When building a website for your online business, the first obstacle that people have to figure out is the homepage.  The homepage provides a critical role in your business structure because it is the first thing that people see when they click on your web address and it can set the tone for not only your business, but people can decide based from the structure of your homepage if they can trust you, your products, and doing business with you as a whole in a matter of seconds. Here are seven tips that can help anyone who is building their own website homepage, and how these helpful hints can keep customers from feeling nervous about clicking on your url.

7 Dropship / Wholesale Business Homepage Tips

1. Identify Your Business Purpose

The purpose of your business is not what you’re selling, or what you have to offer, but it’s what you’re trying to accomplish with your website. For example, if you’re selling custom animal feeders for example, your purpose might be to provide high quality animal feeders at low costs. If you’re selling memberships to your wildlife conservation efforts, your purpose might be to educate the public about wildlife conservation and provide effective means to protect our planet.

2. Avoid Sales Outright

If you have tangible items that you’re selling on your website, it’s a good idea to try not to make a sale on your homepage. You can have a small area for promotional offers, but don’t have a line of skirts that are on sale, a line of discontinued items, or clearance, right on your homepage. It’s a good idea to have easy navigation for your site, so that customers can find the products that you’re selling, but try to keep them off the front page.

3. Change It Up For New And Returning Visitors

Customer traffic is what generates the income with online companies. It’s important to always encourage both new and returning customers and one of the ways to do that is by setting up an RSS feed to remind visitors to come back to your site, create newsletters, or any kind of incentive for returning. If you have the programming ability, you can to do something similar to amazon.com, where customers who aren’t logged in can see popular items, and customers who do log in can see suggested items based from things that they previous purchased.

4. Prioritize Content

You only have so much space on your homepage to put information in without making it seem cramped. Figure out the main things you want on your homepage, and prioritze them accordingly. If there is something that you would like to have more attention drawn to, highlight it with boxes, larger – but not excessively larger – font, or anything else that would work with your page layout. Keep in mind that customers usually see websites in the “f pattern” style. Their eyes usually hit the top left corner first, then go right, then down. The more they scroll down the less interested they become in the content, to build accordingly.

5. Have Contrast

It’s important to remember not to have a noisy background or something that is going to mix your content in with the back of your screen. If you’re putting together two colors that clash, or are too dark together, then it could have a negative effect on your website’s success.  Keep in mind relevant sizing when it comes to font sizes and images, and to avoid “shouting” at people with all capital letters. One thing I had a hard time learning when I was getting my BA in Communications Design was white space. I always wanted to get everything I could into a page, but white space is much more classy, less suffocating, and more effective than clutter, so be sure to use plenty of it.

6. Maximize Page Response Times

If you are importing pictures that are 3mb a piece, it’s going to take a while to have the page load with all the content. Make sure to have your files downsized accordingly so your customers don’t instantly click off your page once they realize it will take more than five seconds to load. Customers have very short attention spans, so don’t lose them even before they get to your homepage.

7. Pick Graphics Carefully

Graphics and photos are one of those things that can make or break your homepage. If you want to use graphics, make sure they are relevant and applicable to what your overall design of your website is, and what your company is selling. If you found a cute picture of a cat and wanted to share it – putting it on your homepage is probably not the best place to put it.

Education, home based business, online business, website design / help

If you look through the archives of our blog, there are many mentions to the word niche and finding your niche market. So, what exactly is a niche? According to the dictionary one of the meanings of the word niche means a distinct segment of a market. When figuring out what you want to sell online, you want to find something that fits a certain niche. Your niche will allow you to zero in on a certain audience / market of people and instead of being a generalist, you become a specialist in your products.

Deciding Your Wholesale / Dropship Niche

1. Find Products You Are Passionate About

This will help you the most in your search to finding a niche. What kind of things are you interested in? Do you like things that involve the outdoors, indoors, crafts, do-it-yourself projects, lights, frames, customized clothing, or in the case of our picture, vinyl family car stickers? It’s important to first figure out what things you like and are interested in because once you have that down, you’re going to be able to commit the time and effort it takes to create a website and build up your business because you’re actually interested in what you’re doing.

