that are using Royal Mail for distribution
Here are two things I would highly recommend for anyone who is intending to send out their goods using the Royal Mail.
A Dymo Label Printer
I use the Dymo 330 Turbo and it is fantastic. It costs around £80 but saves so much time it has paid for itself a hundred times over. It takes rolls of 200 labels, and uses thermal printing technology so it never runs out of ink. The software that comes with it automatically sizes whatever you paste onto the label to fit – so if you have a long address you do not need to manually change the font size etc.
You will also be able to use this printer to print your POSTAGE!
Go to www.froogle.co.uk and search for DYMO 330 Turbo to find a good price.
Royal Mail - Smart Stamp
The Royal Mail offer a service and piece of software called SMART STAMP. This software enables you to pay for your postage by credit card, and print out stamps to stick onto your packages. You can print the stamps including the 60p for recorded delivery AND you can even print your logo on it, so it looks like you have a franking machine. It looks very professional, and is completely compatible with the Dymo label writer mentioned above.
See www.royalmail.co.uk for more details and to download the software.
Recorded Delivery
Most people will want to send their packages out to their customers using Royal Mails Recorded Delivery Service. It costs an extra 60p on top of the regular postage price, and will provide you with a proof of delivery in case of complaint or query.
My tip for this is NOT to use the normal recorded delivery labels that you can ask for at every post office, but to go to a main post office or sorting office and ask for some ROLLS of recorded delivery labels, and a Recorded Delivery BOOK.
Order Processing Tips
I suggest that you print each order out, so you can keep a paper copy and easily keep track of the recorded delivery labels using the system below. If the order details run over to two pages or more, I suggest stapling them together.
Each time an order comes in from your site, print it and process the card (if you are taking card details) or wait for the payment confirmation from PayPal or other service provider.
Sometimes you will get orders that have arrived without payment being completed. You will be amazed at how often your customers accidentally cancel their payment process half way through, or enter incorrect information and the payment fails etc. etc.
These orders will need to be marked for further action, and can be dealt with after you have dispatched the good orders. I have standard emails that I use asking people to re-submit their order with valid card details, or in the case of PayPal, asking them to click on the INVOICE link in the automated email, which will give them another opportunity to pay (one of the GREAT things about SiteWizard eCommerce system!)
Once you have confirmed payment for the goods, you can easily Copy and Paste the Delivery Address information straight from the order confirmation email into the Dymo Label writing software.
Print TWO copies of the address label. One of these labels can go on the package to be delivered and one can go in the Recorded Delivery book, to save you handwriting each address.
Take a recorded delivery label from the roll and stick the main part on the package. You can then stick the spare barcode label (which has the unique RDL code on it) onto the order paperwork that you have printed out – which makes it easy to use the Royal Mails track and trace system to ensure the package has been delivered in case of a query.
Stick another of the spare recorded delivery mini-stickers (they are about one inch long and rectangular with rounded ends) onto the name and address label for this package IN THE RECORDED DELIVERY BOOK.
Print out a RETURN ADDRESS label for each package you are sending out. You’d be surprised how many people fail to collect their items from the post office after they have missed the delivery, and the package gets returned to you. I get at least one of these every week!
Promotion, promotion, promotion!
Every business needs to shout to the world about it’s existence to attract customers, your eCommerce business is no different. You need links to your website from anyone and everyone you can convince to give you one! See our free downloadable guide about promoting your website online. Always ensure that you eCommerce solutions partner has tuned their solution to optimise your HTML for Google. SiteWizard eCommerce solutions are well optimised for Google – don’t worry! – I checked! Tip: Don’t think that being optimised for Google means you will be FOUND for your search phrases without any work on your part! – Read that document I refer to above and you’ll understand more about search engine optimisation than 99% of UK webmasters.
Currency Converter and multiple currencies
We HIGHLY recommend YourCurrencyConverter.com as a Currency Converter for your ecommerce website. They offer a free branded and a low cost (sub £2.50 per month) unbranded AUTOMATIC currency converter. It will detect the currency of the visitor to your website and convert your prices into the correct currency without the user having to click anything. There are also a range of other useful country tools and popup converters. It also provide VALUABLE STATISTICS. If you plan to sell outside of the UK take a look at their website: www.YourCurrencyConverter.com
Pay Per Click Traffic
I have made good traffic gains from reading the document mentioned above, but still get the majority of my website customers from PAY PER CLICK promotion.
