eStores, eCommerce and Business Web Hosting

Money is short and times are changing

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:38:00 +0000

The current economic downturn has seen the internet take a dramatic turn in presentation and content. Web Hosting companies are noticing an increase in the number of daily sales as more and more folks are launching websites in the hopes of making money.

eCommerce sales are stable, with a dramatic increase in new online e-stores, and affiliate marketing web sites. More and more families are feeling the crunch with unemployment and day to day living expenses.

We are now seeing a rising increase in the number of "work-at-home-mums" or WAHMS, with the internet being an obvious work choice for these people. In the majority of cases these people are "salt of the earth" battlers who are more than prepared to invest modest amounts into a new online adventure.

Sending Profitable Newsletters to your Customers

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:31:00 +0000

These days I think nearly everyone is familiar with receiving spam emails for online pharmaceuticals, software, and other junk, not to mention Nigerian and other scams.

Most of us compromise these spam emails by setting our spam-filters higher, and in the process we also miss out on a lot of important mailings and newsletters that we have actually subscribed to.

Unfortunately, the same applies to your eStore newsletters that you send out to your customers, advising them of the latest specials, pricing updates and new items etc etc. Too often, your customer never sees the newsletter as it is gobbled up by your anti-spam filters as junk mail.

There-fore, it is very important to consider the layout of your newsletter just as much as the content you put into it.

1. Ensure that your eStores "from" email address is a valid one for a starter.

2. The title of your newsletter will appear as the email's subject, so make sure it reads like "Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008" rather than "Doohickeys are only $19.95 this month".

3. Make sure you have a clear opening statement in font-size 10px and not 6px, that states that this is the "Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008" that you are subscribed to.

4. Ensure that you have an unsubscribe option clearly positioned at least at the bottom of your newsletter, or better at the top and bottom, with a direct link to your http://www.yourshop.com/login.php. Make sure you include instructions on how to unsubscribe.

You must ensure that your newsletter complies with the regulations found here at The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy .

The three key steps involved are:

Consent - you need to have consent from the person to whom you are sending your message.
Identify - you should clearly identify who is responsible for sending the message and how to contact them.
Unsubscribe - your messages should contain an unsubscribe facility to enable the recipient to unsubscribe.

Notify your customers that they should check their "junk mail" box for your newsletter, and to include your sending address in the "white-list" of allowed addresses in their spam filters.

Try to make your content exciting, new, interesting and brief. If you have a new product to shout about then, run a dynamic heading for it, perhaps with a single image, a special or introductory price, and have it link to your products description page. Do NOT over elaborate in the newsletter, let them get the main story and the features list from your site.

Kepp that newsletter short and to the point, not a 1000 word boring essay!
Good Luck.

Totally off-topic, but relevant to some

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:32:00 +0000

Congratulations to Tola from our accounts department, and her partner Michael, on their brand-new baby daughter Elizabeth, born 11/11/2008 at 4.14pm tipping the scales at only 4lb 13ozs. Both Mother and Daughter are doing fine!

PS. Can you hurry back to work, we all miss you!

All the technical mumbo-jumbo from auStores is here

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:19:00 +0000

We have stopped posting technical information and site tips at the auStores News Blog and will post it here instead. This will free up the auStores site as a source of news and updates pertaining directly to the day to day operation of our servers.

All service difficulties, updates, upgrades, and network outages will be published there. The ideal solution is to track our RSS data feed, which will always contain the top five latest articles. Windows Vista users can easily add the feed to their windows sidebar, and will see upto the minute scrolling site news and notifications. A very very handy solution for Hosting Re-sellers and business accounts.

This blog site is now fairly well established as a great source of information for webmasters and estore managers alike. One should check in here regularly to stay abreast of all the latest developments, and our tips n tricks to help improve your sites ranking.

Useful tools to promote your site or estore

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:41:00 +0000

This is a very handy site if you are looking for a few Freebies to help promote your estore.

This free online animated banner maker is fantastic. You simply select the colors, fonts etc that you want and add an effect, then hey presto, it's an instant 468x60 banner ready to save to your drive.

