StoresOnline Newsletter Blog

3 Bad SEO Techniques

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:40:00 +0000

As a StoresOnline merchant looking to boost your site’s search ranking, you’ll see a lot of advice out there about how to build links and optimize your Web site for search engines. Some of it is skewed by people who want your money. We all know that SEO and link-building are important because they increase our search engine rankings, but not if we do it the wrong way. Here are three paths you should definitely avoid.

1. 1. Slack Off. Whether out of frustration, laziness, or poor follow-through, the surest way to fail at link-building is to not do it. You need to think of link-building like gardening. A garden has to be tended and cared for on an ongoing basis in order for it to yield its crop. The same is true of link-building. You can’t just do a bunch of it and forget about it. Spend a set amount of time each week just link-building.

2. 2. Write For Search Engines. Search engines are getting smarter and smarter. Every day they’re getting better at detecting when they’re being played. That means if you clutter your web pages with repetitive terms designed to snag the attention of search engines, the likelihood that it will ring the bells of those search engines is decreasing rapidly.

Even if that weren’t true, consider what happens when visitors come to your StoresOnline Web site. It’s easy to see when a page has been written for search engines and not people. The result is a page that turns people off and gives you a huge bounce rate; i.e. people take one look at your page and leave within seconds.

Your StoresOnline Web site has to appeal to the people who visit it. A high traffic rate does little good if your bounce rate is sky high. Write your Web copy with the goal of appealing to your customers. Then, go back and see where you can add in your chosen search terms without hurting the effectiveness of your copy.

3. 3. Pay For Linkbacks. You’ll see companies that offer to give you bunches—even hundreds—of linkbacks for a fee. Stay away. Because search engines are getting smarter, they can tell when a site has had this done. It sees a load of irrelevant linkbacks and the result is a lower search ranking. So not only does it not work, but you will have paid to hurt your search ranking.

That said, there are also companies who can provide relevant back-links. These companies have real live people who do their link-building, not automated software “bots”. A live person can make sure the links he builds are relevant to the site they link to. Those are the kinds of links that boost search rank.

December 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:13:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Operations

Happy Holidays from StoresOnline Customer Support. This season can be an exciting time for you as an online entrepreneur. As shoppers search frantically for the perfect gift, your store can be a source of holiday cheer. This month we will be discussing the importance of Meta tags and how to implement them in your site.

What are Meta Tags?

“What are meta tags?” is one of the most frequently asked questions regarding search engine optimization (SEO). Simply put, Meta tags provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize it correctly. To better understand what Meta tags are, consider the meaning of the word "Meta.” The definition of Meta is something that refers to itself. An example of this meaning would be a movie-within-a-movie. Also consider the following description contained within Merchant Services. In public speaking, the speaker may get up in front of the audience and say, "Today I am going to speak to you about…" This would be considered Meta discourse, or in other words, dialogue specifying to the listeners what the speaker will be telling them.

Similarly, the development and implementation of Meta tags in your website can be tremendously beneficial in communicating to your audience. In the case of your website, your audience is search engines. The purpose of the tags is to inform the search engines the information that a given page contains. How well Meta information is written and presented will affect your search engine ranking.

Keep in mind that Meta tags are decreasing in importance. However, contrary to some recent reports, it is still crucial that meta tags be in place, correct, and complete for your site to be successfully ranked by search engines.

Which types of Meta Tags are important to include in my Website?

There are three main kinds of Meta tags that you will want to include in your site. Each Tag is described below:

Title Tag - This is the most important tag when it comes to the search engines. Your Title meta tag should be between 8-12 words and contain keywords throughout. In the search engine results, these Title tags will appear in the “blue” heading above a result.

Description Tag – This tag allows you to establish the description of a page for search engines. Your description should be between 20-30 words in length and should contain keywords throughout. In a search engine inquiry, the description tag will appear in black writing just below the title.

Keywords Tag - The Meta Keywords tag provides search engines with additional keywords to which a given page may be relevant. The Meta Keywords tag should be no more than 10-12 different keywords or keyword phrases relevant to that given page. Each keyword should be separated by a comma and a space. The Meta Keywords tag is sometimes useful as a means to reinforce the keywords that relate to a page. Remember that not all search engines use this tag in elevating a page’s listing. However, it is still important to include this tag, as some search engines still use the Meta Keywords tag as a determining factor in a page’s placement in their rankings.

Remember, meta tags will not be visible by your customers or those using your site (except for the Meta title which is visible in the browser’s title bar).

How do I create Meta Tags for my website?

Once you understand the purpose of meta tags, implementing them is relatively easy. Follow the steps below to ensure that your Meta tags are implemented correctly.

Title Tag

Click on the Pages menu.

Select the page to which you want to add the Meta Title Tag, and then click the Edit button at the bottom of the page. This action will open the Page Edit page (eventually, you will create a Meta Title tag for every page).

Type your Meta Title tag definition in the Meta Title textbox (the information you add here will be visible to everyone that comes to your website, and will be shown above in the blue bar in the Window Browser at the top of your screen).

Description Tag

Click on the Pages menu.

Select the page to which you want to add the Description Meta Tag. This action will open the Page Edit page (eventually, you will create a Description Meta Tag for every page).

Click on the Meta submenu on the right side. This action will open the Page Meta page.

If there is not a value for description, click Add in the bottom left corner of the page. If there is a value for Description, click on it once and click Edit to proceed to step “F” (make sure the drop-down menu reads Name).

Enter "Description" in the Name field.

Enter your actual description (20-30 words in length) in the Value field. The text that defines your description is entered in the Value field.

Keywords Tag

Click on the Pages menu.

Select the page to which you want to add the Meta Keywords tag, and then click the Edit button at the bottom of the page. This action will open the Page Edit page (eventually, you will create a Meta Keywords tag for every page).

Click on the Meta submenu on the right side. This action will open the Page Meta page.

If there is not a value named Keywords, Click Add in the bottom left corner of the page. If there is a name for Keywords, click on it once and click Edit to proceed to step “F” (make sure the drop-down menu reads Name).

Enter "Keywords" in the Name field.

Enter your actual keywords (10-12 words in length) in the Value field.

Customer Support Holiday Schedule

Chat Support
Christmas
Closing midnight MST Dec. 23rd
Re-opening 6am MST Dec. 26th

New Years
Closing midnight MST Dec. 30th
Re-opening 6am MST Jan. 1st

Phone Support
Christmas
No phone support Dec 24-26

New Years
No phone support Jan 1

StoresOnline University Training Set

StoresOnline’s most comprehensive DVD training set, StoresOnline University, is more than 14 hours of detailed training to assist you with each part of the process to establish your eCommerce websites. Our experienced and successful trainers and support staff walk you through 7 stages of development to make the most of your websites as you research your ideas.

Call 1-800-491-1408 or visit www.storesonlinespecialtraining.com/university for more information

Coming Soon: New video tutorials on Relevancy Search Engine Optimization, Finding a Drop-Shipper, and The Reverse Search Tool.

Storesonline Marketing Webinar Series

Starting with an Introductory Webinar, StoresOnline has created a structured timeline of testing and marketing strategies to streamline your efforts with your websites.

These training Webinars are designed to continue and expand your knowledge base in order to optimize the time and effort you spend with your website package investment. StoresOnline is confident that this will help to increase your marketing success.

Call 1-800-716-9332 or visit www.storesonlinemarketing.com for more information

Featured Testimonial

"I love this business I'm running now, because I have flexibility and I'm in control, and I don't have to go out looking for jobs and I don't have to stick to 9:00 to 5:00 and I could have more time with my daughter."

Lilly Gery
www.easyfuntoys.com
Click Here to read Lilly's story

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at www.myquickresponse.com for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat. You may also call 801-434-8582.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline! See you next month!

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Operations
StoresOnline, Inc.

November 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:59:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Operations

The holiday season can be a great opportunity for online entrepreneurs. There are several promotions that you can use during the holidays, including general discounts, free shipping, or specific sales on holiday-themed products. You probably already use several of these promotional techniques. However, using holiday-themed promotions lets you associate your product with the total holiday experience. We at StoresOnline wish you success with this year’s holiday traffic.

Drop-Shipping

Drop-shipping is a great way to sell your products online. What is Drop-shipping? Drop-shipping is the process by which a retailer can sell products online without keeping any goods in stock. The customer’s order and shipment details are forwarded to the manufacturer or supplier, who then ships the goods directly to the customer. As a retailer, your profit is the difference between your cost and the retail price. Drop-shipping can help keep your overhead low and your profits high. Better yet, taking advantage of a drop-shipper can save time and reduce stress, which will allow you more time to market your website an attract new customers.

There are two methods of drop-shipping: blind and regular. With blind drop-shipping, your drop-shipper will use your label and/or shipping information, so that the customer believes the product is being shipped directly from you. With regular drop-shipping, your customers will receive their product from the manufacturer without a change in the label or packaging. Be sure to clarify what type of drop-shipper you have partnered with in order to provide the highest level of service for your customers.

One of the main benefits of utilizing a drop-shipper is being free from the burdens of holding inventory and shipping product. However, there are other potential negative aspects of drop-shipping to be aware of. Because the product is not physically available, you may not always have current information about stock levels or quality control. You will not have control over the shipment process, so be sure that you choose a reliable drop-shipper. Be sure that your customers have the correct return information. This is especially important if you are not using a blind drop-shipper.

If you decide that drop-shipping is a good way for you to simplify your business, there are many ways to find a reliable drop-shipper. Don’t feel obligated to limit yourself to one drop-shipper. Having back-up suppliers is a good idea to ensure that you always have products available for your customers. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

After selecting a product that you would like to sell, research the manufacturers and suppliers online. Often you can find information on product packaging to help you start your search. Contact the company in which you are interested, and inquire about having them drop-ship their products for you. Depending on the size of the company or type of product, they may decline. Do not get discouraged! Ask them for their distributors, and inquire down the line until you find someone who is willing to drop-ship. Remember to have confidence when contacting potential business partners. Researching information about their company and online sales will give them confidence in your abilities. For additional assistance, see the sample inquiry e-mail in merchant services for ideas on how to approach potential suppliers.

Also, consider contacting the owners or buying agents of local brick and mortar stores that already carry products that are of interest to you. Again, do not get discouraged if they do not accept. Small business owners or manufacturers of unique products may not be familiar with the term drop-shipping. Explain the process and the benefits for both parties. Finding a good drop-shipper can take time, but it will be worth your effort.

Another way to find drop-shippers is to use an online search engine, such as Google or Yahoo. Simple searches can produce exceptional results. Remember to use both broad and specific searches. For example, searching the phrase “men’s watch” and then “Rolex Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master” will yield very different results! In addition, using different words like dropshipper, drop shipper (mind the space), manufacturer, or supplier will produce different search results. This process will give you more options to choose from and a variety of companies to contact.

If you do not have a specific product in mind, consider attending a trade show or subscribing to a trade magazine. By doing either of these, you make yourself available to companies looking for ways to expose their company name and products. Contact your local exposition center and check websites like http://www.tsnn.com/ for upcoming events.

Always remember that when contacting drop-shippers by phone, e-mail or in person, you are attempting to forge a professional business relationship. Tell them your name, your company name, and where you found their information. Explain that you are interested in selling their products on your website, and ask what information they need from you to get started. Consider having a “starter” site completed with your basic company information. With the Avail247 communication package, you can provide your domain-branded e-mail and toll-free phone and fax numbers, all while keeping your personal information safe and secure. A well-built quicksite will establish a level of professionalism that will translate to your retail website.

The process of finding drop-shippers will get easier as you become more comfortable with contacting new people and offering your services. Above all, remember to not get discouraged, as this process can take time! As you build a positive track record, more opportunities will be available to you. In time, you may also be able to develop relationships with suppliers that were previously unwilling to do business with you, and secure better terms for your business.

If you need additional help in finding a drop-shipper, remember to search “dropshipper” in merchant services for more information. Your StoresOnline customer service representatives are more than happy to help you with any part of this process. Good luck!

Holiday Suggestions

Remember with the holidays coming up to be sure to test your website to make sure everything is properly connected and set up. Testing would include making sure your ordering rules are configured the way you want them to be, charging the amounts that would best suit your business, and making sure you have your credit card processor connected properly. If you have any questions on how to do this, please be sure to contact Customer Support at 801-434-8582.
Be sure to activate your account for the upcoming holiday season so that you may be able to take orders and suggestions through your toll-free phone/fax number and email. Remember, the toll-free number is only available in the US. To activate your Avail account, be sure to visit us at www.myavail247.com. You can receive a discount code from a Customer Service Representative by calling us at 801-234-5982.

Customer Support Holiday Schedule

Chat Support
Thanksgiving
Closing midnight MST Nov. 26th
Re-opening 5am MST Nov. 28th

Christmas
Closing midnight MST Dec. 23rd
Re-opening 6am MST Dec. 26th

New Years
Closing midnight MST Dec. 30th
Re-opening 6am MST Jan. 1st

Phone Support
Thanksgiving
No phone support Nov 27-28

Christmas
No phone support Dec 24-26

New Years
No phone support Jan 1

StoresOnline University Training Set

Call toll-free 1-800-491-1408 for more information

New StoresOnline Pro Features

Product and Product List Message Elements: You now have the option of adding product or product list elements to your customer email messages. This feature gives you the ability to link to your products directly in your customer emails.