2. Find Products You Know Something About

When your customers write to you asking about the products you’re selling, you’re going to want to have a little more in-depth knowledge of the products than the average consumer. Think about what kind of skills you have or hobbies you enjoy doing and what kind of materials are used to do those hobbies or what kind of materials can come out from those activities. If there’s a product or niche you’re really passionate about but you don’t really know much about it – expert knowledge – then do the research before you get into promoting those products, or promote others while figuring that product out. For example, if you wanted to do high fashion makeup – bright colors, thick pigments, etc. – but want to also get into the mineral makeup lines, you might want to just stick to what you know – the high-fashion products, but sell the mineral while you learn about it.

3. Make Sure Your Products Have a Market

Sometimes you could have an absolute passion for something, but not everything is perfect for the online marketplace. You need to do your research to find if there’s even a niche market for your products. You need to find out a couple things before deciding to base your whole business around the particular products you have chosen. In the case of our picture, I know that the family vinyl car sticker has a demand due to the large families in this area, and not a lot of places sell vinyl products with customizable family members on them. So, ask yourself these questions:

Is There A Demand For It?

If you choose a product that every store is selling, it might be too general to stand out from the crowd. For example, if you wanted to sell only camping equipment, someone would go to google and type that very phrase in and come up with about 9,330,000 results. If you have something a little more specific though like eco-friendly camping equipment, the results go down to about 261,000 results. You might want to ask your friends if you started selling a certain item if they would be interested in it, or if it will sink under the big chain stores who sell the same products. For example, if you wanted to sell soaps and shampoos and things like that, you would have to compete with Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Bath & Body Works, The Body Shop, just to name a few. However, if you sold custom soap molds, you wouldn’t really have to worry about those big name chain stores.

What Are People Typing In For My Products?

There are websites out there like wordtracker.com that will show you what people are typing in most often for your products. You also could look at eBay Pulse which will not only show what products are selling the most from each category but what people are typing in most often. Knowing this kind of information can show you how to create search engine optimization – SEO – when you begin to build your website.

Product Ideas, Uncategorized, dropshipping, make money online, online business, product research, selling products online, wholesale

As an eBay powerseller, I thought it was interesting when I logged in to my account the other day the information that eBay wanted to share with me. Usually, eBay has messages for sellers regarding things they’re promoting, what they plan on doing, and the like. The message this time however, was about updating their system for the holiday rush. As online retailers know, around September to January is the busiest time of the year due to the holiday season. One might think that September would be too early to even think about holidays like Christmas – I myself won’t listen to Christmas music until the second week of December -but it’s never too early to get your website in top condition for the holiday rush.

Preparing For The Holiday Rush

1. Give Customers Incentives

Previously, we have gone over the benefits of incentives for customers and what it means for your business. With the holiday rush, there’s going to be people shopping online for things that might not necessarily be frequent online shoppers. During the holiday season when everyone is holding some sort of a promotion, try not to miss that opportunity. If a customer comes to your site and finds a sweater they want to buy, and then find a similar sweater on another site for about the same price, which will they choose? Your site that didn’t do any promotion like free shipping, or the site that is offering free shipping. Depending on some other factors of course, people will go for the free shipping.

One of the new things eBay is implementing is free listing starting on September 20th for items like iPod / MP3 players, global positioning device systems (GPS), and DVDs, HD DVDs & Blu-ray. As long as you are selling in those particular categories (popular items during the holidays) eBay will waive your listing fees, which, if you’re selling a lot of items, could really amount to something.

Note: I’m not completely positive if these kind of promotions are solely for Power Sellers or if they are available to all eBay sellers. But for your own website purposes, these examples still apply.

2. Keep Your Listings Up-To-Date

Another feature that eBay is implementing is the ability to edit more items in bulk. They’re adding things like find and replace options, and even the ability to change shipping costs for several items at a time. Not only is this ability going to help you keep on top of the price game against competitors, but it will make editing a lot more effective and simple. In reference to your website, it’s important to always have the most current information listed – if that includes the price of the item, the shipping prices – sometimes you might want to hold a promotional for a flat rate for your items – and most importantly the availability of your items. No one wants to buy something for Christmas, just to have it showing up on their doorstep when you’re putting away your stockings two weeks later.

