Facebook Fan Pages

Many shop owners are really lagging behind on the social media angle. Let face it, time is short and so much to do. Fact is, so many things to promote your ecommerce business cost money, this one is free... Just a bit of you precious time to get free promotion for your online shop. There are some very good business reasons to spend a few hours creating your business' Facebook fan page.

Did you know that someone else could steal away your business name for their own fan page?

We talk with shop owners about a great many things, one thing we advise on frequently is protecting your brand. Now I know you are not Coca Cola or Gieco, but your brand is the heart of your business. It may not seem important now, but what if I told you that if you do not act, when the importance of brand protection smacks you in the face it may be too late?

Yes, too late. There are some things you just MUST do to protect your brand, NOW.... Not later.

Register the alternate spellings, TLDs and versions of your domain. This might cost you $50 a year, but it's probably one of the best investments you can make. What will you do if years from now, when hopefully you are knee deep in success, a competitor has a misspelling of your domain?

You will lose traffic is what you will do.... To your competitor at that. A great example is a client of our who registered a domain with a number in it. The number 4 instead of for. His competitor using the "for" domain, grabs a great deal of his traffic.... and sales, as they sell very similar products. Hell, he even gets phone calls for the other business.... Imagine how many of his customers are calling them.

Another recent situation involves a shop owner who has the .NET version of their domain only. Now this is a bad move to start with, but if you have the .COM as well, no worries as you can redirect them. Like we do PRO-Webs.com. This client has only the .NET and the .COM houses a VERY adult website. Many returning customers will not only be lost, but very likely offended as well.

Facebook and Twitter are important for the same reason. They both have vanity urls, like http://www.facebook.com/prowebs and http://twitter.com/prowebs. Once someone else registers YOUR business name, that's it.... Gone.

So while I realize you are long on work and short on time, spending a few hows setting up your Facebook fan page... and your Twitter account as well, is a damn good investment. In the future we will see these social media profiles and pages become an active part of your business' equity and domain worth. Not to mention, how awful to find that your customers are being stolen away by some look-alike business using your rightful Facebook url. Worse yet... Find out there is nothing you can do, because you failed to spend a few hours when it counted.

Interested? Let's set up your Facebook fan page.

First thing is to get a fan (official) page here. Note that businesses have fan pages, not profiles. See this isn't so tough. hey you are on a roll, get your Twitter page while you are at it, here.

You probably noticed that Twitter, unlike Facebook gives you a personalized url right off. Facebook requires an act of dedication on your part to get your personalized fan page url. There have been many numbers for the amount of fans it takes, but currently you need 25 fans before you can secure your own url. We'll talk about getting those fans in a bit.

Here is a pretty easy video to make your fan page, no excuses here =-) For my readers, check this very good tutorial to create your fan page.

I have some additional tips to share with you, so you can maximize your time and effort.

While Facebook has a pretty standardized structure, they do have some cool aps to help you promote your page and build your followers. One in particular, profile HTML is a very handy ap which will allow you to add custom HTML to your profile or fan page.

Very important to add your RSS feeds for your store and/or blog to your fan page. This is really a snap to do an only take a few minutes... Then it will work automatically for you.

Adding RSS to Facebook

Facebook allows you to quickly and easily import an external blog from another website.

1. On your notes about me page, click the Import a blog link on the right side of the page. (hard to find in the new layout --- But here's a link)
2. Enter the URL (web address) of your blog into the text box, and check the box underneath that states that you agree to FB TOS. This is the whole URL, like http://pro-webs.net/blog/feed/
3. To complete the process, click on "Save Settings." Once you do this, your previous posts will appear as notes and any new posts you make will automatically display.

See easy! I also highly recommend the Networked Blogs ap for Facebook.

Going through the settings and such are pretty logical, just read and fill them out. Believe it or not, your teenager is a great resource for this! You can spend a few minutes a week to post tips, coupons and other business related items in a snap.

Now for the important part.... Getting the fans required to get your personalized url.

• If you already have a Facebook profile page, send a note to all of your friends and ask them to click the "Become a Fan" link to your page.  <-- Selfless promotion =-)
• Include your fan page link in the signature of all your emails
• Add the "Become a Fan" widget to your site and blog
• Offer additional savings or promotions specifically for your Facebook fans
• Beg.... LOL

Once you have the required number of fans (currently 25), you will see a link on your home page, but here's a link to grab your personalized Facebook url and protect your brand!

