This is my journey as an E-commerce Consultant
Archive for September, 2007
Setting up a secure e-commerce website for under £100
1711 days
by Liz
in Web Mastering
Well hairfreax needed a revamp, and with the launch of Cubecart 4, I decided to do just that.
Cube 4 at a minimum (keeping the copyright notices) ~ £78 with the VAT added (subject to exchange rate as the price is quoted in dollars)
Your website needs to be secure, so with a £14 SSL certificate from Trusico (£12 plus VAT) the whole e-commerce website costs you £92…
This means you have £8 left to put towards your hosting, the cheapest (and most reliable) I have found in the UK is OxyUK, at 99p a month, the very basics you need. If you need more then I would pay no more than £5 per month for hosting and emails.
Once your SSL cert is installed (usually with help from your host) you can install cube pretty easily as well as..
- Google Checkout
- PayPal Payments Pro
The two designs they have for you are basic, but enough to get you by in your early stages of e-commerce. You can have a professionally designed skin once you know your brilliant idea makes money. Don’t think setting up an e-commerce store can cost the earth or cause you trouble…
You can get a 14 day trial with cube 4 and still FREE access to cube 3 (and the upgrading is almost seamless I tell you).
If you want to know what they get up too, visit the CubeCart Development Blog
Designing a ‘Storefront’ – Channeladvisor
1713 days
by Liz
in Web Mastering
Designing within the constraints of a store front (notably Marketworks and Channeladvisor in the UK) can be tricky, but some designers don’t let anything get in their way:
http://www.cybercheckout.co.uk/ is a channeladvisor store designed by Sell-it-smart who have made this table based basic store look and feel like a real website.
More examples are Grapevinehill who have used a splash page integration to make sure their store front looks and feels like a real website. Hagchairs uses a similar method.
Can’t should never be in a development or design firms mentality, as you can have fantastic websites using store front systems if you try and push the boat out.
On further digging I also found Junction Quest who also manage ChannelAdvisor Store Design and the site Exclusively Home designed by Rick Wells Ltd.
Does the catalogue still have it? Will climate change kill it?
1716 days
by Liz
in Internet Marketing
Avon is still going strong with its catalogue based army of representatives, but I got Joe Browns autumn issue though the post this morning, and also the Boden catalogue through. With the demise of Index and Gratten of the 90′s (you don’t see much of that now) have catalogue mail shots married with their respective on line shops had a come back?
LaRedoute is evidence to that effect. This mainly catalogue retailer has had huge success.
But how about the extra recycling? Its all about climate change in the UK at the moment and how companies can reduce their carbon footprints. Catalogues, are usually recyclable themselves unless they are gummed or have any kind of adhesive, but they always come in plastic.
Joe Browns have decided to write a blog on how as a ‘catalogue’ sending company they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint in as many ways as possible from not printing out emails to reducing the amount of plastic cups they use. Blogging is a great way to let your customers into your company and see the real people behind it. This blog is a great example of how to manage your reputation, defining your presence and ethics.
Oh, and these guys don’t have an eBay shop, but I won’t let that tar their reputation!
Facebook profiles become indexed by search engines….oh no!
1717 days
Now your facebook profile will be indexed in google:
Since your search privacy settings are set to “Everyone,” you now have a public search listing. This means that friends who aren’t yet on Facebook will be able to search for you by name from our Welcome page. Public Search Listings may only include names and profile pictures.
In a few weeks, these public search listings can be found by search engines like Google. No privacy rules are changing; anyone who discovers your public search listing must register and log in to contact you via Facebook.
This means facebook will now become a social site that will have to be ‘reputation managed’ on par with services such as linkedin as they can be listed high in the search rankings for your name and company. Did you think about that when joining facebook or indeed myspace? Social connecting is becoming big business and being raped for its search engine rankings for marketing purposes. Maybe the social community do not want to be marketed at from ALL angles and the reason facebook took over as the popular choice was the fact that is was NOT a marketing tool like myspace quickly became?
Facebook will now become just one of many marketing tools for companies in the Web 2.0 bedroom.
Goodbye facebook. What we had was sweet while it lasted.
This was brought to my attention by SearchEngineWatch
Neutrals are Negatives 90 Day Calculator
Find out your eBay neutral/negative percentage in the last 90 days. Remember if you get over5%, you are bad, ba, bad and you might risk suspension or restriction depending on which eBay group you happen to fall into…
see this post for more details :
