Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Online Advertising E-Commerce:

1.       Advertise your URL in the traditional media. Track how visitors found your page.
2.       Help your customers remember your URL. A constantly appearing internet address can even be elegant without bothering or annoying the audience and without decreasing the strength of the ad's message.
3.       Make your customers go for your brand: You could encourage customers by writing the name of your brand into the search engine. Obviously, you have to ensure that your sponsored advertisements publish your brand name.
4.       Standardize the layout: Traditional and online ads must give the same customer experience about the brand, style and positioning. With a little organization and effort,  interested customers might get the same experience when listening to traditional ads or browsing the internet.
5.       Involve the consumers in building the brand: Make the customers actively participate in the events related to the brand. The key point is to keep them updated with the latest information. In this way visitors will form an online community striving to get the most in connection with the brand.
6.       You should adequately emphasize the URL address of your web shop in your ads in order to make it visible and readable enough to encourage the customers to visit your website. Make sure that the same experience is waiting for them on the landing page as in the traditional ads.

For more details about E-Commerce Consulting, Website development and maintenance, please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745.

Website Design and Promotion

Your website design does not magically come together by itself. You must carefully think through the design of your website and how your website ideas can be configured in such a way to meet your goals.
  1. Your Domain name is the URL used to locate your website. Think carefully about your domain name; it identifies you and your site, consider about its length and ease of typing for customers.
  2. The web hosting company provides access to your website via the World Wide Web. They usually have low prices, better up-time guarantees, and more upgrade options
  3. A professional website design is not complete until you include your logo and overall branding strategy.
  4.  The majority of websites in existence today have a least a few pages in common. These common pages include the following: home page, about, contact, privacy policy and returns policy
  5. Creating content is the most difficult part of the website ideas strategy and website design. Content can be defined as the pages that are specific to what your business does.
  6. The website layout is the overall look and feel of your website design. This can include items such as a header, logo, other branding elements, the specific placement of your content, and the navigation bar.
  7. Meta data is commonly seen on pages in the form of meta keywords, custom title tags, and meta descriptions. This meta data exists to help your search engine optimization efforts.
  8. The call to action is simply the process you want your users to take. Your site should only have one or few specific actions or goals you want the user to take.
  9. A website requires a starting point, then requires testing and tweaking to improve the rate of successful call to actions. Testing can be done with simple analytics such as Google Analytics.
  10. A Site Map visually displays the framework or organization of the content on your site. In addition to a visual site map search engines rely on a search engine friendly site map format such as XML to fully index every page of your site.
  11. A CMS provides an easy way to add and manage content on your website.
  12. Promoting your website does not traditionally fit into the components of a website or website design. This is the marketing part of your website. The following are some of the website promotion techniques:
a.    Blogging is posting quality content articles to your website. Most CMS systems include blogs when setting up a website or easily be added through the use of plugins.
b.   Social media includes using all of the viral sharing tools available to create relationships with your prospects and customers.
c.    Capturing email address through an opt-in form does not actually increase the new user traffic to your site per say but it can get your prospects or customers to return regularly to your site. Using email marketing can be a simple way to boost your bottom line or revenue per customer.
d.   You can get all the traffic you could possibly want and more if you just pay for it. Some options for paid traffic include magazine ads, mobile ads, pay per click search engine advertising, newspaper ads, social networking site ads, etc.
e.    Guest posting is creating posts or articles for use on other's blogs. Most blogs will allow one or two links back to your own website in the author resource box which is generally at the bottom of an article. 
For more details about E-Commerce website development and maintenance please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745.

Monday, August 29, 2011

How to run a successful Online Store

1. Make the shoppers find you : Search engine marketing and placement commonly known to as search engine optimization is an import factor. The successful application of search engine marketing can lead to huge  traffic, and hopefully shopping carts being checked out.  
2. Making A Strong Presentation : Getting visitors to site is only part one. They still need to take the action whether that is adding something to their shopping cart and checking out, or signing up for a newsletter. Whatever action you want them to take, can be accomplished if  we present the website visitor with a pleasing website, that is clean and well laid out. 
3. Trust factors: This can be a visible SSL graphic, a link to your support or customer service department. Visitors will feel more comfortable if they know they can get help if they need it. 
4. Having Just The Right Products : Many people only have a limited stock of items to sell. It's important that they market products well, and feature them in a way that adds value to the shopper. If we have hundreds or even thousands of products, then it's important that create categories and sub-categories for products to be easily browsed through. 
5. Search Feature: Having a search on site will only enhance potential web shopper's experience. Helping them get to what they need quicker. 


