The items have been added to the cart, shipping charges have been determined, and now it’s time for the final step of checkout: payment. While accepting online payments can seem like an effortless process compared to running transactions at a brick and mortar store, there is still a detailed set of systems in place that conduct the flow of funds from customer to merchant. The two main components of charging a credit card online are:

• Authorization – When a customer initiates the payment process while checking out at an online store, their card is first authorized by the merchant’s site to determine whether or not sufficient funds are available to make the purchase. Data is sent through the gateway and then the processing network to the customer’s issuing bank, which in turn accesses the customer’s account information. Depending on the funds available, the transaction is either approved or denied, and this information is conveyed in mere seconds back to the merchant’s shopping cart.

• Settlement – As any store owner knows, the full amount paid by a customer for a transaction does not simply flow directly into a business’ merchant account. A number of fixed and variable fees are deducted for any transaction, including interchange fees from the card’s issuing bank, processor fees, gateway fees and assessment fees from the credit card network. The remaining funds are then transferred to the ecommerce store’s merchant account.

Do you have a preferred method of accepting payment online? Tell us in the comments.

[Photo credit: Fosforix]

For small online retailers, the cost of implementing eCommerce intelligence solutions is prohibitive, which is why Mineful and Shopify have joined to make these predictive analytics and segmentation available to retailers of all sizes at an affordable cost.

Mineful, an eCommerce intelligence and email segmentation tool is now available on the Shopify App Store.

Mineful is a powerful tool to segment customers and optimize your email marketing campaigns. Rather than mass emailing everyone, deliver the right offer to the right person to increase customer profitability and repeat purchases.

Click here to read the entire press release.

As with any Mineful account, it is free to try for 14-days. Once set up, Mineful goes on auto-pilot to trigger your campaigns and once it starts measuring responses, it adjusts to deliver the best message to each individual customer.

Mineful and Shopify are a strong combination that online retailers can leverage to increase click-through rates and repeat purchases.

Analytics is a competitive advantage in online marketing. What are you measuring? Tell us about it and follow us on twitter to stay updated!

What is a niche market?

Simply put, a niche market is a specific market that caters to a generally smaller, albeit more focused group of consumers. This is not to say that running a niche ecommerce store is less profitable; on the contrary, offering these specialized products is often an excellent option for small businesses that cannot compete with larger online retailers.

Riding the long tail of success

Niche ecommerce stores fall under the banner of “long tail” marketing and products. Chris Anderson, who coined the term with a Wired magazine article and the subsequent book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, brought attention to the phenomenon of niche marketing – that a less popular item carried by a smaller number of retailers could rival the sales of an extremely popular item more easily available at a number of retailers.

In many ways, niche markets and small online retailers are a match made in heaven. As Niche Modeling notes “Niche markets are important for small businesses, as they can find it profitable to serve markets too small for mainstream businesses.”

What are some of the benefits to having a niche market ecommerce store?

As noted above, it’s quite potentially a more advantageous market with less competition. Unlike the general market, it’s not necessary for your small online business to constantly diversify and compete with big box retail pricing when you are offering a product that is not widely available elsewhere.

• Greater search engine optimization – your online store is likely to index better given less competition, allowing you to make the most of organic search and shopping results. Of course, you’ll still want to carefully optimize your site with original content and powerful meta tags.

• Customer service – the people who are seeking your product tend to be familiar with it and have realistic expectations. This minimizes potential returns and given a positive shopping experience, your customers are more likely return to you for their shopping needs. As The Heron Academy points out, “the information people are looking for becomes increasingly specific. If therefore you can create or find a suitable product or service for this market, the match between what you have to offer and what the prospect is looking for is even more clearly defined.”

Examples of niche market products

So, what categories might a niche product fall under?

• Hobbies – If you have a particular hobby or activity that interests you, it may be a great start to your own niche ecommerce business. Consider what you look for when you shop for your hobby, and what you have a hard time finding – it may be something that other similar hobbyists are searching for as well.

• White label products (customized t-shirts, mugs, hats, etc) – You might be a graphic designer who specializes in creating unique designs, or perhaps you have the resources to inexpensively produce personalized items based on customer materials or artwork. While white label products can be a part of the general (and more competitive) market, infusing your store’s white label products with our own individual flavor can successfully put you into a more specialized, less competitive market.

