Google offers powerful and useful searches that help customers find online stores, like yours. But did you know that Google offers a “Product Search” that is specifically designed to help customers find your products? To see this great tool in action, simply go to Google’s website and click the “Shopping” link at the top of the page.
Google Product Search allows your customers to search for their favorite products and see a list of merchants offering them, along with prices and seller ratings. Many customers find this tool an essential part of their online shopping.
Not all products and online merchants are listed in this search, though. Only products that have been specifically uploaded to “Google Base,” Google’s special database of products and other information, are included in these product-specific search results.
There are many advantages to having your online store’s products listed in this database. Customers don’t have to sift through as many irrelevant search results because this special search is specific to products they are looking for. This makes it easier to see your online product. Additionally, customers will get more information about your product using Product Search than they would using the regular Google search because special data fields are included in the product uploads. These searchable fields include the following: Product Name, Category (Product Type), Manufacturer, Condition, Long Description and Price. Webplus Shop automatically includes most of these fields without you having to specifically set them.
To upload your products to Google Product Search, you need a “Google Account.” If you use Gmail as your email provider, you can use your Gmail login as your Google Account. If you’re not sure if you have a Google Account, you can ask Google to check for you. Additionally, all products uploaded to Google Product Search must meet the Google Base Program Policies, Editorial Guidelines and Content Policies, or Google will remove the products from its database.
It is easy to include your online store products in the Google Product Search using Webplus Shop. The easiest way is to simply click on the “Inventory” tab and then click on “Google Product Search Feed.” This page will tell you how many products are marked to be included in the feed and which products are not. By default, each product is marked for inclusion.
Click twice on the Play/pause button to start the video.
To maximize the power of this marketing technique, make sure that your product descriptions accurately describes the product, using keywords that your customers might use to find your product.
Another important field is the Google Category (Product Type). Although you can use anything in your Google Product Type (Category) field, Google recommends using it’s product type taxonomy for best results.
Google Product Search is a powerful tool to get the products in your online store in front of your customers. It is growing in popularity and many online merchants say it has significantly increased the number of visitors to their online store and sales. Webplus Shop makes submitting and updating your products very easy and we highly suggest you take advantage of it.
When you earn a profit from your online store, you must report it to the IRS. This is normally done on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ. Profits from your website are taxed as part of your income. If you lost money on your online business, though, you may be able to deduct your losses from your other income such as a job or another business.
There are some rules to keep in mind for deducting your website and business expenses. The biggest is that you need to know (and prove) whether your online store is a business or a hobby. The main difference between these is whether you have a profit motive. If you intend to make a profit (even if you ended up taking a loss), you can declare your website as a business and deduct its expenses, such as for web-hosting, marketing and promotion, and your wholesale cost of goods or services.
If the IRS determines that you did not intend to make a profit from your website, then you may still be able to deduct some of the expenses, but they are restricted. In general, if you make money from a hobby, you can deduct the costs up to the amount you earned. This means you may be able to reduce your hobby-income to zero with the expenses, but you cannot declare a loss to offset other income.
The IRS understands that most businesses do lose money the first couple years, since it takes time for marketing and promotion efforts to pay off and initial expenses are incurred when a business starts. During this time, the IRS can use a set of criteria to determine whether your online store is a hobby or a business.
If you make a profit (even a small one) for 3 out of 5 years, the IRS will see that you intend to make a profit and will see your website as a business and allow you to deduct all legal business expenses.
What this all boils down to is that there are some tax advantages to running an online business as a second income (or even as a first income). Your hosting fees are deductible as business expenses. Also, your ISP or broadband costs, all money you invest on marketing and promoting your website, and all consulting or customization fees you pay to customize your website would also normally be deductible.
Depending on how much you make from your online business, you may be able to take additional tax deductions, such as a percentage of your health insurance costs, a home-office deduction that includes a percentage of your rent or mortgage and utilities, and other deductions that are allowed as business expenses.
This means that even if you end up with a loss on your online store, you can still win by using that loss to offset some of your other income and reduce your overall taxes. Then, when you make a profit on your online business, you have more money in your pocket. An online store is a win-win either way.
