Small Business Ecommerce Web Design

If your small business is venturing into ecommerce, you may be daunted by the technical wizardry you think is involved. But fear not: complete web store software packages will keep all the technical wizardry safely behind the screen, so you don't have to worry about it. All you have to do is choose a design, stock your store, and promote it. Here's how to do that.

Designing Your Online Store: Choosing a Template

When starting a brand-new online store for a small business, you're better off choosing a pre-existing design template rather than having a design done from scratch.

• Templates. If you’re not quite sure what kind of design you'd like, you can browse through the design templates included with most hosted online store programs.

• Themes. Some online store builders take the design template concept one step further, with "themes." Themes are essentially templates that include not only basic design elements but also text styles such as font faces and sizes. Themes also allow for slightly different pages across a website with a single unified design, without having to configure each page individually. For instance, a web store theme might include a product description page, a product category page, an "add to cart" page, and a checkout page. Just by choosing a single theme, you have all the pages in the shopping cart designed with a single, unified professional design, just like big, successful web stores.

• Theme builder. If you want to make changes to a theme–say a different font or a different color–some web store software packages make it easy with a "theme builder." With the theme builder, you can select values for features such as color and font. You can even choose to build a theme from scratch, though for most web stores this will be a case of re-inventing the wheel unnecessarily. You don't need to know anything about HTML; the interface is much like a word processing program.

• Professional design. Once you've created your store using templates or a theme builder, you can turn to a professional designer to make your site really special. Still, you may want to stick with the basic template or theme-builder site until you have a firm idea of how users are interacting with it and what elements are working. That way you'll have concrete requests to make of the designer.

Building Your Online Store: Inventory

The foundation of any online store is the products or services being sold. With most web store and shopping cart software packages, the functions for adding, removing, and pricing items are collectively called "inventory."

Even if you're selling intangibles such as downloadable software, you will use the inventory functions to specify how the items will be sold. There are options for setting the available quantity in stock to unlimited, or handling just about any kind of permutation of selling products or services online. Web store software makers have seen it all.

One of the great things about using a hosted web store software package is that if you do have trouble setting something up, you can get help quickly from customer service.

Adding New Web Pages to an Online Store

If you want to add new pages to your online store, the store creator software can help. If all you want is to add a new product, you only have to use the "add a product" feature, which is often listed under "inventory." However, if you want to add pages for sales copy, manuals, privacy policies, terms and conditions, the store creator interface is the way to do it. Most online store creators have a way of adding pages to a web store without having to use HTML; you simply type in your text in the form and upload any images.

Getting Your Store Found in Search Engines

In order for your online store to generate the most business possible, you’ll want to make sure that your store is easily searchable for Internet shoppers. Unfortunately, some web stores create pages using a dynamic script that search engines cannot index.

Often you can tell if a web store cannot be indexed by search engines by looking at the URL of an inside web page (the homepage, also called the index page or "front page," will usually be search-engine-index-able no matter what). If the URL is a long string of characters that is slightly different from one user to the next (say, when you open the page on your computer and someone else opens the page on another machine), that likely means the site is using "session IDs" which search engines have a notoriously difficult time interpreting. If the URL is something simpler, such as "domain.com/category-5/product-6.php", the page is much more likely to be search-engine friendly.

The best way to check whether a web store or shopping cart software produces "search-engine-friendly" pages is to check the documentation; software that's search-engine-friendly will usually say so.

Of course, as with any website, doing well in search engines still requires your site to have links pointing to it and some text on the pages. Just because search engines can index a page doesn't mean they'll return it for any searches.

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Profits With Safety In The Small Business

As a small business owner, you are a risk taker. There is excitement and challenge in such a venture, but to succeed you need good management information, an ability to be a good manager of people and the intelligence and inner strength to make the right decisions. From unnecessary risk taking, thousands of workers die each year and many suffer injury or illness from conditions at work. 

How often does an owner or manager actually see work-related deaths, serious injuries or illnesses in the workplace? In some small businesses, the answer is rarely. For this reason, many owners or managers do not understand why there is controversy about the government having occupational safety and health agencies with enforceable laws. But others have learned why; unfortunately, they have experienced a loss. These owner/managers will tell you that it is too late to do anything once a serious accident happens. They have learned that prevention is the only real way to avoid this loss and unnecessary risk taking.

Reducing losses and risks are goals that you as an owner or manager must set in assuring the safety and well being of all in the business. Small business owners and managers place a high value on the well-being of your employees. Family members and personal acquaintances may be part of the business and even hired employees will become almost like family as time goes by. 
Investing in safety and health activity now will better enable you to avoid possible losses in the future.

Nobody wants accidents to happen in the workplace. A serious fire, a permanent injury, or the death of an employee or owner can cause the loss of profit or even an entire business. To prevent such losses, you don’t have to turn your business upside down. You may not have to spend a lot of money, either. You do need to use good business sense and apply safety prevention policies. There are reasons why accidents happen. An accident always has a cause and a reason why. Once you know why an accident happened, it is possible to prevent future incidents.

The business needs a plan to prevent accidents. Not all dangers at the workplace depend on an accident to cause harm, of course. Worker exposure to toxic chemicals or harmful levels of noise or even radiation may cause gradual illness over a long period of time. There needs to be a plan that includes prevention of these unseen health hazard exposures. There needs to have a safety and health management system. It is not difficult to develop such a plan. Basically, the plan should address the types of accidents and health hazard exposures that could happen in the workplace. Because each workplace is different, the program should address the specific needs and requirements for the business.

