WP E-Commerce Shipping

Author: Lee Willis

Shipping module for the WP E-Commerce system that offers a matrix of countries, and cart amounts, e.g.

U.K. £0 and over – £5.00 £10 and over – £2.00 £25 and over – £0.00
France £0 and over – £15.00 £10 and over – £12.00 £25 and over – £10.00

You Must already have the following plugin installed:
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#e-commerce, #ecommerce-solutions, #plugins, #shipping

Plugin WP e-Commerce

The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

WP e-Commerce is a Web 2.0 application designed with usability, aesthetics, and presentation in mind.

Perfect for:

  • Bands & Record Labels
  • Clothing Companies
  • Crafters & Artists
  • Books, DVDs & MP3 files

The WordPress e-Commerce plugin is a state-of-the-art e-Commerce platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards and usability. It is both free and priceless at the same time.
WP e-Commerce makes it easy for you to accept payments online. WP e-Commerce integrates with Google Checkout, Paypal, Authorize.net, Payment Express and many other trusted payment processors.

  1. Upload the folder ‘wp-e-commerce’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

Updating

Simply copy the new files across and replace the old files saving saving ones you’ve modified. If you have product images uploaded then do not overwrite the product_images folder or images folder. If you have downloadable products for sale do not overwrite the files folder.

When updating it is important that you do not overwrite the entire images folder. Instead you should copy over the contents of the new images folder into the existing images folder on your server – saving all the exiting product images you may have already uploaded.

If you experience database errors try de-activating and re-activating your plugin.

#ajax, #authorize, #cart, #dropshop, #e-commerce, #ecommerce, #exchange, #paypal, #shop, #stock-control, #web2-0

How to use email marketing effectively

Most newcomers to email marketing think that they can send a promotional email to a list of subscribers and then sit back and watch the money flow in. If only email marketing was that easy. That said, email marketing does have the potential to generate a lot of revenue from promotional email campaigns and ecommerce, but it requires some ingenuity.

If you want to be successful in ecommerce, you will have to work harder than just shooting off a newsletter. With just a little bit of effort, you can double the revenue generated from an ecommerce website All it takes is some effort, careful analysis, testing different methods, and then refining them. Make sure you concentrate on building your email list, creating outstanding content for your emails, managing your list, dividing your list into categories and testing. for more please visit referencement algerie

A good home page does not necessarily translate to revenue generation. You should get traffic that converts. You have to get new subscribers who visit your website regularly to check out new products or services. This can be done by list building, which in turn is only possible if you expand your current list. Make sure your website has an opt-in subscription form on practically every webpage.

Your chances of getting new subscribers will increase if you offer some kind of incentive. An incentive can be anything from an offer for free shipping to giving $20 off on the first order. You can easily get a new customer’s email address through the shopping cart form. Make sure you add a link to the subscription form in the transaction confirmation email. This opportunity can be also used to get further details like gender, likes and product interests.

A Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program, if used effectively, can generate a lot of traffic. One of the most used methods to look for products is to search for them online, and a PPC program will definitely help you here. However, make sure that you have an easy sign-up process, whether the visitor buys a product or not. In addition, concentrate on search engine optimization to get targeted traffic to your website. for more please visit creation des sites internet algerie

If you have a physical location of your business, then offer sign-up forms to your customers at the cash register. This way you get their subscription while the customers are present and you can then send them in-house promotional offer through email. Whenever you send a newsletter, make sure it has an eye-catching subject line,which will compel readers to open the email.

On your website, products should be divided into categories, so that visitors can find it easy to locate what they want. Give your subscribers enough options to select what is appropriate for them. You should not forget to personalize your emails by using the customer’s first name. Adding a “send-to-a-friend” option in all your newsletters will help to generate new subscribers, provided your content is good.

If your email message has a great content and design, you can be sure to get a good open a click-through rate. Finally, keep checking your email program so that you can eliminate any issues before the mail is sent out. for more please visit Marketing Internet Algerie.

Source: bigumedia.com

#e-commerce, #e-commerce-essentials, #e-commerce-guide, #e-commerce-knowhow, #e-commerce-solutions, #email-marketing, #host-for-e-commerce-site, #industry-news

Optimizing Facebook Ads for Affiliate E-Commerce Sales

Optimizing Facebook Ads for Affiliate E-Commerce Sales

My recent Facebook Social Ads trials were aimed at driving traffic to retail websites in order to earn affiliate commissions.  Here is what I did and what I learned.