You should understand this article is not to be taken as tax advice and that you need to talk to your tax advisor about how you can use your online business to maximize your tax deductions.
Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the last few months with nowhere to turn but paltry unemployment benefits. When the benefits run out, where will they go next? Welfare-offices? How do you ensure that you’re not among them? By not having all your income eggs in one basket.
Experts agree that the best way to recession-proof yourself is to have multiple streams of income. Your job is your main income source, but you should have others. An online business is an excellent way to create an additional stream of income with a minimum of investment.
It is important to start at least one online store as soon as you can, since it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It does take some time for your marketing efforts to work and for your customer base to grow enough for the income to be steady. But as the turtle won against the hare with his slow and steady progress, a solid web business will provide a reliable stream of income.
Once you get one web store going, it will require little time and effort to maintain and grow it further. That is when you can start a second online store to provide further income and insurance against recession. Multiple online stores compliment each other. Like all businesses, they have cycles. When one is going through a slow period, like a Christmas store in June, another store possibly selling beach gear can be doing better to keep your overall income even or growing.
Compared to other types of businesses you can use to supplement your income, online stores are among the most affordable, both in time and money. For less than $15/month and just a couple hours on the weekends, you can open your own online store and begin working to diversify your income. If you need help with getting started, our specialists can help you with any aspect of running your own business, including finding products to sell and how to effectively market them. For a small additional investment, our professional designers can design your store for you and set it up with the first 25 products.
During this frightening New Year, one of the best resolutions you can make is to diversify your income. Don’t assume that your current employer will be able to keep you on board through this long recession. Don’t assume that your employer will survive.
Ask yourself one question. How much is it worth for you to have some income if the worst happens? $15/month and a couple hours on the weekend? Take control of your future and start an online store today.
All online stores experience the problem of abandoned carts. This happens when a potential customer places something in their shopping cart but does not complete the purchase. There are many reasons this happens, some of which are preventable. They include:
Customer is only browsing and is not ready to purchase yet.
The shipping and handling charge was too high.
Your store has to charge sales tax to the customer’s shipping address because of your location.
The customer does not feel comfortable buying from you.
Your shopping cart is not easy to navigate.
It is too long or complicated to checkout of your online store.
Some of these reasons are out of your control. It is normal in all stores, both online and brick-and-mortar, for people to browse and not purchase. They might be comparison shopping or they might be looking to just get ideas on what to buy. They might be looking for a store located in another state to avoid paying sales tax.
Some reasons for abandoning online shopping carts are within your control to improve. Here are some effective things you can do to reduce abandoned carts.
Build trust and confidence. Make sure you have your contact details showing in your online store. If a customer has a question, they want to know they can contact you easily with any questions or concerns. Using a simple and easy-to-find “Contact Us” page makes customers feel more confident in your store, while reducing spam you would get by just showing your email address on your website. If your shopping cart software is Webplus Shop, you can verify this on the Settings > Store Settings screen of your Merchant Interface.
Make sure your pages download fast. The best way to do this is to make sure your image files are compressed not too large. Many shopping carts rely on the merchant compressing their image files before uploading them to their online store. Others, like Webplus Shop, will do this automatically when the file is uploaded. Also make sure there aren’t too many images on each page. It’s ok if there are a few to show the product and make the website attractive, but if there are a lot of unnecessary graphics, it will slow down the pages and many customers will leave.
Explain your return policy clearly. If a customer knows they can return a product within a certain number of days without any hassle, they will be much more likely to complete the purchase. A short statement describing your return policy should be on every page, such as in the footer. It is rare for customers to actually return a product, but they will feel much more confident in ordering if they know they can.
Reduce Sticker Shock. Explain your shipping and taxation policies clearly. A brief mention could be in the footer on every page of your online store, along with a more detailed description on a custom page. Your shopping cart should also allow the customer to see estimated shipping and tax costs before checking out. Ideally, it should show this estimate on the shopping cart page, as Webplus Shop does. If you use Webplus Shop, you can create custom pages for this and anything else you need by going to the Appearance > Custom Pages screen in the Merchant Interface.