New Tutorials: The Relevancy Search Engine Optimization article has been updated in Merchant Services. The article contains time-tested optimization techniques as well as a new step-by-step tutorial on optimizing your site.

Coming Soon: Video tutorials on Relevancy Search Engine Optimization, Finding a Drop-Shipper, and The Reverse Search Tool.

Storesonline Marketing Webinar Series

Starting with an Introductory Webinar, StoresOnline has created a structured timeline of testing and marketing strategies to streamline your efforts with your websites.

Call toll-free 1-800-716-9332 or visit www.storesonlinemarketing.com for more information

Featured Testimonial

"With the StoresOnline Program, everything is right here...you can make the change, and five minutes later, that change is online. You don't have to wait for programmers and you don't have to wait for somebody else to approve what you've submitted to them."

James Wall
http://www.smokinjoejones.com/

July 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:15:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

The summer months are upon us, and with the heat come new and exciting opportunities for our merchants to increase their site-building knowledge. In this newsletter we will discuss a free merchant webinar that we will be hosting on July 17, 2008 at 3 PM MST.

Merchant Webinar
Do you feel as if you don't have all the answers you need all at once? Or feel as if you have great information at your hands but need some kind of interaction, or someone to talk to?

What is a webinar you might ask? If one were to look on the internet for the definition it would tell you a webinar is short for Web-based seminar, a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web.

Benefits of a Webinar

A key feature of a Webinar is its interactive elements -- the ability to give, receive and discuss information. Contrast with Webcast, in which the data transmission is one way and does not allow interaction between the presenter and the audience.
Participants are able to interact with the instructor(s) and ask questions and get answers in real time that pertain to the topic in discussion.
Webinars offer a convenience to the participant and a low cost level if any at all (FREE), depending on the business decision of course.
These types of online courses have a higher impact than being able to take what you have in the help button, merchant services, and even the Getting Started Packet simply reading this material.
No travel is required.

Attending a webinar is like attending any seminar apart from the place where the event takes place. Instead of meeting in a conference room you meet in a virtual conference room on the web. Joining a meeting does not take long and is relatively fast and easy.

With the way technology is today and the added convenience Webinars bring to any given company for further instruction of a certain discussion or topic, Stores Online is proud to announce our first Customer Support Webinar which will be held on July 17, 2008 live at 3 PM MST, and we invite all active merchants that wish to receive further enlightenment in setting up your own personal websites.

Our topic of discussion will be in regards to setting up your own Ordering Rules which if you are familiar with, will calculate the shipping costs of your orders which you ship out to your consumers that visit and purchase from your website. We will have some of the best instructors in this given area of discussion.

Again we invite you to join us on July 17, 2008 at 3 PM MST live where we will discuss with you Ordering Rules and then open the last few minutes to Questions and Answers.

Check http://www.storesonline.comfor a link to the webinar.

New StoresOnline Pro Features

New Design: Cologne and Nouveau are now available in StoresOnline Pro. Check them out by clicking on the Site tab.

Default Categories: You can now turn on and off the default category using the Set Default and Remove Default buttons. Selecting a Default Category can save you time while adding new products to your website. For example, if you know that the next 20 products that you add are going to be in your “Summer Collection” category, select that as the default category. As you add these 20 products, you won’t need manually assign each product to the “Summer Collection” category, it will be done automatically. Then, when you start adding products that belong in another category, you can switch the default category to that one. If you are adding a variety of products that are all in different categories, then you might want to click the Remove Default button so that you can assign them to their correct category one by one.

New Tutorials: There are two new tutorials available in Merchant Services: Anchor Text Linking and Pay Per Post Advertising. These are both brand new optimization and marketing techniques that are proving to be quite affective.

Introducing the Avail 24/7 Communication System from StoresOnline. Make Your Small Business Look, Sound, and Feel Like a Big Business! Get your own Toll Free Number now by calling customer support at 801-434-8582. Manage your account online and view your voicemail, email and faxes in one location.

_____________________________________________________________

Featured Testimonial

Gerald worked with 164 people in his company-all who dreamed of striking out on their own some day. Proudly, Gerald proclaims, "Everyone I worked with kept talking about doing it, and talking about doing it, and talking about doing it. So I went out and did it. And they are still talking."

Karen West and her son, Raymond
www.kozykomfortbykaren.com
Click Here to read their story

_____________________________________________________________

June 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:33:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations
The summer months are upon us, and hopefully the heat stokes your entreprenurial engines. Get ready to hit June hard by making a strong statement with your site design. In this newsletter we will discuss how to design a website that makes the right statement and ensures your customers that their experience with your busoness will be worthwhile.

Design to the Point
Your website is the only salesman for your business that your customers will ever meet. It is your showroom, your brochure, your customer service department and the nice person behind your checkout counter. In short it is the entire customer experience rolled into one package. With that in mind you should be aware of the importance of properly designing your website.

Many people build websites to suit their personal tastes. They include their favorite colors and pictures, and they make it a very enjoyable experience for themselves. But is that the point of an eCommerce site? eCommerce has one point, and that is to sell a product or service.

Remember the point of your website and you will design a website that can succeed.

Discussion
Your website has a very simple job, to sell your product. Your Home Page is designed to welcome visitors and assure them that they have found exactly what they are looking for. Your Contact Us page is designed to reassure visitors that if there is a problem, you can be easily reached for help. Your About Us page is designed to assure potential customers that you are a company run by real people that they can trust. Your information pages help the customer make the decision to buy, and your Product pages are designed with just one goal, to get visitors to click the “Add to Cart” button, turning them into customers.

Application
As you design each section or each page, go through the following list and make sure that, whenever possible, what you are doing meets the outlined requirements.

Content
Is the content of your site accurate, up to date, relevant and useful?
There may be plenty of other sites with identical content. Make sure your site has information for your customers that they can trust. Make your site a resource to them by including addition information beyond making a purchase. Most buyers visit a site at least four times before they buy anything. A site that has useful information will be visited frequently, and if return visitors already trust your site, they will be ready to buy from you when the time comes.

On the other hand if your site has old news or yesterday’s model how does that look to visitors? Who would take the chance of buying from a poorly maintained website?

Is your site unique?
Remember this can be a help or a hindrance to your website. You want to be unique and memorable without being unusual or strange.

Technical Questions

Does each page load in a few seconds when accessed from a dial-up connection? If your Home page has large graphics you may lose impatient visitors.

Does everything function properly?

Are there any broken images?

Are there any links on your site that lead to a page that cannot be displayed or that cause any other errors?

Does the ordering process function properly when used with systems running on all platforms?

Does the ordering process work with all products and payment and shipping options?

Does your site fit on a screen 800 pixels wide?

Nothing will tarnish your credibility like a broken site.

Marketing Questions

Your page must tell each visitor:

WHO you are.

WHAT you sell.

HOW MUCH the product costs.

WHY someone should purchase the product.

WHY someone should purchase the product from you.

WHY someone should purchase the product now.

HOW to obtain the product.

Does your page look professional?
Run a spell check on every line of your site. Mistakes are not the message you want to send to your visitors.

Is the header and navigation bar consistent throughout your site?
Many visitors will enter your site from pages other than your home page. Make sure they can find their way around.

Does your page elicit a want or a need from your visitors and does it show them how your product can solve it?
People don’t buy cars because they want cars. They buy cars because they want to go places, sit in luxury and look cool. Sell the experience and then offer the solution.

Does the text on your page take longer than a few seconds to read?
Often, people skim content rather than read it. Most of us read the bold type whenever we can and web surfers are no exception. If your webpage contains as much information as a page from a book, then how much of it is actually being read?

If so break it up with bold subheadings like this one.
Long passages of text are often necessary to say all that needs to be said. However, remember that people shopping on the Internet are often pressed for time and have numerous other sites trying to sell them the same thing. Say what you need to say in as few words as possible.

Bulleted lists have several benefits:

They make key points more memorable.

They show your selling points to those of us who are :

Too lazy to read the whole page.

In a hurry.

In the habit of reading the bold type only.

Does your page have large graphics?
Large graphics or too many graphics distract your readers from the message you are trying to get across. Some graphics are necessary and can be a very effective tool in selling but keep in mind that people seldom buy anything based solely on the images they see. Images may get your customer's attention, but they will buy based on the printed word.

Use images to punctuate and enforce the information on the page. A picture may be worth a thousand words but have you ever bought anything based on just a picture?

Does your page focus on selling to the right group?

People who view your site can be divided into three groups:

1) Those who have already decided to buy your product.
2) Those who have decided not to buy.
3) Those who have not yet decided.

The first group is nice but they don’t require any selling, just a working website. The second group will not be moved but only visit the site to browse. The third group is the only one on whom you can hope to have any effect whatsoever.

Focus your efforts on turning the “undecided” visitors into customers. Otherwise, you are not making the best use of your website.

Common Mistakes in Website Design

Unclear text - The information on your website is useless if customers can’t read it. While small fonts, fancy or unusual typefaces might look nice to your eyes, many visitors have different screen resolutions, color settings and might be using browsers that do not support your typeface. Stick to dark text on white or light backgrounds, and use standard typefaces like Ariel, Times or Courier.

Hard to find Links - Create links that are clearly links. Links are the key to any webpage; do not make it difficult for your visitors to find what you are trying to show them.

Incompatibility - Microsoft Internet Explorer, or “IE”, is still the most common browser in use today, so it makes sense to design your pages to work in that environment. A few years ago 95% of all Internet traffic was using IE, but that number is dropping steadily. It is more important than ever to test your site using Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Netscape Navigator as well as many other browsers.

Forms - Simplify the forms you need and remove any unnecessary forms. A website should not be like a trip to the DMV. You need a secure order form that contains all the required information needed to process the order. A contact form is a must for permission marketing, but it should be as simple as possible, containing name and email only.

Horizontal scrolling - Page widths must be limited to avoid the need to scroll horizontally. Scrolling down is not an issue, but keep in mind the "above the fold part of the page" rule. Get your visitors' attention with the first thing they see, and they will gladly scroll down to see what else you have to say.

Flash and Script - Flash is great, but until everyone has super fast broadband every flash animation breaks the first website rule of avoiding long loading time. Flash increases your loading times by 30 seconds on a fast connection and several minutes on dial-up, which many of your visitors still use.

Scripts can be useful and generally don’t take too long to load, but they frequently fail to work properly. If you want to use scripts, make sure you know what you are doing and test your pages using systems running on all platforms before you go live.

If your site is designed as a showcase for your technical expertise, then design it that way. If it is designed to sell products, then limit your efforts to things that promote that goal.

Pop-Ups - Users almost universally hate pop-up windows. They are not only an annoyance but many feel they are an invasion of privacy. Pop-ups may also make your visitors fear for their safety, because pop-ups can carry spyware and even viruses. Most of your visitors probably employ pop-up blockers, so your work will be wasted anyway.

Lastly remember to listen to the experts. Look closely and frequently at other sites and see what they are doing. If you see a good idea, use it on your site.

Summary
You have invested time and money into your business. You have researched and selected a product, secured a supplier and soon will begin marketing your site in earnest to bring traffic to your site. All of this will be wasted if your site isn’t designed to sell. It’s not a difficult concept. Your website sells a product and if you make that your goal and test it frequently, you will turn traffic into sales. How quickly and efficiently you do that will determine how much profit you turn, as well as how soon you will see it.

Designing your site to sell is critical to success. Keep testing and improving your site and you will be on your way to a successful Internet business.

While searching for a supplier and setting up your business, we recommend Avail as well, it will give you the professional appearance without the cost.

Managing communications with your clients is the core of your business. Avail is the professional, easy to use, affordable communication solution that will give you control over your phone, fax, and email systems, all from the convenience of your computer.

Call customer support to activate your account today 801-434-8582

Use Avail to Manage Your Phone Calls:

Avail works together with your existing phone and phone line. No special equipment is needed. Login to your account online to update and maintain your menus, greetings, teams, and employees. Avail gives you the ability to see a list of all calls, answered or unanswered and to listen to your voicemail.

Use Avail to Manage Your Faxes:

When you work with Avail software, you do not need a fax machine to receive faxes. Avail receives your faxes as email attachments in the same place that you read your emails and listen to voicemail. Your account comes with a toll free fax number making it convenient for local and non-local customers to send faxes.

Use Avail to Manage Your Email:

With Avail, you can send and receive email from the same inbox that you listen to voicemail and view faxes. Avail allows you to use all the standard email features plus the expanded functionality that comes from having your email, faxes, and voicemail managed from the same application.

Use Avail to Manage Your Contacts:

Customers contact you by phone, fax, and email daily. Establish long-term, profitable relations with your clients and obtain reoccurring business, then it is critical to ensure that your communication avenues are open and running very smoothly.

Avail will also help you by:

Saving You Money: Avail eliminates the need for a fax machine and extra fax line

Providing You Worldwide Access: Avail is web based, so you can retrieve messages and faxes from your email.

Increasing Your Company’s Reliability: No more busy signals for clients or paper jammed fax machines. With Avail, you get your faxes, emails, and phone calls and messages organized in one place.

Call customer support to activate your account today 801-434-8582

As a reminder, Imergent Financial Services in conjunction with Home Savings of America is offering merchant discounts on home mortgages. Whether you are purchasing a home or refinancing your home, we are a great resource for you to find affordable financing solutions. Call us anytime for a free consultation at 866.918.8866.

