Grow Your Business Online with Webplus Shop!

Since your webstore will need to collect personal/private info to complete a sale, you should consider writing a Privacy Policy for your business. Having a written policy gives a customer confidence in purchasing from your website. The people over at Trust and Security Online seem to agree.

Having a privacy policy builds a large amount of trust in this area because:

1. The customer will know what is going to happen to their information once they provide it to a company.
2. The customer will learn what they need to do to keep themselves from getting any unnecessary newsletters, emails, or other unwanted material.
3. The customer also knows where their information will be stored once they provide it to you.

Although there are a few Privacy Policy generators available to you, your best bet it is to clearly and simply state what you intend to do with customer information. We here at Webplus Shop indeed follow our own advice and have our own clear, short privacy policy.

Finally, to create a webpage for your Privacy Policy, use the Custom Page tools already built-in to your Webplus Shop store.

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.

Read all of these articles on wholesalers and dropshipping.

If you would like specific info on wholesale relationships available to you as a Webplus Shop Merchant, please give us a call at 1-866-338-8883.

Have you always wondered how many people a day visit your online store? Do you want to see what keywords are bringing those visitors? Do you want to keep track of how promotions, referrals and ads are working for you? There is an easy way to find out that information by using Google Analytics.

Google Analytics makes it easy to improve and track your results in bringing people to your online store. It allows you to write better ads and strengthen your marketing efforts. Best of all, Google Analytics is free to to use. You can use Google Analytics to track all kinds of visits to your online store. For a tour of Google Analytics, you can go here for their slideshow and here to sign up.

Webplus Shop makes it easy for you integrate Google Analytics into your store to track visits to your website. Once you sign up for a Google Analytics account, take the code they provide and then log into your store. Navigate to the Marketing->Advanced and then simply insert the code into the Analytics Tracking Code box and you are ready to start tracking visitors! ( Click on the Image to make it bigger). It will take around 24 hours before Google will show anything in the Analytics Dashboard.

From there you just need to log into your Google Analytics home page and watch how people are coming to your online store. This will allow you to better tailor your search engine optimization and marketing efforts to draw people to your online store!

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and signals the opening of the Christmas shopping season. Usually there are lines of people waiting for the stores to open so they can get great deals on products. These stores create the desire for these products by using “door buster” promotions of loss-leader items. You can use these same kinds of promotions and ideas to draw people to your online store.

Ways to attract people on Black Friday
The first way a store can draw people in is by having a Door Buster event. Products offered as part of a door buster are typically extemely low-priced, low-supply items that create a high demand among consumers.

Create a door buster promotion for your webstore by creating Black Friday Door Buster coupons. Make sure you know how to create and distribute your coupons well in advance of Black Friday. This way you can carefully plan your Door Buster event.

Loss Leaders can, and should be used in conjunction with Door Buster sales to help draw customers in. A loss leader is product that is sold at or below cost to help stimulate other, more profitable sales. Set the price of a product so that you either make no profit or a small loss on an item. Market this item via Google Product Search. If somebody using Google Product Search filters by lowest price for your type of item, your product will be at the top of the list!

Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday is the term for the Monday that immediately follows Black Friday and signifies the start of online Christmas Shopping. Here is some more info on Cyber Monday.You can use the brick and mortar promotions for your online store to bring in customers this holiday season!

Using Webplus Shop’s hosted ecommerce solution to sell products has always been the focus, but now you can promote your store and inform your customers like never before. Learn how to take advantage of Webplus Shop’s latest feature – Custom Web Pages.

Custom Web Pages allow you to publish web content for your online store like an “About Us” page, customer testimonials, privacy policy, sizing charts, event calendar/schedule, shipping policy, or almost anything else that you would like to provide for your customers. Once you’re logged in, simply go to Appearance > Custom Web Pages and click the Add New Custom Page button to get started.

Have fun making your new Custom Web Pages!