Pay Per Click is a large topic, and one that deserves a guide in itself. I have used Pay Per Click for over 4 years, and have learned some valuable lessons which I’ll share with you here.
What IS Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click is the term used to describe the most popular form of internet advertising available today.
With pay per click, you bid against other people for the best position in the search engine results for any specific key phrase.
For instance, if you sell Cosmetics you might find yourself bidding against four or five (or hundreds!) of your competitors for the phrase “Lip Liner”. You bid in pence and the highest gets the first position, the second highest the second position etc. etc.
If your bid of £0.39p gets you the top position, and someone sees your advert appear at the top and clicks on it – you will get charged £0.39p for that “click” – even if the customer doesn’t buy anything! Google works in a slightly different way, in that they ask you to set the maximum cost per click for all terms and then give them a long list. You can also set daily budgets etc. etc.
The TRICK to pay per click programs is NOT to choose the most obvious phrases. This sounds strange at first but think – is someone searching for the phrase Cosmetics definitely a potential customer? There will certainly be a HUGE number of people searching for that phrase, and you will spend a fortune on your click throughs but the important part is converting them to sales. I have consistently found that have a much larger number of phrases that are MORE SPECIFIC and less well searched pays big dividends in conversions. For instance you might want to have these phrases in your account:
- buy cosmetics online
- online cosmetics
- cosmetics shop
- cosmetics store
Then you might want phrases for your PRODUCTS… again be specific and use lots of phrases.
- Max Factor Face Cream
- Revlon Hair Treatments Etc.
Where Do I Get All These Phrases?
A FANTASTIC and useful tool is the Overture Keyword Selection tool. You can use it without signing up to Overture and it will tell you what phrases are being searched for on the internet and how many searches for that phrase happened last month. Remember: Don’t get caught up in the THOUSANDS of results – look for the ones that have only got 40 or 100 searches for something really specific to you. Having ten phrases that are searched for 100 times will give you the 1000 impressions of some of the more generic phrases – but WITHOUT the typical high cost of the general phrases.
Find the keyword tool here:
http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
You will need to study the individual instructions for each of the programs you sign up to.
There are two main players in the Pay Per Click arena. Google, with their Google Adwords program, and Overture, who are part of the Yahoo group of companies. The Google Adwords program is the most successful and the one I recommend most, although it doesn’t use such a simply click model as overture, so it is slightly harder to understand which phrases cost what. I do get 75% of my traffic from this program though, and make good profit, so I forgive them!
Both of these companies allow you to choose your geographical target audience (i.e. you can target the whole world or just the UK)
Again be careful of targeting the whole world if your site doesn’t cater well for international dispatch etc. You don’t want to pay for clicks from America unless America is a big target audience for you. I would recommend starting with a UK campaign and then expanding as you become familiar with the process.
You can sign up to Google Adwords at: http://adwords.google.co.uk
You can sign up to Overture at: http://www.uk.overture.com
Beware of Fraudsters!
Welcome to the world of eCommerce. At some point someone WILL try to rip you off. If an order looks suspicious then check it out thoroughly before dispatching the goods. People DO get into other peoples PayPal accounts and people do steal credit card information. Your vigilance will save you money. Merchant Services Providers offer additional security checks for a small fee (if you are processing the cards yourself) and PayPal do have some fraud protection too. Often fraudulent orders will stand out, since the delivery address is often in a different country from the card or PayPal account address. Also I often find that fraudsters try and order TOO many goods to look legit. My average sale is £30. When I see a sale for £99 – then I scrutinise it more thoroughly, including telephoning the number to ensure it is genuine. Remember that the buck stops with you when it comes to fraud. Your card company or PayPal will take the money back if the order was fraudulent, so always beware. All that being said, fraud makes up a very tiny percentage of the orders I get online and I rarely get caught out by them, so overall I make a nice profit, even though I occasionally get caught out.
We highly recommend signing up for Google ADsense and earning MONEY from your site. Click the link on the left and signup today. It's as easy as pasting a tiny bit of HTML on your website. If you are using SiteWizard you can use the CMS or ask our support staff to paste it in for you!
Good luck with your eBusiness!
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