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Tagging is undoubtedly a web 2.0 phenomenon and it may actually hold hands with the visitors or readers of a website. (Take a look at Amazon Unspun. Do you remember that Amazon has already taken a great marketing strategy by implementing a simple section - “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…” at the end of a product?)

And undoubtedly, it can help you a lot in case of SEO and more importantly, keyword optimization. At least we are trying it in one of our client’s website.

What happens in a traditional product based websites? They line up different products under different categories and sub categories and put everything into the sidebar.

But what if we change the website layout and place a tag cloud at the top of the page and associate the popularity (voting or page views) of the product with related tags (keyphrases)?

I am implementing this idea in a website that connects service providers with respective buyers in a local niche. The main reason why I had to take such a step is that they had around 2000 keywords along with 170 categories and more than 1500 subcategories.

Now, to keep things simple and to keep almost everything into the eye fold, I was looking to do something different (obviously not for the sake of being different). Another big reason to implement tags was keyword targeting. If I had to accommodate maximum number of keywords in the home page, it would have looked like SPAM. And at the same time if I needed to use all the categories into JS Dropdown menu, it wouldn’t have passed any value to the internal pages. To add to the situation, we did not want to keep the product beyond two clicks.

Apart from adding tags in the home page, we introduced tags in the category pages too. Thus the category pages had sub categories and products as tag along with the popular products under that category.

We are yet to come into some definite conclusion as the whole system is only a few days old. Soon we would come to know about user experience and make necessary changes (we may scrap the idea of tagging too if it does not work effectively).

What else, do you want to know the name of the website? Oops, can’t disclose client’s identity.

But what do you think about that?

Even though some consumers might deny it, product reviews will actually have an impact on their perception of particular products and services. Web owners can use product reviews as a tool that will add credibility to their site.

People are social researchers

Internet users have access to vast information right at their fingertips. They conduct research before pay for something. For example, the Kelsey Group discovered that around 24% of internet users search for information on offline products and service including hotels and accommodations online. 87% of the hotel searchers who read reviews stated that product reviews greatly influenced their choices.

Negative reviews

Don’t look at negative reviews negatively because it can actually add to the credibility of your site. So what if one person says something bad about you? It is impossible to please everyone and you really need not worry if you get one or two bad reviews. Internet users are becoming sophisticated; it does not bother them to read negative information about a company as long as the positive feedback outweighs the negative.

Look at GoDaddy, I’ve read so many bad reviews about the site. Yet, thousands if not millions, of people still patronize the site because the company has already proven that it can deliver. In addition, GoDaddy has more satisfied customers than disgruntled clients so searchers are not afraid to try them out.

In the age of fast food, DSL, and Bluetooth, it is not surprising that customers are becoming more demanding than ever. They want products and services to be served instantly. If you are operating an ecommerce site though, then you probably realize that it is not as easy as that because the delivery process consists of different steps. This is the reason why providing an accurate delivery schedule when customers make online checkouts is essential to receive customer approval and satisfaction.

Determine the transit time

Basically, transit time is the period between ordering and the arrival of the goods at the customer’s door. To accurately determine the transit time, you should include the time for order retrieval, transmittal, packing, and the shipping among others. Below are the things you need to consider for transit time:

Clock deadline – this is the time of day by which the order must be received in order to meet a particular schedule.

Order retrieval – this involves getting the order from the website to where you need to route them to the appropriate department for processing.

Order transmittal – this is the time required for the transfer of information about the order. Usually, this will take several minutes if you have a central warehouse.

Packing – the time it takes for your staff to get the ordered items and pack them for shipment. Although this process is relatively simple, it can become time-consuming if you have a high volume of orders.

Accounting – the process of payment verification before the products are delivered.

Shipping time – usually provided by the carrier such as UPS, and FedEx among others.

Take a closer look at the payment options of some of your favorite retailers and you will discover that they are using other payment options beyond Google Checkout and PayPal. Alternative payment options entice buyers who don’t have credit cards or who are wary about sharing their personal information online.

Bill Me Later

Consumers who want to extend their payment over a certain period of time, Bill Me Later ma be a good option because it allows consumer to pay on an installment basis. There are currently around 3 million consumers who are using this system and it is becoming increasingly popular today. Although only large retailers are using this system right now, this will soon change as more businessmen realize the potential of giving the consumer a “way to pay”.

Revolution Card

Revolution Card gives merchants a chance to give back to their customers because of its incredibly low processing fee. The 0.5% processing fee is certainly a far cry from the usual 2%-4% processing fee that consumers have to pay in the past; this in itself, is already an attractive enough benefit. And when you consider the fact that they also offer privacy protection by asking consumers for their PIN for every transaction, anyone will inevitably conclude that Revolution Card is definitely about to revolutionize how consumers pay for goods and services over the internet.

eBillme

For consumers who prefer to use their debit cards instead of their credit cards, eBillMe is the way to go. Debit is an incredibly strong trend both in traditional businesses and over e-commerce businesses. Currently, this service is still not available for small retailers but the company is developing a small business system which will be introduced later this year.