There are four basic elements to all good safety and health programs. These are as follows:

1) The manager needs to lead the way, by setting policy, assigning and supporting responsibility, setting an example and involving employees.
2) The workplace needs to be continually analyzed to identify all existing and potential hazards.
3) Methods to prevent or control existing or potential hazards are put in place, maintained, and updated.
4) Managers, supervisors and employees need to be trained to understand and deal with worksite hazards.

Regardless of the size of the business, the plan should use each of these points to prevent workplace accidents and possible injuries and illnesses. Developing a workplace program following these four points is a key step in protecting you and your workers’ safety and health. If you already have a program, reviewing it in relation to these points should help you improve what you have.

Following this four-point approach to safety and health in your business may also improve efficiency. It may help you reduce insurance claims and other costs. The plan will certainly give you a way to express and document your good faith and commitment to protecting your workers’ health and safety.

This approach usually does not involve large costs. Developing a health and safety protection plan does not have to be expensive and generally does not require additional employees, especially in smaller businesses. Safety and health can be integrated into your other business functions with modest effort on your part and will become part of the daily routine.

The key to the success of a safety and health plan and program is to see it as a part of the business operation and to see it reflected in the day-to-day operations. Once implemented, the safety program will become second natured to the owner as well as the employees.

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7 Key Tactics For The Small Business Owner

For most folks, owning your own business is a dream come true.  The freedom of being your own boss and succeeding to the best of your ability are facts of life for the small business owner.  Sure, there's more stress than what you probably imagined when you were creating your grand plans, but with a little strategy and planning you can overcome any tough spot you get in.  There are 7 tactics developed by successful marketers that are sure to make your business as successful as theirs.

1. Create A One of a Kind Selling Point
If you want to stand out from the crowd, create a unique selling proposition that stresses the benefits the customers will receive from doing business with you.  Will they get faster service?  Go ahead and dramatize it, but keep the customer at the focus..."Get free overnight delivery!"  Hey, it tells the customer...you get quick service and a discount on shipping.   Two definite benefits in one statement.

Why should someone buy from you and not your competitor?  I hate to deal a blow to your ego, but it really has nothing to do with you , your product, or your service.  Yeah, its a little self-centered, but customers are attracted by offers that point out the things that benefit THEM.

Don't go out on a limb to create new products and services to get attention.  Just, add a special benefit to the ones you already have... maybe it's quicker service.  The most effective things to emphasize are benefits that your competition cannot or is not willing to give.

2. Use Testimonials
Hey, we all know that business owners think their product or services are the best thing going, but it's what the current customers think about it that really matters to your prospective customers.  They're the ones who see things from their point of view... what they have to say about the business has an impact.

Testimonials play an important part in advertising - especially for small businesses.  Yeah, big businesses with well-known names don't have to worry about it, but small companies can use testimonials as marketing tools to build credibility.

Think about it...how else can we gain credibility than by creating a group of satisfied customers and shouting what they have to say?  Let's look at some ways we can make testimonials an effective part of our marketing campaigns.

3. Upsell
Upselling is one of the most successful marketing trends today.  Everywhere you go, someone is trying to get you to buy more.  From McDonalds with its supersize options to clothing stores that try to sell you shoes to match your outfit, everyone's jumping on the band wagon.  Why?  It works!

Your customers already know that you have great products and provide satisfactory service.  They trust you to come through for them.  Think about it...  it's much easier to make sales to someone you already have a relationship with.

Use every opportunity to increase your sales volume within the customer audience you already have.  Do you have a product that goes with the one they are purchasing?  Offer it to them at the register.  It's a proven and effective method for increasing sales.  You may be shocked at the additional sales you can generate from those who are already buying from you.

4.  Make Your Price Seem Smaller
Divide and conquer...  The old war tactic works in marketing too!  When the price seems too steep, break it down into "buyable" size bites.  An $120 item is only 12 low monthly payments of $10.  A $365 purchase would only cost $1 per day.  Now that sounds affordable!

5.  Paint The Benefits Pretty
Customers buy because they want to enjoy the benefits of the purchase.  A lady might buy a dress because she wants to feel sexy, or a man will buy a book because he finds pleasure in reading.  Emotions are the key element that drives purchases.

Use word pictures to stir up the emotions that will instigate the sale.  Let them "feel" the benefits, and they'll be more apt to head for the cash register.  Put them where you want them.

6.  Create Attention Getting Headlines
Are you ready to capture your reader's attention with great copy?  The headline is the place to start.  How often do you scan the newspaper's headlines before you decide whether or not to read the article?  Yeah, that's where we lose or gain the reader's interest, so it's a pretty important part of the advertisement.

A good headline should telegraph its message in twelve words or less. Double check those headlines.  Do they make a promise of a positive benefit, or ask a provocative question? Don't settle for less than attention grabbing statements.

7.  Provide An Offer They Can't Resist
Is your deal too good to pass up?  If not, you need to improve it.  Hey, I'm not talking about cutting prices even more...you've still got to make a profit.  You can make the deal sweeter just by increasing the readers knowledge of the value of the product, or adding bonuses that are perceived as valuable, but cost you little.

Motivate buyers with expirations.  Yeah, an open ended offer encourages procrastination...which leads ...yep, nowhere.  When the customer knows he has until Saturday to purchase an item he'll pay more for on Sunday, he'll make it a priority to head for your shop.

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