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

People are always looking for the quick fixes and improvements when it comes to their website.  Usually, time is necessary to do any sort of improvement, development, or fixes, but here are six things you could do today that would take two hours or so to complete or at least start all six – not a week or two.

6 Quick Improvements For Your Wholesale Website

1. Get Listed On Google Places

Have you ever typed in the name of a place into Google and come up with a small map with little marks on them and the information about a company, including their name, location, phone number, and website address? This is run by Google Places. Obviously, this only would apply to your business if you had a physical storefront, but at $25/month it could be worthwhile to list so people had easy access to all of your information.

2. Submit Your Website to Google.com and Yahoo.com

The top websites that people use to get their information is google and yahoo.com, and it’s very easy to get your url’s posted, click here for Google and click here for Yahoo. It’s important that you get on these search engines so when people type in your niche, custom picture frames, for example, your website Mark’s Custom Carved Frames is one of the top choices that comes up. Obviously, you’re going to want to read up on SEO – search engine optimization – to get a little idea of how to make your website get closer to the top of the list as possible.

3. Install Google Analytics

Recently, I wrote about a couple different analytic methods that you could use to figure out what your customers think about your site and what is their favorite product / area of your website. You can check out that post by clicking here. Analytics are easy to set up and they can provide a very important role in your company because it can let you know what your customers want, and if you have what they want, that means more customers, more revenue, and a more successful business.

4.  Set Up An E-Mail and E-Mail Signature

You should have some sort of contact page on your website that would allow customers to get in touch with you if they need to. Most websites have their own hosting accounts for e-mails, for example, info@jerrysfinefurnature.com. You can make things a little easier by providing a form that customers can fill out and the information would be sent formatted to your e-mail account. Make sure to set up a professional signature, so in the case of any replies to your customers, they feel like your company is professional and something they can trust.

Here are some tips for your signature:

• Keep it sweet and short.
• Have some sort of salutation like best regards, sincerely, thank you, etc.
• Include your contact information like your name, business name, the department if applicable, and the website or phone number for your company.
• Keep all fonts the same color, size, and font type.
• If you decide to add a logo, remember that smaller is better.
• A general rule is keep the signature 4-6 lines.

5. Brand Your Car With Your Website

I’m sure you have been stuck in traffic, driving around town, or walking in a parking lot and noticed people with a vinyl window sticker advertising their business. If the business is something that you’re interested in, you might be inclined to write down the phone number or at least the web address to check out if the car’s owner has something that you would be interested in. Here are some examples of creating your own moving advertisment, keep in mind you don’t have to go out as big as some of these examples:

6. Add A Social Networking Bar To Your Site

Social networking is something that is really popular for the age group that a lot of websites are targeting, and it is slowly starting to include older generations. Social networking allows you to connect with your customers on a more personal level, and it gets customers who are already accustomed to the computer and thus more likely to buy something online. By adding a simple to use social networking bar that links to your accounts, your customers can add to your social networking site – ie: your business facebook page, any blog, twitter account, etc. – really easily.

Uncategorized, website design / help

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

In response to Stacey’s question on our entry, We Want To Know What You Want To Know, today I’m going to cover how to find out what your customers think about your website and your products – we’ll address the second question, how to build repeat customers another day, but for now you can check out this post on how get customers to buy from you in general. Previously, I wrote about how testimonials and blogs could help build interaction between you and your customers, but that might not necessarily do the trick. Here are some free (with the exception of one) options to add to your site to see what your customers like, don’t like, and what you can do with that information.

Getting Inside The Customer’s Mind: Interaction and Analytics To Improve Your Online Business

Interaction

Google Talk Chatback

I’m a fan of Google products. I recently switched over my personal e-mail account from hotmail to gmail, I always Google everything I need, and I even text Google when I need to find phone numbers of local places that I need to find the address for. They have a really useful product that’s free available for websites called Google Live Chat. Most people know how live chats work – someone comes on your site, needs to ask a question, and instead of calling them or e-mailing, many like to opt for the inbetween, Live Chat, where customers can instant message someone from the company. Personally, if I have a choice, I will live chat a company before e-mailing (which a reply could take longer than wanted) or calling (sometimes you are at a place you can’t call, you don’t want to be put on hold, or you just want less of a
“commitment” by physically talking to someone).