3. Keep A Good Amount In Your Inventory

If you have a great customer base or your advertising skills get people coming to your site and buying your products like hot cakes, make sure to not get behind on the game. The third interesting thing that eBay is starting – this one actually in August – is the Unpaid Item Assistant. As an eBay Power Seller, nothing is more frustrating than having someone win an auction and not pay for their item. It’s a pain to have to report, relist, and do the whole process over again with your item that the second place person wanted and was willing to pay for it. With the new Unpaid Item Assistant if sellers don’t pay within 16 days – still a long period to pay – then the item is automatically relisted. You can change the amount of time people have to pay, my specific policy is only 24 hours, but we do usually keep it under 3 days if possible, and you can add exceptions if the buyer contacts you.

With your own inventory, if you have an item that’s selling out, make sure to get maybe a little more from your wholesaler or keep your dropshipper close during the holiday months. It would be awful to not get the revenue that your company can build because you didn’t plan enough extra items. But also remember that while buying something wholesale, you really don’t know how much people are going to love it so don’t buy a lot of one thing, just to find out your customers want something else.

Education, dropshipping, eBay, online business, selling products online

Recently, I have been getting a lot of comments on past posts from people who want to start their online business and websites and need a little more insight, so I decided to go over some tips for everyone who is at the point where they need to build their website for their business, but need a place to start before jumping into the deep end. Here are 8 points to keep in mind before you indulge in this new business venture.

8 Things You Want To Realize Before You Start Your Dropship Or Wholesale Website

1. Do you know what you want?

Some people might look at this question and quickly answer, “Well, of course I know what I want. I want a successful business that will make me lots of money so I can retire at 45 with my beach house in Cabo San Lucas, and my winter house in Aspen, Colorado.” Okay, so people might not say that exactly, but if you ask that question to most people that are starting a business, their first response usually is geared toward making a lot of money. Who doesn’t want to have a lot of money? However, if you only think that, you’re missing the point. You need something before you can even think about making money. What is that one thing? Happy customers. Without happy customers, your business simply won’t survive, with happy customers, income should ultimately follow.

2. This is going to cost more and take more time than you first anticipated.

Building a business from the ground up is not something that is going to happen overnight. It takes time, patience, money, and usually much more than what people first anticipate. Not getting a huge increase right off the bat is something that people get scared about, and they instantly back out of what they’re doing because their initial dream profit didn’t happen. If you’re willing to put the time and investment into your company, then the rewards will follow. They might not follow immediately, but if you continue to work hard and do the right things to build your business, they should eventually follow.

When it comes to designing your site, if you have a developer making something for you, you can save time and money by having things such as content, pictures, etc. ready for them, so when they’re ready to piece your site together, you’re not wasting time or money putting everything together.

3. Websites aren’t one big piece

If you go to any website, you will notice it’s not just one page and that’s it. Websites are built in pieces, so it’s important when working with a developer or making your own website that you don’t cut any corners when it comes to your site. If it takes a couple extra pages to make something better, but it means that it will be a couple more hours of extra work, it’s worth it.

4. Don’t overload on the glitter

Some people who are just starting out want the most fancy, flashy website they can imagine. They want music, pictures, animation, etc. Just remember that having a flashy website isn’t always going to be the best thing. Yes, people like animation and things like that, but all with moderation. Just remember that when it comes to design or content, content always wins out. So, build a nice website, but don’t forget that what goes in it is the important part.

5. Just because it’s online, doesn’t mean people will come

There are millions of websites active on the internet. Just because you make a website does not mean it will actually have customers or even visitors. Sure, you might have the occasional person who writes exactly the same paragraph that you did on your main page, but how likely is that? This is where things like marketing, social networking, and other methods of attracting customers come into play. If people don’t know that your site even exists, then how are they supposed to come? If you’re not familiar with social networking, you might want to check out these blogs.