Provide alternative payment methods. Different customers have different preferences for paying online. Some prefer the convenience of entering their credit card number directly in the store. Others prefer to use a payment service like PayPal. And some are simply not comfortable paying electronically and would prefer mailing a check or phoning their payment details to the merchant. If you offer multiple payment methods, barriers some customers perceive in completing the purchase will be reduced.
The shorter the checkout process, the better. Most online shopping carts have long, multi-page checkout processes. The customer enters their shipping address on one page, their billing address on another, their payment information on the third and then are asked to confirm on the fourth. This is a very large source of shopping cart abandonment. Many experts say that if you email people who have started the checkout process but abandoned it later, you can email them to encourage their return to complete their purchase. This is an inefficient and unproductive way to handle cart abandonment. The best way is to have the whole checkout on a single, simple page. This shows the customer exactly how easy it is, shows all details at once, and allows them to complete their purchase in the fastest possible time. There is no chasing after them after they quit. One shopping cart that offers this highly effective single-page checkout is Webplus Shop.
Offer a reason to return. It is a well established fact that it’s much cheaper and easier to get an existing customer to return than it is to find a new customer. The more repeat business an online store has, the faster it will grow. There are many easy ways to encourage repeat business. One simple way is to offer a coupon after a customer checks out to come back. For example, display a custom message on the Receipt saying something like, “Receive 5% off your next purchase! Enter Coupon Code XXXX when you return.” This can be done easily in Webplus Shop by going to the Settings > Store Settings screen in the Merchant Interface and entering your message in the “Custom Receipt Thank You Message” box. You can create your promotions and coupons in the Marketing > Promotions and Marketing > Coupons screens.
It is also important to measure and track your abandoned carts to know if your efforts are being effective. Analytics software, such as Google Analytics will help you understand your online store traffic patterns. You can also see exactly how many carts are abandoned and what items were in the abandoned carts if you use Webplus Shop by going to the Orders screen in the Merchant Interface and setting the Status field to “Abandoned.”
Periodically reviewing your abandoned shopping carts are an excellent way to measure your online store’s effectiveness in completing sales. While keeping in mind that there are some abandoned carts that cannot be prevented, there are many things you can do to avoid them. Using the right shopping cart software and following the seven suggestions will go a long way to reducing cart abandonment and increasing sales and profits.
If you’re looking to open and online store with no up-front investment or want to cheaply supplement your existing online store’s inventory, keep reading. This article will help explain some of the pros and cons in regards to the no-fee and per-order drop shippers. What is a dropshipper?
No-fee dropshippers simply require that you sign-up with them to use their services. Per-order dropshippers charge a small fee each time you place an order for products. We maintain lists of dropshippers here at Webplus Shop. Call us toll-free at 1-866-338-8883 (international: +1-605-229-0307) to talk about specific wholesale companies.
Pros of Per-Order & No-Fee Dropshippers
You have very little or no overhead on your inventory. You don’t have to keep any stock on hand and you don’t have to worry about packaging and shipping from home.
“No Sales, No Fees.” This means that if you experience a slow month, you won’t be paying a monthly wholesaler fee that eats into your profits.
Cons of Per-Order & No-Fee Dropshippers
Often the products will be at a higher wholesale cost and you won’t have as high of a markup.
Sometimes the products are not name-brand which can, but doesn’t always, indicate questionable product quality.
Leverage a Per-Order or No-Fee Dropshipper Relationship
You can easily use a no-fee or per-order drop shipper to your advantage. Not only does it have zero or very low overhead cost, it also allows you to widen your catalog with no initial fee. A larger catalog can quickly widen your customer base.
Lastly, keep an eye out for drop shippers with steep minimum order requirements or consistently low quantity-on-hand (i.e. in stock) amounts. These can result in an inconvenience to both you and your customers.
For more information about wholesale dropshippers or starting your own online store, call us toll-free at 1-866-338-8883 (international: +1-605-229-0307) or send us an email.
Drop shipping is a form of supply chain management where one company, the wholesaler, manages the inventory and shipping while another company, the merchant (You!), promotes the products and takes orders from customers.