• Eco or green products – While environmentally sound items are becoming increasingly mainstream, there is still plenty of room to carve out your own particular eco-friendly niche.

Perhaps you already have an online store and have noticed that you have a quirkier product that nonetheless seems to have found a dedicated audience. If you wish to pare down your overall store selection and focus on an item or type of item that sells well for you, you could start with this item.

Conversely, you may have experienced customers seeking a particular item that is not readily available. If you have any sort of production or manufacturing capabilities, you could look into developing a specialty item and being its sole online retailer.

Sizing up the competition

Before you launch your online niche product store, your first step of research should be looking at your potential competitors and audience so that you can gauge how viable your business will be. Some points to consider:

• Who is the online competition? Can you compete with their resources, and can you compete with the number of competitors?

• What sets your business apart from your competitors and makes it unique? How can you use this to your advantage?

• How competitively can your price your item(s)?

• Who is the audience? Is your niche a market that has dedicated online customers and thus staying power? Is it one that lends itself to repeat business?

Research tools of the trade

To further research and develop a greater understanding of your niche, try these online keyword tools:

• Google’s external keyword tool – Not only does this keyword tool come from the number one search engine, but it’s free, allowing you to do long tail keyword research to your heart’s content.

• NicheBot – A paid service that calls itself “keyword research on steroids”, Nichebot combine four keyword research tools in one and offers three levels of service.

• Wordtracker – Search engine optimization service Wordtracker offers paid keyword, link builder and strategizer services, as well as a free keyword suggestion service.

• WordStream – Another keyword research service, WordStream has a free edition that allows you ten free searches on profitable niches.

• Amazon product listings – You can sort listings by best-selling or best-reviewed to get a feel for which niche products are performing well. Don’t see your product listed? This may mean that your product will have little online competition. However, as Entrepreneur cautions, it could also mean that others before you have tried and failed to connect with this particular niche’s audience. If your product type is suspiciously absent from the market (on Amazon or otherwise), you may need to do a little more digging to find the cause.

With all keyword tools, when evaluating search demand/global monthly searches, make sure to select exact match type as opposed to broad search, as it will considerably alter the number of results and give you a more accurate estimate.

What other resources exist to market/promote your niche?

• Blog coverage can be a great grassroots way to drive traffic and generate interest for your business. Promoting to blogs rather than print publications generally requires less lead time and has more of an immediate effect, allowing the interested reader to simply click directly through to your ecommerce site.

• Social networking sites encourage customer interaction and submissions, and are a great way to provide value added services to your customers like blog post, giveaways and exclusive promotions.

• Community sites on particular topics can prove to be great ambassadors for your niche product or site. Satisfied customers can recommend your ecommerce store to other community members looking to find a particular item.

• Consider partnering with another website or product that has a similar sensibility to your niche product and may have a certain overlap of customers, but is largely non-competitive.

Are you finding success with niche markets? Tell us about it below, and follow us on twitter to stay updated!

[Photo credit: ceiling]

Despite the costs to ecommerce stores, free shipping remains a powerful incentive proven to convert sales. Here are some of the forms that “free” shipping can take:

• Sitewide – If your profit margin supports it, you can offer free shipping on all the products you carry.

• With Membership – Customers receive free shipping if they pay an annual fee (for example, Amazon Prime’s free two day shipping) or hold a store credit card.

• With Minimum Order – Free shipping is offered to customers who purchase at and above a predetermined dollar amount.

• Select Items – If shipping costs vary greatly across an online store’s items, free shipping can be offered only on certain items.

• Pick Up – An ecommerce store with one or more brick and mortar locations can offer an option to purchase online, and pick up in-store for free.

• Return Shipping – Offering free return shipping can help reduce buying uncertainty and convert sales, particularly on items that require being seen or tried on in person.

• Location Specific – Free shipping can be applied to particular destinations; for example, within the contiguous United States only.

• Flat Rate Shipping – Though not wholly free, offering a single low flat rate for shipping, no matter how many items are purchased, is still an appealing customer incentive.