  • Bidding

Place very low bids.  Adhering to Facebook’s recommended bids will drive you to complain about how ads on social networking sites do not work. My objective was to drive lots of low cost but well qualified clicks to high value products on retail websites, and then benefit from sales that occur over the next 30 days (affiliate cookies typically last 30 days).

  • Headlines

Like with any ads, experimentation with different headlines and ad copy is critical. Once established, the optimized copy can deliver consistent returns.

  • Well targeted headlines that were very specific worked best. For example, “Buy Books” was not as good as “Vampire Lover?” when talking to an audience of female Edward Cullen fans.
  • Getting clicks is easy using truisms in your headlines and Facebook’s interest based targeting system facilitates this well. For example, a female between 18 and 25 who has an interest in Vampires and Edward Cullen is likely to be responsive to the headline:  “Vampire Lover?”  And a 27 year old male in San Francisco is likely to take notice of the headline:  “27 and in SF?”

Ad Copy

With ad copy, I found two styles work well:.

  1. A compelling message that is conversational in style.  For example, positive customer reviews like: “I love this set of Vampire tales! It has everything you want Mystery,Fantasy and of course romance with juicy bits! Only $88.99.”
  2. Other good ad-copy requires a compelling, yet specific value proposition that sounds believable.  For example “Today Only” was not as good as “Until sold out” because people hear the phrases like  “Today Only” and “One Day Only” far too frequently.

Coupon codes also drove good clickthrough rates and allowed me to easily track which specific combination of headline and ad-copy worked best.  Interestingly, resulting conversions where very limited.

  • Product Strategy

Promote specific, high value items to a captive audience (people who want what you are selling) who are more than likely to become customers. This increases the probability of your ROI being positive.

  • Targeting

Improve your targeting by looking at which specific page or application on Facebook each of your clickthroughs come from.  I ran identical Google Ads for comparison and my sales reports told me exactly what search terms people are using to trigger my ads to show.  I can then add these keywords to my Facebook targeting.

  • Limitations of the Facebook Social Ads Platform

Currently the Facebook social ad campaign manager is somewhat limited compared to AdWords. For example, if you want to change your bid, you need to make the change for each ad manually.  There is no global bid manager, although i’m hopeful we will see this option appear in the future, together with email reports. In addition:

  • A recent change has meant that the % symbol is no longer allowed in ad-copy, which constrains the type of value proposition you can convey to your audience.
  • I’ve tracked a number of clicks from intern.facebook.com.  I was suspicious that I was being charged for these clicks, but a count of my clicks vs. charges revealed that this was not the case.
  • Concluding Observations and Comments
  • I was using the Amazon Associates Program until they announced they will no longer pay referral fees on paid-search-derived traffic. In any case, the system seems to work better outside of the USA.

    Finally, Subway has made clever use of Facebook, displaying ads with headlines like: “It’s time for Lunch” and “Hungry?” between around 11am to 2pm and encouraging you to order online. I think they are certainly doing something right.

This is a guest post by Kunal Kripalani, who most recently led marketing strategy for Australia’s biggest online bookstore, Fishpond. Kripalani has been experimenting with Facebook Ads as a channel for affiliate e-commerce sales, so we asked him to share his tips here.

#add-new-tag, #e-commerce, #e-commerce-essentials, #e-commerce-guide, #e-commerce-knowhow, #e-commerce-solutions, #industry-news

Things to know when choosing Your E-Commerce Hosting

Before you decide to venture off on your e-commerce hosting adventure, there are a few things you need to know about choosing a web hosting company. Even before that, you must investigate whether or not e-commerce is the best choice for your business. Once you have made that determination, then you set about finding the best company to fit your particular needs. There are a lot of different hosting firms because there are a lot of different approaches to hosting. It’s that simple.

Your web host is essentially a service provider that rents you space on their system(s). Some will also offer website building services and other things, but whoever takes care of building your e-commerce site, your hosting company is the one that will implement it on a server that connects to the Internet.

Thus, one of the first things to find out when you are considering prospective hosts for your firm is that the company provides near total uptime (well over 99%). If your website is inaccessible to visitors because the server is down and being repaired, then you are losing money.

  • Features and costs

If you really have the intention to open an e-commerce site you should bear in mind the type of features that are common to most hosting services, and compare them. There are many companies that offer “one size fits all” e-commerce and shopping cart services, often for low or no cost, in its hosting plans. For smaller companies these basic options may be enough. On the other hand, there are many hosting firms that offer more comprehensive, customizable services for both hosting and e-commerce. These services can be quite good, but the price can be quite high.