Also, stay tuned for our Financial Advocate Network Release in July. Included is a suite of financial products and services that are available to Merchants at significant discounts. Our financial dashboard tool “ABOUND” will also be a key part of the release that will enable individuals to run a free financial fitness evaluation, optimize their finances, accelerate the payoff of their debts and mortgages with the revolutionary software, and improve cash flow. Feel free to check out the website at www.financialadvocatenetwork.com.

Featured Testimonial
“I can be teaching in my classroom and when I go home and check my website, I can have $2,000 worth of sales that I didn’t have to do anything to get, once the website was built. You go out shopping, spending money, and you come home and you see that money has been replaced because people have being purchasing from you.”

Karla with a K
www.proclubgear.com
Click Here to read Karla's story >>

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at http://support.myquickresponse.com/ for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat. You may also call 801-434-8582.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline! See you next month!

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc.

Handle Complaints and Keep Customers - wikiHow

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:04:00 +0000

Handle Complaints and Keep Customers - wikiHow

May 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:06:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

IMPORTANT NOTE: Phone support will be closed on Monday May 26th in observance of the Memorial Day holiday. Chat and e-mail support will still be available on May 26th.

It is May! Wow, seems like we were just in January yesterday. Hopefully all of you are doing fantastic on your websites. Last month we learned about Inbound Links. This month we will broaden our horizons by learning about Social Networking.

Social Networking via Blogs
Promoting anything online boils down to one thing: getting links. You submit articles to either A) get quality inbound links, or B) get your link in front of your (human) target market. You exchange links for the same reason - for traffic and search engine benefits. You pay for advertising so that you can put your links in front of people who are searching for products/information you offer on your site.

But with a blog, it comes much easier - and for the most part, naturally. You’ll find that you get a large number of unsolicited natural links, and that those links will be posted in places that get seen by a large number of potential visitors and readers.

Why is this? The blogosphere is made up of information hubs, grouped by topic and style by both individual readers and authority sites, which creates a natural breeding ground for super-networking between information publishers.

This group, as a whole, links very freely to sources that relate to their own - or, simply put, to ‘bloggers that they like’. In the end this creates an entire network of related information for each niche, and even micro-niche, within the blogosphere.

Don’t set out to be “The Lone Blogger”!

Previous teachings may have left you thinking that “linking out” is a bad thing. You may leak “Page Rank”. Or worse, lose your visitors by sending them to someone else’s link. But when it comes to blogging, you will actually increase your readership dramatically by getting involved… and by linking out freely.

Here are 7 ways that you can get involved:

1) First and foremost, if you are currently using Blogger.com – you may want to try using a WordPress blog on your own domain. There are other solutions out there (such as type pad, for example), but you’ll find WordPress super easy to use and an endless source of help and information on it across the web. This is important, because WordPress has TONS of ‘perks’ to blogging that you won’t find elsewhere.

2) Second and equally important, if you have a “splog” (a “spam blog”), it’s time to trade that in and start publishing quality content. In order to truly do well with a blog long-term, you need to post useful information on a particular topic on a frequent basis.

3) Having your personal style shine through in your posts is a big plus. Even if you’re quirky, because your readers love ‘real’ and that’s why they’ll keep coming back. The winning combination in your actual writing is: Quality Content + Personal Style. You might be funny, geeky, outrageous, dry - whatever. But this tends to be a big ‘attraction factor’ with blogs.

4) Make use of your Blogroll and link out to related blogs, or blogs that you frequent yourself. Wordpress has a feature that will automatically alert the bloggers that you link to, and most of them will check out your site - and add you to their blogroll if they like what they see.

5) Include Tags in each of your posts. Try using the plug-in here: http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/, which allows you to include tags at the end of each individual post. This is VERY easy to do - not as complicated as it sounds. Simply put the code at the bottom of each of your posts with relevant words that pertain to that post.

Once you publish your post, check out the hyperlinked tags at the bottom. Click on each one and you will see a listing at Technorati of posts on other blogs that are also tagged for that particular word. Check those out, and if they are interesting and related… leave a comment! When you are given the option to put in your URL, link back to your individual blog post on the same topic (not your “home page”).

6) Frequent blogs that you like, or that are on similar topics as your own, by subscribing to them through a feed reader. Check ‘your favorites’ no less than once a week, and post comments on any interesting new posts you find there. You can find active, popular blogs on just about any topic in some of the major blog directories.

7) When you find posts of particular interest (while going through the steps above), mention them in your own blog posts. In WordPress, when you link out to an individual blog post on another blog, it shows up in the comments section of that post as a “trackback”. It’s automatic, and it’s that simple: you link to a post and an excerpt from YOUR post shows up in their comments.

When their regular visitors and new readers are finished reading the article, they will notice your excerpt and link at the bottom. Many of those readers will click through to see your comments on this post, or to continue their research of the topic. It’s a great “traffic sharing” method - highly encouraged in the blogosphere!

As you get more involved, and become ‘known’ in your particular niche, you will find that others link as freely to you as you are linking out… which improves your overall exposure, your readership, and your search engine rankings.

What kind of results can you expect?
Try tracking your results. The goal is to see the number of unique visitors and an increase to the number of inbound links showing up daily!

iMergent Inc., parent company of StoresOnline, launched our mortgage and financial services division November 17, 2007 under a Federal Bank Charter Home Savings of America. This new division will continue the tradition of outstanding customer service and innovation that you have come to depend on from StoresOnline. The timing is great as fixed rates are near historic lows-15 Year fixed rate is available today of 5.125%!! iMergent Financial Services is currently able to provide residential and commercial real estate lending, credit enhancement services, and equipment leasing. Make sure to check out future additions of the newsletter for more details on each of these exciting new services.

Product Spotlight: Prime rate is now 5.0% and just recently we have seen a rally in Mortgage Bonds. What does this mean? 30 year mortgage rates have dipped down again. Currently a 30% fixed mortgage is available at 5.625%--Don't hesitate to call us for a FREE, NO OBLIGATION RATE QUOTE. We also offer FHA financing which enables customers to refinance for cashout to 95% of the homes value.

Our financial specialists are standing by to help you with any of your financial needs.
Call: 866.918.8866 OR Email: contact@imergentfinancialservices.com

We are happy to announce that you can now get your logo designed directly through us. We are pleased to offer this new service to you in addition to our websites.

We want to help you attract the right customers for your business. First and foremost, your logo should look great and serve a functional purpose. A quality logo design should be distinctive, polished and memorable.

Average Competitor's Basic Package: $300 - $600

StoresOnline Logos Basic Package: $185

Example Logos: Let our work speak for itself. Below are some actual logos created by StoresOnline Logo

Get Your Logo Started Now! WWW.STORESONLINELOGO.COM

New StoresOnline Pro Features

Product Export: "Delete" and "Product URL" are new columns being added to the Product Export in pro for Tab and Excel formats.

The delete column will allow for a mass product delete. The Product URL column is the "Example URL" found in the product edit screen of the builder providing the full web path to the product.

Essence and Zepher Color Scheme: Essence and Zephyr both had their site elements color based on the primary color, when they should have been based on Link or Navigation. We have changed the color that the site elements are based on. In Essence they will be based on Link color and in Zephyr, the Navigation color.

Page Element: A new page element, Recently Viewed Products, has been added to Pro. The new element displays a list of products recently viewed by a site visitor. "Recently viewed" can be found under the Navigation group of elements to add to a page.

New Design: Cologne is now available. Please make sure that you check it out.

Avail: We have added an explicit column for sorting by first name and last name and added the labels back into the person edit screen.

New feature in the Store Builder: If you get an error at the top of the page and it is related to a field not being filled in or the data being invalid, the corresponding field will be highlighted and if you put your mouse over the highlighted field, it will give you the details of the error.

For example, if you add a Standard Product and instead of filling in the SKU and Product Name fields you hit the "Done" button, you will get 2 errors: "SKU is Required" and "Product Name is required". The SKU and Product Name fields will be highlighted. If you put your mouse of the highlighted field, it will show you the error for that field.

Featured Testimonial

"[My manager] just told me I was done...It devastated me. It turned me off on the corporate world and everything else. But now they're supplying my products...I think in the grand scheme of things, I think them letting me go was the best thing that ever happened to me."

Jerry Lillie
www.tanks-to-pans.com
www.yourautocoolingsource.com
Click Here to read Jerry's story >>

Robert Schow

VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc.

April 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:41:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations
Happy Spring time! I hope all of you have had some time to enjoy some good weather and finally say good bye to your heavy coats and sweaters. This month we will be learning about building inbound links.

Link Building
Link building is the process of getting other sites to link back to your site. This is one of the biggest factors that plays into ranking high in search engines. Although link building takes a decent amount of time and effort initially, the payoff is well worth it. In most cases, these back links will stay in place permanently which means once it’s done, it’s done. Below we will discuss a few methods that can help you build more quality inbound links.

Method #1: Live Directories
This is one of the easiest and most effective ways of building links. Like with any other method, it does involve time but after submitting to a few directories, you will get a pattern down to make it a little easier as you continue submitting to more and more directories. Some live directories have a cost but there are literally thousands that are free. Review the Merchant Services tutorial called “Submitting to Live Directories” found in the section called “Getting Traffic (visitors) – Basic”

Method #2: Manual Link Exchanges
Link exchanges, or link swapping, is an industry standard way of building incoming links. Very simply, you agree to link to site XYZ and site XYZ agrees to link to you.

It may be helpful to use link management software to organize your links and to ensure that all of your link partners continue linking to you. One option would be SolvoLink, which you can download for free at http://www.free-link-exchange-software.com. StoresOnline Pro users can take advantage of the built in link monitoring tool which helps organize and monitor your reciprocal links.

To start obtaining links manually, you will need to find webmasters with sites related to yours that want to swap links. Here are a few free tools that you can use to locate other webmasters to exchange links with:

• http://value-exchange.sitesell.com
• http://www.linkalizer.com
• http://www.addurldirectory.com

Method #3: Articles
Writing a theme specific article is an excellent way of getting free, high-quality links pointing back to your site. Here's how it works: You write an informative article sharing your expertise in an area. Include a signature in your article that includes links to your site. Then submit it to various article distribution directories. Other webmasters will use your article as content for their site which would include links back to your site.

To get a list of directories that you can submit your articles to, go to http://www.internetsuccesskey.com/submit-article.html.

We are happy to announce that you can now get your logo designed directly through us. We are pleased to offer this new service to you in addition to our other services.
We want to help you attract the right customers for your business. First and foremost, your logo should look great and serve a functional purpose. A quality logo design should be distinctive, polished and memorable.

Average Competitor's Basic Package: $300 - $600
StoresOnline Logo's Basic Package: $185

Our designers are some of the industry's best! Giving you a quality logo is the most important thing to us. We will provide you with a variety of fresh, unique logo concepts, customized specifically for your business needs, while communicating with you throughout the process.
Example Logos: Let our work speak for itself.

StoresOnlineLogo.com - Get Your Logo Started Now!

New StoresOnline Pro Features
New Design: Two new Store Builder designs, Cologne and Nouveau,are now available in StoresOnline Pro. Check them out by clicking on the Site tab in the Pro Store Builder.

New Warehouses: New warehouses continue to be integrated for StoresOnline Platinum users. The newest one is called Movies 4 Wholesale. They offer new and used movies (DVD & VHS), CD's, and games (PC & console).

Default Categories: You can now turn on and off the default category using the Set Default and Remove Default buttons. Selecting a Default Category can save you time while adding new products to your website. For example, if you know that the next several products that you add are going to be in your “Summer Collection” category, select that as the default category. As you add these products, you won’t need to manually assign each product to the “Summer Collection” category, it will be done automatically. Then, when you start adding products that belong in another category, you can switch the default category to that one. If you are adding a variety of products that are all in different categories, then you might want to click the Remove Default button so that you can assign them to their correct category one by one.

New Tutorials
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is becoming more and more prominent as a new marketing channel online.

One of the many social networks is Facebook. For information on how you can utilize Facebook as part of your overall marketing strategy, check out the new tutorial called “Social Media Strategies: Facebook” found in the “Getting Traffic (visitors) – Basic” section of Merchant Services.

The newest Google Adwords tutorial is now available as well. Look for “Keyword Matching Options” found in the “Google Adwords” section of Merchant Services.

Introducing the Avail 24/7 Communication System from StoresOnline. Make Your Small Business Look, Sound, and Feel Like a Big Business! Get your own Toll Free Number now by calling customer support at 801-434-8582. Manage your account online and view your voicemail, email and faxes in one location.

Avail247.com - The Communication Solution System for Entrpreneurs

Featured Testimonial
"My supplier is pretty happy with the amount of sales I'm bringing to them through the website...Every time they pull up my account, they always seem to be surprised at the amount of sales I'm doing."
David Brown
www.thetapestryshop.com

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at www.myquickresponse.com for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat. You may also call 801-434-8582 Monday - Friday 6:00am - 7:00 pm MST..

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline! See you next month!

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc.