6. Don’t build then leave.

Imagine building a house – it took you time, energy, and a lot of planning, but you finally have a nice outcome. What happens if you don’t ever clean the inside of the house or get things replaced that break? Eventually, your beautiful house that you worked so hard on isn’t going to be so beautiful anymore, and the smell coming from each room is going to scare any visitors from saying more than two seconds in your house. Your website is the same – you will spend all this time working on it, making it amazing, but once it’s established you can’t just leave it alone. You want to make sure to update your website on a daily, weekly, or bi-weekly basis. Think about it this way, “How is my target audience changing, and how can I adapt to what they want?”

7. You get what you pay for

If you hire someone to develop your website for you, you’re going to get in return what you invested in. If the person you hired is your neighbor’s daughter’s friend’s brother who learned two lines of HTML but is really good about lifting codes (taking the HTML and CSS work / the design of other websites), and all he does for you is lift codes all day for your $20 paycheck, then what you’re going to get is a poor website that isn’t original, and could cause you a lot of problems when people find out your whole thing was illegally lifted.

8. Don’t start with a CMS right away

For most small businesses that start right off the bat, a Customer Managing System might not be something you need immediately. Wait to invest in a CMS when your customer base builds and you need to have something to handle all your customers. Talk to your web designer about getting something more low key to start off – they might have something they can make in the meantime.

home based business, make money online, online business, selling products online, website design / help

With growing technology, people are able to view items, buy items, or simply research products through various mediums. For example, not only does e-commerce entail people simply on the computer browsing for things, but also the people on their cellphones, PDAs, etc. With the changing dynamic and growing expectations for companies who operate with the Internet, business owners have to know how to keep their business at the top of the game. Here are some tips to keep those customers and utilize the people on different operating systems aside from computers, and how to give your company an edge.

Adapting To The Commerce Everywhere Consumer

Find A Niche

We’ve reiterated this message in plenty of blogs, but it really is that important that I think it’s necessary to repeat it. To give you some ideas on what you can use for your niche market, check out our blog post, How To Brainstorm Products You Can Dropship For Profit. Niche markets will give you the edge because you will know the ins and outs of your product.

Improve Usability / Add Features

I offered some advice on what you should add for your retail site, but those tips can be broadened for any website. If we’re simply talking categories, things like sizing charts, features lists, color swatches (possibly even an idea of getting a picture of the fabric used so people can see the real color, or trying to simply find a color online that matches what the fabric looks like) are a good idea. Other aspects, like multi-media (video and images), and cross-sell and up-sell options, as well as customer reviews, ratings on products, are all good things to add to your site to make your customer’s experience the most effective. The more dynamic your website is, allowing customers to customize their searches to find the exact products you’re looking for, is a sure-fire way to have people not feel frazzled coming to your site or simply get tired of having to dig through your products to find what they want.

Making Things 100% Right 100% Of The Time

It only takes one bad experience for a customer to either drop your brand, question using your website, or simply just disappear. It’s important to have your products information correct 100% of the time. As a buyer on amazon.com, I always check to see why people leave sellers negative comments. One of the most common ones I notice is that they posted something as being available, when in reality, it was sold out. No customer wants to get excited about getting a product at a great price just to find out it’s not really there after they paid for it.

Check Out Product Content Managers

PCM is something that basically makes it certain that you do not have erroneous information with your products. Not only will it get the most accurate information about your product, but it will grab all the customer reviews about the product to add as well. PCM covers things like creation, aggregation, categorization, staging, publication and syndication to the assignment of attributes such as category, price and promotion eligibility, as well as integrates things like reviews, videos, etc. about products as well. These are the kind of things that are becoming a key feature in making your products accessible from various channels.

Uncategorized, dropshipping, eBay, home based business, make money online, online business, selling products online

As promised, today I’m going to cover the second half of Stacey’s question when she commented our post, We Want To Know What You Want To Know: How to build repeat customers. Repeat customers are essential to the survival of any business, big or small. You always want to have enough new customers coming in, but if none of them never come back, then it’s hard to find more new people. Here are four tips to retaining and building a customer base that will return to your website time and time again.