This isn't so hard, and even if you choose not to promote it actively... at least someone else won't =-)

Easy SEO?

More to the point, you saw this title and thought I was going to give you some easy trick to make your shop rank so you can be rich. Not so, this is rather a rant, some things that just need said. You can benefit from the content of this post if you are determined to succeed in your ecommerce business, and you have some common sense. If so, please read on...

First lets tackle something no one seems to know. What is SEO?

SEO is a very mechanical, analytical and hands on discipline. SEO is a part of marketing (SEM), but is not marketing, rather SEO is just as the acronym suggests... Search engine optimization.

SEO itself is a method/practice of making your website better accessible to the search engines, mechanically sound, optimizing page structure, content and elements, website architecture, flow and navigation and server side scripting as well.

Rank itself is the goal, but making both your content and website easily understood and navigated by the search engines is the process. The things we do are generally based on 3 things. Things we know. Things we see proper research to prove. And things we believe to be true and are testing.

None of these things we do is anything automated or really easy. This is definitely hard work. The hard work involved comes in a few forms. For example building great content regularly is hard work, building quality inbound links is hard work... But most of all, reading enough so that you have a clue and can participate in the decisions for your SEO campaign is also hard work.

So that leaves basically 2 sets of website owners... Those who do, and those who don't.

Those who do seek to optimize their own websites are very vulnerable, for many reasons. They often set out and read on the internet about the SEO they need, implement it blindly as fact without support or merit and then fail to measure the results. These individuals then proceed to propagate this disease by sharing their ill founded and unsupported techniques with others just as vulnerable. For these folks I have some advise.

1. Know your sources. I could put up a website tomorrow offering a 5 minute solution to all of your SEO needs for $200 and sell these lies to the masses with ease. Just because I say something, does not make it true. I could get away with this because most have their heads wrapped around easy and fail to search out any supporting documentation or support for anything that looks to make SEO easy.
2. SEO cannot be automated. Even if every search algorithm factor was laid out for you in a to do list, you could not automate your SEO. Every website is different, the only way to properly succeed in your SEO campaign is to read, understand, test and measure the results. Anything less is just a reckless waste of time.
3. Common sense. If I tell you your website will rank if you make it all yellow, do you believe me? At the end of the day, your success will be determined on your ability to make good decisions. Now if you haven't taken the time to seek out the reading and education you need for these decisions, then at least use common sense.

Those who do not, are equally at risk, just in a different manner. There are many reasons website owners seek out a professional to provide their SEO, unfortunately most of these reasons are what make them destined to fail. If you think that paying someone for SEO will answer all of your goals without you lifting a finger, you are mistaken. If you think you will require no knowledge of the techniques because you are paying someone, you are also mistaken.

Website owners blindly paying for SEO they do not understand are running around with a big bulls eye on their foreheads. You are not only vulnerable, but the cost can be both failure and cash! So I have some advise for those that do not as well...

1. Do not pay someone for SEO if you haven't checked them out. Do they use a gmail email address? Do you think that is professional? Is their own site well constructed, easy to navigate and ranking? Can you call them on the phone and have a discussion?
2. Ask questions. If your paid SEO cannot/will not answer your questions regarding technique, services etc... Then they are likely jerking you around. Ask questions, do some reading and then ask better questions.
3. Why are you paying me? You may think this is in contrast to #2, but I assure you it is not. If your SEO tells you you need more content, you do some research and are still confused, then perhaps you should just do what they say. You are paying them for their professional services, correct?
4. Cost. If you are paying a low amount of money for an SEO who has said they will do everything and you need to do nothing, you are getting screwed. This type of service in my opinion is not only impossible, but would be very expensive (in the thousands of dollars a month). The reason this is veritably impossible is that this SEO person needs your input and niche specific expertise to create and execute a successful SEO campaign for you. No person, SEO or pretending professional can know every product, niche and service well enough to proceed without your involvement.
5. If they guarantee you rank, they are lying. SEOs do not work for Google, Bing or any other search engine. There is no way for any legitimate SEO to make you a guarantee of rank. It's just frankly a snake oiled lie to get in your pockets.