When a product is purchased, the merchant sends the customer’s order info and shipping details to the wholesaler. The wholesaler then ships the goods directly to the customer. Merchants earn profit by selling the products at a higher price than the low wholesale cost of the items.
Signing-up with a wholesaler usually done through one of the following types of plans…
Recurring-fee membership to the wholesaler’s inventory and services
One-time, up-front investment for a lifetime membership
Small, per-order fees paid when products are ordered
No-fee, free-to-use drop shipping services and inventory
Over the next several weeks on the Webplus Shop Tips & Tricks Blog, we’ll examine these different plan types along with the pros and cons of each method.
You are acting as a Copywriter any time that you use your writing to promote your products or services. (Wikipedia has a longer definition.) One of the strongest areas to turn a customer into a sale is in a product’s description. Webplus Shop calls this a Product Long Description and they can be found on the Inventory > Products > [Edit] page.
There are plenty of resources available for writing a compelling product description, such as TheMauritius.com’s How to Write a Product Description article.
A good product description conveys the benefits of using the product and not just the facts around the product. A good product description convinces the customer that they need the product and they need to purchase it from you.
In short, don’t just explain what the customer is looking at, but also why they want to buy it. Before you begin editing your descriptions though, understand that it is important to have a consistent “voice” used in all of your copywriting. FutureNow’s 2 Simple Steps to Finding Your Website’s Voice article explains more about voice and how to give your own store an identity through writing.
I would argue that copy is perhaps the most important element for conveying your website’s personality or voice. As a copywriter, there are two things you must do:
Have a clear understanding of your personality, brand or voice
Convey that personality, brand or voice to your audience
Use these resources and keep these ideas in mind to write better copy, especially in your product descriptions. If you want to learn more a copywriting, start by reading Copyblogger. The insight you’ll gain there will be invaluable as an online business owner.
One of the first questions facing many merchants new to selling online is whether they should set up their new online store themselves or pay for professional online store setup. It may seem logical that if you are able to set up the store yourself you should. Why pay someone else to do something you can do yourself, especially if you are on a tight budget? However this is not always true. Below is a brief discussion of the pros and cons of setting up an online store yourself vs. paying a web designer to do it for you.
First off, I should say that many shopping carts do not leave an option for you. Many are very complicated on the backend and require a programmer to do all setup and future changes. Unless you have programming knowledge I would not recommend attempting to set up a store yourself with such a shopping cart. For the average merchant, I would not recommend this type of cart at all since all future changes will require you to hire a programmer which can get very expensive. Only in the event that you have a programmer on staff or happen to be a programmer yourself would I recommend a cart which is this technical. With that said, Webplus Shop, our shopping cart software, leaves both options open for you as it is simple enough for you to set up yourself and we also offer affordable website setup for just $349.
So back to the question, should you set up your online store yourself or pay for professional setup? In most cases, if resources allow, I would recommend paying to have your online store set up by a professional web designer who can make the website look great and get it done in a timely fashion. Web designers usually have years of experience in what makes a website enticing to visitors and can showcase your products in a way that, in most cases, would be better then if you set upthe website yourself. The initial setup of your online store is very, very important to the future of your online business so you want it to look as inviting as possible. You should use the initial setup of your online store to learn from your web designer which you can apply as you make changes to the store down the line. As you get more experienced running your online store you can begin to add your own touch. Then there is the time factor. As if it weren’t time consuming enough running a small business now you have to worry about setting up a website as well! For many small business owners just finding the time to get all their products entered into their online store can take weeks. In ecommerce, time is money! You are missing out on sales every day that your store is not online selling for you. For this reason, the couple hundred to couple thousand dollars that most web designers or shopping cart companies charge to set up your online store is well worth it and a small investment for the long term. Our company charges $349 for complete online store setup and can usually have your website live within 48 hours.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely against setting up your online store yourself. There are some cases in which it makes sense. If you have a very limited budget or are simply experimenting with a product concept, it may make sense to set up an online store yourself to test the waters without much of an investment. If you are good with programming or graphic design you may want to put your skills to work as well. Or if you have adequate time to learn new software and do the store setup, again, you may consider setting up an online store yourself. This may be true of retired individuals or those whose business is currently more of a hobby.Webplus Shop is very easy to use with no programming knowledge required. We usually figure it takes under an hour to learn. If you are looking for an online store solution that is easy to set up yourself please do give it a look.
