This idea of being both powerful and easy to use has not changed in the following models of the iPhone that have come out every year since and with another iPhone being rumored for this summer itʼs unlikely that it will change. Another reason why so many people like these smartphones is because of their ability to play games; you can simply download them from the Apple store and straight away have something to occupy yourself with.

With a new iPhone this will only get better as the games made will get better as they will be able to use the extra power. One type of game that will definitely be improved by a more powerful phone coming out will be the browser based game. Sites such as JackpotCity have developed mobile friendly sites that allow for phones to play games without having to download them onto their phones. With more power in the phones they will be able to cope with more complex games as well as better graphics within them. This does not mean that you shouldnʼt go and check out their current games though as they are still great fun to play.

However, in reality the picture is not as rosy as it seemingly appears to be. Especially in today’s heated competitive era, it is surely not enough to open a site online with some ‘things’ merely put up on it for sale. Today, the medium requires one to indulge in a professional research before running a business or creating a commercial site online. As such, with even more stringent rules required to be followed by all the online business managers, a good understanding pertaining to logistics and other such essential technicalities has become mandatory for professional running of the business online.

Several questions pertaining to the modes of starting online store have cropped up, which according to me are worth pondering upon.

After having experienced varied forms of success, from more than a dozen affiliate and niche sites in the last two years, I got to know certain principles which, according to me, are pertinent guidelines in the operation of business online. I had the opportunity to work on highly successful niche sites racking in six figures a month, as much as the pleasure of associating with affiliate no -maintenance sites earning a mere $2500 per month. As such, I even came across certain sites which could best be termed as absolute drain both – financially and in content. These sites were an absolute loss; however were good eye-openers in rendering me certain valuable online insights.

Starting Online Store

I want to share these insights with my readers wherein they could get cues on how to run ecommerce stores with success. Merely imbibing the ideologies of ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes wouldn’t be enough. Instead, it is preferable to learn and take into consideration certain pointers before starting out or commencing of your e-commerce venture. The 5 things requiring consideration and which according to me are the prerequisites to be followed before starting any venture online are:

1) Trimming your existing idea for creating a more specialized niche

With all the loads of business ideas that you believe in as the future chart busters of your online business, it is worth your time to render each of these ideas a well planned thought. There are many people who might be thinking on similar ideas of business and you certainly sideline the possibility of that happening.

In fact, tablet e-commerce store was the most recent business on which I was privileged to work on. Seemingly a great business to visualize, I had the opportunity of selling Kindles, iPads, and Galaxies alongside many other non-branded product ranges. Although an evolving market showing better promise in the world of technology, our approach on running of this business was rather incomplete as compared to the range which this tablet market encompasses.

Being competitive, the tablet market certainly brings along with it the saturation, due to which any business owner or new entrant in this arena ought to find modes to niche down. In our case, we failed to do so. We focused on multiple products, rather than simply focusing on marketing and selling only the viable niche brand amongst others available in the category. We could have followed the niche market to be led by the then new entrant- Fire. We could have spent all our constructive efforts in marketing Fire before its release, rather than following the extremely competitive market driven by iPad. In other words, following niche would have rendered us much more success.

Thus, if you niche down your idea, it would make better sense in driving bigger success for your business.

2) Test-run your idea even before you invest

Starting a brand new project online without evaluating the degree of interest that your venture could possibly attract, is not such a good idea. By not doing this, you pose a strong possibility of all your time and money going down the drain. Moreover, if you do not evaluate your offer converts before your business run, you might be committing a blunder. Starting a blog is a decent idea to understand your business value and anticipate the demand that your business could garner. For instance, Simon Stock made good use of WordPress blog before he started his now successful venture of surfboard racks. As such his highly successful E-Surfboard racks stands on the foundation of a good research and the interactive medium of WordPress blog and SEO technology. Simon Stock’s blog was much informative, which was appreciated by the target audience seeking information on racks and surfboarding products. Moreover, he placed Amazon affiliate links besides each information which was depicted in his blog as well as in the sidebar. In doing so, he generated significant traffic from prominent search engines ultimately rewarding him with good affiliate sales from Amazon. Further, taking aid of Google ads not only enabled him market products but also rendered him do a successful test-run for his surfboard business. Test-driving his business potential before actually running him not only branded his business identity in the eyes of many prominent manufacturers, but also enhanced his identity in making him an expert in the arena of surf boarding and its accessories. Today, E-Surfboard racks stands as one of the largest surfboard resellers on the World Wide Web.