The numbers support it – FreeShipping.org’s studies conclusively show that online customers prefer merchants that offer free shipping, and will often abandon their cart or find another store that does offer free shipping if charges reflected in their shopping cart are too high.

Have you tried any of these free shipping tactics with your online store? Let us know in the comments.

[Photo credit: malias]

When customers shop online, a vendor’s shipping costs can become as important as merchandise prices, item selection and customer service. Let’s examine the costs, both financial and figurative, to customers, merchants and the world in general.

Cost to Consumers

In general, domestic shipping for online stores is broken down by shipping destination and weight (this excludes any free shipping deals or flat rate shipping offered by ecommerce vendors). Most online stores based in the US use Fedex, UPS or USPS for their shipping needs, and rates can vary greatly between these services given a particular package’s specs.

Due to changes in the world economy and the rise of fuel prices, most parcel companies have raised their rates in the last few years, which have been passed down to the merchants, and in turn, the consumers.

There are other shipping factors to consider when buying online. If a customer decides to return an item purchased online, charges may be incurred for restocking at either a flat rate or a percentage of the purchase price. Additional charges made to the consumer for their online purchases may include special handling charges for packaging delicate items, additional insurance for items over a certain price, hazardous material charges or special delivery charges (for example, having an order delivered on the weekend). Some odd shaped, oversized, or live items may warrant shipping costs significantly above ordinary ground shipping costs – for example, bicycles, surfboards, live animals or motorized vehicles.

Cost to Retailers

Shipping charges oftentimes hinder sales conversions, as nearly half of shoppers have been found to abandon carts once they see shipping costs added. Rising shipping costs affect retailers as well as consumers, as ecommerce stores may find themselves offering shipping incentives at a loss in order to stimulate weak sales and build consumer confidence.

Small online businesses tend to pay more in shipping costs than larger businesses, in part due to higher rates paid due to lower shipping volume. Many e-tailers also find themselves absorbing the cost when it comes to returns, especially if they have offered any shipping incentives at a loss or if they do not deduct shipping costs when refunding a customer.

Cost to Environment

Beyond financial costs, environmentally-minded consumers and retailers may find themselves at odds with the environmental impact of shipping an item purchased online. For an individual package, shipping by air by far incurs the greatest use of energy and emits the most carbon, followed by shipping by truck, shipping by rail, and finally, shipping by sea. However, overall shipping by sea freight emits the most carbon emissions annually as it is utilized by 90% of global trade.

Have you experienced shipping issues with your ecommerce store, or did you recently abandon an online purchase once you saw the shipping charges? Give us your thoughts in the comments section.

[Photo credit: numberstumper]

You’ve got a successful online business bringing in steady revenue, and supporting your life-style. But how do you take that business to the next level? You continue to earn money from your business even while you are on vacation, or enjoying your favorite hobbies. Creating a solid foundation for your business to continue without you is the true way to wealth, and is the dream of many business owners.

Neil Patel of Quicksprout gives insight on what you can do to set your online business on auto-pilot:

I wish I could tell you that it happens over night or that it happens in three years, but each business and industry is different, and the size of your company matters, too. Just be patient and enjoy the ride.

Click here to read the rest of the post.

What you’ve done to create a legacy with your business? Tell us about it and follow us on twitter to stay updated!

[Photo credit: jacreative]

While it’s safe to say that most small online businesses are looking to increase their search engine visibility, investing heavily in higher rankings and increased clickthroughs isn’t always a viable financial option. However, search engine optimization can be within anyone’s grasp by employing some of these tried and true SEO techniques for eccommerce sites.

Create Your Own Unique, Original Content

While helpful and easy to integrate, manufacturer and designer generated descriptions are often posted in multiple locations across the internet (including on competitor sites). Using these descriptions in their entirety could seriously hurt your store’s ability to index well in search engines. Opt instead to write your own product descriptions or modify the pre-existing descriptions significantly enough to satisfy the Googlebots.

Carefully Craft Your Title Tags

Title tags have long been considered to be one of the most important on-page SEO elements. When crafting title tags for your product pages, you’ll want to make sure that your tag contains important, relevant keywords that are likely to be entered in searches for your product, that important keyword terms are listed at the beginning of the tag and that overall character length doesn’t exceed 70 characters. As with your main content and product descriptions, you’ll want to avoid duplicative title tags for indexing purposes, even when listing similar products.

