Archive for ecommerce

admin | August 26, 2012
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Top 5 Hosted E-commerce Solutions

In the previous year in the United States alone, online purchases amounted to more than $194 billion.  This figure from the US Department Of Commerce means that e-commerce takes a bigger portion of retail sales overall compared to any other sector.

 This kind of spending inspires small businesses to offer online purchases. Fueling this movement to e-commerce is software that is easy to use and allows small businesses to add e-commerce to their websites.

At a price which is usually less than $100 / month, an e-commerce shopping cart can be added to your site and you can reach more customers thus allowing your small business to grow.

 One option that favors most small businesses and entrepreneurs is hosted e-commerce software. Hosted solutions will provide you with everything you will need to build an e-commerce website.  These include often domain name registration, admin tools, and the front-end shopping cart to get you up and running.   And you are not required to have a technical knowledge on website design and development.  The top 5 hosted e-commerce solutions for small businesses are:

 

1.  Vendio

Vendio focuses on automation.  It helps you put your products on eBay,  Amazon and Facebook, and your very own online store. Other features offered by Vendio are inventory control,  email marketing, sales and order management, shopping cart, and analytics reporting.  Pricing by Vendio starts at $99.95/month for 2GB storage and 200 products.

 

2.  Shopify

With this e-commerce platform you can do various things from just one administration dashboard, like pick a template, add a product catalog, optimize the design, create blog posts, and organize your products. Other features include mobile commerce with a mobile storefront and an iPhone app.  Also available are coupon codes and marketing tools for SEO to help market your items.  With a price that starts at $29/month you can have unlimited bandwidth, 1GB storage, 100 products listing, and 2% transaction fee.

 

3.  Intuit

With Intuit, you can create and publish a store easily and can be updated anytime because of its interface that is simple point and click design. What you get with Intuit are domain name, hosting, a site builder tool, the Simple Store e-commerce software, online payments via Intuit Merchant Account.  The e-commerce also has Facebook extension.  Intuit e-commerce website prices start at $19.99/month with 5GB storage, one domain, 5 email accounts, and 100-page site.

 

4.  Big Commerce

Big Commerce offers store design, hosting, SEO,  marketing and inventory, mobile commerce, and integration with eBay.  The lowest pricing plan is at $24.95/month that includes 100 product listing. As in all e-commerce platforms, the higher the price plan gets, the more features will be added.

 

5.  Ability

Features offered by Ability include the store’s mobile-optimized version,  plus tools to help you integrate your accounting and order management systems. It also has the SmartSite Content Manager that allows users to change product prices, images, store  promotions even without programming knowledge.  The Channel Feed service gives you the ability to manage your products on Amazon.  Pricing for Ability is based on specific requirements of your business, so it is customized.

 

 

Category: ecommerce |
admin | August 26, 2012
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3 Ways To Integrate PayPal With My Website

If you want to receive payments for the goods and services that your website sells on your site, one of the most popular ways to do this is with PayPal. PayPal offers free service for your site integration. 

PayPal has website integration tools that you can try such as setting up purchase buttons on your site.  From these tools, you will be provided with some HTML code that you can put int your web pages. 

If you are not familiar with basic code or html, you can hire a web designer or developer to assist with PayPal code integration on your site.

PayPal is the web’s most popular and most used payment service, so if you integrate your website with Instant Payment Notification (IPN) service by Paypal, you can generate more revenue from your website.  There are many ways to integrate PayPal with your website.  Some of them include the following.

 1.  Simple Integration

As in all integration processes, you need to sign up to a PayPal account if you do not have one already. You need to provide your email address, your name, your address, your date of birth and your phone number.

When you log in to your PayPal account, you will find the Merchant Service tab.  Click this tab and you can access the Website Payments Standard screen. This method is the simplest way to integrate Paypal with your website.

 

 2.  API (Application Programming Interface) Integration

PayPal’s Direct Payment APIs allow you to experience your own online check out.  And this is in addition to having a gateway and a merchant account.  You have control on what your customer sees – from brand, colors, layout and page and language sequences.  API also works with other shopping carts.

But this integration is more complex and will require you to hire a web development company like Coding Capital so that you can get the customized checkout process your business needs to generate higher revenue and appear more professionally and trustworthy to potential customers.