Other StoresOnline Links

Avail247.com

BuyStoresonlinePro.com

ImergentInc.com

MyCorporateBrochure.com

MyQuickDevelopment.com

StoresOnline Press Release Blog

StoresOnline.com

StoresOnlineCustomerDevelopment.com

StoresOnlineDomestic.com

StoresOnlineExpress.com

StoresOnlineHelp.com

StoresOnlineInc.com

StoresOnlineMerchant.com

StoresOnlinePro.com

StoresOnlineQuickSite.com

StoresOnlineResources.com

StoresOnlineSite.com

StoresOnlineSuccess.com

StoresOnlineSupport.com

StoresOnlineTutorial.com

StoresOnlineUSA.com

StoresOnlineWebsite.com

StoresOnlineWorldwide.com

March 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:20:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

Important Note: The Keyword Analysis Tool has been changed. To use the new version, log into one of your StoresOnline Pro websites and click on the Pages tab. Edit your Home page and click the Analyze button. Select Keyword Analysis from the Tool drop down menu. Enter the keyword or keyword phrase that you want to analyze in the field provided and click the Run button. Additional features and functionality will be added to this tool in the near future.

Website Real Estate
This month we will discuss some very important tips about the Real-estate on your website and how you can better use different areas to help convert visitors into customers.

One of the Prime Real-estate areas of your website is your Header. The content included in your header is importannt because it is usually the first thing that a visitor sees and it will appear at the top of every page on your website. You want your visitors to be able to see at a glance who you are and what you offer. Other important things to include are credit card logos for the payments you accept, a phone number if you accept phone orders and any other short tag lines to make your customers feel comfortable ordering from you. An example from http://www.wheatgrasskits.com/

Over 10 years in business

#1 Wheatgrass Destination Online

Over 45,000 Happy customers

Your home page is your window display for your website to draw customers into your store. This is often the first page your customers will see. Make sure that you are giving your customers a reason to purchase from your site. The opening paragraph on your home page should be roughly 25 to 30 words and should leave no question as to what your site offers. Use the 15 second rule to explain what you are selling and what the benefits are for purchasing from you. Below is the opening paragraph from the home page of http://www.wheatgrasskits.com/.

Grow your own wheatgrass, barleygrass, sunflower greens, sprouts or herbs for pennies a day! WheatgrassKits.com offers you nature's most perfect living foods.

If you offer something like free shipping for orders over a certain amount, make that clear and visible in the openeing paragraph, the header, or both. If you are highlighting a specific product or category page from the text on your home page, be sure to create text links from the paragraph to the appropriate page.

When a customer comes to your website, they know that your goal is to sell them your products. Don't be afraid to do exactly that.

Some of the other key pages on your website are the About Us, Privacy Policy, Contact Us, and Frequently Asked Questions pages. When you receive a call or email from a customer with questions that might be common to other customer, add their question with the corresponding answer to your FAQs page.

For additional information on this topic, take some time to re-visit the Dialing In Your Website Tutorial found in the Initial Website & Product Research section of Merchant Services.

New StoresOnline Pro Features

New Warehouses/Drop Shippers:

11 new dropshippers have been added to the warehouses section under the Products tab. This will offer you a larger variety of drop shipping. Many of these new drop shippers have no activation fees or monthly fees.

Receipt Page Content in PRO: There are now 2 areas of your order form receipt that you can add content to. One is content that is displayed on your confirmation page and the printable PDF version of your receipt that your customer gets when they complete an order. The other is an advanced section used to add code such as Google adWords conversion tracking. To add and edit this content, go to the Pages tab, then click on the Forms tab, edit your order form and then click on the Receipt tab.

New Design: The new design Bistro has been finished and is available for use.

Wish List: A new feature in StoresOnline Pro is the Wish List. The Wish List allows your customer to compile an order that you may not be ready to place that day but it will save it for when they come back to complete it.

New Tutorial - Basic Computer Skills: This tutorial is intended for StoresOnline merchants that are in need of some instruction in basic computer skills. It is divided into two parts; basic desktop computer skills and basic internet computer skills. To watch this video tutorial, go to the Other/Misc section in Merchant Services and click on the Computer Basics link.

iMergent Inc., parent company of Storesonline, launched our mortgage and financial services division November 17, 2007 under a Federal Bank Charter. This new division will continue the tradition of outstanding customer service and innovation that you have come to depend on from Storesonline. The timing is great as fixed rates are near historic lows—15 Year fixed rate is available today of 4.875%!! iMergent Financial Services is currently able to provide residential and commercial real estate lending, credit enhancement services, and equipment leasing. Make sure to check out future additions of the newsletter for more details on each of these exciting new services.

Product Spotlight: There is a mortgage revolution going on with the Mortgage Accelerator. With the recent lowering of interest rates from the Fed, the rates on this mortgage product are incredible. You can lock in on a rate today as low as 3.87%. The best part about this program is the Mortgage Acceleration component which literally could enable you to pay off your home in 1/3 to ½ the time with virtually no change to your daily spending habits. Please contact us for a FREE, NO OBLIGATION consultation to how this program works. We also are sponsoring a webinar on Wednesday, March 19th at 4 PM PST, 5 PM MST, 6 PM CST, or 7 PM EST. Call in info is:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/464599721

Conference Call: (605) 990-0010, access code 464-599-721

Meeting ID: 464-599-721

Stores Online now offers additional value added shipping services through
Atto Solutions using DHL Express.

Now you can get your products shipped fast, reliably and cost effectively through DHL. All you have to do is select the DHL shipment option and in a few clicks you can have your shipment on the way. If you choose the NAS (Next Afternoon Service) through an exclusive arrangement with Stores Online you can get your package via this air service for just a few pennies more than you would spend on the ground shipment option.

For more than 35 years, DHL has built the world's premier global delivery network by trailblazing express shipping in one country after another. Over 220 countries and territories later, DHL is the global market leader of the international express and logistics industry. DHL specializes in providing customers with innovative and customized transportation solutions from a single source.

Featured Testimonial

"I had about 20 years of retailing...and I’ve seen a lot of people that have no retail experience at all, and they were doing it. If they can do it, you know, I should have a little edge."

Paul and Sharron Savoie

http://www.petfenceworld.com/
http://www.protechcarcovers.com/
Click Here to read their story >>

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc.

February 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:10:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

Now that we are in the second month of 2008, I hope you have started putting your goals to the test and are reaping the rewards of doing so. Last month we went over adding credibility to your site by using Testimonials. This month we will touch on some suggestions for Marketing Offline.

Marketing Offline
Customer acquisition, the process of gaining new customers, can be an ongoing saga for business owners. In a business, customer acquisition is more important than buying office furniture, designing business cards, purchasing computer systems and son on.

To make a profit and stay in business, business owner need a reliable way to get more customers in the door that are willing to spend money. One of the best ways to acquire more customers is through a direct response marketing system with the capability of carefully tracking and accounting for the source of the traffic. This simply means that whatever method a business owner chooses to seek out new customers, there should be a built-in way of tracking the response in order to know where the customer came from.

You must tell your potential customers where they can find you and give them a compelling reason for doing business with you. All marketing practices can be boiled down to this one thought. It sounds so simple when you think about it, but this is one of the major stumbling blocks to a successful business. The owner thinks potential customers will spend time and energy searching out a company to do business with. This is simply not the case.

Most potential customers will only shop at places they already know about. If they do not know how to find you, they will not come to you to buy anything. You must find a way to tell potential customers where your business can be found.

You can accomplish this by following a few of these basic steps:

1. Distribute a press release detailing the latest breakthrough in your business field, available only at your place of business. Include a special telephone number for customers to call for more information.

2. Place an ad in your local yellow pages publication. It doesn't have to be huge, elaborate, or expensive. Something modest and consistent will do. Readers become comfortable with ads they have seen before. After your ad runs a few times, you will be surprised how many people begin to feel they can trust giving your ad a try. Additionally, it can be quite an added attraction to couple your local ad with such things as special discount offers in the ad.

3. Send everyone in your zip code a postcard announcing a sale at your place of business. Have them bring in the postcard to receive the discounted price.

4. Become the local expert in your business field by being interviewed on the radio. Include a special phone number for customers to call during the broadcast to get more information.

5. Give a speech at the Chamber of Commerce. Hand out problem solving brochures with your address, phone number and a special code number for customers to use to get a discount.

Many business owners regard marketing only as a necessary evil. They would rather concentrate on their core business activities. But when they use these simple methods to harness the powerful secret to getting more customers, they can eliminate the pain of marketing. Their businesses will then be truly successful in bringing in more customers, more money, and more profits.

New Software Features
Product Reviews: StoresOnline Pro sites now has a Product Review feature that allows visitors to rate and review their products. This feature can be enabled by navigating to the Site menu, then going to the Options tab and clicking the checkbox next to "Show Product Reviews". Below a product will appear a list of reviews as well as a review form that can be filled out and submitted. You can approve, reject and delete submitted reviews.

Introducing the Avail 24/7 Communication System from StoresOnline. Make Your Small Business Look, Sound, and Feel Like a Big Business! Get your own toll free number now by calling customer support at 801-434-8582. Manage your account online and view your voicemail, email and faxes in one location.

iMergent Inc., parent company of Storesonline, launched our mortgage and financial services division November 17, 2007 under a Federal Bank Charter. This new division will continue the tradition of outstanding customer service and innovation that you have come to depend on from Storesonline. The timing is great as fixed rates are near historic lows—15 Year fixed rate is available today of 4.875%!! iMergent Financial Services is currently able to provide residential and commercial real estate lending, credit enhancement services, and equipment leasing. Make sure to check out future additions of the newsletter for more details on each of these exciting new services.

Product Spotlight: What is a 700 FICO worth to you? Whether you are applying for a job, renting an apartment, buying or leasing a vehicle, or applying for a credit card, YOU ARE PART OF THE CREDIT MACHINE. Especially amidst the nations CREDIT CRUNCH, credit scores are as important as ever. 79% of all credit reports contain an error of some kind with 25% of these errors being serious enough to result in the denial of credit. We offer:

A quality educational program aimed at helping you raise your FICO scores

A Member Service Center with qualified staff to assist you with your credit needs

Free credit report and interactive credit score monitoring

Free auditing and verification of items you believe to be incorrect, erroneous, or otherwise unverifiable

A monthly newsletter to educate you on the “credit machine”

Our financial specialists are standing by to help you with any of your financial needs.

Call: 866.918.8866 OR Email: contact@imergentfinancialservices.com

Featured Testimonial

"It was the tools, the marketing tools, that make the difference. And StoresOnline exhibited all of the marketing tools that I needed."

Karla with a K

www.proclubgear.com

Click Here to read Karla's story >>

Best of luck in all your endeavors this new year and we'll see you next month.

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc

January 2008 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:45:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

We finally made it through the Holidays and are slowly getting back to our routines. We now can start the New Year by setting some goals for our businesses. One of these would be refreshing and updating your website. We start off this New Year with the value of customer testimonials.

Testimonials
Customer testimonials are a great compliment to your company, and a very effective marketing tool. Suitable for everything from direct mail to press releases to website flash animation, remember these tips for getting the most from your testimonials.

Keep It Real
Always use actual testimonials from your customers. According to author Robert W. Bly, "Even the most skilled copywriter can rarely make up a testimonial that can match the sincerity and credibility of genuine words of praise from a real customer or client." Cite your source with name, company and city but don't list confidential or specific contact information.

The Magic Word
Always ask your client's permission to use their testimonial and try to get a general release so you can use it repeatedly in a variety of venues. Thank your client for their cooperation and let them know how much their comments help your business.

Short Is Not Always Sweet
Avoid paraphrased sound bites that look more like clever editing jobs. Instead, use full quotes about specific services, solutions or products your company provided.

Archive
You may want to start a testimonial database and/or file so that your comments are close at hand, especially if some of your customers have agreed to act as references. A database will also help track testimonial usage. If a testimonial or reference leads to new business, you'll want to show your appreciation to the client who helped land the lead.

New Software Features
Product Reviews
You can now have visitors rate and review products they have purchased from your site. This feature can be enabled by navigating to the Site menu, then to the Options tab and clicking the checkbox next to the "Show Product Reviews". Below a product will appear a list of reviews as well as a review form that can be filled out and submitted. You can approve, reject and delete submitted reviews. For more detailed information on this feature please see the help tab.

iMergent Inc., parent company of Storesonline, launched our mortgage and financial services division November 17, 2007 under a Federal Bank Charter. This new division will continue the tradition of outstanding customer service and innovation that you have come to depend on from Storesonline. The timing is great as fixed rates are near historic lows—15 Year fixed rate is available today of 4.875%!! iMergent Financial Services is currently able to provide residential and commercial real estate lending, credit enhancement services, and equipment leasing. Make sure to check out future additions of the newsletter for more details on each of these exciting new services.

Product Spotlight: What is a 700 FICO worth to you? Whether you are applying for a job, renting an apartment, buying or leasing a vehicle, or applying for a credit card, YOU ARE PART OF THE CREDIT MACHINE. Especially amidst the nations CREDIT CRUNCH, credit scores are as important as ever. 79% of all credit reports contain an error of some kind with 25% of these errors being serious enough to result in the denial of credit. We offer:

A quality educational program aimed at helping you raise your FICO scores

A Member Service Center with qualified staff to assist you with your credit needs

Free credit report and interactive credit score monitoring

Free auditing and verification of items you believe to be incorrect, erroneous, or otherwise unverifiable

A monthly newsletter to educate you on the “credit machine”

Our financial specialists are standing by to help you with any of your financial needs.

Call: 866.918.8866 OR Email: contact@imergentfinancialservices.com

Featured Testimonial

"With StoresOnline, you have an original outlay, but after that, basically, you have everything at your fingertips...the information is there. You just follow it step-by-step."

Lee and Sue Harper
www.thetexastamalewarehouse.com
Click Here to read their story >>

Best of luck in all your endeavors this new year and we'll see you next month.

