Audrey’s Top Platform Recommendation – ShopSite

One of the questions I get asked over and over is what shopping cart platform I most use and recommend. Over the past few years I’ve tried a number of carts and found a few that I’m very happy with. There is one though that stands ahead of the crowd in my opinion.

ShopSite is super powerful in terms of use and tools as well as the flexibility to make your store as unique as you want. That combination alone makes it a great platform but it’s the ease of use that makes it the cart I most recommend.

There are plenty of powerful carts that can be customized but most of them are so complicated even simple tweaks need to be done by a developer. ShopSite is simple enough for a person with no experience to jump into and start building. If you have HTML knowledge you’ll quickly be able to start customizing the templates or building your own. ShopSite templates work off simple calls to include files which makes them easy to work with so you can build your store the way you want it.

So that’s my answer to one of the most common questions I get. I’m happy to elaborate if anyone has questions, post a comment.

I also have a recommendation for ShopSite hosting. I use Lexiconn for my ShopSite stores. They are fantastic and that is not an exaggeration. I’ve never had to wait more than a half hour to get a question answered and any issues that have popped up have been fixed in less than 24 hours. They’re helpful and the hosting is high end.

There are other ShopSite hosts out there that are cheaper, but the level of service Lexiconn offers is worth the extra, it’s only like $20 more, per month. They offer a few add-on modules that I recommend including the Order Status Module and Product Review Module.

If you’re thinking about going with ShopSite, check out Lexiconn. This is my affiliate link: http://www.lexiconn.com/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=audreykerwood

Again, I’m happy to answer any questions. Choosing a platform is a big decision and making the right choice from the start will save you time, stress, and money. So do some exploring and make sure the cart you go with has all the features you need and any others you want.

eCommerce Catalyst Mastermind Partners Wanted

Who else wants a weekly eCommerce Catalyst with Audrey Kerwood?

I can only coach 7 directly. I need 7 Bad Ass students who are ready to implement quickly. That’s the BAD ASS OFFER below, FOR BAD ASS PROFIT-MINDED PEOPLE WHO CRAVE WEEKLY PERSONAL MASTERMINDING AND ARE WILLING TO COMMIT TO 15+ HOURS A WEEK OF FOCUSED IMPLEMENTATION of MY INSTRUCTION.

There is a lighter version, where you go at your own pace… FOR PROFIT-MINDED PEOPLE WHO CRAVE WEEKLY DIRECT CONTACT WITH THEIR INSTRUCTOR… And, who are motivated enough by making more that they have a track-record in being able to follow step-by-step instructions that are well written and supported in weekly Q&A.

This is access like you’ve never had before.

eCommerce Catalyst
Weekly Classes, Q&A + MM
7-Person Peer Mastermind
$20 7 Day Trial, then $97 each Month

Weekly Classes + Q&A eCommerce Catalyst
Audrey Kerwood Personal Mastermind
YOU MUST BE A BAD ASS!
$197 each month + Other Biz Expenses
YOUR SUCCESS STORY IS MY PRODUCT!
3-Months Total… Must be willing to document
PROGESS AND ALLOW ME USE OF DOCS.

StomperNet eCommerce Simplified Webinar

Tonight at 8pm EST Todd Chism and I will be hosting a free eCommerce webinar!

We’re going to be sharing proven ways to easily build and grow your eCommerce store. And when I say proven, I’m not talking theory – these are things we do in our own eCommerce stores that you will be able to put into action immediately.

If you know me at all then you know I like to talk action, you can get theory anywhere. You can take what I tell you, apply it directly to your store, and start seeing results right away. I believe in keeping it simple – do this and this will happen. So join us tonight – for free!

http://budurl.com/StomperCommerce

Working with Product Images

Depending on how you operate your eCommerce store, you may or may not have physical access to the products you sell. If you’re one of the many (like me) who use drop shippers the whole point of your business model to NOT to handle the products. So we’re left with the images provided to us by our drop shippers.

If you’ve spent any time shopping online you’ve probably seen several websites that have all or mostly the same product images. As a shopper what did that make you think? That all those websites are basically the same?

If nothing about your site stands out to the visitor they’re going to base their purchase on price. Now, it’s very true there are a lot of ways to make your site stand out from your competitors – Unique Selling Propositions, Discount Offers, Higher Search Positions, etc. Well product images are another that I think is very important but many eCommerce storeowners overlook it in the effort to build their store quickly.

It’s understandable from a store building perspective but what about from a customer perspective?

Let’s talk practically.

You have an image from your drop shipper of jewelry box. It’s sitting on top of a green blanket. Everyone using that drop shipper is also using that image. How do you think taking the green blanket out of the picture so the jewelry box is on a white background will effect the look of your product page? Do you think seeing yours will catch a visitors eye because it looks different than all the others she has seen during her search?

Yes it will!

Anything you can do to make your product stand out from the rest is a good thing. What’s nice about the images is it’s not that difficult. You need an image editor like PhotoShop and, as with all new techniques, it’ll take a bit of practice but spending a minute or two altering a product image is time well spent.

Even if all you do it flip the image horizontally, that’s enough to change your visitors perception of the image.

I take the backgrounds out of every product image I put on my stores. If I’m adding products quickly I sometimes add them as they are and then go back and alter them later… but I ALWAYS alter them.

Drop Shipper Image:

My Image:

This is something that can be outsourced as well. I have an employee who does most of our image work and since I like using PhotoShop I do some myself if I’m just sitting around watching TV.

This is one of the small steps not taken by the vast majority of online store owners. You should, every little change helps.

Take Control of Your Navigation

Many eCommerce store platforms use loops to create elements of your website. Two of the most common are product loops and navigation loops. They make it nice and easy to build your store as they populate your category pages when you add products and add links to your nav bar when you add categories. Great way to get started but ultimately you need precision control over your navigation and loops won’t give it to you.

Often the navigation link is whatever you name your category and unless you assign a specific file name your URL is that category name too. Sounds fine but what happens when your top keyword phrase for that category changes? You change the category name in the backend of your store so the anchor text in your nav bar is the phrase you’re going after. Still sounds fine, right? Well, if you aren’t using specific file names or your store platform doesn’t offer that functionality then your URL is going to change too. Uh oh. No external links, no page rank, no search positions. You have to start from scratch.

Let’s say you are using file names so you don’t have to worry about losing the URLs you’ve put so much effort into getting ranked. If you have more than a couple of categories in your store you’re going to want to create sections within the nav bar to help your customers find what they are looking for by grouping like categories under those headings. This is impossible using your store platform’s built in loop.

You need to go static. The only way to have complete dominance over your nav is to create it by hand. That may sound strange in this era of automation, but it’s the truth. You nav bar will still be automatically added to all the pages in your site (or at least the same ones the loop nav was on) and it will still be just one file. You’re going to replace the loop with HTML code.

This is easy to do whether you’ve coded before or not. You only need one thing, your published home page. Simply go to your site, view the page source, locate your nav bar, and copy the code. Paste this code over the code for the loop, publish, and… it should look exactly the same as it did before. Voila, static nav.

Now when you want to update anchor text, all you need to do to is change it in the code and publish, easy peasy. You now also have the ability to add section headings for related groups of categories – a big bonus in the conversion department. To do this, create a new table or copy an existing one from the nav. Change the anchor text to whatever you want your heading to be and remove the hyperlink.

You can get as fancy as you want now. Change the background color of the section heading to separate it from the nav links. Add image icons to grab customer attention. Add other static pages wherever you want them. The length of your page is the limit!