 

3.  Gateway Integration

You can use gateway integration through Payflow Pro with any Internet Merchant Account.  Credit card transactions can be processed online and it has everything you need to connect with the aforementioned account.

There are other ways to integrate PayPal to your website like in single item purchases.  One recommendation for this type of purchase is the Buy Now Button.  With this button by PayPal, there will be no need for a shopping cart, and integrating it with your website is a simple process.  Your customers can pay you much faster than by money orders or checks.

 

Lastly …

Paypal is the most trusted of all payment gateways, so considering accepting payments through PayPal to your website is highly recommended.  You will not be charged any set up fee, and you can easily integrate it with your website. PayPal manages hundreds of million accounts and operate in 17 currencies and in more than 90 markets. 

Payments through PayPal are very secure and it accepts all major credit cards.  PayPal payment buttons just need a little configuration in your account (just like plug-n-play) and paste the HTML code in the web pages.  In cases of refunds, you won’t have any issues with PayPal.  If you refund your client, PayPal will refund also the transaction fee.

Category: ecommerce |
admin | April 26, 2012
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Best Ecommerce solution for small business

small business ecommerce solutionsWhat are the top 3 open source eCommerce solutions for your business?  

It’s an important decision as your business will need at least the basic features, and probably a few more, and to best sell and manage your products and orders. 

Since we’re talking about small business, our aim is to provide rock-solid proven solutions that out-of-the-box will provide all or just about all the basic features you will need to start selling online.

Our eCommerce solution web firm, Coding Capital, has worked with all the below ecommerce solutions as well as many others that didn’t make the list.

But these are the best and one in particular, which we define at end of article, is our favorite and what we put most of our clients on these days.

Top 3 Open Source Ecommerce Solutions 

(in no particular order)

  • OpenCart
  • Prestashop
  • ZenCart

A Quick Note …

They all start to sound the same, and some kind of look similar which isn’t a bad thing as a familiar eCommerce layout is best for your customers, but there are other similarities which we recommend. 

We’ve installed, configured, designed and customized most of the carts and we have whittled down these carts because:

  • they have proven records
  • their popularity is a testament to their functionality
  • the have solid software frameworks which is very important because a complicated cart, like Magento, will create more headaches for you and cost more to maintain

 

OpenCart – 9 out of 10

The code structure is very clean and logical and makes customizations much more easily than many other platforms. This is crucial to your business as it will allow for easier and more reliable site maintenance. 

Might seem mysterious if your not technical but this is one of the most important aspects of your online store. It’s like knowing that under the hood, you’ve got a solid engine…even if you don’t know how to change the oil.

The administration module is clean and attractive and simple to use. So many other carts have terrible admin back-ends, like osCommerce. Everything is ready and available in such a way that is familiar to anyone with any admin experience. And if not, you’ll learn it quickly. 

Some important OpenCart features:

  • unlimited categories
  • unlimited products
  • unlimited manufacturers
  • templatable
  • multi-language and currency
  • product reviews
  • product ratings
  • SEO friendly urls
  • auto image resizing

 

Prestashop - 8 out of 10

Prestashop is a solid and very popular platform that has quickly grown over the last 3 years. It has an impressive list of features and a straightforward GUI for the front and the back-end, although the back end takes a day to get used to. 

The install and configuration for this one-stop shop is doable even for the web novice.  

Some important Prestashop features: 

  • Unlimited categories, subcategories and products
  • Product customers’ evaluations and comments
  • Quantity discounts
  • Wish list
  • Featured products on homepage
  • Top sellers on homepage
  • Product image zoom
  • Customer referral program
  • Loyalty system (points)

 

ZenCart - 7 out of 10

ZenCart is a good cart to beginner and small business and those who want to keep their online presence relatively simple. It’s basic framework allows to make minimal changes to design and layout without too much fuss but if you want a very different look or require much more customization in features and / or design, a more sophisticated cart, you’d be better off with one of the others above.

Some important ZenCart features: 

  • Quantity discounts
  • Easy to install
  • Advanced template system
  • Merchandise Pricing options
  • Products can be marked as free or Call for Price
  • Featured products
  • Minimum or maximum quantities
  • Product attributes
Category: ecommerce, internet business |
admin | November 12, 2011
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Which PayPal account is right for me?