Taxation is a highly debatable issue as far as e-commerce is concerned.  Those who favor taxes will say that online businessmen definitely need to pay their due because they are putting brick-and-mortar businesses at a disadvantage. On the other hand, those who are against e-commerce taxation will argue that it is up to traditional businesses to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the World Wide Web; and in fact, many brick-and-mortar businesses have an online presence as well.

Also, people who are against tax on online earnings argue that taxes can put some online businesses at a disadvantage particularly because if one country regulates their tax laws, their competitors in another country will still enjoy the benefit of not paying the proper amount in taxes.

But the fact is, most people have no idea how they can pay the exact amount of tax from their online earnings even if they want to. If you are starting an e-commerce business, the Internet Tax Freedom Act which was authored by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden and House Policy Chairman Christopher Cox is a great resource that will help you determine how much tax you really need to pay.

There is always a misconception that an online business is tax-free. This is not so because similar to a brick-and-mortar business, you are also engaged in a legitimate business which needs to carry its share of the tax burden.

It has been said countless times that a web owner should treat his online venture as a serious business undertaking. Being able to meet various legal requirements of setting up a website is essential in this case. Complying with internet laws and regulations is actually more simple than you think; most of the time, web owners are actually complying with the laws without even being aware of it. Basically, there are two legal aspects every web owner should meet: the business notices and the legal notices.

Business Notices:

The About Us Page – this is important to let your visitors know about you and your company. You should include your name, the name of your company, and pictures if applicable. If you have other partners in the business, you should do the same for them.

The Contact Us Page – at the very least, the contact us page should include your e-mail address. And if you have an offline office, you should include the physical establishment of your company. However, try not to disclose your home address and personal phone number on the website.

The Affiliate Program Page – if you are using affiliate programs as a marketing method, you need to include a page wherein interested affiliates can look for more information. You need to describe your affiliate program, the payment terms, and the support affiliates can expect from your company.

Legal Notices:

Copyright – basically, this is just the copyright information of your website which needs to be included on the webpage. Be sure to include the word “Copyright” and the copyright symbol.

Disclaimer – this is the extent to which visitors can use the information available on your website. It should also state that your company will not shoulder any liability that may arise from using or downloading some information from the website.

Privacy Policy – when you need to gather contact information about your consumer, you need to make a “privacy policy” stating the purpose of gathering their data and what you will do with the information you gather.

Terms of Service – visitors should be informed about who is legally allowed to visit a particular website. You need to put an age statement as well.

Top online stores usually get a conversion rate of between 5% and 15%. You might be wondering how they can achieve this especially when your conversion rate is just a fraction of this percentage. Two popular merchandizing techniques are cross-selling and up-selling.

Cross Selling

Cross selling is basically just offering an item that is similar, an alternative, or an add-on for the product that the consumer is looking for.  Cross selling will enable the consumer to find just exactly what they had been looking for; this will increase the rate of completion. Cross selling can also lead to additional sales from the original selection because consumers found add-ons for their original item.

Aside from related items, merchants also use cross-selling techniques to showcase the best-sellers as well as high margin products from their store. There is always the possibility that consumers will be interested in these items so that can translate to a higher conversion rate.

Up Selling

Up selling is basically offering the consumer more expensive and better quality products from their original selection. If the visitors goes to a page and puts the item in the shopping cart, it is almost certain that he will purchase that product. But how can you utilize up selling in this case?

Well, a popular online approach to up selling is bundling; that is, the merchant can offer two or more products together at a discount. The merchant can also offer discounts on a particular product or service when the consumer purchases from the store. This will encourage the consumer to buy more products from your store.

Displaying the Options

It is interesting to note that there is a high rate of abandonment in shopping carts as consumers still decide whether they will really purchase the items they selected or not. In line with this, displaying both cross selling and up selling option in the product page as well as the shopping cart is recommended.

Ecommerce is a very competitive business environment to get into. In fact, a lot of small and medium scale business owners are intimidated just by the thought of competition against industry giants online because they fear that they do not have the necessary resources for this endeavor. However, this should no longer be a concern because a lot of ecommerce software has already been developed to give anyone a chance to be successful in e-business.

It is important to look for an ecommerce solution that is reliable and effective though. One such software is CoreCommerce. They have even partnered with RackSpace IT Hosting because this is a known company for Zero-Downtime network and Fanatical Support. In fact, Gartner Research even recognized RackSpace as a leader in the hosting business.