Building Your Repeat Customer Base For Your Online Business

Why Are Repeat Customers Important?

1. Repeat Customers Aren’t As Expensive As New Ones

In the sense of advertising, repeat customers are less expensive. They don’t require the new ads or incentives that you’ve put out there to get customers to come to your site – they come because they are familiar with you now. Getting new customers not only takes time, but good timing as well to find people who are willing to make choices at that moment. If you’re promoting to a customer base that isn’t wanting to do anything with their time and money, then you’re wasting your time trying to get them to come to your website.

2. Repeat Customers Are Some Of Your Best Advertisements

When one of your friends goes to the new restaurant in town, what they have to say about it when they come over the next day is either going to be false advertising or awesome free advertising. Friends, relatives, co-workers, or just anyone that you trust their judgment, are the best sources of free and effective advertising for your company. Customers who come back to your site on multiple occasions are coming back for a reason, and they can bring in other new customers to your site that might not have known you existed otherwise.

How To Get Those Repeat Customers

1. Stay Consistent

If a customer has an awesome experience working with you (as far as finding their items, shipping times, how the items were packaged, customer service, etc.) they’re going to be more inclined to come back to your site for more items. If they have a bad experience the second time, it might be enough to lose the customer from any further purchases, but you want to keep their experiences at the same level of excellence every time.

2. Have Good Employees

Employees are the front line of your business. If someone calls your customer service phone number because they have a question about something and have a horrible experience, they won’t want to work with your company. This is consistent throughout your company from the bottom up. Try to hire people who are willing to do their job to the best of their ability to create a good atmosphere for the customer so that they don’t feel like they’re important with your company, or simply appreciated.

3. Get To Know Your Customers

If you know what your customers value and what they want out of your business, then you will be able to highlight those features and present them. To get ideas on some of our ideas to finding out what your customers want, you can check out a couple of our blogs about testimonials, using blogs to find that out, and other methods.

4. Don’t Lose Contact

Try to keep in contact with your customers though things like newsletters, blogs, and sending them promotional ads once in a while. If a customer goes away for a while, a little reminder about your company, its products, and what you have to offer could go a long way, and might bring them back to the site for more purchases.

Customer Service, Uncategorized, online business

Recently, one of my latest projects has been to find a dark pink dress. I just want a dress that hits the knee, isn’t too exposed, and is at a reasonable price. After hours of searching through site after site online, I have distinguished between the sites that I’m happy to look through because I can find exactly what I’m looking for, and the ones that I almost immediately click off of because of their disorganization.

The one thing that I notice most between the two different types of sites is the option of search categories. When it comes to searching, your customers want to be able to type in what they want, and have the results appear. Sometimes, in the case of my dark pink dress, I might want just want to see what selection they have of pink dresses. Having categories or more search options when your customers come to your website will not only help them feel happier because they’re finding what they want, it will deter them from jumping off your site and encourage sales. Today I’m going to focus on how to make your retail wholesale or dropship website the most effective for your customers.

Creating More Search Options For Your Dropship & Wholesale Website

1. Distinguish between genders and ages

One of the first things your customer should be able to do is separate your inventory based on gender and age. Sometimes, sites will only separate between genders, which can cause a problem. If you have a variety of clothing you are trying to sell, from ages 18-60, you will need to distinguish between the age differences. As someone who was born after the movie The Breakfast Club came out, I’m not necessarily going to be wearing the same kind of things things that people born twenty or thirty years before me would wear. If you have enough inventory to do so, the most common categorization is mens, womens, and juniors. Juniors could range from anything someone would wear between the ages of 16-30, and could be included in a “size” category under womens  if you prefer.

2. Styles

In the case of dresses especially, it’s important to try to distinguish between different styles. There’s dresses you could wear to a nice dinner, a day at the beach, and just out running errands. Having the different styles of clothing put into their own categories can help people find specifically what they’re looking for. Don’t forget to always have a view all tab just in case someone wants to, in this case buy a dress, but doesn’t know what kind of dress they’re looking exactly. The same concept can be applied to almost any kind of clothing. Sweaters or shirts can be categorized into the kind of sleeves they have, what kind of material they’re made out of, what kind of sweater they are – pull over, cardigan, etc. – the possibilities are numerous.