Easy SEO Summary

• There is NO easy SEO.
• SEO cannot be automated.
• SEO is hard work.
• SEO requires common sense and research.
• There is no plugin, module or magic dust that will make you rank.
• If you make changes without analysis, you have failed.
• No one can provide comprehensive SEO services without your involvement.
• Rank guarantees are outright lies.
• Use your head, check people out.

So this means, those of you seeking out the quick get rich SEO trick are pissing up a rope... The very rope that will be used to hang your website out to dry.

Prevent Credit Card Fraud

The new Advanced Fraud Detection Suite or AFDS for short is a set of very customizable, rule based filters and fraud detection tools that identify, manage and help prevent suspicious and potentially costly fraudulent transactions for your business. You can fully customize AFDS filters/rules and tools to suit your business' needs and adeptly control how suspicious transactions are handled for your account, including the ability to approve, decline or hold transactions for manual review when filers are triggered.

U.S. merchants alone lost an estimated $4 billion to fraud in 2008. This is not matter to be taken lightly. Many merchant gateway accounts are just NOT designed for your card no present ecommerce business. I have worked with many shop owners who have switched to other gateways to lower fees, only to find themselves in a normal retail swiped card type application.... Resulting in more charge backs and fraudulent transactions, more than enough to eat up and bury any savings on fees. It is very important you have the proper tools designed for your ecommerce business. Would you go to WalMart for your office networking equipment-- I certainly hope not!

So the new AFDS costs a few bucks ($9.95 a month), but the tools are cutting edge fraud preventing technology. There are a great many tools involved in the new suite, all of which are highly customizable for your business, but I am going to cover a few that most shop owners probably already wish they had!

1. Transaction Amount Filter – Set lower and upper transaction amount limits to restrict high risk transactions often used to test the validity of credit card numbers.
2. Hourly Transaction Velocity Filter – Limit the total number of transactions received per account,  per hour, preventing high volume attacks common with fraudulent transactions.
3. Transaction IP Velocity Filter – Identify suspicious activity from a single source by identifying excessive transactions sent from the same IP address.
4. Authorized AIM IP Addresses – Allows merchant submitting transactions through the Advanced Integration Method (AIM) to specify an absolute server IP addresses for websites permitted to submit transactions.
5. Enhanced AVS Handling Filter – The Address Verification Service (AVS) is a standard feature of the payment gateway that compares the address submitted with an transaction to the address on file with the shopper's credit card issuing bank. Merchants can then choose to reject, flag or allow transactions based on the AVS response codes.
6. Shipping Address Verification Filter – Will verify that the provided shipping address received with an order is in fact a valid postal address. ((WOW))
7. IP Shipping Address Mismatch Filter – Compare the supplied shipping address to the IP address of where the shopper submitted the order from. This helps to determine whether or not the order is shipping to the same country from which it originated.
8. Regional IP Address Filter – Flag, filter, reject or allow orders coming from specific regions or countries. Filter actions are based on an entire geographic area, or single country by country.

So in essence, as far as I have been able to determine, this new suite brings Authorize.net to the top of the food chain for fraud prevention and supplied tools for ecommerce merchants. If you've never had a fraudulent transaction, that's great... But the likelihood is you will. Credit card fraud on the web is growing at an alarming rate and if you haven't the tools to fight back, you will likely suffer at the hands of a thief.

Check out the rate for processing your transactions with Authorize.net... You just might be surprised that the best tools in the industry are the best prices as well! make sure to also pay a visit to the fraud prevention center for tips and best practices to utilize in your online store and prevent fraudulant transactions.

There was a time when homework and other questions were referred to the encyclopedia or even the public library. That process has come to pass why teenagers search for homework answers on the Internet and parents search for the things they need like recipes, product information and more.

We have more access to information than we ever have and to more knowledge than we ever thought we would even seek out. This is exactly why ecommerce stores should never shy away from informational content on their sites.

The growth of the Internet is driven in many ways by a unquenchable thirst for information. It's very interesting that customers are initially less interested in where they find the information and instead focus on the quality of the information.

In actuality the useful information on your website and the search engines that find it will bring someone to your site initially and thus deliver you the opportunity to impress this potential customer. Fact is, this useful information is appreciated by surfers and they begin to trust you based on your information. Trust being the first step in any sale, then you are on to something.