In a nutshell, test-run the potential of your business before making a fully-fledged investment in it.

3) Manufacture your products on your own or outsource your manufacture optimally

Sharing your sale proceeds with any foreign manufacturing company can drive away significant amounts of your profits. Therefore, starting an online business which affords you the feasibility of manufacturing its products on your own would be optimal business tool.

Knowing your target audience and having procured expertise in your business, should render you the strength to market and manufacture the products on your own. Or as an alternative, sourcing its manufacture to developing nations such as Vietnam or China would sound just right for your business profitability. However, there are certain issues which could create lot of problems, especially if you desire to source your product manufacture to Asia or other developing nations. Firstly, the language barrier in these nations is a hindrance as for any business development communication plays an integral part. Moreover, lack of quality control measures and the methodologies used or the operational standards adopted in Asia could stand as major obstacles in the manufacture process. Which is why, wither you opt to manufacture products on your own or decide on partnering with some Asian giant to manage your manufacture on day to day basis.

In case, you want to choose an Asian company to run your manufacturing show in that country, it would be formidable for you to fly down there so as to check their business operation so as to ensure your investment profitability. Also, it would be optimal for you to ask for samples from such Asian entity so as to enable you the feasibility of your outsourcing operations. I would not like to commit the same mistake a friend of mine made. He neglected to gain insight of the company he chose for manufacturing his products. Due to which, he had to face a lot of quality control problems ultimately resulting him with several rejected goods as well as enormous losses due to the significant refunds he made to his customers.

The bottom-line is that having your products manufactured from any company in Asia won’t hurt if you carry it out with a well versed plan.

4) Imbibe the SEO technology for your business growth

The time required by any business owner to spend on ecommerce SEO errors is one of the most sought-after questions on any business blogs. Although you do not need to spend more time on tackling SEO issues, you ought to know certain parameters which could garner you better rankings and render a good outcome.

With the help of using efficient SEO technology to your advantage, you could make your E-commerce a whole new ball game. Social sharing is certainly critical for enhancing your business interactivity, however which SEO strategies to use is necessary to understand so as to refrain your business from creating bulk-up in your traffic. Bulked-up traffic could be a hindrance rather than an advantage. Some of the most successful niche sites I experienced or managed generated approximately 90% of their traffic from prominent search engines.

Using SEO technology rightly would definitely reward you whereas you can also turn-off many of your customers as well as advertisers such as Google if you happen to over-use it. Many webmasters can tell you their story of losing top rankings on Google by overdoing of recent Penguin update. Nothing wrong in overdoing SEO, but you would certainly piss-off a lot of people around you.

As a serious e-commerce site, your business could adopt high quality SEO which could comprise of the following:

• Creating Content which can be linked: Writing good quality content is prima facie for attracting broad appeal to your site or for your business growth. A good quality content should be informative enough so as to depict you as an expert in the arena of business your run online.
• Guest Post. Ghost-writing is certainly not such a bad thing to do. Likewise, Guest posting is something you should indulge in on your business blog. In doing so, you can give valuable information to your readers thus enabling value-additions to your business in literal sense.
• Participating in forums actively. If you become fairly active on related forums, you can easily build contacts as well as stay in touch with the latest trends in the niche segment of your business. Your quality posts and participation could get you quality links as well.

Adhering to the aforesaid pointers could do your business a whole world of good. Using SEO technology to your advantage is the best way you could stay as a front-runner in your business. As it is, all the yesteryear spamming links have been termed to be low level and which is why Google has completely shunned them by perfecting on its defense mechanism online. You too as a business owner ought to proceed by imparting advanced technology in your business.

5) Choosing a Communication platform

With many of the options your E-commerce stores could possibly afford, you have to take steps in adding appeal to your secured business website. Apart from keeping good patience for nurturing your site’s development, choosing of an optimal communication platform becomes more than critical. You have to study various cases to enlighten you with several problem areas and the mistakes created by the site developers or owners. On the other hand, you could gauge into the benefits of a WordPress to enhance the workability of your website.

Choosing your platform is crucial as migrating can give you several headaches. From my experience, shifting my case site to Shopify from its original OSCommerce was such a good idea. However, hire a professional to do the same for you rather than trying it out yourself. I would advise you to start using Shopify especially if you happen to be a beginner. Apart from being convenient, it is economical costing you as low as $30/month for its basic use.

There are many platforms which are more technically advanced as well as expensive, however your choice should correlate with what you intend to do with your business or how you want to run it.