So, you have your business and your website and you now want to sell your products and/or services online. You’re new to having your own e-commerce store but you’ve heard PayPal is an affordable and capable way of allowing your customers to pay for your products via your website.

This is true but the question you’re asking is what options does PayPal offer and which is best for me?

Here’s a review of the 3 different payment methods:

3 PayPal Payment Options

The PayPal back-end experience in terms of reports, search, payments received or paid out, etc. are basically the same between the 3 different accounts. The main difference is the user experience and some tasks you might or might not need to do.

 

Website Payments Standard (Without Cart)

Whose it for?  For novice e-commerce webpreneurs whose website does NOT have shopping cart software.  You can use this option if:

  • you do not have a shopping cart on your website
  • have limited products (max 15 – 20)
  • do not nor expect to have high sales volume
  • know some basics of html (or willing to learn)
You will need to manage your products in PayPal. After you setup the products, PayPal will generate html code snippets (the Buy button) to paste into your product pages. When user clicks the buy button, they are redirected to PayPal site that will display your company name and provide the shopping cart experience you don’t have on your site. The user can check out on PayPal and return and continue shopping.

 

Advantages:
  • if you do not and will not have shopping cart software
  • have limited products
  • can work with basic html
  • no SSL certificate needed
Disadvantages
This option is meant for most basic and limited shops – to provide a workable solution. Any serious e-commerce with products and volume will have graduated to other options.
  • difficult to manage – not admin friendly
  • not meant for 25 products or more
  • knowledge of html
  • generally poor user checkout experience
Cost:
YOUR MONTHLY
SALES		 YOUR FEE PER
TRANSACTION		 EXAMPLES
$0 to $3,000 2.9% + $0.30 $3.20 fee on a $100 sale
$3,000+ to $10,000 2.5% + $0.30* $2.80 fee on a $100 sale
$10,000+ 2.2% + $0.30* $2.50 fee on a $100 sale

 

Website Payments Standard (With Cart)

Whose it for?  For new e-commerce webpreneurs whose website DOES have shopping cart software.  This is an excellent economical option for the new, or fairly new, webpreneur (internet entrepreneur). It removes all of the listed disadvantages above!

Advantages:
  • costs only if you sell
  • most of the shopping cart experience is on your site
  • manage products within your own site admin
  • no SSL certificate needed
Disadvantages
There really aren’t any disadvantages except .. for the big one … having a user redirected off your site while they’re checking out.  Not the biggest deal as you’re getting going, but as your site grows and as you mature as a Webpreneur, and study conversion rates during the checkout process, you will see the extra benefit and extra sales you will get from a user checking out on your site!
Cost:
Same as above.

 

Website Payments Pro (With Cart)

Whose it for?  For serious e-commerce webpreneurs whose website has shopping cart software and who has improving or moderate to high sales volume – or planning on being there soon. You want this option if:

Advantages:
  • you have a pro shopping cart on your website (NOT plugin)
  • have many products (more than 30 – 50)
  • expects or aiming for moderate to high sales volume
  • is in it to win – long term & serious
Disadvantages
There really aren’t any disadvantages (except as listed below) … you get the big advantage of looking like a webpreneur e-commerce pro by having users checkout and pay on your site. But the disadvantages are: 
  • additional set monthly cost plus percent
  • need SSL certificate for you site
Cost:
$30.00 Monthly fee plus …
YOUR MONTHLY 
SALES2		 YOUR FEE PER 
TRANSACTION		 EXAMPLES
$0 to $3,000* 2.9% + $0.30 $3.20 fee on a $100 sale
$3,000+ to $10,000 2.5% + $0.30* $2.80 fee on a $100 sale
$10,000+ 2.2% + $0.30* $2.50 fee on a $100 sale

Finally, Webpreneurs …

If you’re starting out, and serious about at least a 6 to 12 month commitment to your online business, you would be best served by at least Option #2.

Payment Pro is for serious ecommerce stores with sales and volume and making the most of their site.

Option #1 is really for begginners or for infrequent or known customers who know you and are trustworthy of the process because of their knowledge of you.

Best of Luck!!!

Category: ecommerce |