Add Descriptive URLs and Image Names

Descriptive URLs not only help Google index your product pages, but they also help users find your content and navigate your site more easily. For example, instead using the product URL yoursite.com/product1234, try yoursite.com/mens_cotton_collar_shirt_green. You’ll want to avoid being verbose with your descriptive URLs, but do try to think of the most searchable and accurate terms to describe your product that you might want to include in that URL.

The same goes for images – don’t stick with generic image file names that will do nothing to help your search engine optimization. A descriptively named image (e.g. floral_dress_red.jpg) will help your site index in Google image searches, leading to more potential clickthroughs and visits. You’ll also want to make sure that you include unique and descriptive ALT text for your images for the same SEO purposes.

Pay Attention to Internal Linking

Internal links help define site architecture, making it easier for your site content to be crawled by search bots. Specific product pages should be able to be found via paths originating from the homepage, rather than existing as standalone, unlinked pages. SEOmoz states that the ideal site structure would be that of a pyramid, with “the minimum amount of links possible between the homepage and any given page.”

Use Long Tail Keywords

If you’re currently using or plan to employ pay-per-click advertising services like Google Adwords and have a limited budget and/or a very particular product that you would like to cater to, consider utilizing long tail keywords in your search terms. Long tail keywords focus on very specific search terms, and because of this specificity tend to be less competitive in PPC bidding, yet potentially have a greater ROI, particularly for small niche businesses. For keyword suggestions, you can always use Google’s free Keyword Tool, or a paid keyword tool like HitTail to help you find the “least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results.“

Add a Store Blog

Not only does a store blog create fresh and indexable content for your ecommerce site, but it encourages customer interaction and repeat visits, creating a sense of community and personal, human interaction. You’ll also be able to write content about topics, news and trends that relevant to your ecommerce site, yet wouldn’t necessarily be included in a product description or similar page.

Add a Product Feed

Create a product feed or an automated product export to submit to shopping aggregate sites so that your products will be more easily found by the consumers specifically seeking to buy them online. The Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) allows you to add products to Google Shopping search results and is free to use. Another free service is TheFind, while some of the more popular paid product aggregators include Amazon Product Ads, Shopping.com, Nextag, Shopzilla and Yahoo! Shopping.

Incorporate Customer Generated Product Reviews

As our article on customer service related software noted, user submitted reviews can provide your site with fresh, unique and indexable content, without having to generate that content yourself. Customer reviews also encourage interaction, sales conversion, clickthroughs and repeat visits, all of which are helpful with building your search engine ranking.

Create Custom Landing Pages

If you have a particular product or manufacturer that has proven to be popular or has a dedicated customer base, consider creating a custom landing page. This specifically optimized page will allow customers browsing your site or using a search engine to quickly locate that item or brand’s dedicated section.

How are you optimizing your online store to stay ahead of the competition? Tell us about it and follow us on twitter to stay updated!

[Photo credit: Horia Varlan]

Of the many reasons to start an online business, financial gain ranks among the highest. But did you know there are only a finite number of ways you can become rich?

Neil Patel of Quicksprout explains the 4 ways you can become rich:

If that is your only option you better be willing to do whatever it takes. If you aren’t you better learn to or don’t waste your time trying to become rich.

Click here to read the rest of the post.

What steps are you taking to be successful running your online store? Tell us about it and follow us on twitter to stay updated!

[Photo credit: AMagill]

From dozens of popular options, picking the right eCommerce can be a hard choice. A question that comes up frequently is, “How do I find the best eCommerce platform?”.

MikeCP for SEOMoz highlights some of the some of the must have features when evaluating the SEO capabilities of any eCommerce platform. Whether you’ll be selling home-made goods, or drop shipping, you’ll want to make an informed decision from the start.

[…] product imagery can provide awesome conversion benefits and make a strong differentiator in your niche. Unfortunately, a lot of eCommerce platforms don’t provide the necessary control and commit a lot of SEO missteps (like generating a new URL when the product images are cycled).

Click here to read the rest of the post.

What eCommerce platform are you using? Tell us about it and follow us on twitter to stay updated!

[Photo credit: Lori Greig]