Start with a research, which should render you an insight into marketing several products, as much as enlightening you with many more technicalities to be used in your business for betterment of its operations. The same goes if you want to run an affiliate site, however I would suggest that you maintain your use of WordPress. You could also try out some advanced plugins along with the WordPress usage in case you want to run an elaborated data feed marketing for your business products.

What is Ecommerce?

Any ecommerce website will be consisting of the following:

Shopping Cart

Shopping Cart is the terminology used to refer to the virtual basket where a buyer can add products/goods that he or she liked at the website. It is pretty much like the shopping carts in a super market. All products on an ecommerce site will have an “add to cart” option – which is essentially you adding a product that you want to buy to the shopping cart. After that, you can either immediately checkout or you can add a few more items to the shopping cart and then proceed to the billing page of the ecommerce site you shopped at.

Payment Page

Once a buyer has finalized the purchase, then he or she is directed to the payments page. Since this is an online shopping site, there is not the conventional checkout counter. However, the site will take you to a payment page where you will be asked to choose how you intend to make the payments. Most ecommerce site offer many options such as:

• Credit Cards
• Debit Card
• Net bank tranfer (EFT)
• Cash Cards
• Cash On Delivery

The buyer can choose any of the above payment options that he/she finds most suitable and pay for the products purchased via the ecommerce site.

Logistics (Shipping)

After you complete the payment, you would also be asked to enter the address where you would like the products you brought online to be delivered. Logisitics (or Shipping) is the responsibility of the seller. However, a buyer should enter the correct address so that the seller can execute his supply chain for delivering the products you purchased online right to your doorstep.

Why people are preferring ecommerce sites for shopping?

Online shopping has taken off in a big way in the recent times. Ecommerce sites have started offering excellent deals for their buyers. But there are many reasons why buyers are now preferring to shop online instead of the traditional brick and mortar stores. The main reason is the shrinking time availability – more and more people are busy in their professional lives and ecommerce offers an easy alternative to shop from anywhere – even from work, if you have an internet connection.

Also, ecommerce sites have started offering better deals for the same products that are available outside.

In the near future the boundaries between “conventional” and “electronic” commerce will become increasingly blurred as more and more businesses move sections of their operations onto the Internet. We can already see that most tickets for flights, trains or even movies are being booked online. This shows the huge potential and the wide acceptance that ecommerce businesses are gaining.

Key takeaways from this data:

• The turn around time to reach out to your user after he abandons the cart matters a lot
• The key is to get the email opened – test with subject lines to get the highest open rates
• Take time to have a good email made with great creatives and copy

Email Marketing Tips for Ecommerce Sites

Clear & Concise Subject Lines

Do not go overboard thinking of subject lines that can go along with your email. When it comes to subject lines for your email – less is more. Initially, spend some time on A/B testing subject lines that push open rates. Avoid using vague words or subject lines that trick your recipient. It might only lead to higher unsubscribe rate. It is highly recommended that you read Copyblogger on how to write some magnetic headlines & subject lines that your readers cannot resist opening.

Do not make your email an images overlay

Most email marketing campaigns go wrong when they spend a great deal of time on images for their emails. It is important to note this right now that most email clients disable images by default – such as Gmail (one of the most popular email clients, most of your users will be having this).

So it is important that your users can get to the point of your email without the images having to load. Most users do not even know that they can view images on the email and you have quickly lost a potential sale. Images can enhance the appeal of your email but they should not be the mainstay of your email.

Mix Up Your Content

Make sure that you don’t convert your emails into essays. A lot of text will seriously never be read. White space is important and make sure you consider the attention span of your readers. It is hardly anything. Give them a break by adding call-to-action blocks, videos, links or pictures. Buttons, Quotes & call-to-actions are great additions to any email content.

Design with Mobile in Mind

Worldwide, in May 2012, mobile traffic crossed desktop traffic and has been growing even faster since then. As of October 2012, mobile traffic accounted for more than 60% overall traffic. The smartphone penetration is clearly visible and ecommerce companies need to smarten up and start designing their email campaigns with mobile in mind. In a recent survey, it was found that 70% of the users delete a mobile email that does not look good and a whopping 18% will unsubscribe. Well, it is clear – nobody likes a cluttered inbox. So keep mobile in mind for all your email designs.

Study the audience data

You need to know these facts – who are you sending the emails to? The age group, gender, the types of offer they prefer etc. This is all extremely important intelligence which can help you bolster your conversions from email marketing. Did you know that 48% of people name special promotions as their favorite type of email to read? If you did not, well then it is time to come up with some special promotions that you can run on your store and shoot to your email user base.

