Don't fall prey to SEO scams!

In the huge, huge world of the Web, scams are perhaps as common as success stories. It is not uncommon to come across phoney advertising messages promising the moon for nothing. These are not very different in their pitch from the ubiquitous mails we keep getting about being winners of a lottery without a ticket or an inheritance from a person we had not heard about till then. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) scams are no different.

Be realistic!

The online business needs to understand that SEO is not something that one can create out of thin air. It is carried out by SEO specialists. It requires the use of social media tools to succeed.

Social media services are applied to a site to help it improve its rankings, but it has to be noted that this is not a magic wand. Many ingredients such as content, right choice and use of keywords, lots of offsite marketing and related activities go into website optimisation.

Once these are put into effect, it still takes a lot for the website to crawl up the rankings and attain higher rankings. SEO can push the page rankings, but only with sustained effort. Even if it does reach the top, it takes a lot to remain there.

Understand how social mediamarketing works

Understanding the working of website optimisation and social media marketing is the key to preventing frauds. SEO scams, like superstition, can flourish only in an environment of ignorance. So long as online businesses are in awe of technology, a fake SEO company is expected to have a field day.

An online business may not be able to prevent a scam at the source, but what can be done is to be knowledgeable about the workings of website optimisation. When you design ecommerce website, you have to make sure the right ecommerce design that uses the professional help of ecommerce designers and has the proper ingredients such as SEO is in place. Only then can scams become less common.

Does customer service exist in ecommerce?

Can customer service and ecommercecoexist? This seems like a very corny question to ask. The answer, surprising as it might sound, is a big ‘yes’. The truth is that, customer service and ecommerce are inseparable twins.

One major reason for which most people tend to think that customer service is not needed in ecommerce business is that it has no salesmen working in a physical store. People think of ecommerce solutions as ecommerce websites on which one displays a product and sells it.

This is true, but only up to a very small extent. Ironically, the role of customer service is more accentuated in ecommerce, because there may be no salesman, but serving the invisible, faceless customer is all the more challenging in the online space.

Actually, the ecommerce company starts customer service much before a product gets sold. It all starts with getting the ecommerce site to get noticed. At this stage, some kind of customer service starts.

And then, once the customer makes the purchase using the ecommerce shopping cart, another level of customer service starts, because the website ecommerce has to ensure that the product is delivered properly.

Since the ecommerce web site has to induce the customer to buy on it, and once that is done, take care of the remaining aspects, customer service, although it does not appear so, is more pronounced in ecommerce business than in the conventional, brick and mortar model.

Should your ecommerce business offer daily deals?

Deals are an indispensable part of an ecommerce business. Any e-retail can hope to survive only by offering deals. This is because a good deal is something any customer would look forward to.

So, which are the kinds of products that can be offered as daily deals, and which do not do well?

An ecommerce web site would get an idea of these items over time, but some of the kinds of products that are suited for daily deals include items of daily use. You could think of items like say toiletries.

A rule, kind of

Your ecommerce site could go by a simple logic: Daily deals are suited for daily items, while they are not for those that are consumed once in a while. The trick is to mix and match that stimulates the sale of related products.

Even products that are not related, or are not consumed on a day to day basis, can be pushed through deals. Your ecommerce shopping customers can be made to buy a pair of goggles that has not moved for a long time, if it is offered when the bill exceeds a certain amount. The cost of the goggles can be made up by the high value of the bill. This way, the ecommerce company does well, and the items keep moving.

Best of all, the customer who gets the feeling that his ecommerce shopping cart is always full is a happy customer, whose loyalty is the best reward for ecommerce websites.

Dealing with ecommerce site crashes is important!

As someone who has been in e-business, you would know more than anybody else that in terms of embarrassment, there is nothing that comes anywhere near a site crash! An ecommercewebsite crash is more than an embarrassment. It can be highly frustrating and worst of all; can result in a loss of face. There can be no bigger disincentive for the shopper than to arrive on a website and find it in bad shape.

Creates a bad impact

Having a glitch-ridden ecommerce site is disastrous for the ecommerce business because it creates a bad impression in the mind of the customer. One bad experience is enough to deter a customer from visiting sub-standard ecommerce websites for perhaps a lifetime.