The opportunity to make a discounted purchase is a strong attraction for a potential customer. With Webplus Shop, your online business can utilize coupons as marketing tools just like the paper coupons that arrive in your mailbox and newspapers. By distributing online coupons to specific places on the web, your coupon based marketing will cost very little, yet still have the potential to reach more people than a typical mass mailing campaign.

Creating a coupon in Webplus Shop takes two steps.

1. Create a promotion in the Marketing > Promotions area by clicking the Add New Promotion button. Enter the settings for your new promotion and make sure that you change the Require the Customer to Enter a Coupon Code setting to “Yes” and save your changes. (If this is your first promotion, click the Help button in the upper-right of the Promotions screen to learn more about how promotions work.)
2. Create a Coupon Code in the Marketing > Coupons area by clicking the Add New Coupon button. The customer will need to enter the Coupon Code to redeem the offer, so make it easy-to-use; one word and all uppercase (no spaces!). Set the Coupon Reusability to “Indefinately” so that many customers can use the same coupon. Set the Promotion to the one you just created in step one and save your changes. That’s it! You’re done!

Now that you have a Coupon Code that’s ready for customers to use, you need to let people know about it. Luckily there’s plenty of bargain hunters online and lots of coupon sharing websites that cater directly to them. Below you’ll find a few links to get you started. Simply fill out the form with your Coupon Code information to let people know about your store’s promotion.

• http://www.retailmenot.com/submit.php
• http://www.couponchief.com/coupons/submit
• http://www.dealhunting.com/submit.php
• https://accounts.couponmountain.com/login.php (free account required)

There’s plenty of other coupon sharing websites available besides those listed above. Unfortunately, many of these are affiliate marketing sites that only offer coupons from select stores instead of using simple Submit Coupon forms. Fortunately though, many of these affiliate coupon sites have Message Boards or Forums that you can post your coupon to. Look around on their homepage for a Message Board or Fourm link/button, sign-up, and start posting your Coupon Code.

Coupon Sharing Website Search: http://www.google.com/search?q=online+coupons

Examples of where to find links to Message Boards and Forums:

Post Coupon Codes on Site Message Boards and Forums

The first question many people ask when they are looking at opening an online store is “How do customers find my site?” This is a great question and an important aspect of running an online business. Webplus Shop offers many easy ways for you to enter keywords and meta tags about your products which will greatly help your products to be found by search engines. While these tools are crucial for helping your online business get recognized, there are many other ways you can promote your store without using your computer at all.

The first suggestion is using business cards. There are many places that will print up 100’s to 1000’s of business cards for you at a reasonable price. These cards can be used to hand out to your friends and co-workers or to complete strangers at trade shows or just on the street. Having your cards at a business, at the mall, or wherever there are many potential shoppers is a great way to get your business name out there.

Flyers are an effective way for you to get some information about your site out to people as they are reading something to pass the time. Passing out or placing flyers in doctors’ offices, airports, bus stations, street corners, and shopping malls will not only introduce people to your store, they can also have coupons or descriptions of what your online store is all about.

Don’t be afraid to do something out of the ordinary. From painting your domain on your car to putting it on a big sign in front of your house, any publicity is usually good publicity. Create T-shirts, buttons, stickers, hats or whatever fits your budget and pass them out for people to wear at concerts, fairs, amusement parks, etc. A simple shirt with just your domain on it will increase curiosity and may lead them to your site by just wanting to know what that hat or shirt was referring to.

Checking out the price of running a small ad in newspapers, talking to radio stations about mentioning your site on the air, or printing calendars and pens that have your business name on them are also effective strategies. Donating prizes, gift certificates, or coupons to fund-raisers, golf tournaments, or contests also can help promote your store and even if they are not redeemed, it could be some free publicity.

Most offline promotion techniques are fairly inexpensive if not free. If you are really serious about having a successful online business, please utilize all the features Webplus Shop has to offer as you are setting up your store, but remember that there are many other ways to promote your business without being online at all. Above are just a few of the many methods of offline promotion that we recommend, so please take some time and find a way to promote your store offline that works best for you.