Hope this was a useful article for anyone who wants improve their email marketing conversion rates. Best of luck!

Google Analytics exclusively offers an ecommerce reporting which you can use for measuring metrics that are essential and/or specific to an online store. Here are some example of the types of metrics that you can measure using ecommerce reporting tab in the Google Analytics (GA) dashboard:

• Transactions & revenue from Adwords campaigns
• Transactions & revenue from third-party referral
• Transactions & revenue from Organic sources
• The total number of transactions on your site in a day or date range
• The overall or campaign-wise or source-wise conversion rate on your site
• The per visit value of your traffic

From above it is pretty clear that GA is an invaluable asset for your ecommerce endeavors.

Steps to Track Ecommerce Transaction with Google Analytics

Step 1

First off, you need to enable ecommerce reporting in your dashboard.

This is how you need to navigate once you login to Google Analytics: Go to Analytics Settings > Edit Profile Settings > Edit Main Website Profile  Information

The screenshot below will show you how:

Step 2

Google Analytics provides you with the necessary code snippet which you need to insert to your site. This code needs to go to the page where the visitor lands after successfully completing a transaction. For an ecommerce site, it is usually the thank you page where the visitor lands after his purchase.

So you need to add the code snippet to the thank you page so that it gets triggered every time a user will complete a transaction on your site. It ensure error-free tracking of all the orders that take place on your site.

Step 3

GA is an advanced tracking tool, it can not only record the number of transactions but it can tell you exactly which product was sold, the quantity, revenue generated and an Order ID or SKU that was associated to the product. These are vital metrics that Google Analytics can show you in your dashboard.

However, you need to add an extra bit of code to your original tracking. Be sure to check out the snapshot above for an easier understanding of the same. Below is an explanation on what these pieces of code actually do in your ecommerce reporting and how they work.

The “_addTrans()” method establishes a transaction and tracks the following: Order ID*, Affiliation, Total*, Tax, Shipping, City, State, Country. Your code will dynamically retrieve this value from your payment gateway to generate the above data.

Items that are transacted by the visitor, is called under the piece of code:  “_addItem()” and it takes the argument Order ID*, SKU/Code*, Product Name, Category, Price*, Quantity*.

Finally, the” _trackTrans” bit is responsible for sending the transaction data as well as the item data to the Google Analytics server.
Ensure that the ecommerce tracking code is called after the Google Analytics Tracking code calls “_trackPageview()”.

When https protocol is used for secured pages, if you use ga.js then Google Analytics Tracking code would automatically detect the same.

If you are using urchis.js code for GA tracking, you can refer to the following article: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=74984

In the article, values with an asterisk (*) represent required fields. Please feel free to ask questions regarding Google Analytics for ecommerce conversion tracking below!

Zivame

India’s best online store to buy lingerie for women. They started in this market when there where no other ecommerce sites selling the same. And today, they are among the top players in this niche. You can purchase anything related to female inner wears such as panties, thongs, underwear, transparent bra and much more. There place stands cemented with 70-80 per cent of their users repeating another purchase.

Cilory

Another great option for those looking to buy female inner wears, however, they don’t restrict themselves to selling only lingerie. You can find a wide variety from fashion to sexual care products. But if you check their inventory of lingeries, Cilory stocks everything from thongs, G-strings to Bikinis.

Pretty Secrets

They are quicky establishing themselves as one of the other popular options for those looking to buy intimate fashion products. You can choose from a wide variety of Bikini, Panties, Nightwear, Swimwear, Shapewear & Stockings.

Moods of Cloe

They have interesting section called Gentlemen’s Guide, that can help a guy decide to get the best lingerie that would work for his lady. They look extremely promising and have created a decent brand image. Their variety and catalog is at par of any other ecommerce site listed here in the article.

Jabong & Myntra

They are old players who started with pure fashion products and have no ventured to female inner wears. It might be because of the good margins they offer and the products capacity to achieve new customers to the business. However, you will not find the most expansive catalog or variety that you will see in the sites that are listed above. For Jabong and Myntra, lingeries are just another category on their ever growing product listings.

Hope you found this list. Would highly appreciate if you can list out more below in comments so I can continually keep this list fresh.