Ecommerce follows in the footsteps of its brick and mortar predecessor and must cater to an on demand crowd to be successful. No one likes to wait and they want what they want when they want it. Got it?

This may all seem a little bit selfish on the part of the consumer, but the ecommerce business that insists on being centered on the needs of the customers will certainly garner the most business. Remember, they hold the commodity you seek $$$

Consumers very clearly understand that the money they have at their disposal is a commodity YOU must earn from them. You have to earn their trust, provide exemplary customer service and provide the useful information they need or they will move on.

Furthermore, because brand loyalty is diminished in the 21st century you have to continually earn the trust and support of your customer base. This is where marketing tools such as ezines, email marketing and ebooks can make a real difference for customers that want not just a product, but also seek knowledge they need to make the best use of that product.... Your product.

There are many ecommerce businesses that do not share this service orientated point of view. They insist on operating their online store in a way that fails to capitalize on something they have clearly failed to comprehend. The Internet opens the possibility to provide value added materials and information in a cost effective environment. Customers do not have to choose your store so make sure they have ample reason to place your site at the top of their list.

I think that most everyone would answer NO! We get calls all the time from shop owners who are just not making it. They reach out to us for help... Well kind of. Most think there is some magic wand we can wave to make them rank. This is a common myth among shop owners.... EASY MONEY! Yep, that's what we hear...

Shop owner: My online store has been live for 6 months and I have made 3 sales!

PRO-Webs: What have you done to promote your store? Build links? Build usable content? Updates?

Shop owner: I really don't have time to do those things, why do I have to promote my store? Won't people just find it and give me money??

Easy Content

Ok, so that is a bit dramatized... But we get calls very similar to that all the time! So today for you shop owners who lack the time to properly promote your business AND the funds to hire PRO-Webs to do it for you, we are going to give you 5 easy ways to add additional content to your website and pick up additional longtail and niche searches.

How does adding some content help?

This is a very simple mathematical equation that everyone should clearly understand. Your conversions are generally referenced as a percentage of total visits... and average if you will. Soooooo, increasing the visits (qualified leads) will inevitably increase your sales.

How to Boost Searches with Content

These ideas to help you promote your store with content are NOT completely without effort. I would certainly rather see you sit down and write great content for your visitors... But, since you don't have time....

1. Buying Content: Buying content is really a simple matter of buying PLR articles related to your niche OR hiring a copywriter to write for you. Most importantly this content must be unique, so the smart shop owner will not just publish purchased articles, but rather change it up a bit for uniqueness.
2. Add a Glossary or FAQ section: Glossaries, dictionaries, FAQs and tutorials are excellent niche content, inexpensive to get going and easy to maintain. Probably the most common for shop owners is a Q&A or FAQ section. Many times this can be accomplished with a simple plugin for your ecommerce software. Our FAQ sections contains questions, answers and tutorials... We used WordPress to build it. Fact is this is very inexpensive to get going and easy to maintain. So when customers ask questions.... answer them and post it.
3. Product Reviews: Product reviews are very easy to manage. Most ecommerce software has this ability build in or a modification is available to add it. Biggest issue with this is getting folks to add a review. Some shop owners use a system to ask for them to post it, some make it open for guests to post (ill advised) and then wade through the spam to find good reviews... But our suggestion is far simpler! Just create a nice email master asking customers how their experience in your store went, did the receive their items and by the way can you reply to this email with a review of the product as you see it. Ahhhhh easy, many more will provide a review for you if they can stay within the comfort of their own email screen.
4. Forums: While web forums are not the gleaming star they used to be, if your products are very technical or related to a hobby for example... then a forum might just get shoppers writing content for you! Again, this is not easy task to get going, but a well structured and supported forum can supply an incredible amount of user generated content with little or no effort long term to maintain. Again, this would not be a very costly project to develop, but you would have to add content manually for a while and invite your shoppers at every opportunity to get it going.

A web site that grows it content in a sustained pattern over time gets better search engine ranking. You can also use content creation regularity to train the Search Engine Robots to visit your store more often simply by updating your web site content every week. The trick is in the perserverance, so don't run out and buy 10 articles and publish them all at once, you have far more to gain from publishing them once a week for 10 weeks.