For more details about E-Commerce Consulting, website development and maintenance please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745


Ways to Increase Website Traffic

  1. Create a "Must Reads" Section at the end of your content. One of the most common (and effective) ways to attract current readers to view other sections on your site, is to produce a short list of several other posts that displays at the bottom.
  2. Link within Articles. This works well, both to explain unfamiliar terms and ideas and also to direct readers to more detailed information on a specific topic.
  3. Build a relationship: When readers are engaged and feel like part of the conversation, they'll feel comfortable and confident to explore your content. Make the content of your pages like a conversation between you and the reader.
  4. Compile Content into meaningful Sections/Pages. This is a great way to tie your content together into clear and easily readable collections. It is also very likely to be visited more frequently than if the content is broken up over the whole site.
  5. Make Use Of The Sidebar. Give Links to important or Featured Pages in the sidebar and you'll help readers find them  and they'll stay longer, reading more.
  6. Use Excerpts On Your Home Page: Web readers are used to clicking links for content, especially if the title/excerpt catches their attention.

  For more details about Web Development and Maintenace and E-Commerce Consulting,  please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745.

Tools or Features used in a Website

·         User Forum: User forum can help members, share ideas and receive support directly from your company.
·         Social Network Tools: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace – effectively using these tools can reach thousands of new prospects and help existing clients stay in touch with your company.
·         Blog(s): A well written blog is a great way to build site traffic and share your industry knowledge and insight.
·         Product Catalog: The catalog should be searchable, both by key terms and by product category.  A dynamic catalog offers the best user experience.
·         Newsletter Signup: Newsletter is a great way to build client loyalty, but takes significant time to create great content and execute campaigns. Consider AWeber or Constant Contact for your newsletter. Both offer tools to generate signup boxes for your website and great tracking tools.
·         Media Gallery: It display your products in use, show product benefits, or actual users comments on how they used/liked specific products.
·         Online Demos and “How-Tos”: Depending on your type of product, this can either be useful for after-the-sale service reducing calls to your support line, or can help make more sales by showing how the product is used.
·         Advertisements: either through affiliate programs or directly placed ads, appropriate advertisements can add value to your site, and introduce your clients to complementary service providers.
·         Member Registration: give your clients a sense of belonging. Either for purchases or simply to participate in the forums, registering members is a great way to build a community.
·         About Us:  Tell your visitors about you – not just your name, but a photo of the principal’s (or the front end people) and a brief profile.
·         Search Box: It will reduce the time needed to find what they’re looking for. Google offers a free site search option, or your programmer can create one for you.
·         Free Content: in the form of downloadable pdf files, these reports are a valuable means to educate your prospects, aiding them in making a buying decision.

For more details about website development and maintenance and E-Commerce Consulting, please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Sell More through your E-Store during Holidays


Here are several tools for making your E-Commerce website more attractive and friendly especially for a holiday promotion: 
  1. Sell what you have in stock, at least in the main pages of your store, every product you display needs to be in-stock and ready for delivery.
  2. Deliver the product on time. Your seasonal delivery schedule, delivery rates and premium delivery services should be clearly posted on the website
  3. Make sure that every employee serving your online customers fulfills the published delivery commitments.
  4. In the case of any unexpected problems you must inform the customer immediately.
  5. When giving something for free to your customers make sure that you attach in some way the information on your products.
  6. During a holiday make sure to give your customers clear directions to contact you.
  7. Your regular telephone, fax numbers should also be posted and display your customer service e-mail address and business hours with a schedule.
  8. Never underestimate your customer feedback. Respond to the feedback you have received from your online customers by phone, by e-mail or by other methods.
  9. If they are telling that you are good, you must strive to be better. If anything is not quite right get it fixed immediately!
  10. Be sure to always report the changes that you have made because misinformation is the number one reason for online shopping cart abandonment. 
 For more details about E-Commerce website development and consulting please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745

Friday, August 26, 2011

Some useful tools to automate Online Business

1.Article Marketing: 
SubmitYourArticle.com automates the article submission process by allowing the user to submit up to eight articles each month and then distribute the articles to hundreds of web sites, article directories and ezine publishers.

2. Audio Recording/Podcasting: 
AudioAcrobat.com makes audio streaming fast and simple, whether the user  wants to add an audio greeting, audio testimonials, podcast or videos to their website or send out an audio postcard or record a teleclass. 