If you have adequate technical expertise, or someone in your company does, then you may be able to manage with a “Chinese menu” arrangement for choosing hosting and e-commerce services. This way you can save money by building the site yourself, as well as performing maintenance and troubleshooting. You must keep in mind that whatever technical abilities you lack, you will have to pay for, to someone. If you are already hosting your site with an e-commerce-oriented company, it will most likely be them. Minimizing these costs is important.

  • Follow the money

Finally, you absolutely must know how you are going to transact business (process purchases) before setting up your e-commerce site. If you do not already have a merchant account for processing credit cards, you should look into getting one. If you are too small or too new to get an account on the best terms, you will have to settle for paying higher rates and fees while you grow your company. You can always renegotiate your merchant account when your fortunes improve.

Fortunately, there are also alternatives for when your fortunes diminish, or you just want to start out slow and “test the waters.” You can use PayPal, a financial “third party,” for customer purchases, though it will cost you somewhat more. There are other third-party processors, as well, with a variety of entry-level accounts that will at least allow you to take major credit and debit cards, even checks.

However, third-party processors will always cost you more. The advantage to you, of course, is being able to take credit cards at all, since without that capacity you really have very little hope of success in today’s “plastic-oriented” sales environments. People want to use credit and debit cards, not cash or checks, period.

As always in business the parameters you need to look for, when choosing the best e-commerce hosting company, are good management, reliable equipment and speedy, professional customer service. If it is one thing more than any other that you should focus on, all other parameters being equal, then go with the firm that has the most expert (and available!) customer service staff. You will be dealing with them more than you now think, that’s for sure.

Amy Armitage is the head of Business Development for Lunarpages. Lunarpages provides quality web hosting from their US-based hosting facility. They offer a wide-range of services from dedicated server hosting and managed solutions to shared and reseller hosting plans.

Article Source: EZEDIR.COM

#e-commerce, #e-commerce-future, #e-commerce-guide, #e-commerce-knowhow, #e-commerce-solutions, #host-for-e-commerce-site, #industry-news

The Future Of E-Commerce

  • Players are stepping on each other’s toes, significant acquisitions are coming and opportunities still abound.

Almost 15 years after the advent of e-commerce, it is interesting to take stock of how its market leaders have progressed. All the pioneers are stepping on each other’s toes. For instance, Amazon’s logical progression will inevitably lead it into Netflix’s territory; Amazon is already squarely in eBay’s. The end of this movie is yet unknown. Will Amazon eventually end up acquiring Netflix?

Amazon, eBay ( EBAY – news – people ) and Netflix ( NFLX – news – people ) announced their earnings results last week, and all of them seem to have performed better than expected.

In fact, Amazon seems to be finally edging its way out of a largely retail business model that was giving it serious bottom-line challenges. What is all the more surprising is that Amazon is doing it in this sordid economic climate.

  • First-quarter revenues grew an impressive 18% to $4.89 billion; earnings per share grew 17% to 41 cents, compared to 34 cents a year ago. Amazon handily beat analysts’ estimates of 31 cents per share on revenues of $4.75 billion.

Amazon continued to remain silent on details of Kindle sales but did say that the number was higher than their expectations. This week they also acquired Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, a popular free E-Book application for the iPhone. In its effort to enhance margins, I am also anticipating that Amazon will acquire another Seattle company, BlueNile, a diamond jewelry seller.

EBay’s performance was less bright than Amazon’s. First-quarter revenues of $2 billion were marginally higher than the Street’s expectations of $1.9 billion, but they were down 8% from the year-ago quarter. Earnings per share of 39 cents were also higher than the Street’s expectations of 34 cents, but 7% lower than they were in a year ago.

EBay’s core auctions business revenues fell 18% to $1.2 billion due to a 20% drop in the site’s Gross Merchandise Volume. This was despite some big offers, such as free shipping on nearly 30% of items sold on the site.

PayPal, however, continued to perform well, increasing the number of registered users by 22% to more than 184 million. PayPal is now also being used by third party e-commerce sites, like Sears, and continues to enjoy a near monopoly in the segment.
Skype also performed very well: First-quarter revenues grew 6% to $150 million and the company added 37.9 million users. Nonetheless, eBay is finally getting out of Skype. It took a long time, but I am glad to note that John Donohoe’s strategy to turnaround eBay includes spinning off Skype through an IPO.

Besides Skype, eBay is also divesting StumbleUpon. I like the fact that Donohoe is starting to deal with mistakes like Skype. But it is still unclear where eBay is headed. Is acquiring MercadoLibre part of its strategy? It could certainly give eBay an excellent growth engine in Latin America.