Choose the right ecommerce website

Most ecommerce websites flounder because they are not built to handle high traffic at one go. So, choose an ecommerce site that has the resilience needed for this. This should be the most important factor to consider when choosing your ideal ecommerce website. It takes precedence over other qualities such as ecommerce site design, ecommerce shopping software, ecommerce design and other related ones.

Other elements

If this is the critical aspect of an ecommerce website, other factors need to be taken in to account. Ecommerce shopping software should be such that it should make all functions such as payment gateway, eBay integration, Amazon integration, etc. smooth and easy. All these should be supported by a strong backend which ensures that crashes happen at no time of the business.

Customers' trust is indispensable for ecommerce business

We have heard this before –nothing contributes to a business’ success more than the customer’s trust. This is the universal strand across all businesses, whether it has a brand or not.

In ecommerce, you may have the catchiest ecommerce site design and you may have the best ecommerce software; but do these in themselves enable your business to earn customers’ trust? How does one bring that about in the ecommerce business space?

Bringing about the human touch to ecommerce

It is a fact that no matter how well one’s brand is known, it is the human element that makes an ecommerce business a success. It is the salesman who finally brings about the sale. Where there are no humans involved in selling, and where the business is all about items such as ecommerce website design, ecommerce web development, ecommerce business solutions, ecommerce shopping software, e commerce site development, online shopping cart software, e commerce software and the like; is there space for human contact?

Ecommerce solutions may run on a good e commerce software and get propelled by proper support services, but more important is to get a good feel of what the customer looks for. Understanding customer behaviour is the important component for success in ecommerce, and this requires human intervention.

Yes, there is no person convincing a customer about a product, but in a technology-intensive industry, customer behaviour analysis is its equivalent.

The technology that is already there needs to be used to analyse and understand the customer better. This should be used to offer the products the customer looks for. This is how the human element of technology works.

Communicate at the personal level with customers

Website ecommerce, as its term indicates, depends on the Net for its sustenance. In a sphere in which the Net pervades every of its activities, ironical as it may sound, communicating at the personal level with customers is vital.

This is often the most important way of establishing customer recall and eventually, loyalty. There is a flood of products for customers to select; so, how does one bring about personal communication in this industry which thrives on ecommerce shopping?

An ecommerce business has a lot to gain by sending out just an occasional personal letter. It does not have to speak anything about offers, no matter how attractive the ones the business is planning to have, is. It can just be a personal, informal greeting from the top brass of the online business.

While it is all too common to keep getting mails that we hardly open and consign to the recycle bin the moment we see it, a personal mail from the owner of an ecommerce business from which we have been buying, is sure to arouse interest.

It need not speak at all about ecommerce shopping. The ecommerce company can have its owner speak something about the user experience of the ecommerce site.

It can simply say a nice word or two about how important this customer has been to the ecommerce online. It can speak of a memorable event that the customer could have shown interest in. It can come up with many forms of communication that will go a long way in creating an endearing bond with the customer.

Chart out a roadmap for your ecommerce business

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Any business that has a serious intention of growing should be having a roadmap. An ecommerce roadmap is, in simple terms, a plan for the future of the business. So, what is a roadmap? It is the route to the target that those in ecommerce business set for their business.

An ecommerce business roadmap is not a goal; it is the means to one. An ecommerce company may set itself goals, but the route it is going to take to get there is the ecommerce business roadmap.

Challenges

That anyone doing e commerce online needs a roadmap is beyond doubt. But in this particular industry, there are unique challenges. First, there are many new businesses which are not sure about where they will be headed over the long haul. So, for such ecommerce websites, it is a little tricky to chalk out an ecommerce business roadmap.

Secondly, and more importantly, website ecommerce is by nature dependant on technology, which as we all know, changes drastically over time. Any ecommerce business that draws out a roadmap based on factors of the present may have to encounter uncertainties brought about by new technologies, which could throw existing technologies and modes of business out of gear.

Foresight is the key

This is not to suggest that when you design ecommerce website, you will not be able to have a roadmap. A good businessman is one who can foresee the direction of his business, no matter what technology is present or will come up in the future. On this rests the chalking out of a roadmap and its realisation.

Watch out for these ecommerce products

How does one make an assessment of the most popular products of the future in a highly lopsided, fragmented global market for ecommerce shopping?