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc

December 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:02:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

We would like to first Thank You for another great year. We have been able to progress as a company and importantly make great improvements and upgrades to our software.

The end of the Year has come and I am sure we are all busy with filling orders and shipping them out. This is also the time that we spend with a lot of families and friends.

2007 Accomplishments

SSPA Star Award – We were awarded the SSPA Star Award for Services Excellence in Consumer Support. Read more here.

We were able to add several functions and updates to our software. Please see Technology Blogs.

We have expanded our Merchant Services with more articles and marketing tutorials. Please refer to Merchant Services.

Important Dates

Christmas Holidays 2007: There will be no phone support available. We will be closed December 24th and 25th ALL DAY!

New Years: There will be no phone support available. We will be closed ONLY on the 1st. We will remain open December 31, 2007 and January 2, 2007.

Programming Extravaganza
One More Week for the $99.00 Website Programming Offer!
Click here for details.

iMergent Inc., parent company of Storesonline, is pleased to announce a new array of financial products being offered to our merchants through iMergent Financial Services. This new division will continue the tradition of outstanding customer service and innovation that you have come to depend on from Storesonline. iMergent Financial Services is currently able to provide residential and commercial real estate lending, credit enhancement services, and equipment leasing. Make sure to check out future additions of the newsletter for more details on each of these exciting new services.

Product Spotlight: Why should you get your commercial equipment lease with iMergent Financial Services? We can issue approvals in as little as 24 hours, over 90% of our applications are approved, we offer a variety of flexible financing programs with competitive rates, we finance almost ALL types of equipment, and we can handle A to C credit. So free up cash flow and make your business accounting more simple. Our financing specialists will help you to acquire the best equipment financing option that offers you the most benefits. There is no cost or obligation to apply, so call or email us today.

Call: 866.918.8866 OR Email: contact@imergentfinancialservices.com

Updated Software Features

Categories: Now if there is no Category Start Page selected it will no longer graft the category tree into the site map.

Dividing Lines: Before you were able to add or remove the dividing lines from a product list displayed in the center or bottom. The dividing lines were not displayed on the left or right even if this option was checked. This option will now work for the left and right sides as well as center and bottom. This is enabled by default, so most product lists in the right and left column in your licenses will display dividing lines; however, you can edit that component and click off the dividing lines option to disable them.

Surveys: You can now add surveys to your web site. This new feature can be found by navigating to the Pages menu and then clicking on the Surveys tab.

Sorting: Your customers can now view your product categories and lists in the order they would like. You will find this option once you add a category or product list element to your page.

12 Days of Christmas Safety
‘Tis the Season to be Careful

On the first day of Christmas… Keyword Navigation
Using keyword navigation by setting links throughout the text or ad copy you create for emotional response (as noted above) is very effective in driving potential customers further into your site and onto product pages where they can place orders. Consider making keywords and phrases used throughout your ad copy and other text into clickable links that link to a page or product in your site that each keyword or phrase refers to.

On the second day of Christmas… Check your Meta
To set up a meta title for a page, start with your pages tab, select the page you want to edit, open the page for editing, look for the "Edit" tab on the right hand side and click it. Then look for the "Meta Title" box and type in your title info.

For Meta description and keywords, select the "Meta" tab on the right hand side, click it, and add a Meta element for description and another for keywords

On the third day of Christmas… Unique Selling Points/Proposition
A USP (Unique Selling Point) is a subtle line or phrase that draws focus to a beneficial aspect of your product or service. A USP is advertised in such a way that it implies you are somehow different from your competitors without actually specifically saying you are different. For example, a recent advertising campaign for Sprint PCS used a USP that focused on the aspect of their network being “all digital”. It seemed to imply that they were the only company that offered mobile phone service on an all-digital network; yet there were other mobile phone service providers that were also set up on all digital networks.

On the fourth day of Christmas… Contact Info/Having an 800 number
It's often a good idea to designate a small space somewhere near the top of your page and at the bottom that lists a phone number customers can call to make inquiries and/or an e-mail visitors may use to contact you. An 800 number is suggested but any customer service number and other contact info listed near the top of the page can increase the credibility of your site and trust with potential customers.

On the fifth day of Christmas… Page list/Link in Footer
Adding a simple page list for all of your top level pages horizontally in the footer of your site provides visitors and customers more convenience to navigate to another page after reading through the bottom of the current page without having to scroll back up to the main navigation menu for your site near the top of the page.

On the sixth day of Christmas… Promotional Info
A largely overlooked technique for making your site more marketable is putting informational content on your site to accompany the product or service you provide. Informational content can be an article that relates to the industry or market your product or service fits with. Informational content increases the profile of your site for relevancy-based search engines. While articles and tutorials posted on your site may be longer than your standard ad copy, if properly optimized with a proper meta title, description, and keywords, informational pages can have a dramatic effect upon search engine rankings.

For more info on ideas and guidelines for setting up informational content to aid you in promoting the site, please refer to pages 42-46 of the “Dialing In Your Website” manual, which can be downloaded from Merchant Services.

On the seventh day of Christmas – Secure Site
It is good to have some sort of logo or icon that re-enforces the notion that your site is secure. Many merchants just use a nice looking icon or create their own icon or image that symbolizes the security of their site. Ultimately, the test of security for any site page used to capture info is to look for a little yellow lock icon in the bottom of the browser window and also look for an 's' following 'http' on the page's URL in the address bar of your browser. You may also want to use a line of text that emphasizes the security of your site, for example "100% Secure Shopping!” and make it stand out.

On the eighth day of Christmas… Blog (This is also very important during the busiest shopping season)
Consider creating a blog (you can set one up at www.blogger.com). If you can commit some time every so often to write in a personal blog, it can help increase relevancy and give search engines more links to index to your site. Keep the information you write relevant to your site and provide a link to it from your site as well as links back to your site from within your blog. Remember, a blog is different from a discussion board in that a blog is like an online journal or diary that only you would add info to.

*Note – If your site is built with StoresOnline Pro, then you may add a forum to your site to serve as a blog. A forum can be set up to be like a discussion board where anyone can contribute content to it, or it can be set up to serve as a blog (where you are the only one that contributes content to it).

On the ninth day of Christmas… Positive Benefits
Near the top of your page, you may consider listing positive benefits, such as a bulleted list of reasons why your products, business, and website will satisfy your customers. .

On the tenth day of Christmas… Testimonials
If you have any friends or know of anyone who's had a positive experience with your product or your site; request them to write up a brief testimonial for you to post on your site. This will also increase the credibility of your product, and thus your site.

On the eleventh day of Christmas… Viral Marketing
An example of this would be to have an “Email a friend” element on all pages that you would be happy to have customers refer their friends to. The more information you have on your site that would be of interest to those you are marketing to, the more likely they will want to refer other friends and acquaintances they may have that would share their interest.

On the twelve day of Christmas… Newsletters (Extremely important during ANY holiday season)
This could be critical in retaining customers. Most major sites on the internet today offer newsletters and the opportunity for new site visitors and/or customers to sign up for it. By adding a place to register for a newsletter and encouraging visitors and customers to subscribe to it, you will be able to secure customer names and e-mails, and then advertise certain specials and items through each newsletter, as well as providing useful and valuable tips, and information relating to the hobby or activity your products support.

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at www.myquickresponse.com for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat.
You may also call 801-434-8582.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline!

November 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:18:00 +0000

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

Last month we went over different ways you can use various promotional strategies to help accommodate your customers during this Holiday Season. This month we will be touching on a few different ways you can use major search engines to help you accomplish your marketing goals.

Thought for the Month
This month will be the beginning of the busiest shopping time of the Year! This is a great time to gear up on your marketing skills and start driving in the traffic.

We will be discussing the 3 major search engines.

Google - Free Submit: http://www.google.com/addurl/

Yahoo Search - Free Submit: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request/

MSN Live - Free Submit: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Google
Google offers a variety of marketing techniques and tools to suit your budget. One tool that we highly recommend is Google AdWords. There are 3 things you can accomplish with this

Your target will be reached. You can advertise to people who search on Google. This way your AdWords campaign can target new audiences.

You will have greater control. You would be able to edit your ad and adjust it to your budget until you get the results that you want. You can also restrict it to specific languages and geographic locations.

You get measurable value. You do not have a binding contract that will hold you to a minimum spending requirement and/or time commitment. And with the cost-per-click option, you're only charged if people click on your ads. This means every dollar of your budget goes toward bringing new prospects to your website.

Yahoo
Yahoo also offers a variety of marketing products.

Yahoo! Local - Local Listings are a great way to promote your business to customers looking for information in Yahoo! Local. Unlike Local Sponsored Search, which uses a pay-per-click payment model, Local Listings have 3 listing options; Basic (Free), Enhanced (Fee) and Featured (Fee). Visit http://listings.local.yahoo.com for more information.

Yahoo! Search Submit - This enables you to submit up to 5 URLs per domain for inclusion in non-sponsored search results on Yahoo! and other portals such as AltaVista and AllTheWeb. Visit https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit for more information.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Product Submit - This will allow you to promote your products prominently in Yahoo! Shopping and appear in highly relevant areas across Yahoo!, giving you access to millions of motivated buyers. Pay for your performance Inclusion in Yahoo! Product Search and buyer's guide pages is based on a cost-per-click price that varies by product category. You pay only for leads directly to your site. Quickly and easily update product information and monitor performance. Visit http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/shopsb/index.php for more information.

MSN Live
We have negotiated directly with Microsoft on your behalf to get you a $50 advertising credit with Microsoft's adCenter. When you establish an advertising account with them with a low $5.00 activation fee, you will receive a $50 advertising credit which goes towards clicks.

Go to startadcenter.com/storesonline and use promo code STORES07 during the setup process to receive your $50 credit. It's an awesome opportunity to spend just a little bit of money and gain valuable traffic. As you do, you will be better able to make the adjustments to your site and your marketing to maximize its effectiveness.

New Software Features

Custom Price Labels and Add to Cart text: This will allow you to customize the text used for your Add to Cart buttons and price labels. To access the custom labels ares, go to the Products tab and click on Price sets. Double click on your standard Price Set and the click the Labels tab.

Inventory Search/Pagination: Your inventory screen will have the ability to search by name or SKU. This will help with time out problems and will also benefit merchants that have thousands of products in inventory.

New Design: Check out the new design called Big Sky by going to the Site tab located in the Store Builder.

Allow Multiple Variation Ordering: This feature allows customers to buy quantities of multiple variations at once. For example, if you sell a product that comes in Small, Medium and Large, using this feature will add a quantity box next to each size. Now your customer can enter a separate quantity for each size and then click Add to Cart one time saving several back and forth clicks. To enable this feature on a specific product, you will need to be sure that the variation is being displayed as a list and then check the options box that says "Allow Multiple Variation Ordering"

DOBA Pro Memberships: The StoresOnlinePro platform now supports Doba Pro memberships. If you are a Doba Pro member, you will now be able to view products from all of the suppliers that you have access to.

Featured Merchant

"I finally got to the point where I wanted a change in my life. We wanted a business that would kind of express our passions...I love to photograph butterflies up close, you know, full frame. Now I can go do that just for fun without the stress of having to earn a living with my pictures."

Click Here to read Sue’s story
Sue Anderson
http://www.butterflybuzz.com/
http://www.motherearthclothing.com/

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at http://www.myquickresponse.com/ for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat. You may also call 801-434-8582.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline!

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc.

Avoid Corporate “Bah, Humbug”

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:39:00 +0000

Will Your Company’s Christmas Be Full of Joy Or

Are You About to Experience Corporate “Bah, Humbug”?

Quick Facts
According to eMarketer, United States e-commerce holiday sales rose
24.6 percent for the 2006 holiday season compared to 2005.

For many retailers, the holiday season can represent anywhere between
25-40% of their annual sales.

"The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice." So Charles Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge in the holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. The story begins on Christmas Eve, with Scrooge at work. Later that evening, Scrooge is visited by three Ghosts of Christmas: Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

Our companies all have a past, we live in its present and we’re preparing for our futures. In case you haven’t noticed, the holiday shopping season is in full swing. Various consumer groups estimate that $30-$41 billion will be spent online in the next six weeks. That figure should both excite you and put the full fear of God in you. How prepared is your company’s website for the holiday season and how prepared are you to fulfill orders?

eCommerce has grown bigger and faster than any other form of commerce in the history of the world. There’s never been a time when you can sit in your basement office in Winnemucca, Nevada and purchase cupcakes at Josephine's Bakery in Rome, Italy (http://www.josephinesbakery.com).

Imagine it. $30 billion is out there about to be spent on whatever and you have an opportunity to collect on it. How? There are many reports and studies showing that nearly 70% of companies don’t have the ability to sell their products or services online. With 74% of Americans saying that they’re going to buy Christmas gifts online over the next few weeks it is ludicrous to draw traffic to your site only to lose them to your competitors who allow for eCommerce transactions.
In order to process orders your site must have three key elements:

· Shopping Cart
· Payment Gateway
· Merchant Account

For you to succeed online during the holiday season you’ll need more than just shopping cart technology. First, your site must look professional. Your site should reflect the kind of business you operate and should engender trust and confidence for consumers to buy your products without any reservations. We’ve all seen sites that make us question the security and integrity of their owners. Some sites look like the cliché used car dealership. Your site will lose more customers quicker by having a poorly designed site than anything else.