Here's our quickie sample:

Another very handy set of gadgets to score a lot of free back links would have to be these free plugpanels that they have on the OziFree.com site. Install one of these plugboards (There are lots of differnet sizes and types there) make a few plugs on other sites, and in no time you will have visitors plugging on your board.

Free or cheap web hosting in Australia

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:45:00 +0000

Free or cheap web hosting in Australia, does it exist, and what are the Pros and Cons?

Yes it does exist. There are Australian hosting sites actually offering free web hosting right here in Australia! As for cheap Australian web hosting, a Google search will quickly reveal hosting plans for less than $5.00 a month! Just how cheap do you need!

Free Hosting
Pros:
Well you can't get cheaper than FREE!
Cons:
Usually limited in features.
Often uses a subdomain name of the parent site
Support is way way down the list
Usually sponsored by advertisments.
Mail-boxes often flooded with newsletter spams.

Cheap Hosting
Pros:
Readily affordable.

Cons:
Feature limited
Often shared hosting so down-time is imminent
Lower support priority
Slower servers
No phone support

So there you have it. I realise that there may be exceptions to the rule, how ever in the majority of cases, you will find that what i have written is about right. One only needs to read all the complaints pertaining to various hosting companies and their lack of support in the forums at webhostingtalk.com.au to soon realise that 99% of the whingers are either free or el-cheapo economy hosting accounts.

That is why companies such as auStores.com.au shy away from shared hosting, and actually own their own server boxes outright, with a direct internet connection in a reputable data center.

Just remember, you only get what you pay for, so if it's free, you cannot expect the support and features that a premium account would be receiving.

Why is it done this way? Well one of the main reasons that dollars equals service, is to help weed out the chaff from the wheat. Why waste expensive man hours working on a free or cheap business web site that will never be able to cut the mustard, as the owner is not really serious about succeeding?

Do Australian Web Hosts really have Servers Australia or Servers USA

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:34:00 +0000

People seem to question web sites claiming to be Australian Web Hosting, and advertising Business Hosting, Web Site Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, hosted on Servers located here in Australia.

In an earlier post here on shonky web hosts we discussed the simplicity of opening a shared hosting resellers account, and claiming to be a large ISP or hosting company. Here we look further into the advantages of using a web host with servers in Australia or overseas.

Until the recent stock-market crash and the world economic disaster fiasco, the cheapest hosting was in the USA, where Aussies could grab a hosting package of good proportions, for a few dollars a month. Now with the vast devaluation of the Aussie Dollar, (approx .61c at the time of this post), overseas hosting has become very very expensive.

Lets consider overseas servers here first:

The Pros:
Larger disk space offers, more bandwidth, instant setups, moderate pricing.

The Cons:
Email support only, timezone difference, higher lag time, slower page loads.

Now the Australian Servers:

The Pros:
Faster loading, phone support, personal setups, local networks, lower priced, reliability.

The Cons:
Billy the School Boy, Amateur Host.

In general, the US based servers only ever appealed to Aussies when their costs were very low. How ever as I mentioned earlier, the current devaluation of the Australian Dollar has virtually ripped the heart out of this as being a viable option for reliable web hosting.

Proper Australian Web Hosting on Servers in Australia is the industry recommended solution for business web hosting, and in particular for Australian eCommerce Web Hosting. Why? Well one very important consideration is that the majority of Australian business and ecommerce web sites target a specific Australian audience, and Australian based servers will still reflect on our local Australian Network even if links to the US or Europe fail. Major search engines also recognize Australian IP addresses as being local, and can actually use this information to help target your audience with local search results.

Other considerations are that local servers are operated and maintained by local Australians, who are familiar with our currency, taxes, address formats, legislations, business practices, and even the name of your company! You are more likely to get a genuine and caring response from a local support technician at 3.30am here in the morning, than from someone across the globe who knows that you too are across the globe from them, and you cannot really do much about it. ie: They do not have to care, as distance provides immunity.