The world over, there has been a phenomenal growth in the number of people who shop e commerce online. Yet, this growth is very unevenly distributed between the developed and developing economies, with a fair percentage of growth being witnessed in the emerging economies.

Any reference to what people will buy in the future will depend on a large number of variables. Some pointers can be had from a study Nielsen Company conducted in March 2010, during which it polled more than 27,000 Internet users in a wide swathe of 55 markets from across the globe, in the markets of the Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America and South America.

These were the top five answers the study threw up:

• Books
• Clothing and related accessories
• Videos/games
• Electronic gadgets
• Music

Again, this is highly unpredictable and can change at any time. Yet, this could shed some light on what one can expect in the future. Whether these products are the definers of the future of ecommerce is difficult to say, but one fact is certain – e commerce online is not only here to stay, it is here to grow.

Are ecommerce owners required to know too much technology?

In a business in which technology is the driving force, how much technology is the one who runs the business required to know?

Ecommerce websites are a prime example of a business that runs entirely on technology. It is a business that was born out of technology, and has in fact, precipitated major changes in technology entirely for itself.

Ecommerce software lies at the heart of ecommerce business. An ecommerce company obviously needs technology for any of its operations, ranging from having orders placed for products on the ecommerce site to ecommerce design to, in fact running the entire website ecommerce.

Not externally visible

It may be e commerce software may power the business, but as with any technology, it runs the ecommerce business from the backend. Yes, an ecommerce business does run on technology, but only unobtrusively.

Whether it is multi channel ecommerce, multi-channel retail or an end-to-end ecommerce business suite that you want for your business, the technology that goes into it, without which the business is unthinkable, happens without being seen.

Ecommerce website development ensures that when an ecommerce website is being used for business, none of the features requires the use of any great knowledge. It needs no rocket science to print out the alphabets on the keyboard, does it? Similarly, E commerce software ensures that the user have nothing more than minimal knowledge in running the business. All that is needed is elementary knowledge –and this too is on most occasions made easy –is all that is needed. The ecommerce software does the rest.

Easy way of reaching out to over 200 million potential customers

Reaching out to more and more customers is one of the cornerstones for success in ecommerce business. As a business, ecommerce drives on selling better when more people are within its reach. When this is the stated aim of an ecommercebusiness, one of the easiest ways of doing this is to have eBay integration into the e commerce online.

More is better in ecommerce

Why eBay integration? It is for the simple fact that it has a user base of over 200 million. Of these, no fewer than 15 million are from the UK. As many as 10 million products get traded, making it the world’s largest online marketplace.

eBay ecommerce integration is made as easy as a few clicks. Once this is done, the way is cleared for opening your own eBay store. This is the easiest way to making your ecommerce site a multi-channel retail store. Multi-channel retailing, as we all know, is the integration of several functions into e commerce online. That is not all. You also get:

eBay shop design

eBay template design

eBay integration with website

eBay listing software

eBay listing tools

eBay design

eBay store design

Do you need to integrate with Amazon?

When starting an ecommerce business, an ecommerce business is bound to ponder over this question. The answer would be a firm ‘no’. That is, if you want your business to remain where it is and lose out on the opportunity of selling to about 90 million potential customers.

Amazon integration is a must for an end-to-end ecommerce business suite. Websites ecommerce drive on a single motto –of reaching out to more and more people. When you have a simple chance of reaching out to a huge chunk of this planet’s population, why should you let your e-retail suffer the lost chance?

An ecommerce web site that does not offer Amazon Integration is incomplete, to say the least. Amazon ecommerce integration is one of the easiest ways of selling your products through one of the world’s largest online marketplaces.

When you integrate with Amazon, you associate your business with this name known the world over. One of the big benefits it offers is that it automates data flow from Amazon Seller Central, Amazon.com's virtual bazaar where sellers can offer their products for sale, to your ecommerce site without requiring any effort from you.

Enjoy freedom with policies

Another major advantage Amazon Web Services offers is that you set your own policies with your customers in regard to items like customer return, shipping and handling policies for your set of Amazon.com products. If you design ecommerce website that is Amazon approved, you can sell in several Amazon.com categories. Amazon will handle payment processing without charging an item listing fee.

Do I need to integrate with Amazon?

When starting an ecommerce business, an ecommerce business is bound to ponder over this question. The answer would be a firm ‘no’. That is, if you want your business to remain where it is and lose out on the opportunity of selling to about 90 million potential customers.