You need to make your site easy to navigate. If it takes more than one click to find your items for sale and begin the purchasing process you’re going to lose sales. At the least your site should have three items for sale on its homepage. Make sure you highlight those items you most want customers to purchase. Have high-quality photographs of the item with detailed product descriptions. Make sure the price is easily found. You should list products that a potential customer might enjoy to go along with their other purchases.

Help people find your website through a cost-effective online marketing plan. eMarketing is constantly evolving to match the evolution of search engines, Web 2.0 and consumer trends. You must adapt and evolve to stay ahead. Make certain that you work to strategically link your site, use resources wisely for your sponsored links. Optimize your site for search engines. If no one finds your site no one will buy your products.

A recent survey of online shoppers found a 60% increase in the likelihood of purchase if the site offered free shipping. If this is true you ought to consider absorbing that cost somehow. Even if the increased likelihood were 20%, don’t you think it would be worth it?

On November 26, 2007, over $700 million was spent on retail sales. Over 80% of Americans claimed that they’d spend time at home or at work purchasing gifts this week.

October 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:49:00 +0000

Special Announcement:
In an effort to better serve our customers, we have asked J.D. Power and Associates to evaluate the support we provide to you. As part of their evaluation, they will be randomly sending out email messages from October 24th through 26th and asking for your help in completing an online survey. We would greatly appreciate you taking the time to complete this survey, as we value your input and want to offer the best support possible.

We are pleased to announce even more exciting new features for the month of October. Read below for a listing of the new features, tutorials, and other updated information from StoresOnline.

Thought for the Month:
We are starting to approach the holidays, so look for promotional advantages during this profitable season. You may want to pay close attention to major websites and their strategies, or use the Merchant Services tutorials to devise your own promotions for the holidays. Consider the following strategies:

Free Shipping: Many consumers search for free shipping during the holidays

Holiday packages: Create a kit made up of several items you sell on your site and sell it as a single product

Holiday Coupons: Create discounts and special offers

New Software Features

Calendar Feature: You are now able to add a calendar to any page as an element. This will allow you to display your promotional events and customize your calendar. Please refer to the Calendars article in the Pages section of your Knowledge Base.

Contact Information Element: The Contact Information element lets you display your contact information on your site in an online contact card. This element recreates your information as an image, which may prevent malicious automated software from recording your personal information. It is similar to a business card, and can display the company name, phone, fax, email, and address.

Quantity Discount Pricing: If a product is on sale and a quantity discount pricing table has been defined, the product will now show the original price and sale price in a table along with their respective quantities.

Customizable “Add to Cart” Messages: You are now able to customize the “Add to Cart” button if you have a need for it to say something other than Add to Cart. For example, Buy Now, or Book Reservation etc.

Custom Site Elements: Custom Site Elements allow you to further customize your site's navigation. The site elements are the small links that appear at the very top of your site, usually above the header. Until now, there have been pre-set links to choose from such as View Cart, Login, Order Tracking etc. Now you can add links and text of your choice to this section of your site.

Simply navigate to the Site menu and the Elements submenu, select Custom from the drop down menu, and click the Add button. In the URL column, click the Ellipsis button to select any page from your site. Enter the text that you want to appear for this link in the Name column. If you want to add text to this section that doesn't link to another page, you can leave the URL field blank. One example of this would be to display your phone number or some other important messages.

Merchant Services Updates

log into Merchant Services to access these updated tutorials. Click Here

Creating Your Website v. 1.0 > Site Navigation (Navigability)
This article explains the importance of Site Navigation, or the system of links that allows your visitors to find all the important information on your site.

Going Live and the Testing Process > Getting 100 Visitors to Your Site on a Daily Basis
This article details the process of increasing the number of daily visitors to your site after publishing your site for the first time.

New Services Offered
StoresOnline is constantly negotiating with other online business companies to provide you with special offers to help you better your business. Please remember that your feedback, whether about StoresOnline software or our integrations with third-party software or services, is very valuable to us and we appreciate it very much.

Operation Dropship:

We have recently added Operation Dropship to our list of dropshippers. They provide IN STOCK drop ship products to your customers. They normally charge $39.95 monthly for this service. But during this limited beta test period, you pay a one-time fee of $3.00 for six months worth of service.

Visit http://www.operationdropship.com/storesms for additional information.

Microsoft adCenter:

We have negotiated directly with Microsoft on your behalf to get you a $50 advertising credit with Microsoft's adCenter. When you establish an advertising account with them for a low $5.00 activation fee, you will receive a $50 advertising credit, which goes towards clicks.

Visit http://startadcenter.com/storesonline for additional information.

Logoworks:

Logoworks and StoresOnline have teamed up to provide your business with a logo design solution that offers tremendous value.

Visit http://www.storesonline.logoworks.com/?source=STRSS1WL2&lpn=StoresOnline+Landing for additional information.

Makau Corporation:

Makau Corporation is the leader in online education, providing online education content for such companies as the Dell Learning Center, IBM, Net G Press and others. Makau has created an online educational environment exclusively for StoresOnline merchants. All courses are available to you at deep discounts, allowing you to continue your education on many technological topics, including Microsoft Office, Business Communication, Quickbooks & even network administration.

Visit http://storesonline.learningitnow.com/storesonline.asp for additional information.

Atto Solutions:

StoresOnline has teamed up with Atto Solutions to provide you small parcel cost saving services which include; Discounts with DHL and "Atto Alert" an innovative service that will contact your customers when the carrier has missed their delivery commitment, working with them and the carrier until the package is successfully delivered. Now that is Customer Service at its Best!

Visit http://www.attoautoship.com for additional information.

eLayaway:

eLayaway makes it easy for StoresOnline merchants to market their new payment option. You can download free banner ads, promotional ads and other creative digital assets from eLayaway's Merchant Account page. Simply sign-in to your Merchant eLayaway account (set up during the opt-in program) and download what you need. There's even a section devoted to sharing marketing ideas that work. Properly marketing eLayaway on your site can help increase sales conversion rates and reduce shopping cart abandonment. Thanks to eLayaway's growing network of consumer members, you may also see considerable increases in traffic to your sites.

Visit http://app2.elayaway.com/partner_splash/StoresOnline for additional information.

Veriship:

Through VeriShip, all StoresOnline merchants can have their UPS and FedEx shipments audited for free. VeriShip will work with you to discover over charges and mistakes in invoicing from these shipping companies and will get you credits on your shipping invoice. They only bill 50% of the credits actually attained. In other words, if they don’t save you money on your shipping, you pay them nothing.

Visit https://www.veriship.com/RegisterOnline.aspx?RefId=1 for additional information.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline!

September 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:41:00 +0000

Reviewing Your Site: A 24-Point Checklist

When you are considering publishing your website, here are 24 points that you should check in order to make sure that your site is ready.

1. SITE LOGO/HEADER - Display a picture of your product(s) and a byline with the name of your site (store). These site elements help identify what you sell.

2. LOGOS FOR SECURITY/PAYMENT METHODS - Be sure to display logos for all of the credit cards and payment methods you accept. Normally, these images appear near the top of your home page and/or along the bottom of every page. Many merchants use a professional icon or image that symbolizes the security of their site. You can create this image yourself, or you can use a generic clip art image. Displaying this image along with your payment method logos helps emphasize the security of the site.

You may also want to emphasize the security of your site with highly visible text, such as "100% Secure Shopping!” Ultimately, the best indicators of security for any internet page are an 's' following 'http' on the page's URL in the address bar of your browser and a little yellow lock icon in the bottom of the browser window. Look for these marks before sending your personal information to a website.

3. CONTACT INFO/800 NUMBER - It's often a good idea to designate a
small space somewhere near the top of your page that lists your contact information. You could include a phone number for customer inquiries or an e-mail visitors may use to contact you. An 800 number is suggested if you can afford it, but any customer service
number and other contact info listed near the top of the page can increase your site’s credibility
and trust with potential customers.

4. MAKE AN OFFER/BUILD VALUE - Always try to build the value of
your product or services for your customers. For example, you can create an e-book with
useful tips or info on how the potential customer can use your product or service, place a
value on it, and offer it free with every purchase. Along with physical products or information, you can include free shipping offers or discount coupon codes as other possible buyer incentives. Be sure to emphasize the value of any promotional item with descriptive phrases, such as “a $5.00 value”.

5. EMOTIONAL RESPONSE (ad copy) - Make sure your ad copy (text)
is well thought out. Use action verbs, write in the active voice and use words that trigger
and appeal emotion. Always write in the active voice because the passive voice is
much less powerful and effective, as shown in the following comparison:

Passive Voice: “Marked improvement in clarity has been experienced by our
clients.”

Active Voice: “Our clients experienced marked improvement in clarity!”

You should also use action verbs. Carefully consider which verbs you use as you develop ad
copy (or text) for your website. Some verbs are more general while others are
more specific and exciting. As you write your ad copy, use verbs and adjectives
that will heavily influence the mental image and emotional response you want
your readers (visitors) to have.

6. IMAGES WITH ALT TAGS/DESCRIPTION - Make sure to enter a description for each image that you place on your website using HTML “ALT” tags. You should include any relevant target keywords in these descriptions. If you use StoresOnline Pro, you can simply include relevant keywords in the image “description” field when adding or
editing an image placed in a text element. Adding keywords to your image descriptions can help increase the keyword relevancy of the page for relevancy search engines.

One way to see if you have sufficient “Alt” tags for images is to hold your mouse over the image. If you have completed the “Alt” tag for the image, a small box appears next to your mouse. You can use this method to review the keywords and other content included in your “Alt” tags.

7. KEYWORD NAVIGATION - Drive potential customers towards your product pages through keyword navigation links. Create links throughout the text or ad copy you create for emotional response, using your keywords and other important phrases as anchor text. When your visitors follow these clickable links to specific product pages, they have a greater chance of purchasing your product.

8. UNIQUE SELLING POINT/PROPOSITION (USP) - A USP is a subtle line or phrase that draws focus to a beneficial aspect of your product or service. A USP advertisement implies that you are somehow different from your competitors without actually claiming that you are different. For example, a recent advertising campaign for Sprint PCS used a USP that focused on the aspect of their network being “all digital”. It implied that they were the only company that offered mobile phone service on an all-digital network; yet, at the same time, there were other mobile phone service providers that also offered all-digital networks.

9. POSITIVE and/or NEGATIVE BENEFITS - Consider listing positive benefits near the top of your website. You could format these benefits as bulleted list of reasons why your products, business, and website will satisfy your customers.

You can also use negative benefits to push a sale, if they can be applied to your products. Negative benefits would be a list of frustrations or complications customers may experience by going elsewhere or using a different product and then show how your site or product is the solution to those problems.

For further info on using positive and negative benefits, refer to pages 35-37 of “Dialing In Your Website”.

10. INFORMATIONAL CONTENT – Adding informational content to your site is a largely overlooked technique for making your site more marketable. This content should accompany the product or service you provide. An example of informational content is an article that relates to your product’s industry or market.
Informational content increases the profile of your site for relevancy-based search engines. While articles and tutorials posted on your site may be longer than your standard ad copy, if properly optimized with a proper Meta title, description, and keywords, pages with this kind of information can have a dramatic effect upon search engine rankings. If you do a periodic newsletter with tips and info related to what you sell, you should create an archive of previous newsletters.

For more info on ideas and guidelines for setting up informational content to aid you in
promoting the site, please refer to pages 42-46 of the “Dialing In Your Website” manual,
which can be downloaded from Merchant Services.

11. NEWSLETTER OFFER – Offering a newsletter could be critical in retaining customers. Most major sites on the Internet today include the option for new site visitors and/or customers to sign up for their newsletter. Adding an invitation to register for your newsletter will help you legally advertise directly to your customers’ e-mail inboxes. When you advertise certain specials and items through each newsletter, as well as providing useful information relating to the hobby or activity your products support, you encourage your prior customers to become repeat customers.

12. TESTIMONIALS – Along with your invitation to join your newsletter, you should also include an invitation on your site for your visitors to send you their experiences and comments. If you have any friends or know of anyone who has had a positive experience with your product or your site, encourage them to write up a brief testimonial for you to post on your site. Including testimonials from satisfied customers will increase the credibility of your product, and thus the credibility of your site.

13. VIRAL ADVERTISEMENT – A viral advertisement encourages your visitors to share your site with their friends. For example, creating an “Email a friend” element on your best pages encourages your visitors to send a link to your site to their friends. In turn, these friends may pass your site along to their friends, and your site has the potential for exponential exposure.

The key to viral marketing is to keep your visitors’ interest. If you create interesting and useful website content, your visitors will be more likely to refer their friends and acquaintances, many of whom will already be interested in your product.

Along with direct invitations to email their friends, you can invite your customer to “bookmark” your site, whether on their own computer or with a social bookmarking service such as del.icio.us.

14. PAGE LIST/LINKS AT BOTTOM – Along with listing all of your top level pages at the top of your site, you should include these links across the bottom of your site as well. This provides visitors and customers with more convenient navigation after reading to the bottom of the page, letting them avoid scrolling back up to the main navigation menu.

15. GENERAL INFO PAGES - Make sure these pages are all accessible
from your home page. Some common pages that most commercial websites have for
posting general info are:

Company Contact Info - Make sure you have a company info or contact page is easily accessible with complete contact info for your company, including, but not limited to: company name, mailing address, street address, phone numbers, fax number, e-mail address, etc. (This info is often required for approval for a
merchant account)

About Us - This would be a page where could summarize any history your company has and if you don’t yet have a history to share, you can state what the company’s mission is or what your goals are and things of that nature.