With the Google Talk Chatback, it will say if you – or someone in your company like a customer service representative – is available to answer questions. This might be something that could be valuable if you have someone who would be available for questions from customers, but even if it’s only on for a little bit, Live Chat could be a nice thing to figure out what the customers are having a hard time with – finding something, understanding something, etc. With this information, you can adjust accordingly so that more people could avoid that problem.

Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is a tool that allows you to give your customers surveys to see what they think about your products and / or your website. The basic account is free and allows you to ask up to ten questions on one of fifteen pre-build themes. You could ask questions like, Would you recommend us to a friend or collegue? and include a scale of 1-10. Other marketing questions may include, If you could have something created just for you, what would you have us make? What other products / services should we offer? How would you describe us to a friend?

The group of consumers you want to get a hold of, the non-customers, are going to be some of the hardest people to get information from.  If you offer incentives to your non-customers like a percentage off their first purchase, or some added bonus, then you could tap into this group of people. Make sure when addressing the non-customers to ask open-ended questions – you want to know what they’re looking for and if they are able to find that something within your company.

4Q

4Q is a company that offers an exiting questionaire to consumers. After your customer places an order and is ready to exit your site, it will appear asking if they wouldn’t mind taking a quick survey about their shopping experience with your company. They answer questions like: Please rate your experience, What was the purpose of your visit? What do you value the most about our site? How often do you visit? Not everyone is going to want to take these kind of exiting surveys, but the ones who do can give you a little insight about what people do and don’t like about your services.

Analytics

CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg is the only option on our list that is not free. This service costs about $9 a month for the basic service, which isn’t a huge fortune, so I decided to add it to the list. CrazyEgg is a service that will allow you to see essentially a heat map of your website; something like this:

The heat map allows you to see what kind of things people are clicking on, and what is getting the most attention in your website. The interesting advantage of a heat map is it will show you things that customers are clicking on that aren’t necessarily something that is supposed to be clicked on. If you have an icon or something that looks like it could be a link, and people are trying to click it to see where it goes, it will let you know. With that information you could turn that icon into a functional link. Knowing where your customers are going most often in your site allows you to build up those sections of the site. If you’re a retailer, you can see what kind of products people are most interested in, and in contrast, the ones that aren’t getting any attention.

Google Customer Search Engine

Another good way to figure out what customers like about your products is to find out what they’re searching for. This is another tool from Google that shows you what kind of things people are writing when looking for things on your website. If you see that people keep searching for something that isn’t on your website, you might consider putting something up (finding a new product from a dropshipper / wholesaler) to fulfill that need, or if you find that people are particularly interested in a certain product, you can find more items similar to that one.

Customer Service, Uncategorized, website design / help

During this time of ever changing technology with the new release of the iPad, iPhone4, the Android, and obstacle course games you control with your brain, it’s no question that websites are becoming more technologically integrated with things like java, flash, and multimedia. Multimedia, especially in the journalism world, is becoming so common, that they’re creating emphases in universities solely devoted to multimedia – I should know, it was one of mine. Adding multimedia components to your website could be a positive way to catch your audiences attention, however, too much multimedia could cause the completely opposite effect you were going for.

Creating Proper Multimedia For Your Wholesale Website

Why use multimedia, and what is its downside?

Studies have shown that multimedia is a very effective way to catch your customer’s attention. Multimedia ads have a 71% higher impact on customers than say text alone.  It has been shown that multimedia adds to websites and can also clarify whatever it’s trying to portray rather than something that is static. The reason multimedia is so appealing is its ability to reach more senses than say text will. You hear something, you see something moving, you can click something and move it – it’s a lot more interactive. However, as great as multimedia sounds, if you don’t have the skills to produce your own high-quality products, it means you have to find someone who will, which can be expensive.

The Basic Stages Of A Multimedia Project

Whether you want a really nice introduction to your website (a good example of this is photography websites), or want to create an advertisement video for one of your products or business, they all start relatively in the same place.