Another good thing about CoreCommerce is that no transaction fees are charged to your account. Most other ecommerce software providers charge these fees but CoreCommerce does not believe in penalizing businessmen for the success they worked hard for. Their goal is to simply provide their clients with the best ecommerce software and support in today’s global marketplace.

The CoreCommerce Software also provides a wide variety of features that had been specifically designed to meet the needs of their customers. Through years of feedback and research, the company has been able to develop the best list of features in the marketplace today including:

Security – has 128-bit encryption SSL, admin area access log, fully encrypted credit card information, multiple admin log, cutting edge firewall protection, premium bandwidth, daily backups, and multiple fiber carriers.

Order processing – one page checkout, automatic calculation of taxes, shipping options, accepts many kinds of payment methods, email receipts for both the customer and admin, unique order number, and batch order printing.

Website Look – the software can be heavily customized to match the overall theme of your site, ability to manage all the content in the store, various free ready-to-use templates, logo upload, favicon upload, search functionality, browse by vendors or categories, and sort by price features among others.

Search Engine Friendly – the whole store is search engine optimized, generates static HTML pages, header tags, meta tags, page titles, add custom content, and the bread crumb trails usage.

There are so many other features available from CoreCommerce that can help an ecommerce businessman set-up and maintain his online store successfully. But despite the advanced features they can take advantage of from CoreCommerce; this software is actually relatively easy to set-up. There are 5 basic processes that will tell you exactly how you can effectively use CoreCommerce.

Nowadays, it would seem like every company is trying to sell something over the internet. But behind the various websites the sell goods and services is the complicated process of setting up a payment system that is both reliable and secure.

Merchant Account

In order to understand how payment systems for ecommerce would work, you must first try to think like a banker. Every offline business establishments needs to have a merchant account in order to accept credit card payments but this is especially true in an online business where card payments is the preferred payment method. In the past, merchant accounts were harder to set up because banks used to require that a business should have existed at least two years before their application can be approved. In addition, this business must be tied up with a property or a street address to be considered. But this is not the case today because various service bureaus such as the First Data Merchant Services, Authorize.net, and many other providers has made it easier for online business owners to open a reliable merchant account.

When a customer uses his credit card to pay for something over the internet, there are several stages he has to go through for his transaction to be processed. These include authorization and capture. Basically, authorization refers to the act of verifying in an account number is valid, if it still has enough credit, and if it is not reported as stolen or lost. The address of the customer will also be matched against the account to deter any fraudulent activities. Meanwhile, capture refers to the approval, the posting, and the shipment of the products. Capture can happen in three ways. First, it can occur during the authorization process with the bank wherein the bank clears both the credit card and the storefront’s account. Second, it can happen after the authorization occurs but you will need to conduct a separate capture process. And lastly, it can occur on hourly batches where the storefront owner will need to coordinate with a card processing intermediary.

PayPal

Aside from credit card payments, another popular way to send money online is PayPal. If you are wary about revealing your credit card information over the internet then using PayPal may be the answer for you. PayPal is basically an online account that allows you to send and receive money instantly. Note though that to fund or withdraw money from your PayPal account may take several days.

Online stores such as Ebay.com promote the use of PayPal extensively partly because Ebay.com also owns PayPal. Sending and receiving money from PayPal is also easier for international users because they do not need to shoulder the costs associated with credit card payments when they use this account. PayPal accepts various cards such as Visa, American Express, MasterCard, and Discover so you can fund your account easily and conveniently.

Right now, a lot of merchants already accept PayPal payments but there are still some that only accept credit card payments. Even if this is the case today though, it is undeniable that more merchants will accept PayPal payments in the future because customers have already accepted it as a reliable payment method.

More isn’t always better, especially when it comes to mobile devices and online services.

In-Stat has recently put out a report showing that combining features for mobile devices and web services aren’t seen as useful or wanted by consumers.  Consumers and readers are looking for a combination of functionality and a new interaction model.  If you are aiming your product towards the corporate world, the study also finds that US businesses and business professionals tend to be loyal to older technologies and are unlikely to take on the cost of an unproven invention.

Even with the invention of all these lovely convergent technologies, many users prefer using multiple, redundant devices, over choosing a single phone and single computing device.

“The smartphone is a successful example of a converged device where a single device combines a PDA, computing device and a mobile phone. In this case, the smartphone offers a benefit to the user in the form of real-time data, typically wireless email,” said In-Stat analyst Bill Hughes.

Defining an easy to use and understand product is still the way to go.  If a new idea or solution comes to you, introduce it as an update if it is very small, or as a whole new product if it is of any consequence.  Think of Yahoo! if you need an example, all the services it has developed and canceled after implementation are pretty astounding in number. However, Yahoo! was great with its search engine, and that’s what still makes all the money and gets distributed in every new deal Yahoo makes.