Shipping Info - This can be a page used to state general info about what shipping methods and carriers you offer, what your shipping rates are, etc.

Return/Refund Policy - This would be a page where you state any policies and instructions you want your customers to know for those who may seek to return or exchange their product and/or request a refund. (This info is also often required for approval for a merchant account)

Privacy Policy/Statement - This would be a page where you state how customer contact information and any other personal information that your customers submit to you will be handled, such as if you will be sharing it with any 3rd parties for marketing purposes or if you intend to keep it all private and secure strictly for your own business. (This info is also often required for approval for a merchant account)

16. FAQ’s - Think of all the questions your customers could possibly ask about your site, your business, and your products, and list them on a page with their accompanying answers. Name the page “FAQ’s” (Frequently Asked Questions). A “FAQ’s” page shows that you care about your customers and your business.

17. BLOG - Consider creating a blog, or an online journal or diary. Blogs are more personal than discussion boards, with most of the content coming from the blog’s author. If you can commit some time to occasionally write relevant information in a personal blog, you can help increase your site’s relevancy with search engines. Along with including links to your site from your blog, include a link to your blog on your site. These links will help search engines index your site.

*Note – If your site is built with StoresOnline Pro, then you may add a forum to your site
to serve as a blog. A forum can be set up to be like a discussion board where anyone can
contribute content, or it can be set up to serve as a blog (where you are the only one
that contributes content). If your site is not set up in StoresOnline Pro, you can set a
blog up through www.blogger.com).

18. SITE MAP - A site map is a page or element that is like an index of all other pages and sections of your site with links to each page, organized much like a flowchart. You will want to keep it simple with no images. Having a site map enables your visitors to quickly navigate to a certain section of your site without having to click through multiple levels or pages. The larger a website gets, the harder it is to maintain 100% intuitive navigability for every page. A sitemap is a navigational safety net, a place where your visitors can find a list of every page on your site if they get lost.

A sitemap is also important because deep-indexing, relevancy-based search engines like Google follow all the links they find on a site. If a page on your site is orphaned, or not linked to any page other than the sitemap, Google will still be able to find it and index it.

19. LINKS - Continue to search for relevant sites for link trades. Contact them to request a link trade. (Your site should be published before doing this, since most web site owners will want to see your site before agreeing to trade links.)

20. PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS/SUMMARIES - Set up descriptions and summaries for each product. That way, when you set up a product list on a page, customers will be able to see a summary for every product on the list. You can add summaries and descriptions as you edit each individual product.

21. PRODUCT CROSS LINKS - Consider providing links to other related products on each product page. For example, when selling a scarf, an accessories site might add links to the matching handbag page. For these links, use a heading such as “Customers who bought this also bought the following”.

22. META – Meta tags are an important section of your site’s HTML code. This section is usually close to the top of the page. A meta tag is information about the web page that does not actually display on the web page. Meta tags tell search engines about what the web page deals with. Search engines take the information included in the Meta tags and build the listing for that particular page. Meta tags provide information that does not appear on the webpage itself but that can be accessed by indexing search engines and by people who view your website's source. It is widely believed that Meta tags can have at least some positive affect on page rank in relevancy-based search engines, if they are used wisely and appropriately.

The three most important Meta tags you want to be concerned with are meta title, meta description, and meta keywords. To set up a meta title for a page, do the following:

Click on the Pages menu

Select the page you want to edit

Double-click the page, or click the Edit button

Select the Edit submenu on the right hand side

Enter your title information in the Meta Title box.

For meta description and keywords, follow the above instructions, but select the Meta submenu instead of the Edit submenu. On this page, you can add one meta element for description and another for keywords.

*Note: Your home page may already have a meta tag for description and keywords
already in place. Just simply edit those elements and fill in with the relevant info for each
one.

For more info and tips on creating meta tags for your pages, see "Create Page Meta Information" under the
Pages section of Help. Also see "Relevancy Search Engine Optimization" under the "Getting Traffic (visitors) - Basic" section in Merchant Services.

23. MERCHANT ACCOUNT/ CREDIT CARD PROCESSOR - If you are taking orders and intend to secure payment through your site, make sure you've established and connected a merchant account and/or payment processor. (i.e. ECI or Paypal)

24. ORDERING RULES - Make sure your site is set up to charge the necessary sales tax in accordance with your local government's tax laws, where applicable. Also, if you will be charging for shipping, make sure you have ordering rules set up to calculate the appropriate shipping and handling charges for your customers' orders.

New Strategic Alliance for U.S. Merchants

eLayaway is a unique payment solution that allows online consumers to reserve purchases on layaway. it offers shoppers on your website the flexibility and convenience of paying over time for their online purchases with only a flat 1.9% transaction fee.

eLayaway does not charge merchants any transaction fees. StoresOnline merchants save even more with a special offer that exempts them from having to pay eLayaway's $299 annual fee. Sign up for an account today and start accepting eLayaway in time for the Holiday season! Click HERE to set up your account.

Become a Certified Beta Tester and experience Operation DropShip for only $3 for the next 6 months. Operation DropShip provides small businesses with access to over 150,000 wholesale and discounted products available for resale on their websites. Read More...

August 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:38:00 +0000

New MAP Pricing Feature

MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price. It is a method for suppliers and manufacturers to protect or at least have some control over their pricing structure. As an online merchant, it means that your website cannot display a price lower than the Minimum Advertised Price, but you can still sell the products at a lower price if you decide to do so.

In order to make this possible, StoresOnline has created a MAP pricing option in the Store Builder. When this option is used, you are able to enter a MAP price which will be displayed on your product listing page as well as the detailed page for a specific product. Then, when a customer clicks the Add to Cart button, your actual price, which can be lower than the MAP Price, will appear.

Some merchants will make mention on their site that in order to see their lower price, the customer must click the Add to Cart button. That way the customer knows that the original price they see is not necessarily the price that they will have to pay.This satisfies most suppliers and also gives the merchant more flexibility. Every supplier is different so you may want to read your supplier's policies regarding MAP pricing before you decide to use this option.

The steps in using this tool are simple:

Go to the Edit Product screen for a specific product in the Store Builder. Enter the price that you want to use for the MAP into the Suggested Price field.

Enter your lower price into the Price field. Leave the Sale Price field blank.

Check the box for "Use Minimum Advertising Price (MAP) in the Options area.

Test the process; make sure the prices are showing up correctly. There are 2 pages where the MAP Price should appear, the product listing page which is usually a page that contains multiple products with a thumbnail image and a brief summary, and the more detailed product page which contains all of the information about the product as well as the Add to Cart button. Then, when you click Add to Cart, you come to the View Cart page and this is where your lower price will appear

After following these instructions, you have successfully used the MAP option in the Store builder.

If you have any questions about this tool, feel free to contact Customer Support through the Online Chat at www.myquickresponse.com or Call the Customer Service Line at 801-434-8582..

One more month to take advantage of

our Programming Department's Special Offer! - CLICK HERE!

Using Custom Page URLs

You may already be familiar with the custom Page URL feature in the store builder. If you are not already using it, we suggest that you consider it. A custom URL gives your site a more professional look and helps search engines interpret the purpose of your site.

Let's suppose that you sell paper as one of the product lines. When you add a page in the store builder to list your paper products, the default page URL will look something like this: www.example.com/store/LICENSE/page/1251436.The number on the end is a random number generated by the Store Builder. By using the Custom URL feature, you can make it look something like this: www.example.com/paper. As you can see, the custom version looks cleaner and is easier to remember.

Custom URLs can also help you with your permission marketing campaigns. For example, you could create a page listing all of your specials, and customize the URL for this page to read www.example.com/specials. Then, if you were to send a marketing email to your customers, you could say, "Go to www.example.com/specials for our most current special offers". Not only is the URL easy to remember, it also looks more professional. Having a customized URL also helps when you want to verbally tell someone how to get to a particular page of your site.

Another benefit of using custom URLs is that it makes the structure of your site more search engine friendly. When deciding what words to use for the custom URL, try to incorporate some of your main keywords into the URLs of the various pages of your site. Adding keywords into your URL is just one small and simple step in the overall optimization of your site.

Setting up these custom URLs is easy. From the Pages tab of the Store Builder, double click on one of your pages. This takes you to the Page Edit screen. About half way down the page you will see Page URL. Click the Add button and a new line will appear where you can type in the word that you would like to use in your URL. Do not use spaces. If you want to use a two word phrase, just remove the space from the phrase.

July 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:35:00 +0000

Getting Traffic

Reciprocal links are a very important piece of your overall marketing strategy. We recommend you trade links with sites that have a Google Page Rank of 4 or higher.
If your site has a low PR and you are having trouble finding sites to trade links with, we suggest reading about a newer link building strategy called Stealth Linking. This tutorial can be found in Merchant Services. Click the Merchant Services link when you login to one of your storefront licenses. Enter "Stealth Linking" into the search bar.

Dialing in Your Website

At any stage of your website, you should revisit the Dialing in Your Website tutorial. Each time you read it, you will appreciate different parts as you learn and grow as a website owner. This too can be found in Merchant Services. Enter "Dialing in Your Website" into the search bar.

Getting on Chat

We've had reports of trouble accessing chat. Most computers come pre-loaded with Java 1.1 and our system runs Java 2.2. To ensure that you have the most current version of Java, visit www.java.com We will be making adjustments in the future to make our system compatible with 1.1.

Customer Service Hours

We welcome all the new merchants that have come aboard and as a reminder, our live Customer service phone support hours are Monday through Friday 7am-6pm MST. We also offer 24 hour chat support at www.myquickresponse.com

Frequently Asked Questions from the month of June

Q. Does StoresOnline supply email addresses when registering a domain name?

A. StoresOnline does not supply email accounts but we do offer email aliases for each domain name that you use with your website. An email alias incorporates your domain name such as info@yourdomain.com and then forwards any messages sent to this address to an existing account that you already have such as hotmail, gmail, yahoo, comcast or any other email that you own. Displaying a domain related email alias on your site gives a much more professional look and feel than using a personal address.

Q. If I do have an email address through my domain registrar, can I still have email accessibility with my Stores Online websites?

A. Yes, you can still have that capability to use the email account that you have been provided by your domain registrar. You will need to make sure that you have the DNS codes of your domain name point to the Stores Online servers at NS1.STORESONLINE.COM and NS2.STORESONLINE.COM. You must also request what are called MX records from your domain registrar for the given email account that you so wish to use and provide them to StoresOnline.

Q. Once I have registered a domain name with Stores Online is there anyway that I can return it for another one that I like better for my website?

A. Due to the process of registering a domain name with Stores Online, once you have registered that domain for the length of time that you wish to do so you will be the owner until the end of that period. We are not able to swap domains once one has been registered.

Q. What is Avail 247 that I purchased at the workshop

A. Avail 247 is a communication solution that manages phone, fax, email, and your contacts all from one easy-to-use web application that Stores Online has provided you. Learn more at www.avail247.com

Q. What is stealth linking?

A. "Stealth Linking" is an unconventional approach to getting links in ways most online merchants would not consider. With this approach, you will utilize the interactive features of many websites to post messages, such as blogs with reader-comment functionality, Web-based message boards, forums, and websites with guest books. The reason you are doing this is to build incoming links to your site.

Q. What is the message that keeps popping up when in the Store Builder?

A. Stores Online has implemented a new reminder system that prompts you to use the Help Button if it recognizes you have been idle in the Store Builder for about 90 seconds. This is just to remind you that the help feature is always accessible to you whenever you are in need of help or assistance.

Another Special from our Programming Department! - CLICK HERE!

June 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:26:00 +0000

We have been discussing ways in which you can improve your website's conversion rate. Last month, we discussed Website Navigation and how you can make your site's navigation easy for a customer to find what they want in quick, clear, and concise ways.

This month, we will be going over the Critical Pages that are necessary in every website. Each website needs certain clearly written pages that inform customers of important topics regarding your business, your policies, and your products, answering the basic questions they may have. We will teach you the value of providing critical pages. You will learn the benefits of why critical pages should provide easy to understand and user-friendliness in websites. You will also learn how to mitigate the problems of unnecessary pages.

Critical pages are essential to a website because it can help expedite the customer's need to find what they are searching for in a timely manner. Make sure that you have all the pages that are essential to your website. If web users are have a difficult time searching for information on a web site, it is obvious that critical pages are missing, since the user's need is still pending. If such is the case, your potential customer will become someone else's actual customer by going to their site.

Critical pages may provide information to a question and/or a solution to a problem. Consider the following list of critical pages:

Home Page

The home, or front, page of your site is obviously essential, as it will provide a general "overview" of your site. Make sure that you give your customers a reason to purchase from your site. Use the 15-second rule to explain what you sell on your site and the benefits of purchasing from you; for example, you could include something like "FREE shipping on orders of $100 or more". You might also include several descriptive paragraphs that include information on featured products. Or you may also want to include links to those products. Within the body of your home page, your customers should be able to navigate to each of your product categories. If you only sell a few products on your site, the customers should be able to navigate to those products directly

Links page

A well-organized Links page (one that has the links separated by categories) is much more than a simple repository to display the links from your link-trade partners. Visitors consider a good Links page, containing links to other useful and relevant sites, a good resource. Having such a resource will also help you in your Relevancy Search Engine listings, since these will see your site as an "Authoritative" site on the subject matter. A large Links page subconsciously communicates your general involvement in the industry and the online community dedicated to your subject matter. This, in turn, communicates credibility. A great Links page also gives your website stickiness, as visitors might return to your site just to use your comprehensive list of links to other related sites. Always have each link open in a new window when it is clicked so you never lose a visitor to your web site.

