Using the E-Commerce Internet .... getting ready ....holiday season It feels strange to talk about the holiday season while we're still going to the beach and enjoying the nice weather but, this is the nature of retailing whether you're a pure play e-tail merchant or run a brick and mortar store. The big guys have been getting ready since the last holiday season. PROMOTE You're not going to make sales if customers can't find you. Now is the time to order a small ad in appropriate print publications directing people to your web site. It doesn't have to be a fancy ad but, if you have a special holiday gift offering, mention it. This is a good time to introduce a holiday gift pack offer. Assemble related items into a single package and offer a discount over the individual item prices. This will give holiday shoppers a convenient (fewer decisions) choice and increase per order revenue at the same time. We're all familiar with the Hickory Farms food pack as good example of a pre packaged holiday offer. Be sure to check site description and keywords in the header of your web pages to make sure they're up to date. You may have added new items to the store and should include these in the keyword entry. Anytime you make a revision, resubmit the page to the top ten or so search engines. REVIEW Review the start to finish operation of your web store. If your store supports a test mode use it at an unlikely ordering time and be your own customer. If you don't have a test mode, make a purchase anyway using a valid credit card. Your net cost will only be the processing fee ....a small price to insure that everything is operating correctly. Pay particular attention to product descriptions that appear in a list of items. These should be clear and concise to avoid customer confusion. Link to product detail pages where long descriptions are required. If your store supports it, place an "add to cart" button on the detail page for each item. STOCK UP Naturally you want to make sure you have enough product on hand to make timely deliveries. This is very important and has been the source of customer irritation in past years with on-line stores that have experienced greater than expected holiday sales and couldn't make timely deliveries. If you get your products from a manufacturer, you might try getting advance shipments on consignment. This will save you cash out of pocket and avoid having excess inventory left over after the holiday season. Right now is the time to act on this. Call your supplier, describe your web store, and explain that you want to put your resources into pre holiday promotional efforts while at the same time being able to make quick deliveries. Most suppliers will respond positively to your request. It gives them a better shot at making sales. Also, don't forget to have enough shipping materials on hand. Many customers will order at the last minute. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to safely pack an item in the wrong size box while under pressure to get the order out the door. If you haven't already, be sure to have a method of shipment worked out. This may include insuring items and should include some method of delivery confirmation. Along these lines, if your store supports it, you should offer a next day shipping option to accommodate those last minute shoppers. WATCH OUT At any time but especially during the holiday season, sending items as gifts is a tricky area for the on-line merchant because it frequently means shipping to an address different from the billing address. This makes it more difficult to ascertain the validity of the order. Be particularly alert to multiple orders going to the same address. This is a common scam that fraudsters are most likely to take advantage of when you're most busy. The destination address could be a temporary location or a freight forwarder address and the credit card number could be stolen. Next issue:  Getting ready ....site design Up-comming:  More on getting ready FURTHER READING: Other IT newsletters can be found at FreeTechMail.org Don't overlook our LINKS page for information sources.  Products of ImagineNation!    Providing on-line stores for small and mid-size Internet businesses since 1996,   Imaginenation is a full service company meeting all of your e-commerce needs:    Storefronts     Credit Card Processing     Back Office Utilities     Merchant Accounts DO YOU NEED HELP WITH OUR PRODUCTS OR HAVE A GENERAL QUESTION? Please E-Mail specific product questions using the mail form at  ImagineNation.com For general information questions, visit our moderated public Q&A   FORUM For back issues of E-ComTips visit the   ARCHIVE Recent     Changes    Improvements    Upgrades    Stories New benefit for webPeddleGold subscribers! Last weekend a search utility was added to the PeddleGold storefront. Clients didn't have to do anything but download a default search button for use with the utility or they could have used their own custom buttons. This is the power and convenience of subscribing to a served application. The search button generates a new page within the PeddleGold store where customers can enter search criterion at three different levels of specificity: 1) Search by item type (category). This is a drop down menu that is automatically generated from the TYPE field of the merchant's product table. A search here returns a list of all items in the store of the type selected. 2) Search by item description. Entries here to a form field will return a list of all items in the store where a portion of the DESCRIPTION in the product table matches the search entry. This is a broad criteria search designed not to miss any product possibilities resulting from vague entries. For instance, a search on 'sweat' will return a list including sweat shirts, sweatbands, and sweaters. However, a more specific search, for instance on "sweater", will return a list of just sweaters. 3) Search by item ID number. Repeat customers will find this capability useful for quickly reordering an item. The customer simply enters a known product ID number or even just the first few characters and is immediately presented with a select list for the item. There are more benefits in the works for PeddleGold subscribers. Have you seen the new PeddleGold storefront? You supply the content; we provide the container. Instantly turn your web site into a storefront with PeddleGold. Create your own table of products, upload that and the PeddleGold container, and you have an on-line store complete with select lists, buy buttons, search utility, shopping cart, shipping form, and payment form. Use our default navigation buttons or your own images, logo, colors, and background to keep the look and feel of your web site all the way through to order confirmation. PeddleGold automatically sends your customer a confirmation copy of the order and integrates seamlessly with our back office utilities for order management and credit card processing. Using the IAMS back office utility with PeddleGold is an excellent, low cost combination with "no merchant account required" support for taking credit card payment. PeddleGold is the standard for robust, easy to use, low cost storefronts. Take a demo ride.       Check our low prices. Get your first month free. Tips 'n Tricks    HTML tags shown here use the caret (^) instead of braces <> for proper rendering.     Brackets are represented by the curly bracket symbols ({}). PeddleGold storefronts support linking from the product description field. Sometimes the first thing a customer sees when entering or searching a store is a select list of items where they can place an order. Depending on the item, a customer may want to know more about it before ordering. Linking gives you the opportunity to make the description field of the item clear and concise and at the same time enticing without taking away from more informative product descriptions. For instance: the description field might read, "Newly Arrived, 3D widgets!, More Info". The "More Info" will be linked to an item detail page as follows: ^a href="Details/3Dwidgets.htm"^More Info^/a^ Note that we created a "Details" folder to hold item detail pages ...just makes better organization. The 3Dwidgets page can be as fancy as you want to make it. It'll usually include a large picture of the item. It can and should also include an "add to cart" button which will have the following link: ^a href="JavaScript:top.addToCart('3dw',1,'B')"^^img src="Buttons/btn_cartadd.gif" hspace=5 vspace=1 border=0 alt="Add this item to shopping basket."^ Add this item to shopping basket.^/a^ Note that we created a "Details" folder to hold item detail pages ...just where 3dw is the product ID code, 1 is the quantity, and B tells the application that the information came from an "add to cart" button. Note that we included both text and image in the link. This sometimes makes navigation easier for the customer. On the same page you may also want to place a "Similar Items" link. This will present your customer with a list of items matching the TYPE field entry. For instance, the link may be as follows: ^a href=javascript:top.readdb('3D Stuff')^View Similar Items^/a^ Note that we created a "Details" folder to hold item detail pages ...just Clicking this link will generate a select list page of 3D Stuff where the customer can enter an order. If the item descriptions here are linked to additional detail pages, the customer can easily get to these pages and make comparisons. ImagineNation © 1996 - 2002 Suffering from overload?  List Removal E-ComTips is brought to you by ImagineNation because you are listed as a user of one of our storefront products or have subscribed to receive the Newsletter itself. To remove your address from our list, go to List Remove and, if your correct address and service ID are not showing when you get there, enter the correct values manually. Please do not reply to this newsletter return e-mail address. Replies here are not processed. Use the Mail Form at ImagineNation to correspond. 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