You’ve optimized your online store pages and your category pages in your online business. Now it’s time to optimize your product pages with SEO (search engine optimization) techniques that work.
Optimizing your store’s product pages will increase the number of customers who find your products and, ultimately, purchase them. For example, if someone is searching for “handmade bracelet,” you want to make sure that your handmade bracelets appear as high as possible on their search result list. If your bracelet product page is on the first few pages of the search results, there is a high probability that the customer will go directly to that page, where it is very easy for them to add the product to their cart and complete the sale.
Optimization is done by adding strategic keywords to the product page SEO tags and in the product descriptions. These SEO tags include the <title> and <meta> tags, which search engines use to determine what your online store page is about and how relevant it is to the customer’s search.
The <title> tag sets the text that appears in the browser’s window title bar, at the very top of your browser window (above the toolbar buttons). This field is very important to search engines and is one of the places they look for keywords the most.
By default, Webplus Shop sets this text to the name of your product. For better sales, though, you should change it to have more good keywords that your online store’s customers will use to find this product. Make sure the text in the <title> tag for each product is specific to that product. Setting it the same for all products will significantly reduce its effectiveness.
The <meta> tags consist of the “meta-keywords” and “meta-description” tags, which contain important keywords and descriptions relevant to the product, but do not actually appear on the web page to the customer. Some search engines use these tags to help them catalog what the page is about so they know when to include the page in search engine results.
If you use Webplus Shop as your online store shopping cart software, setting the title and meta tags is very easy. On the Edit Product screen, where you enter your product’s information, click on the “Featured Product and Marketing” section. Scroll to the bottom, and enter your <title> and <meta> tag keywords in the “<title> Tag Contents,” “Description Meta-Tag Contents” and “Keyword Meta-Tag Contents” fields.
Equally important to putting great keywords in the SEO tags is making sure that your descriptions, like your “Long Description,” have enough information in them. Most search engines catalog the words used in your descriptions, so the more information you put in your descriptions the better. Your customers also rely heavily on the long description to make their purchasing decision, so the more information you provide, the more comfortable they will feel buying from your online store. To super-charge your descriptions, make sure to include effective keywords in the text in such a way that it appears natural.
Remember to not repeat keywords too many times or search engines will penalize your online store, possibly removing it completely from their listings.
Using these techniques to maximize your online business’s exposure to customers via search engines will significantly increase your store’s traffic and sales.
Your category pages are some of the most important pages in your online store. After the home page, the category and product pages drive sales the most. Optimizing them for search engines will significantly increase your sales and add a boost to all of your other promotional efforts.
Like the other pages you optimized by setting <title> and <meta> tags, you can do this on your category pages. By default, the <title> tags are set to match the name of the product or category displayed. This will help your store somewhat, but adding additional relevant keywords to the product and category name will give your customers a better chance to find you.
Here is a simple method for setting the <title> and <meta> tags for your category pages:
Login to the merchant interface of your webstore (link opens in a new browser window).
Click on the “Inventory” tab.
Click on “Categories” option that appeared.
Select the category you wish to optimize by clicking on it’s name.
Click on the “Marketing and SEO” section to expand it.
Enter your desired <title> and <meta> tag keywords. Keep in mind that the most relevant and important keywords should be first. Also remember to refrain from repeating keywords too much, or your business website may be considered spam and be rejected by search engines.
Repeat this for each of your categories to customize the keywords for each specific category.
Customizing the SEO information for each category will drive more customers who are looking specifically for the products you sell in that category. This will help them find your online store and place an order with greater ease.
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All online stores experience the problem of abandoned carts. This happens when a potential customer places something in their shopping cart but does not complete the purchase. There are many reasons this happens, some of which are preventable. They include:
You’ve 