Zen Cart Survival

I am quite sure I have mentioned each of these Zen Cart tips many times before -- Just not in this consolidated form. We receive many calls and emails from frightened and surely scammed ecommerce site owners. These calls range from outrageous to just plain poor planning. To help you get started or make your current ecommerce business more manageable we will share these crucial tips all in one place today. Stop back as I may add to this list, as we hear new nightmares frequently.

1. Your Zen Cart is not a free meal ticket. It's not easy, nor work free. Very likely you will find it to be a great deal of time and effort. Make the commitment early on -- and stick to it.
2. NEVER, EVER, EVER allow a webmaster or Zen Cart designer/developer to register YOUR domain in his/her name. If you have to ask why, you have not done enough research to get started in this business.
3. Demand that your designer/developer maintain a fully transparent line of communication regarding your Zen Cart project -- Start to finish.
4. Get it in writing! If your Zen Cart developer cannot give you a maximum quote (at least), then he/she is not experienced enough to give your project the quality it deserves.
5. Sometimes, you get what you pay for. Certainly our Zen Cart store packages are more expensive than some... But many times shop owners call us with a great looking, terribly coded and broken Zen Cart (which was quite expensive in many cases). There is so much more to a website than its design. I cannot even count how many Zen Cart owners have contacted us after a year with little or no sales and a really spiffy looking, broken cart!
6. Demand full access control including user names and password for your hosting account and Zen Cart admin. You don't want to be calling us because your webmaster skipped and you can't access your cart -- or worse you don't even know where you are hosted!
7. Question everything! If your designer/developer cannot at least try to explain everything they are doing.... You likely chose a lemon.
8. Do not let the designer/developer tell you what your cart is going to look like and how it will function. They should be giving you the opportunity to describe your envisioned dream site and then guiding you and helping you avoid problems and future issues.
9. Ask around. While you site is in development, there is no reason you cannot seek the opinions of other web professionals, friends and family.
10. Plan to spend a great deal of time working with your designer/developer on your site. To do this right, requires great and descriptive communication... Plan for this in an ongoing capacity and do not wait until he/she is done to ask for changes.
11. Get an SSL... Even if you use PayPal, trust me you need it and it will increase your ability to convert sales.
12. During and after development plan to learn to use your Zen Cart. While this is no easy task... it is a crucial piece. NEVER depend solely on someone else to manage YOUR business.
13. Make use of the wealth of knowledge and excellent community support in the Zen Cart Forum.
14. Don't be afraid to ask your designer the what, why, how and other questions regarding the layout, design and functionality of your Zen Cart.
15. Make sure you have installed Google Analytics --- You will be a while learning how to extract the data you need to succeed, but in time you will learn and Viola! the data will be there for you.

Remember, this is your business... Would you have a brick and mortar business you don't even have the door keys for??

Have YOU got what it takes?

What every single ecommerce business wants most is for online users to type in their credit card number and make a purchase of their products.... Nice and easy, right?

You can have the best developed shopping cart of its kind, but if no one is buying, then you simply have a really nice website.... Which isn't making any money.

When it comes to ecommerce and online sales, how do you encourage site visitors to move from passive window shopping interest to a paying customer?

The short answer is easy enough... Prove yourself trustworthy and professional so the customer has the necessary confidence to make a purchase.

That, of course, is easier said than done.

This is the hardest concept in ecommerce to implement, but if you want more shoppers and less visitors, you will have to work hard and learn a great deal.

First and foremost, you and your store MUST make the shoppers your number one priority. Having said this, realize the treachery involved in that statement.... Yes, I mean 100% customer service from your and your site.... Even when you are sleeping.

You will have to do whatever ways you can to find a way to prove to your potential customer that you are looking out for their interests and are genuinely interested in passing along helpful information to them.

There are far too many sites that exist that ooze with insincerity and even more with a complete lack of professionalism. It is a very tough sell to believe that these site owners care about anything beyond their wallets. Certainly, you can’t fault them for having an interest in their financial future, but online users want need you to prove to them you can be trusted and that you are worthy of their business.... This is especially true in these uncertain economic times.

I haven’t done exhaustive scientific research on the following statement, but I have performed enough research and management that the guess is very well educated...