According to comScore, Amazon has 60 million visitors on its shopping site compared with 50 million a year ago. By comparison, eBay has 70 million visitors, down from 80.1 million a year ago. So, Amazon has the potential to overtake eBay. I have not been bullish on eBay for a while now and have been anticipating this all along.

In the quarter, Netflix’s subscriber base increased nearly 10% to 10.3 million from the previous quarter. The addition of 920,000 net subscribers was the largest ever addition in the company’s history.

Netflix also said it continued to invest in consumer electronics manufacturers and hopes to form tie-ups so that within a few years, all Internet-connected consumer devices will include a Netflix streaming client.

Netflix, however is facing stiff competition from the DVD rental kiosks operated by Redbox. These kiosks are located in areas that have significant foot traffic, and Redbox charges only a dollar a day for movie rentals. Netflix is aware that with further refinement to the system, the kiosks will be able to make money in the next three years and be present “in every 7-Eleven, every Starbucks and every airline gate.”

In fact, Netflix’s churn rate has edged up as subscribers cite kiosks as the reason for moving out. Still, Netflix said it’s not too concerned about the kiosks because they focus on newly release DVDs, which constitute only about one-third of Netflix’s rental business.

Every time I look at Amazon, eBay and Netflix, they remind me of John Doerr’s famous quote, “The Internet is under hyped.” To think that most of the world–large parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America, China–are not yet on the Internet, is a sobering thought.

Can you imagine how many more significant businesses are yet to be built as the next billion get online?

Source: NYT

#e-commerce, #e-commerce-future, #e-commerce-guide, #e-commerce-knowhow, #e-commerce-resources, #e-commerce-solutions, #industry-news, #shopping-cart-in-wordpress

Six Essentials for a Successful of E-commerce Website

E-commerce websites are the most common mediums for doing online business. However, there are certain points that need to be kept in mind while looking for E-commerce website development. The following article lists down the six important points that can give you quick and expected success in E-commerce.

Starting with a business was never this easy as it is now-a-days. You require no huge funds to have an office or shop, no need for tons of money for maintenance of it. You can simply begin with global business by having an E-commerce website.  You can have the E-commerce website development in just matters of some days and get your business running. All you need is a good web hosting and good E-commerce portal development company which can direct you the pathway to success. In recent times solid, reliable and reasonably priced e-commerce services are available. A hosted E-commerce service resolves the businessman’s non-product needs such as hosting, shopping cart technology, merchandising, payment, shipping, and so on.

Lot many choices are available these days for selecting a host but this can get you all the more confused as well. There are many companies that provide with plenty of hot offers for E-commerce packages. This is when you need to be careful and make a wise choice. Here are certain denominators to consider while choosing E-commerce service provider.

•Full Wizard driven setup- First of all, you need to select a hosted E-commerce solution that is all in one. It should provide you with set up facility as well. A wizard enables to take you from start to the finish in the completion of a fully operational e-commerce storefront.

•Selection of templates- As one size does not fit all, similarly, one template is does not go for all the products and services. There is a wide range of products that you wish to sell in you E-commerce website and therefore, ask the host to provide you with customizable templates, designs and styles.

•Payment Gateways- PayPal is the most commonly used medium for getting and making payments. However, having only PayPal is not enough.  You need to have other payment gateways as well which can cater to the needs of all your customers. The best E-commerce portal development company will provide you with the facility of multiple payments.

•Features of Import/Export in Catalog- All most all E-commerce storefront permits you to create a catalog but there are only few that will allow you to import or export data. This is important for you in case if you wish to change the host.

•Marketing Capabilities- Building an E-commerce storefront is enough in itself. You need to market your E-commerce storefront well enough to get you good amount of customers. Make sure you market you E-commerce website in a proper manner.

•Shipping – This is undoubtedly an important part of your E-commerce website. Hosted E-commerce must include automated shipping calculation for hosted E-Commerce solution to be of any practical use.

Viteb is your all in one E-commerce solutions provider. You need not go looking for any other E-commerce portal development company as you get all you need at Viteb and that too at the reasonable costs. Viteb can make your business reach to the acme in your business that you have imagined.

  • Source: myfreearticledirectory.com

#e-commerce, #e-commerce-essentials, #e-commerce-future, #e-commerce-guide, #e-commerce-knowhow, #e-commerce-solutions, #industry-news, #shopping-cart-in-wordpress