Ecommerce has become a very real source of revenue for thousands of people out there. Though there are the huge vendors such as Amazon and eBay, there are a lot of smaller sites that are operated by a smaller crew of people and often focus on only a particular category of products. If you are running on such site, or are even involved in one, then an Ecommerce Theme can go a long way in helping you achieve that monthly or yearly sales target.
Your Ecommerce site is basically an online store. If you owned an actual store, chances are, you’d spend thousands of dollars working on the interior and the overall look of a store. That’s because it’s an accepted fact that the environment someone is buying something in goes a long way in influencing the buying decision. So why should an online store be any different? If your website is cluttered, doesn’t have a uniform look, and is tacky, then your customers will be put off and will go elsewhere with their business.
However, do not despair. There are thousands of free Ecommerce templates that you can apply to your site, thus resulting in a polished look. These free Ecommerce themes can be a life saver if you have no knowledge of web programming, as they are usually easy to install and use. You can find these easily with a quick Google search.
However, if you’re serious about your electronic business, then you probably want a theme that is so polished that it gets your customers coming back. In this case, it makes sense to spend a little money on a theme designed by experts. Several sites online have professionally designed themes that are available at very reasonable prices.
Generally, most Ecommerce websites are not written by a programmer from scratch. They are based on one of many available engines, such as Magento or OSCommerce. Both are great platforms with their own set of benefits. You need to ask the web developer who helped design your site about which engine he based your site on. Once that’s done, you can head down to the site of your choice and choose the relevant section. You’ll be provided with a wide variety of themes, and can choose any you feel suits your site.
Some quick pointers on picking a theme; make sure it is compatible with your website. Broken links and unwieldy borders can look really bad, and are usually the result of an incompatible theme. Keep it simple, light colours usually work best. Avoid flashing banners, flash ads, and so on. Don’t pick a theme with too many colours too. They can make your site look cluttered.
Once you’ve chosen a theme and paid for it, installation is a breeze. It’s important to pick a theme that works well with your site you like, and using platforms such as Magento and OSCommerce, this becomes a task you can accomplish with little effort. So, it’s now a simple procedure to convert your site from its present state to something that’s as polished as all the big names out there today.
Customers are providing a wealth of free data to businesses of all sizes, and it’s up to the company to implement this data to help customers make better decisions. Generating customer feedback is the way they provide this feed back. Let’s take Amazon.com for instance and their customer reviews. Customer reviews are hardly a novel idea, but one that convinces consumers that they’re making the right decision is.
Just scroll around Amazon, and you’ll see several variations on this practice, from “customers who bought this item also bought…” to “customers who viewed this item also viewed…” Known as social proof in the marketing arena, it is a popular technique to convince customers to purchase. Amazon uses this Web 3.0 customer feedback marketing features. Informing new customers “Customers who viewed this item ultimately bought…,” is providing social proof according to Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist of Amazon, while speaking at the World Innovation Forum about how to bring your business into Web 3.0 marketing.
One key to mining this customer feedback to first extract these info-net nuggets. Every business executives should have their IT department report multiple times daily the last 1,000 search queries on their company Web sites. Here you will discover what your customers are looking for, how they are arriving at your website, and if any trends are developing. This will enable you to develop improved processes to make their searches and decisions easier.
Customer-to-customer interaction is another important Web 3.0 marketing feature. Getting your new customer to share the love, to share the results of their happy and successful buying experience with someone else. Including within your purchase and checkout process the opportunity for your customer to access methods to immediately share their purchasing experience with a colleague, friend, or family member has proven to be a successful way many online retailer have began to implement a customer to customer interaction experience.
Your customers communicate with other customers. Your customers enjoy and want to communicate their personality to the world in some way. Web 3.0 marketing involves customer to customer interaction, customer feedback data mining and also the ability of your customer to publicly share their wants and interest. A gift registry of sorts; Amazon refers to theirs as its wish lists. The Wish List allows Amazon’s customers a tool to publicly share a list of their interests and wants based upon Amazon’s multimillion product selection database.. “It not only shows that this is book, product, service you are interested in,” but it also reveals some of what kind of person you are. This Web 3.0 marketing feature is referred to as Customer-to-world communication according to Weigend.
He went on to relate how customer-to-world communication and interaction is popular because like Twitter, it creates an “illusion of an audience.” “I have followers. If I have 387 Twitter followers I feel that if I say what I’m having for breakfast, then 387 people will read it.”A similar illusion is established when you have a specific number of individuals monitoring your wish list, Weigend believes.
This Customer-to-world communication Web 3.0 marketing feature, this “illusion” of an audience helps create and foster online communities within Twitter and Amazon e commerce model. It will do the same for your company’s site when implemented correctly. Web 3.0 features like the wish lists give the impression that the list owner is publicly sharing their interests.
Customer-to-customer interaction enables the customer to share the love by instant notification of their pleasure of their purchase and a brief glimpse into their superior character.
While customer feedback data mining gives you access to the inner workings of your customers mind as it relates to your product or service. This info-net data enables you to craft presentations, information and strategies custom tailored to your customer needs.
The internet has created a new breed of consumer. Customer service is being placed in the hands of the consumer. Now they have the opportunity to voice their choice and let multiple others know about their experience. These Web 3.0 marketing process are only the beginning. As Web 3.0 marketing evolves improves so will the ability to interact with customers and improve customer service.
What is ecommerce? This is a question that I have been asked many times by people. I think that the main reason for this is that in the information age today nearly everything is internet based. If you look at how we used to transact in the past you will notice a significant difference.
Ecommerce has had a huge impact in our lives. If you need insurance you can get this over the web, if you need to do grocery shopping you can order over the internet and if you need any electrical appliance, books or dvds you can buy from an online store like Amazon. If you operate a business and have not considered using ecommerce your competitors will leave you behind.
Most people these days first do their research on the internet and once they have completed this research they will transact over the web primarily because it is very convenient. By definition ecommerce is transacting using internet technologies.
This could be selling products online like an online store with a shopping cart and accepting payment via credit cards or electronic checks. EDI(Electronic Data Interchange) with the relevant suppliers and customers for example you could have a marketplace where companies can order stationary from stationary suppliers and order in bulk. This will pass significant savings to the purchaser. This will streamline your business processes using workflow systems that will assimilate your business intelligence.
There are two main types of ecommerce. These are B2B which is business to business ecommerce and B2C which is business to consumer ecommerce.
Let us look at the main advantages of implementing ecommerce in your business. If you can produce a high converting ecommerce site then you will create a profitable stream. This will also reduce the cost of the order as traditional paper based orders have a higher cost to process. You will also gain access to a much larger customer base as you are not limited by a physical store as geographical boundaries would have been removed.
The sooner that you implement ecommerce in your business the sooner you will be able to reap the rewards.