3. Colors

This is where you might essentially keep a customer that would otherwise not be interested in scouring through your merchandise.  Try to include along with your other categories of searching, a way for customers to pick what color they’re looking for. Simply having a standard rainbow palet (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) along with other popular colors like white, black, pink, gray, and browns, can allow your customer to look through your products and find what they like because of the color. In the case of the dark pink dress I’m trying to find, I am relieved when I find a website that will allow me to search by colors so I won’t have to through fifty other dresses that I can’t order in dark pink.

4. Sizes

When you go to a department store looking for a new piece of clothing to buy, you’re usually not going to want to spend time looking in the section that is six sizes too big or three sizes too small. Some online retail stores allow their customers to search for items depending on the size that’s available. Although, the downside of searching by size could mean that a customer might not find what they’re looking for because the piece of clothing they wanted is simply out of stock in that size. It’s important to always have your inventory lists updated so that customers know exactly what they can, and cannot, purchase at that very moment.

5. Prices

Prices would be an appropriate search category if whatever you’re selling has a broad range of prices. In the case of shirts, most are going to be roughly around the same price. You might have a collection of shirts that are under $10 for example which could constitite having its own link to let customers know you have those inexpensive items. In the case of the dress I’m trying to find, dresses can range anywhere from $15 to $300 dollars. Personally, for the kind of dress I’m looking for, I’m simply not interested in anything over $100. When you have merchandise that has a clear range of prices, you could add search options like items under $50, items under $100, under $150, $200, whatever you think would have enough products in each category. You wouldn’t want to click on “items under $50″ to only find one product listed. Make sure to at least have five items or more available under each of your categories. It’s better to have categories that cover more products that say ten categories for dresses under $10, $20, $30, $40, and $50. The one tab of under $50 would cover all of that.

Overall, a good idea to see what kind of search options are available is to visit websites for major retail stores like Nordstroms, JCPenney, Macys, or other retail locations to see what they’re doing for their products.

Customer Service, Uncategorized, dropshipping, online business, selling products online, website design / help

In yesterday’s post, we went over how a blog could benefit your business, and today we’re going to touch the design and details of your blog that will make it the most effective at the goal you’re trying to achieve. There are only a couple of things to worry about because with templates and a mired of choices nowadays, it’s hard to address every single aspect of a blog, so here are some key points.

Starting & Designing Your Dropship Blog

1. Pick A Domain Name

The very first thing you will do when you sign up for your blog is create a domain name. The same kind of tips apply to creating a blog domain name as creating a website domain name. You want to keep it short, relevant, easy to remember, and avoid any trademarks. Let’s think of an example: if your website is devoted to selling fancy aprons and your storefront is named Adorable Aprons, you could try to see if that name was available, or adorableapronsblog – something that will have connection to your storefront. If you picked something completely different than your business name, people might be confused at how the two are connected. Keep in mind that if your first choice domain name is taken, you shouldn’t simply alter the spelling of the name to make it work, like making it adorablapronz. Not only does that look unprofessional, your customers aren’t going to make it to your blog because most likely they will forget you dropped the e and added a z.

Making a website name easy to remember doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the most bare minimum thing you could write in the domain name to make it applicable. You could get away with having a slightly larger name by putting blog at the end of it, but it goes back to things like numbers, spellings, sometimes dashes, etc. that make it difficult to remember.

2. Keep It Clean

As you can see on our blog, we like to keep things nice and organized with headers. When people scan the website page they’re on, bigger font is going to catch their eye a lot faster than smaller font is. By using headers with key words, like thesis sentences, people who might not have a lot of time to spend on your blog can read the information they want and keep on going. It’s always a good practice to remember not to write novels in your blog posts. Think of these entries more like a newspaper article than like one of those essays you had to write in school.