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:

1. Have a clear understanding of your personality, brand or voice
2. 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.

Aberdeen, SD – (PR.com, October 7, 2008) Webplus, Inc. (www.WebplusShop.com), the leader in affordable ecommerce web hosting, announced today the launch of its $1.00 ecommerce web hosting promotion. Through this promotion, businesses will receive their first month of ecommerce website hosting for just $1.00 when setting up a new website with Webplus Shop. Package includes support for up to 150 products and product support with a cancel-anytime guarantee. Enter promo code: SELLONLINE at checkout to receive this promotion.

Webplus Shop is easy, affordable ecommerce web hosting. With Webplus Shop, individuals and businesses can build an online store fast and sell or showcase almost anything worldwide in their very own online store website. Ecommerce hosting packages start at just $14.95 per month with no “percent of sale” fees like many online auction sites. All ecommerce web hosting packages are ad-free and come with a domain name so people can find the store fast. Video tutorials make learning how to use the online store very easy and no programming knowledge is required. Webplus Shop support staff is just a phone call away if there is ever an issue. Need to start selling online fast? Webplus Shop staff can set up your ecommerce website and have it online and selling in just few hours.

For more information on Webplus Shop, please visit www.WebplusShop.com or email sales@webplusshop.com. Promo may be redeemed online or by calling 1-866-338-8883.

About Webplus Shop
Webplus Shop is the easy way for small businesses and individuals to open an online store and to sell almost anything online 24×7. Webplus Shop displays your products, processes orders and keeps track of inventory on the back end and may be added to an existing website or may act as a stand-alone business website. The Webplus Shop shopping cart software has been in continuous development by Webplus, Inc. since 1996 with a focus on ease of use and affordability. No programming knowledge is required to set up an online store or to make routine changes; we realize that most small businesses don’t have a computer programmer on staff and your time is better spent running your business than figuring out software. Webplus Shop is also very affordable with packages starting under $15 per month including the software, secure, US-based hosting with 99.9% uptime and your very own domain name. Webplus doesn’t take any percent of your sales to cut into the bottom line of your online business. Webplus also does not outsource any portion of our services and our customer support is unbeatable. Yes, you can actually call and speak with a human when there is an issue. Call today or visit www.WebplusShop.com to get started. You can’t afford NOT to sell online!

Contact:
Bryan Kriech
605.229.0307
bryank@webplus.com

Making your online store look great doesn’t have to be difficult. A simple graphics set can make all the difference between an ok looking store and something that stands out above the rest.

You really need to set yourself apart as soon as possible. This can be done by using the free graphic sets in Webplus Shop, uploading your own, or have Webplus design something for you!

A few tips when thinking about a graphic set:
Try to make it work with the colors that your web store uses. Think of complementary colors and using easy to read text colors

Try to stick to a solid background color or a fairly quiet background picture: if there is too much going on or too many contrasting colors, this makes the text very hard to read. If you choose to use a image, make sure that it can be tiled. This means that it will repeat nicely across the background at any resolution.

Here is a background image that will work well with a dark text.

Now, these two are great examples of what not to use for a background image.

Any color of text appearing on these backgrounds would be un-readable because of the varying amounts of color and the patterns.

Any header image you upload to Webplus Shop is aligned to the top of the menu bar. The footer image is anchored to the bottom of your content, NOT the bottom of the screen.

Any text you put in the header or footer HTML editor boxes in the merchant interface will appear on top of the header or footer images. This means you can have a simple graphic without text, making it easier to change that text later.

If you have a hard time with color theory, check out Adobe Kuler where you can choose a color and get complementary colors quick and easy.

Finally, when making a header or a footer for your store, try to keep the width at or under 960 pixels and have a minimum height of 150 pixels.  By using the 960 pixel width, that will keep the image the same length as the menu bar.