The online businesses that will be most successful in the next decade will be ones who are honestly interested in the needs of the customers.

For those of you who are fixated on the bottom line you really need to know that customer satisfaction is tethered to your bottom line. Consider it the cost of doing business, something you pay forward for the ability to live with yourself and sleep at night.

Most of my teen and adult life I spent in restaurant/food management... I can tell you in no uncertain terms, you MUST earn your customers trust, approval and patronage. There is just no other way. So maybe you got in to ecommerce thinking it was a great deal... Easy money? Sorry to disappoint you, but when a customer entered one of my restaurants I have the GENUINE opportunity to look them in the eye and demonstrate my concern for them and their experience in my restaurant. Your online store DOES NOT give you that ability... You have to must work even harder than any brick and mortar small business. This I promise you.

The quickest way to grow your sales is to earn them with trust and professionalism..... and if you watch your bottom line too closely with regard to your customer's satisfaction.... It will move for your, indeed as it falls through the floor. The mix is quite unique, but you must find this balance in your business.

Business Logos

You should know, however,  that many local graphic designers may charge as much as $1,000 or more for a fully unique logo design depending on the amount of time and work the logo takes to meet your specifications. These professionals will work with you to come up with a way effective to brand your name or product in the minds of your shoppers. The importance and historical value of a quality logo cannot be overstated.

While it is possible to locate a much less expensive brown bag solution to your company's logo needs. It is also possible to receive a stunning business logo for as little as $69, however you might also get a common logo which is less than perfect for that price as well.

Many online logo design firms charge a standardized fee and will allow you the opportunity to make a limited number of revisions. You begin to pay more when they have to return to the logo design past for more than the predetermined number of revisions.

A quality company logo presents your online and corporate image to all site visitors. If that logo looks unprofessional or crappy the overall trust factor in your ecommerce business will sustain a substantial hit.

This same line of thinking applies to the design of your store or website. It is very common for shop owners to  have a quality product with a comprehensive guarantee and still have few customers. You can provide free shipping and other promotional schemes and still have a poorly performing online store if your website does not meet the professionalism normals which regular online shoppers are accustomed to.

Spend some quality time reviewing other ecommerce sites to give you a better idea of the look and feel you will need to develop in your own store.

Interestingly many large and successful ecommerce shops could really stand some updating. These websites have been online for a few years and were developed as cutting edge ecommerce solutions when they were new. It is correct and safe to say that these websites are missing out on a wealth functionality and contemporary website design.

Brick and mortar stores also need to maintain their presence with things like a new coat of paint, store remodeling and new carpet every now and again. The same is true for an online store.... The pitfall here is that a successful store which is outdated has no tangible means to measure the increased success of implementing new software and/or design functionality. It frankly requires a leap of faith.

For far too long many entrepreneurs have simply considered ecommerce a novelty item that draws some residual income to their business, but is of course secondary to an existing brick and mortar operation. The truth in this lie we tell ourselve is this... those who have taken ecommerce adventure seriously and with great dedication have discovered very tangible increases in online sales that are often more than their brick and mortar sales total.

Pay attention to your online store and develop it into a great destination for online shopping in your niche. Your shop is not a business card... Its a customer sales person who works 24 hours a day and 7 days a week!

I think right out of the box ecommerce owners will have to compete with better and more user friendly options. Additional shipping options, checkout options including checking out without and account and navigation strategy will be very key elements.

Many Americans have been burned on sneaky eBay style shipping tricks. Online shoppers are very cautious and un-trusting regarding shipping issues. This will be a major player in the success of any online store in 2009. I have some suggestions to improve your current shipping processes...

• Clearly post your shipping... At the very least shoppers MUST be able to get a shipping quote from the cart page. If you can manage flat rate or free shipping, you will find great success. NEVER, have any shipping disclaimers where you intend to recalculate shipping after the sale... This will send most of your shoppers running for the hills.
• Offer a small selection of relevant shipping options. Shoppers want options, but too many shipping options will send them packing packing as well.
• Your shipping rules must be clear and easily located. I strongly suggest you include a shipping summary in your checkout, as shoppers will rarely navigate to the shipping page to find the information.
• Your shipping should contain and estimated delivery time... Without it, shoppers can be easily convinced to pay more elsewhere for a promised shipping date.
• Post your phone number. If you are not making your businesses phone number clearly available on your site... You are just screwing yourself in too many ways to count.