By the same token, any one dragged out of bed at 3.30am on an emergency server outage is not going to be 100% excited, but your local guy is going to be more understanding of the importance and need to get your site back online as fast as possible. It's a lot smoother when both parties are aware that they both are up at the same time, or working the same shift, trying to sip coffee and communicating over hundreds of kilometers, in similar cultures.

Then again, how many of us really enjoy calling our phone company or cable network in Australia, only to be greeted by a support person in another foreign country. Lets keep it local, and help keep our money here in Australia where it belongs!

eCommerce Success, seperating fact from fallacy.

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Current economic times have seen a greater push into the ever expanding world of eCommerce. Online eStores are becoming increasingly popular, with a huge surge in the lower-end free estore web hosts, and are popping up everywhere at an alarming rate of knots.

This sudden boom in ecommerce seems to be brought on by more and more women, struggling to support their partner's income as rising interest rates and the economic downturn starts to hammer home the message of financial doom and gloom. Unfortunately all this is acheiving, is nothing more than rushing out to buy a lottery in the hopes of winning on Saturday night, and being able to pay out the mortgage.

Successful merchants lose very little ground with this influx of instant estores, just add products. In fact they gain a lot as desperate people simply open an online shop, list a few choice products at over-inflated prices, and then sit back waiting to become rich. Probably the wealthiest that we find in this chain are the scavengers selling their ebooks on how to get rich by opening an estore.

Why would you buy such a book? We are talking about schemes with titles such as "How to open an estore and make millions - by one who did!" If I could open an estore and make millions, do you really think that I would take time out from living the life of luxury to bother writing an ebook on how I did it. Do you really think that some millionaire really wants to "share the wealth" with you and risk losing their business strength.

Do you really believe that you can simply open a free estore , list a few dropship products, and expect to compete. Dream on sucker, all you will be doing is wasting electricity to run your computer and the server that your estore is hosted on. Do you really think that spending an hour a day blogging about your cloned products will get you there? I hate to tell you but you are still dreaming friend.

It's common knowledge that the way to success is through hard word, even though there are thousands out there telling you this is not the case. Yes these are the thousands that are charging you fees to attend their seminars, or buy their ebooks on "How to get Rich". I can tell you, the two best ways to get rich quick are to sell an ebook telling others how to get rich quick, or to open a new church for some weird religious sect.

Then there is the other way, the one where the WAHM (Work At Home Mum) does a little market research, creates her own mini business plan, checks a budget, and opens her own online estore.

She stays within her budget, spends hours every day taking advantage of any free advertising or traffic exposure she can get, yes she blogs too, she spends hours using Publisher to create flyers and letters, then saddles up all the kids and begins stuffing letter-boxes. We find her at the school, fetes, functions, shopping centers, we find her everywhere we turn, until we know the name and URL of her estore off by heart.

She works hard attracting business to her online shop, then works equally as hard maintaining and nurturing her client-base with newsletters, gifts, rewards, offerings, and emails until "word of mouth" becomes one of the greatest free advertising formulaes she has. She soon finds that the free estore she is using is not helping to grow her business, so she invests in a paid monthly professional estore, the kind that is packed with features to make life easier, and to help push her business forward.

Her perserverance pays off in the end, and while she may not be "making millions", she finds that she is able to be a major contributor to the household budget. By now this is all becoming a strain on her, as the reality of the long hours required to run an online estore become apparent, so she enlists the help of her computer illiterate hubby to keep things moving. It's not long before the next step, this is the one where they usually enlist the support of a few loyal girlfriends to help.

Now nothing gets things moving faster than a bunch of the girls working together, and it's not long before hubby is back outside with his lawn-mower, sacked from the laptop, and one of the ladies takes over the keyboard. Now this bunch of sheilas shifts into high gear, they decide some tasks, they have an action plan, and they soon begin to be a well established force on the internet!
It's not long before they are all making a comfortable living for each of their families, all done through hard work and committment.

Don't believe me? Then check out some of the past success stories on television programs such as Today Tonight.

How to search thoroughly for Australian Web Hosting and avoid the pitfalls of finding shonky web hosts in Australia.