List of top 7 sites where you can buy books online:

Flipkart

This is India’s favorite place to buy book online. They often offer books that are signed by authors and most new releases can be pre-ordered even before they hit your local book store which makes Flipkart a very tempting place to shop for books. With one of the largest collection of books, they stocks 11.5 million book titles on average. Recently, they have introduced e-books into their catalog which you can buy for a much cheaper price than the cover.

HomeShop18

In my personal experiences, I have found that HomeShop18 sells most books cheaper than their competitor at Flipkart. This might be because they are a Network18 company with deep pockets and no investment pangs like Flipkart. The pricing of books is definitely more competitive than India’s no.1 online store. And of course, they have pretty fast delivery and convenient payment options.

Infibeam

Infibeam has quickly gone on to prove that they are not too far behind when it comes to shopping for books. They have also started offering e-books for buyers. Like the sites above, you can purchase books from a wide genre such as management, biography, novels and a lot more. This site has an interesting Author’s Corner where you can read all about your favorite authors and get more details about them. Definitely, something that other ecommerce site selling books have not tried out.

Crossword

The famous Crossword chain also has an online store with the same range and collection that you can buy at their store. It is inclusive of CD’s, magazines and obviously their catalog of books. It is something you might want to try out if you are a loyalist to these guys. The user interface is not that remarkable and personally could use a lot of work.

Landmark

Just like Crossword, Landmark is not far behind in bringing in their brick and mortar business online. I have not tried them out and cannot really vouch for their delivery and customer support. Moreover, I find the look of their site not so appealing and the books are not priced too cheap either.

Book Adda

Bookadda is also an old payer in the Indian ecommerce scene of selling books. It claims to stock over 1 crore books. They are among the few sites that have begun completely dedicated to sell books online. They have also brought in quite a few innovation into this niche by offering the option buy and sell old books. So if you are looking for cheap second hand options you can try Bookadda. Secondly, they have a dedicated section called Acad-zone which is for students where they can find text books and other materials that are based on academic interests.

Indiatimes Shopping

Indiatimes shopping is also a place where you can buy books from, although very frankly the above sites would more than suffice your requirement in terms of pricing, variety and quality of service. Happy reading and hope you find this post useful.

If you feel there are some sites that I may have missed out, why don’t you give me a shout below and I will consider including it in this list.

Why is that though? Well, think about it. While a fully-functional website, for example, is an excellent method of showcasing your store’s weekly deals, residents of your local community are most likely going to expect you to promote your store’s deals and coupons in a more tangible way, such as with newspaper ads, flyers, and promotional products. With that in mind, some folks in your local community may not even think to look on your website (or even know it exists).

To fully embrace the essence of traditional marketing, you need to look back to the good ol’ days, as the old-timers would say; back to a time when the Internet was unheard of. It is here that you will find the foundations for traditional marketing.

The newspaper and radio, for example, were a primary means of promotion at one point in time. If old man Jenkins was having a sale on color televisions, he’d raise officials down at the local newspaper to assist him in taking out an ad. Believe it or not, in a world where the newspaper is slowly being phased out, you would be surprised at how many business owners are still choosing to take out a local ad. That must mean that folks still enjoy reading the paper. The same goes for the radio. Who likes a quiet car ride to work? Nobody! This makes the radio a vital marketing asset when you consider that almost everyone that is on the road has got the radio playing.

One piece of traditional marketing that has flourished through the years and is still widely used, arrives in the form of promotional products. Three or four decades ago, promotional products were basically composed of business cards, pens, and baseball caps. Now though, well, let’s just say you can slap a logo on anything (literally!). From a basic tomato-shaped stress ball, to stainless steel sports bottles to a culturally-relevant recycled shopping tote, more and more printing companies are sprouting up that are just bustling with creativity, that feature a wide variety of diverse products.

Often overlooked, one of the tried-and-true methods of traditional marketing that still works wonders, even today, occurs sometimes without you even knowing it is occurring. I am referring to what is known as word-of-mouth advertising. Simply put, word-of-mouth advertising is basically talking, marketing of the mouth, gossip, etc. It is generally accepted that a good product or service will market itself. For instance, if you manage a salon that employs phenomenal massage therapists, and 100% of your customers walk away smiling, it is probably safe to assume that they would recommend your salon to anyone looking for a good massage.

Traditional marketing methods worked several years ago, and still work today. However, if you really want a concoction for success, try implementing a marketing campaign that incorporated both traditional and contemporary advertorial methods. In doing so, one can expect to attract new customers from as close as around the block, to halfway around the globe. As any business owner knows, more customers translates out to more revenue. Who couldn’t use more of that?