Site Map page

This page will list ALL pages that comprise your site. You will list all your top-level pages (such as: home page, contact us pages, etc.) and your sub pages (such as: product category pages). Customers can also turn to your sitemap page as a safety net, where your customers can always go to find a list of all your pages. This page is also a good resource for marketing. For example, Google uses sitemaps to index your pages. Another reason to include a sitemap page is that many Live Directories will not include you into their directory until you provide a sitemap page in your site.

Shipping page

This page should provide your customers with information on shipping prices, method of shipping, delivery times and policies. You could also include information on what the customer can expect before and after they make a purchase (for example, shipping prices and timelines).

Search and Browse page

This page will offer customers a way to search your site by using keywords or by typing exactly what they are looking for. This will result in a list of pages or products that pertain to their specific search.

Refund page

Some merchant account companies require that you have this page or that this information be included as a disclosure on your website. It is also helpful to provide this information to your potential customers as some will want to know the answer to this question before they make their purchase. Remember, as was mentioned earlier, you need to answer ALL of your customer's questions on your site or they will go somewhere else.

Shopping Cart page

This page will allow your customers to switch back and forth between your product and shopping cart pages to view items in their shopping cart. You may also use this page to include instructions on how to fill out your order form.

Testimonials page

The purpose of the Testimonials page is to enhance credibility. Internet users may judge a website solely on its testimonials. If testimonials are believable, the user may rely on the website and eventually make a purchase or bookmark the page for future reference.

About Us page

This page will give your customers a brief background on your product and/or company. If you use a drop shipper, you will probably want to use the page to relay information about your product(s) and their benefits. You will also want to include your mission statement. This page will also add to the credibility of your site.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page

This page provides frequently asked questions from previous buyers or site visitors and the answers to those questions. The benefit of including such a page is to provide answers to your users so they will continue using your site instead of searching another website for the answers. Your FAQs page will probably change somewhat frequently. The reasoning behind this is that when a customer emails or calls with a question about the site, in all likelihood, the question was not answered on the site. Thus, questions from all customers must be considered and included to ensure that all possible customer inquiries are answered.

The FAQ page should provide detailed answers to your customers' questions. Some items to consider including in the FAQs page are:

1. Specific Website Navigation Questions

Ways customers can find what they are looking for

Recommendations on how to best search by keyword

Where to find certain pages: i.e., Privacy Policy, Terms, Contact Us, and other pages

Etc.

2. Specific Company-Related Questions

How long the company has been in business

How to get support after the sale

Questions about lead time and shipping issues

Etc.

3. Specific Questions about Products, Services, or Information

Questions about features

Questions about advantages

Questions about benefits

Questions about limitations

Questions about price

Questions about warranties and/or guarantees

Questions about availability

Etc.

4. Any other appropriate or Miscellaneous Questions

Contact Us page

Disclosing contact information is very important and crucial to a website. Any site that hides the owner's information raises a red flag in the mind of the buyers. Having your information displayed on this page will truly gain the trust of your customers. Contact information may include the following: company name, mailing address, phone number, fax number, and email address. To reiterate, providing this information will add to the credibility of your site.

Privacy Policy page

This page includes information that will help your customers feel safe ordering from your site. StoresOnline has a default privacy policy page that you can modify or expand to relate to your specific situation. This will assist your customers to know that you are up to date on Internet privacy issues. Furthermore, many live directories (i.e. Yahoo! Live Directories and DMOZ.com) will not list a site if its privacy policy page is not clearly marked on the site. This is definitely an essential page to have on your site.

The home page is key in displaying a website's links to its critical pages. As mentioned in one of our workshops, the home page serves as a door or an at-a-glance guide.

Another factor to keep in mind is to ensure that critical pages are in synch with search engines. Currently most of the major Search Engines have problems with the following:

Links accessible solely through frames, image maps, or JavaScript

Very short pages

Flash pages

Long JavaScript (JavaScript should be placed in an external document)

Dynamic URLs

Thus, when creating critical pages on a website it is not only important to create the page but it's also essential to create the page effectively so the search engine will lead more users to your page.

Critical pages should be informative and easy to navigate. Do you want happy customers? Give them the answers they want by providing effective necessary pages.

We have negotiated directly with Microsoft on your behalf to get you a $50 advertising credit with Microsoft's adCenter. When you establish an advertising account with them with a low $5.00 activation fee, you will receive a $50 advertising credit which goes towards clicks. Go to adcenter.microsoft.com and use promo code STORES07 during the setup process to receive your $50 credit. It's an awesome opportunity to spend just a little bit of money and gain valuable traffic. As you do, you will be better able to make the adjustments to your site and your marketing to maximize its effectiveness.

Logoworks and StoresOnline have teamed up to provide your business
with a logo design solution that offers tremendous value.

Makau Corporation, the leader in online education, providing online education content for such companies as the Dell Learning Center, IBM, Net G Press and others has created an online educational environment exclusively for StoresOnline merchants. All courses are available to you at deep discounts allowing you to continue your education on many topics such as Microsoft Office, Business Communication, Quickbooks and even network administration. We encourage you to sharpen your business and computer skills with these convenient and powerful online courses. New courses will be added on an ongoing basis so you will constantly have cutting edge tools and resources to grow your business. For more information please visit http://www.makaucorp.com/ or (801) 224-9449 ext. 143

We are pleased to inform you that StoresOnline has formed a relationship with shipping auditing company VeriShip. Through VeriShip all StoresOnline merchants can have their UPS and FedEx shipments audited for free. VeriShip will work with you to discover over charges and mistakes in invoicing from these shipping companies and will actually get you credits on your shipping invoice. They only bill 50% of the credits actually attained. In other words, if they don’t save you money on your shipping, you pay them nothing. The reason we are excited about offering this to you is that this kind of service is typically available only if your shipping volume is high. By pooling all our merchants together we were able to get VeriShip to provide this to merchants of all size. Keep up the good work and save on shipping. For more information, visit VeriShip online at https://www.veriship.com/RegisterOnline.aspx?RefId=1 Or contact them directly at 800.903.3073 or via email at info@veriship.com.

May 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:11:00 +0000

Last month we continued our discussion of ways in which you can improve your site’s conversion rate. Conversion rate is the single most important factor of ecommerce. It goes without saying that anything you can do to improve it is worth your attention.

In this series we’ve discussed Ad copy; writing descriptions that are designed to sell, rather than just inform; Features vs. Benefits, remember customers don’t want features, they want benefits; and Credibility, because no one will buy anything from a site they don’t trust.

May’s topic is the next item on the Conversion Rate Improvement plan: Navigability. When your site is properly marketed you will bring potential customers to your site. Some will arrive on your Home page but most will not. If customers cannot find what they want on your site easily you will lose them.

There are several keys to make your site easily navigated:

Planning

Consistency

Three-click rule

Utilities (View Cart, Search, etc)

Alternative navigation

Clarity (less is more)

Planning

Know what your site’s needs are before you begin building it. Whenever possible know how many top level pages you will need, how many product categories you will have and how many products in each.

Consistency

Your site’s main navigation menu should be consistent throughout the entire site. This will keep your customers from being confused or lost and give them the confidence to browse the products they want and to buy.

Three clicks

The Three-click rule is a general guideline that says your customers should not have to spend more than three clicks to get to the product they want. Most will choose to surf around and compare a little, but if a customer wants to buy, they should be able to do so without spending more than three clicks.

‘Utilities’

One thing that must always be available to the visitor is the links to things like Cart and Order tracking. These add credibility to your site as well as a sense of security for the customer.

Alternative Navigation

Studies have shown that different types of web surfers respond more favorably to different types of navigation. Some will ignore text links and click on images; others will pass over pictures and look for text navigation. Some will look top left for the official navigation bar while others will scroll to the bottom of every page for a site map. Make sure there is more than one way for customers to access the next page.

Clarity

While it is important to have options for your customers it is equally important to make sure your page does not become cluttered with too many redundant links. Fill the requirements of having varying options for your customers but don’t fill the page with so many options your customers don’t know which to choose. Remember to guide customers carefully. Give them one irresistible direction and let them choose it.

Each of these points will help you improve your site’s ease of navigation. A more navigable site is critical to giving your customers the sense of stability and security needed to turn them from visitors into customers and customers are what it’s all about. Remember to keep testing and improving your site and we’ll see you next month.

April 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:08:00 +0000

We have been discussing variables that you can test to increase your conversion rates. Last month we covered Features vs. Benefits. The next item on the list is Credibility.

It is very important that your site's visitors trust your site and have confidence in the legitimacy of it. There are many factors that contribute to the credibility of a website. We will focus on the following points:

Testimonials

Security

Contact Page

Domain Email Addresses

Phone Number

Testimonials

One of the best things you can do to add credibility to your site is to display legitimate testimonials from your customers. These can be all on one page, or you might have a few highlighted on other pages such as your home page or a product listing page. There are different methods of getting testimonials. In some cases, happy customers might email you with good feedback. If the content of the email looks like it could be used as a testimonial, reply to their email and ask permission to use it on your site. You may want to just use a first name and last initial along with the general location of the customer like " John D, Orem, UT".

Another option would be to send out a survey to your existing customers asking how their experience was ordering on your site. As replies come back and you see some that you want to use as testimonials, follow the steps above to gain permission to use them on your site.

Security

Your visitors want to feel comfortable ordering from your site, especially when they are entering sensitive information such as credit card numbers, billing addresses etc. When you are hosting your site with StoresOnline, your Shopping Cart/Order Form uses a server secured through VeriSign. In StoresOnline Pro, there is now an element on the form called "Security" that you can use to add the official VeriSign logo to your order form. For 4.0, you can submit a programming request to the Changes Department to have it added to your site.

Contact Page

This one might seem obvious. In fact, every StoresOnline site has a Contact Us page built into i by defaultt. Be sure that this page has enough information for customers to be able to easily contact you with any questions or concerns.

Domain Email

If you have a domain name for your website, you should definitely be using email addresses that use the domain such as "info@yourdomain.com. This small point makes a big difference when it comes to credibility. Displaying non-domain-related email addresses such as Hotmail or Yahoo addresses, can look unprofessional and lessen your credibility. In StoresOnline Pro, you can create your email aliases right in the store builder. For 4.0, contact customer support to get them set up.

Phone Number

When a visitor sees a phone number displayed on a website, even if they aren't planning on calling, it adds credibility to the site and confidence to the visitor. Displaying a phone number may not be possible for all merchants, but it is definitely worth looking into. You might be surprised at the amount of orders you get by phone that you may not have otherwise received. If you are not always available to answer the phone, be sure to have a voicemail greeting that sounds professional.

These five items will work together to give plenty of credibility to your website which in turn gives a boost of confidence to your customer. Remember: Credible Site = Confident Customers = Higher Conversion Rates.

March 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:06:00 +0000

As we mentioned last month we will address some of the variables that you can test to increase your conversion rates. Since the first variable is Ad Copy and that was discussed in our October version of our newsletter we will skip to the second in the list, Features vs. Benefits.

The importance of focusing on the true benefits of your products or services, regardless of the type of website, cannot be overstated.

Make sure visitors to your site understand the benefits of your products, services, or information. Be sure to distinguish between features and benefits. For example, when you describe a feature like "free overnight shipping on orders over $100," make sure you always describe the accompanying benefit: "Never again deal with the hassle of driving across town, in traffic, to make a purchase! Have your order delivered in the morning for free."

Even if your feature is standard, explain its benefits. Features and benefits are one of the most overlooked areas of selling power in advertising. As the saying goes "Features tell, but benefits sell." Critically analyze your website's ad copy for benefits. Do not assume that when you describe a feature of your product or service, your customer will naturally extrapolate the feature's benefit. When you describe a feature you must always describe the accompanying benefit! If you do not, you will lose sales. Here are some ideas and examples to help you keep a focus on benefits:

Positive Benefits: Positive benefits are direct benefits that accrue to the customer when they purchase.

Make sure you do not exaggerate the benefit claim. Some benefits sound so good they are not credible, even if they are true. In these cases, you will want to understate your product's benefits a little. For example, if you have a product that cures acne 100 percent of the time, you will lose credibility if you make that benefit claim, even if it is true. You will be more credible if you understate the claim by saying your product cures acne in 78.6 percent of all cases.

Negative Benefits: Negative benefits can sometimes be more powerful than positive ones. Focusing on negative benefits means implying what could happen to a prospect who fails to purchase your product or service. Here are some examples of negative benefits: "Never again be the butt of jokes on the golf course," "Do not let your snoring cause you to spend another night on the couch," "Never feel unconfident about your appearance again," or "Do not waste your lunch hour driving across town for supplies." Test throwing a strongly worded negative benefit into your product's description and see what happens!

Understand The True Benefit: Carefully consider the true benefit of each product feature. Do not just throw a benefit out there without carefully considering what the true benefit is. In other words, when a customer purchases your product or service, what is he or she really buying? Here are some examples:

Baldness Cure: The true benefit of a baldness cure is not hair. Hair is the feature! Confidence is the benefit.

Life Insurance: The benefit of life insurance is peace of mind.