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:13:00 +0000

Web Hosting in Australia. One of the most popular Google searches would have to be for Australian Web Hosting. Web site hosting is one of the most common search terms used in either a WWW or local Australian search for web servers, and unfortunately only sponsors the most sought after and dedicated web host key-words in Australia.

Australian Hosting companies bid daily for popular keywords like "australian web hosting, australian hosting ,web hosts, web hosting, shared hosting, australian hosts, domain, domain names, hosting, website, ecommerce, estore" etc, paying out money hand over fist to have Google associate these words with their sites. Consequentially, that very simple search for "web hosting services" could in fact return young 12yr old Billy Webbs shared hosting service on page one of the search results.

Other hosts such as auStores eCommerce and Web Hosting tend to ignore this blatant play on keywords to attract customers, and rely on word of mouth advertising based upon a core commitment to service.

Just because a host does not appear in the top 10 results, does not meant that they are any the less noteworthy. Often this simply means that you may not have used the most common search term to find them!

For example:
Click to see the Google search results for keywords "australian estores" and you will notice that auStores Hosting is on page one, where-as a search for "australian ecommerce hosting" does not reveal auStores Hosting until pages 7-8!

Now auStores provides ecommerce websites, hosted online estores, business web hosting, reseller shared hosting, dedicated servers, domain names, sms servers, voip and adsl services as well, yet a search for these services may not always pull up auStores as No1.

Interestingly though, a search for "free estores" or "online estores" or even "hosted estores" will bring up auStores Australian Complete eCommerce and Website Hosting Solutions in the number one spot.

What can we learn from this?
We should really think about the type of hosting that you are looking for, before entering your keywords into Google or another search engine like NoDotAu or OziSearch, as this will produce the most accurate search results!

The example above illustrates that although auStores provides a complete range of services, the majority of search engine traffic is generated through people seeking estores, rather than web hosting. As a major provider of business web hosting, auStores have little interest in providing mass automated cheap web shared hosting, as they specialize in providing one-on-one professional business hosting solutions. They operate from a large referal client-base of satisfied customers, and continue to offer full support to each and every client.

Be wary, the search results link you click could even be for Billy the school boy who has a hosting reseller account, with a very professional looking web site! A cheap account is not necessarily the best hosting account, as many have found when something goes wrong with the server, and Billy is unable to provide quality support!

Options and steps required to build a successful e-store.

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:01:00 +0000

Thanks to the spread of broadband and wireless services at home, online business are growing rapidly, urged on by confidence in online brands such as eBay and Amazon.

The global ACNielsen Online Consumer Opinion Survey conducted last October found the vast majority of Australian internet users (87 percent) made a purchase over the internet. "Our ongoing e-commerce research clearly demonstrates an upward trend in Australian and global online shopping," says Richard Sandlant, ACNielsen's director of customised research.

So, how can your business tap into this growing market? While businesses may already
have websites to promote their business and provide additional information, it may be worth considering actually selling online as well.

However, before embarking on developing your e-store, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is my product really going to sell; is it applicable; are people going to buy it on the internet? Anna Carosa started her accessory business, msAnna, just over two years ago. After successfully selling via mail-order catalogue she decided to launch online a year later. Selling mainly handbags and jewellery, she knew these were viable products to sell online. "I find with handbags, it's more of a visual thing," she says. "People know roughly what their style and taste is so most can buy jewellery and fashion accessories online relatively easily."

2. How do you want to brand and structure the shop; do you want it to be a link off your main business website or a separate entity?

3. How am I going to do it? Analyse your current financial positionresources, costs, and so onthen ask yourself, can I afford this additional distribution channel? You'll need to consider the extra resources needed to fulfil online sales and maintain the website, as well as set-up charges, ongoing maintenance and trouble-shooting costs.

4. Will you build and maintain the site in-house, outsource the job or use a combination of both? Deciding which way to go will depend on your time and resources, and how much risk you're willing to take.

If you're planning to sell online, the best research starting point would be to shop online yourself. Have a look at how other e-stores function and you'll get an understanding of what consumers expect in terms of usability and security.