When it comes to all your sidebars, footers, and anything else surrounding your information, make sure they too are nice and clean. You don’t want to have huge icons, banners (unless it’s your headline icon), moving clipart, and other things that could distract your customers from the information in the middle. It’s always good to check their font weight (boldness, font, and size) against your text to make sure it doesn’t overpower your blog entries. Your customers should be able to easily see what you’re writing and not have to dig through your sidebars that managed to steal the limelight.

3.  Add some gadgets

If you take a look at our blog on the right hand side, one of the first “gadgets” you can see is the location where you can join our blog via e-mail. This is a really nice item to include so your customers can get all the information they’re looking for without having to check your blog once a day individually. Another good idea is to add RSS (really simple syndication) feeds in appropriate locations to other blogs or news stories that could interest your readers, and show how connected you are with the subject you’re writing about. For example, if you have a computer store, you might have a RSS feed to technology news from the New York Times if it’s applicable to what you’re trying to sell. It wouldn’t hurt to include a link to your Facebook site, which you notice is right under our subscription area, and it shows actual pictures of real people so people can see how many people are actually interested in your blog, so they don’t feel like a lone ranger. Try to keep from adding gadgets that are pointless to your site – always have a professional mindset.

Uncategorized, dropshipping, internet marketing, make money online, online business

Right now, you are reading the blog for Wholesale Match. Now ask yourself – why exactly are you reading this? Hopefully, you have come to this blog in hopes of learning new information for your online dropship or wholesale business, and this is more interesting and personable than, say, a piece of paper. This not only is directed straight at you, but it’s written by someone who understands what you’re trying to accomplish with your online businesses, and wants to give you the tools to succeed. Since blogs gained significant popularity starting in 2005, companies have adopted using them as a method to reach out to their audiences and become more personable. There are some benefits to adding a blog to your business.

Writing Blogs For Your E-Commerce Website

1. Easy To Use

Blogs are very easy to use. Unlike some other forms of communication with customers – newsletters, websites, etc. – blogs can be created in about five minutes, are free, and are pretty easy to understand. One of the most popular blog websites, is Google owned blogspot.com. However, this blog is powered by WordPress, which is more complicated than Blogspot, but it is easier to incorporate it into our website design a lot more effectively. You don’t need to know HTML, designing, or really any technological things to start a blog or make it look nice – it just might take a little time looking around the features that the blogs offer.

2. Low Cost Alternative

Like mentioned above, since blogs are easy to use, you don’t have to worry about paying someone to make a really nice newsletter for you, or someone to completely build a website either. However, I would discourage using solely a blog as your storefront, but more like a nice addition to your website. For example, recently I have been looking around for a photographer. Most of the photographers I have been interested not only have a website that has all of their galleries and pricing, etc., but they also have a blog. They usually keep their blogs updated with a couple pictures from a shoot they did that day, and a little message to describe how it went. This lets you see the most recent work the photographer has done, as well as an idea of their personality when they write about the shoots they just did. However, sometimes the only way to show off their work was through a blog, and 99% of the time I would simply move on to the next photographer’s website if they only had a blog. When it comes to photography, it’s difficult to look at galleries and pricing if they aren’t organized and put together nicely like they would be on a website.

This photography blog example could work with any business type. If you got a new product that you’re excited about, feature it on your blog and write a little bit about why you’re excited about it. Blogs let people comment on what they see, so it can also help with figuring out what your audience is looking for – their likes and dislikes.

3. Quick And Easy

Again, blogs are quick and easy. Writing a blog can take anywhere from a five minute quick post to an hour with something a little more in-depth. Don’t forget to format it in a way that is appealing for people to read. We will get into blog designs and layouts in a later post.

4. Share Expertise And Thoughts

Blogs are a prime location to share your expertise about any subjects and your thoughts. Keep in mind that this isn’t going to be a personal blog that you can tell your customers about how your niece / grandson / daughter / pet is the cutest thing you ever saw, and how you hate when it rains in the middle of summer – try to keep your thoughts solely on building your business. For example, let’s image that your business is selling customized t-shirts and apparel online that have funny pictures and sayings. You just got in a new shirt, and you want to feature it. All you need to do is stick it on your blog, write about why you stuck it there, and you can even ask what kind of quotes or designs people like on their shirts so you can look for more for them. There’s something about the internet and anonymity that makes people feel comfortable commenting on things people post.