3. Backup: 
Carbonite.com offers an unlimited amount of data storage.

4. Blogging: 
Typepad.com is both simple to use and powerful. User can set up as many blogs as required and can customize the  blog in an infinite number of ways.

5. Bookmark Manager: 
SPURL.net makes managing a moderate to massive amount of bookmarks very easy and adding a favorite website is as easy as clicking a button.
 
6. Color Matching:
 Pixie is a tool that help to match a color exactly for a document to replicate on a website.

7. Content Management: 
Edit.com is a website maintenance service that makes a website editable so user can change the content themselves. They handle everything to get the site set up . There is no software to install because it just uses the web browser.

8. Email List Management/Autoresponders:
aWeber.com is a great service for creating, mailing and reporting back on the success of newsletter as well as to subscribe readers to a sequential autoresponder.

9. Fax: 
MaxEmail.com lets us send and receive faxes through the Internet/email. The faxes arrive in PDF format, so user can easily share the faxes with others as needed. They also offer voice mail on fax line, and the voicemail message arrives as an audio file in email inbox. 

10. Graphics Program: 
SnagIt.com lets users show someone exactly what they see on the screen. User can select and capture the screen image. and send it to SnagIt's editor to add professional effects, edit the image (resize, adjust color), and or drop it into favorite application. 

11. Hosting:
 Aaces.com offers the ability to buy a hosting plan in which user can host and manage a large number of websites through one account rather than buying multiple hosting plans for each website for their business.

12. Idea Management:
With EverNote.com user can easily store and quickly access typed and handwritten memos, webpage excerpts, emails, phone messages, addresses, passwords, brainstorms, sketches, documents and more!

13. Merchant Account: 
PracticePaySolutions.com offers an all-in-one ecommerce solution that helps you take payment online.

14. Publicity Tracker:
Google Alerts let user type in an unlimited number of search terms, like name, company, industry, the name of competitors, etc. Google will then deliver an email alert for any mention of your search term online.

15. Password Management: 
Roboform.com is the top-rated password manager and web form filler that completely automates password entering and form filling.
16. Shopping Cart: 
KickstartCart.com is easy to use and setup, and offers the ability to create affiliate programs, follow up with prospective and current customers with autoresponders, create coupons for limited-time offers, as well as enable buyers to immediately download electronic purchases (ebooks, audio files).

17. Spyware: 
CounterSpy.com will protect computer from spyware, adware, Trojans and other malware threats. 

18. Teleconference Line: 
LiveOfficeFreeConferencing.com lets us meet with colleagues, associates or even family members through a teleconference bridge line that can bring up to 250 people together at one place over a teleconference phone line. We can use the line to conduct classes and training and record calls, as well as manage participants from an online interface. 

19. Time Tracker: 
TraxTime.com helps keep track of projects. Simply create projects and clock into and out of them.

20. To Do List Management: 
Accomplice.com works online and offline, integrates with Outlook, and syncs with PDA. This software can create in-depth, hierarchical to-do lists (tasks and sub-tasks of a bigger project) very easily, and add additional tasks on the fly.

For more details about Website Applications, website development and maintenance please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745

E-Commerce payment gateway to accept online payments

An  E-Commerce site must always have multiple payment options. If you run a shopping site, and you only have one payment method, you may be leaving thousands of dollars on the table. So what are some of the must-have payment options?

  • PayPal
Paypal is an online payment gateway system. It allows its members to make payment without having to use a credit card. The credit card info has already been stored in the PayPal account. All the member has to do, is to login to his or her PayPal account when making payment. That means entering an email address and a password. That is far more convenient than having to take out the credit card and enter the credit card numbers into the payment form. In addition, you can easily integrate PayPal into your shopping site as most E-Commerce software supports PayPal.

  • Google Checkout
Google is becoming a highly competitive player in the payment solutions space. Like PayPal, it also has millions of members. You can easily add Google Checkout buttons to your site by copying and pasting some code snippets. Google Checkout is especially important if you are promoting your E-Commerce site using Google's very own pay per click advertising system. When you create an Ad in the system, your Ad appears on the right hand side of the search results. If your site supports Google checkout, a small little shopping cart will appear in your Ad. Visitors will know that your site supports this payment method just by viewing the Ad. This increases conversion rates because payment by Google checkout is very fast and convenient.

  • 2Checkout
2CO is a payment processor that allows you to accept payments by credit or debit cards. Unlike PayPal and Google Checkout, customers will have to fill in their credit card info when making a purchase. The payments will be sent to 2CO, who will then verify the payments. The revenues will then be sent to the merchants via direct bank transfer or check.