Amazon integration is a must for an end-to-end ecommerce business suite. Websites ecommerce drive on a single motto –of reaching out to more and more people. When you have a simple chance of reaching out to a huge chunk of this planet’s population, why should you let your e-retail suffer the lost chance?

An ecommerce web site that does not offer Amazon Integration is incomplete, to say the least. Amazon ecommerce integration is one of the easiest ways of selling your products through one of the world’s largest online marketplaces.

When you integrate with Amazon, you associate your business with this name known the world over. One of the big benefits it offers is that it automates data flow from Amazon Seller Central, Amazon.com's virtual bazaar where sellers can offer their products for sale, to your ecommerce site without requiring any effort from you.

Enjoy freedom with policies

Another major advantage Amazon Web Services offers is that you set your own policies with your customers in regard to items like customer return, shipping and handling policies for your set of Amazon.com products. If you design ecommerce website that is Amazon approved, you can sell in several Amazon.com categories. Amazon will handle payment processing without charging an item listing fee.

NicheSuite POS Features

Whether you are a large, multi-location retail chain or a small, independent retailer, NicheSuite POS Solutions serve your every need. Our POS solutions give you the option of choosing the right technology and with it, the benefits relating to the operational, capital/operational expense, support needs and security & maintenance. NicheSuite can also be deployed on different kinds of IT infrastructure and hardware.

POS – Administration features

• A searchable full audit trail of the store's sale history is enabled by the electronic journal
• Can enrol new customers into loyalty programs for campaigns/CRM purposes
• An employee database that supports attendance, labour scheduling and time can be maintained
• Ensures smooth functioning of day to day tasks between headquarters and stores
• Generates pertinent and effective reports relating to profitability, sales and stock
• Interfaces with multi-order points like cell phone, kiosks and web
• Is capable of printing vast variety of reports with which cash management processes can be smoothed
• Items such as edge shelf labels, applicable tax rates, prices and tender types are updated
• Registries for items such as for bridal and baby gifts and events by dates, names, items, prices, etc are supported
• Set up authorisation levels and usage security with which to manage different stakeholders and groups and control the roles they play in the system
• Shipment packages with online integration with shipment companies like DHL, FedEx, Royal Mail, UPS and USPS etc can be tracked
• Special offers, such as promotions and percentage discounts, can be launched
• The GUI, which is browser-based, enables back-office users to manage every aspect of the store. This makes its use easy and reduces training costs.
• The price check system, which is fully integrated, allows reporting on management of promotional message displayed to customers and system usage, helping to improve customer service
• You can set up and manage ecommerce and retail stores and warehouses and set up associations between them.
• You can synchronise intervals between warehouses, ecommerce stores and retail stores. With this, you can see a real-time synchronisation between these different business channels and set up preset stock replenishment levels
• Your business can set up payment gateways like Barclays, CyberSource, Google Checkout, HSBC, PayPal, Sage Pay and any other custom payment gateway that has inbuilt 3D Secure support

POS –terminal features

• Can handle different kinds of payment methods, such as credit card, cheque, cash, voucher, or gift cheque
• Can integrate with third-party processors, such as stored value cards, smart cards etc
• Can manage advance sale, cash and credit
• Goods can be shipped to consumers
• Indicative sale, like consumer specific promotion or up-sell prompting, can be done
• Its Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) interface aids third-party integration
• NicheSuite POS supports internationalisation. A number of languages and currency options that can be comfortably swapped are available for the user/cashier
• Offers a host of flexible sales functions, such as sale by item, and accepts all popular modes of online payment
• Offers support for US taxation
• PLU, the number assigned to that product which is not bar-coded, is supported. When server action is restored, offline transactions are automatically recorded and updated
• Returns/Exchange, Refunds and Deliver Slip can be tracked
• Sales can be reviewed through a web browser interface
• Store is completely automated, because of which super fast checkouts are ensured and human errors reduced
• Supports currency and drawer management
• Targeted sales goals can be set. Every step towards achieving these goals can be tracked online, adding to the motivation levels among sales personnel.
• The Hold and Retrieve Options under Suspend/Retrieve functions, by which an employee can return to a transaction later, is enabled
• The print management system gives out clean receipts and can void transactions when required
• Use of gift certificates is supported