Simply put, blogs are something that can highlight your online business. They aren’t necessarily going to be the focal point, but more like a way for you to interact with your customers through pictures, comments, and posts.

Uncategorized, online business, website design / help

Once you get your e-tail dropship business up and running, there are many things you can do to get people to your website. We’ve gone over social media marketing in the last few posts, and have reviewed how to get your niche audience into your website to look at your products. The next step after you get your potential customers into your website is to make them feel comfortable enough to buy your merchandise. How many times have you gone online to buy something, click on a website, and it just looks so sketchy that you don’t feel comfortable enough writing in your credit card number that you ditch your online shopping cart, and never look at it again. Studies have shown that about 60% of all online shopping carts are abandoned, so let’s check out how to keep that number down on your website.

How To Avoid Abandoned Carts On Your Dropship Website

1. Customer Reviews

Whenever I am deciding on trying out a new product, I always always always look for reviews on things. I just got a new digital camera as a gift from my parents. I tried it out, didn’t like how slow it was, so the first thing I did was to check the reviews on it. Sure enough people said that a definite con of this particular camera was that it was too slow for someone who knows intricacies of cameras like I do. If I see an interesting commercial for something, saw something in the store, or just want to see what people think about something I check out the reviews. This is more often the case when people are putting in a small investment into the product. For example, a digital camera isn’t exactly inexpensive. I didn’t want to spend a couple hundred dollars on something just to find out that it’s definitely not want I wanted.

Adding reviews to your products not only will help customers be more excited or apt to purchasing it, it also gets customers involved with your store and keeps them coming back. People like to be heard and love to see when others comment on the same thing they did. It also can help with your inventory control – if you decide to dropship a certain item on your website, and you find out that people don’t even like the product, it might be a good time to reconsider offering it. The same can go for the other side – if someone loves something, and I see that comment, it puts more confidence in myself to try the product out as well. This helps with getting the items in the cart in the first place.

Another aspect of customer reviews are testimonials on your website. Make sure that they’re visible to see for people, but aren’t obnoxiously loud that your customer’s don’t believe their authenticity. If your customer knows that they’re not the first person to buy from your website, it’s a good idea. No one wants to feel like the guinea pig. It’s always best if the person lists their name and where they’re from – it could show diversity with your website and it might sway someone from that particular area to keep looking around your site. A good way to get testimonials is to send a thank you e-mail to your customers and offer some sort of incentive if they write a testimonial, or a feedback, with their purchase. This could also just be something available for them to write on your website in a form and you can give a discount to whoever you decide to post on the site like 10% off their next order – there’s plenty of options, but we’ll look into that another day.

2. Easy Checkouts

Something that I really dislike when buying products online is a fifteen page checkout process. It’s best to make things clear and easy to understand, but put it in enough pages so that your customer doesn’t feel like they’re taking a fifteen page survey just to checkout their products. You want it to be clear where they should enter their information, a place for promotions, costs, and a list of what they’re buying all in about four pages or less. With Amazon.com you can either do one click shopping which will show everything you need to checkout on one page – which was ideal for textbooks during college, or you can go through a three page system: shipping and payment, gift-wrap, and place order.

3. Make Them Feel Safe and Secure

Another way to keep from accumulating abandoned shopping carts is to make the customer feel like their information is going to be secure. There’s nothing worse than having a customer with a full shopping cart ditch out at the last minute because they don’t feel like their personal information is safe. With identity theft on the rise and credit card numbers being stolen, it’s understandable why people are especially careful now with their information than ever before. They’re not just going to tell you their name, where they live, and give you access to the money in their bank account without feeling that it won’t be misused. Putting in things like 30 day money back guarantee, full warranty, and listing privacy policies and practices at the bottom of the page so that they can review how exactly you’re going to use their information. Keeping your customer’s happy and feeling secure is always the key.

dropshipping, make money online, online business, selling products online