  • Worldpay
This is a very popular payment processing solution that is used by many large corporations. You must have your own merchant account if you want to use Worldpay. The setup allows revenues to be sent directly into your bank account.

  • Authorize.Net
The payment solution offered by Authorize.Net is an easy, affordable way to help you accept secure credit card, electronic check, and other payments via your E-Commerce website. You can easily integrate Authorize.net Payment gateway in your website and accept Credit Card Payments like Visa, MasterCard, AMEX and Discover. 


For more details about E-Commerce website development/maintenance and E-Commerce Consulting  please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745.


Simple steps to maintain an effective E-Commerce website

1. Think like a consumer: Organize your products in more than one category. Make your  goods and services easy to find. This will help your business as people purchase more and they experience greater overall satisfaction with the web site. Cross Sell and recommend products that make logical sense together.

2. Keep it simple:  Successful E-Commerce sites simplify the checkout process and display clear pricing and shipping information. They also post clear return policies and access to customer service. Putting your store's phone number in a visible place on web site is a good idea as consumers feel more confident.


3. An image is worth a thousand words, so use multiple images of products and go easy on the text. Generally people do not read; but they scan as it is harder to read on the web.

4. Market your website:  It's not enough to just build a web site. We need to make an effort to market and promote web site to new and existing customers. Collect email addresses as it helps to keep in touch with customers and consider creating a newsletter. Optimize your site's content for relevance and submit it to the major search engines.

5. Implement Easy payment processing: Online shoppers need a way to give money online. We can accept credit card payments with either a PayPal account or an online merchant account.


For more details about E-Commerce website development and maintenance please feel free to contact Prevaj Consultants at prevaj@prevajconsultants.com or call +91-8144760745

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Most Wanted Web Development Skills

1.     Ecommerce integration
Business web sites are always going to need ecommerce integration. Essentially, if it is a language or framework (PHP or Rails) and fuse it with a payment gateway (like Paypal or Authorize.net). Having the knowledge to piece together integration with online banking services like Paypal and Google Checkout will be great skills to have.

2.        CMS Customizations and plugin development

CMS are great because it gives site owners with little technical know-how the ability to change aspects of their site on the fly with the help of modules. Developers can have thriving businesses in CMS development and customization alone.

 

3.       Custom CMS themes

Designers and developers can always find work creating or customizing a CMS theme. So has the demand for creating themes for the software. Many people use CMS to power their personal or business websites, so this work is always going to be around.

4.       Framework knowledge

It seems that frameworks are one of the next big things. With the meteoric rise to fame of Rails, Django, and other MVC frameworks, developers have learned that they can build websites much faster with the help of these tools. Frameworks help cut out much of the repetitive tasks that normal custom programming would require.

5.       PSD to XHTML services.

Another one of the more popular skills needed is converting Photoshop files (PSD) to XHTML files for template use. Because designers don’t always know how to convert Photoshop layouts into template files, a CSS and XHTML expert can always find work. Because of the array of browsers now in common use and the niggling differences in how they render sites, this kind of design to code service is the most sought after of them all.

6.       Facebook applications

Facebook has opened up their platform to allow developers API access, and the demand for social network apps has been huge since then. The social media application platform has been found to be very viral and potentially very lucrative. Social networks like Facebook require that to learn their own language of syntax, like the FBML (Facebook Markup Language), so there is a small learning curve to this skill.

7.       Mobile applications

Yet another platform-specific skill set, building mobile applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, can be very profitable, and much like the social media applications, a great skill for any developer to know.

8.       Flash and Actionscript Knowledge

Flash can be used to create videos, interesting navigation, fun animated sequences, widgets, gaming and many other useful things on the Internet. The flash technology can add a very professional dimension to any website, and large websites and corporations always pay to have their sites look professional, and often commission Flash animated interfaces to showcase their products. With search engines working on ways to have Flash communicated better with them, this is a skill that’s sure to boom as the search technology advances.

9.       Javascript Plugin creation

Javascript frameworks are built with the ability to add custom functionality in the form of modules. If a developer knows to build custom Javascript modules for frameworks like jQuery or Dojo, have plenty of work available.

10.    Widget development

With the advent of widgets, data has become more portable, interactive and most importantly, viral. It’s in almost every web startup’s business plan to include a widget or two at some point, mainly because it helps increase their audience and puts more eyeballs on their content. Widget development requires knowing Javascript and/or flash, not to mention knowledge of the regular language that the parent site is built in.