A crucial first step is registering a domain. If you don't already have a corporate website or you want the e-store to be a stand-alone entity, you'll need to register the relevant domain names. While Carosa chooses to promote her website www.msanna.com she has also purchased www.msanna.com.au which diverts to the '.com' site. "We do want to become global in terms of being able to export our products and the '.com' was the best avenue to do that," she says. "I'd recommend businesses register '.com', '.com.au', '.net' and '.net.au' wherever they can, to make sure no-one else registers those names as well."

Then decide on your website hosting solution. While it's possible for individuals with an always-on broadband connection to host their own website, this can be quite technical, complex and risky for those unsure of what they're doing. Shared hosting is the most popular and affordable option for SMEs and involves having your website hosted on another company's server (a web hosting company) for a monthly fee of around $30 to $40.

You should then choose an online shop application. Many hosting companies such as auStores.com.au offer complete end-to-end e-commerce solutions, or you can purchase shopping cart software to load onto your site. It's important your e-store application can integrate with your accounting system. This will streamline inventory management and invoicing functions from the e-store right through to the back-office.

Free eStores and confirmation emails

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:03:00 +0000

One of the biggest problems we see with clients signing up for hosting accounts or estores, is that they continually use Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo email addresses when they sign up.

What happens? They assume they never receive the "Account Confirmation" emails, and we end up with a waste of space on the server.

Why? Well most automated "Account signup" systems send out automatically generated and generic emails, usually containing your essential login details and account information.

How? Most email servers these days run complicated anti-spam software, and unfortunately a lot of these generated system emails fall into the spam-box or spam-folder.

Oh! Yes thats right, thats the folder that you never bother checking, the one people assume is full of junk-mail only! The one where when they do check, they find that long lost email reply from Uncle Bill, or the login details for all the accounts that they have signed up for over the preceding months!

So people the moral of the story is.... Regularly check your junk-mail folders! You might be missing out on a big lottery win :)

Looking for a FREE eStore for your home business venture?

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:01:00 +0000

auStores FREE Shopping Cart online e-Store.

A popular "Starter" for those just venturing into the competitive world of e-commerce.

Packed with features, and one of the simplest to use, this FREE e-Store will have you "Online and Ready to Sell" in no time at all.

Ideally suited for users with an already established client base, and a smaller inventory of products to sell.

Fully functional, but without the "Bells and Whistles" or "Glitz and Glamour" of the Standard eStore, it comes pre-configured with your account signup information, ready for you to add your Categories and Products.

The auStores FREE eStore is still based upon the powerful osCommerce shopping cart, but doesn't require a programmer's degree to setup. All the difficult stuff is already done for you!

NEW: Free eStores now have a "Change CSS Template" feature, to instantly change the colour scheme of your eStore to any of the basic pre-programmed themes.

eCommerce Web Hosting in Australia

noreply@blogger.com (Gerry Atrick) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:51:00 +0000

The Australian Web Hosts

auSTORES host Australian online e-Stores, Shopping Carts, and eCommerce Websites.

Be successful and open your Australian Free online shop here with auSTORES.

auSTORES are the specialists in WAHMs web hosting and estores.

Cheap $19.95 cPanel Web Hosting on reliable Australian Servers!

If you are just starting out, then our FREE e-Store is a great startup option that you can readily upgrade later.

Now quote prices with GST in AUD, and accept payments by Direct Deposit or PayPal, and calculate Australia Post shipping, all as standard auStore features.

AuStores Paid Hosting Plans and eStore packages are all backed by our 14 day, Money back guarantee!

Free After-Sales Service and Customer Support.

Our product packages listed have been designed to suit the most common ecommerce applications.

If you are still not sure, or can't find what you need then contact us now, as we specialize in custom packages tailor-made to suit your requirements and to help boost your business income!

auStores are the specialists in creating custom multi-purpose applications based on the osCommerce Shopping Cart Engine. This entire website was developed from a standard osCommerce MS2 installation, just to show what can be achieved from basic shopping cart software, and yet to retain the identifiable "look and feel" of the osCommerce platform.

Our eStores are back-boned by a very simple and user friendly environment, that is fully integrated into one of the most popular shopping cart systems in the world today.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AustoreseCommerceHosting