US and other shoppers worldwide are sick and tired of spam... They have been tricked, spammed and basically misled by so many websites. Convincing a shopper to trust your site is a very substantial challenge. Checkout options and other related store functions will help to build trust and convert sales very effectively.

• Your shoppers need the opportunity to checkout without creating a store account. They are sick of all the store accounts and lost usernames and passwords. If your software cannot be made to allow checking out without an account then look in to PayPal Express or Google Checkout for these leery shoppers.
• Remove ALL login and account creation type language from your checkout. Many software platforms can be made to appear like there is no account being created just by changing the language to reflect a transaction rather than and account creation. Dump that login box and grow your sales in 2009.
• Get an SSL to encrypt your transactions and tell folks you have it to protect their online transactions with your store. Again, make your phone number readily available to build trust and let shoppers know you are a "real" business.
• Shorten up your checkout and remove distractions preventing your shoppers from purchasing. This one is just a simple and logical step to increase the revenue you are getting from your existing level of visits and prevent checkout abandonment. Shorten up your checkout as much as you can... Lets face it, if your shoppers had a bunch of time to waste they would shop at Wal Mart. Remove unnecessary menus and click able things to get your shopper off track and not checking out. Once they decide to give you money... LET THEM!
• Clearly post on your site and checkout the payment options your shoppers have. I cannot tell you how many times I have went all the way through someones checkout to find a credit card field and I have NO CLUE which cards they accept and have to then search for their policy regarding payment... Which of course causes me to LEAVE CHECKOUT.
• Make certain your shoppers can track their orders... Even if they checkout without an account.

Navigation and flow control are so crucial to your website... Likely the most important factor of all. Many shop owners haven't even a clue as to how their site is navigated... OR NOT. I have some simple tips to help you to improve your site's navigation and thus improve the average time on your site, making a sale far more likely.

• You know your products, sure, but do your shoppers?  Nothing irritates me more than a menu I cannot navigate. When planning your categories and menu use real language... Stuff even I can understand.
• Categorize your products logically and in a few different ways. Shopper A knows he is looking for a "Gadget B", but has no clue that it is a child category under "Gadgets"... But he know this gadget is what he needs to complete the work on his RC car, and that its a "part". So he will likely navigate more effectively to this gadget using a menu group called "RC Car Parts". While Shopper B knows full well that that part will be located under "Gadgets" as he is no novice RC builder.
• Do usability studies... I tell shop owners this ALL THE TIME, and usually they fail miserably. Pay, beg, ask or bait regular people to shop in your store and report what they find back to you. Use a logical collection of test shoppers and include a kid, like 13 to 17 years old... As they will really tell you how it is. Now, when your reports come in, DO NOT GET DEFENSIVE, this is about improvement... A defensive reaction will accomplish nothing but no improvement. So if you HAVE TO always be right... Just skip this, because you are of course right... Right?
• Have a good long look at your use of page real estate... How much information is above the fold (the point where a visitor must scroll). Are you using this space wisely? Did you know that you have about 15 seconds to engage a new visitor... and that they are 80% more likely to read text in this 15 seconds?
• Colors have many psychological properties and can be used to assist a shopper in finding your products and then in making the proper buying and checkout decisions without having to flounder around. Green is a perfect color for action links and buttons. Red really is a stop color, use it to draw attention to a product or attribute very effectively. However, if your checkout button is red... You screwed up.
• Have a good long look at your product page layout. Is it effective, fast and easy to navigate. What if I purchased this product before.... Going to make me hunt down your add to cart button?
• Cross selling related products within your product and category pages is not only effective marketing, but effective navigation as well. For 25 plus years I was a restaurant manager and one thing I learned is that when you suggestive sell a product properly it is helpful to the patron... Not a bother or inconvenience. Shoppers and patrons alike have this in common... They pay little or no attention to the details of much of anything collectively and genuinely require your assistance.

So I have to say if you are looking to grow your online store in 2009 then these items above will have the best and fastest return on your time or money investment. Another restaurant managers lesson is to get the most dollars and purchases out of your existing customers first. Build your check average and grow your sales.