1. Creative Development

This is where you want to figure out what type of thing you want your multimedia to do. Do you want to make a nice flash slideshow that has clickable arrows and music in the background? Do you want to have an interactive room for your custom baby products, so the mothers can see what things would look like when finished? It’s all possible. You want to always think of strong ideas opposed to getting as much sensory overload as possible. Some of the most compelling multimedia products are simple, clean, and don’t attack the customer – they present a strong idea. This is where most of the money is going to be spent if you hire a team to do this for you. Keep in mind if you do decide it’s in your budget to have a design team take on a project for you, the best way to get the most innovative creative ideas is to get a team or firm of designers, rather than just having one person figure it out themselves.

2. Actual Production

Depending on the parameters of your concept – the amount of animation, complexity, quality of the design, etc. – will greatly depend on how much you’re going to spend at this stage. One trick to saving money in this stage, and really the whole production, is to create a fixed price that the team has to work under. This way they won’t charge you over what you’ve established and you won’t have to worry about going over your initial budget.

3. Revision Stages

There is going to be revision in each stage. In the creative development, this could be changing concepts, then a draft of the final should be developed in the production stage, and ultimately a final review before they turn the product to you. To save money in the area of revisions, make sure to have only one contact point in your company. If you have four people the designers have to go through, then it could get drawn out and only minor revisions will be made. If this is the kind of project you want to oversee directly, have the designers only come to you. If it’s something you don’t want to take on and you have enough staff helping you out, delegate that responsibility to someone who shares the same kind of vision for your website.

Whatever you decide to do, multimedia is an investment. You’re going to want something that not only is high quality and achieves the goals you set out for it to do in an effective manner, you don’t want to break your bank doing it. If you’re not in the financial stage to do it right now, then just hang tight – as your business grows and progresses, so does your opportunities to add bigger and better things to your website. Just like any growing business, it takes time and finances to create something big.

Uncategorized, website design / help

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

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

Here is part 2 of my SEO Tips For Your Dropshipping Website series.  We already talked about the basics of SEO, namely fresh content, keywords, inbound links, and videos.  Now we are going to go slightly more in-depth on optimizing your dropshipping website.

1. Keyword Links

You already know that it’s important to include plenty of keywords on your website and to garner plenty of inbound links from other quality websites.  But did you know that all links ON your website and TO your website should be keyword phrases themselves?  Let’s pretend you’re dropshipping bicycles, and you’ve written a guest blog post for an outdoor adventure site.  Within your guest blog post, you want a link to your website.  But you don’t want your link to read: “To find the best repair kits, visit my website.”  Instead, make that link a keyword phrase: “Click here to find the best bicycle repair kits on the market.”

2. Original Photos With Captions

Another way to bring organic traffic to your website is to have your site pop up in image searches.  Whenever you post a photo on your dropshipping website, make sure you name that photo with relevant keywords, and also include the words “picture” or “image” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions.  To give your photos an extra boost, log in to your Google Webmaster Central account and enable the “Enhanced Image Search”.  Images have become increasingly important in blended search results, so this should help your SEO.

3. Links From .Edu and .Org Sites

Search engines give more weight to links from .edu and .org domains.  Try to find a .edu or .org site for which you can write a guest blog post, educational article, or product review.  They should be willing to give you an inbound link in return.

4. Minimal Flash, Frames, and AJAX

Flash, Frames, and AJAX are not SEO friendly.  In addition, they are not compatible with new Apple products like the iPad (you can’t view flash on the iPad at all).  If you believe Steve Jobs, Flash is going the way of the dinosaurs – use other formats whenever possible on your dropshipping website.

SEO, website design / help

With all the e-tail competition on the internet, it’s important to make your dropshipping website or eBay store stand out.  Customers expect the basics like an attractive, easy to navigate site with quality content.  It’s the extras that are going to dazzle them.

4 Ways To Improve Your Dropshipping Website Or EBay Store:

1. Add product reviews and ratings

Allowing your customers to rate and review your products promotes customer interaction and gives other customer a sense of security when making a purchase.  Product reviews can also save you money – the more informed your customers are when making a purchase, the less likely they are to require exchanges or refunds.  Major e-tail sites that have implemented a product review system have seen up to a 30% increase in sales.

2. Upsell

People tend to buy products that are similar to items they have already viewed or purchased.  Your sales will dramatically increase if you can find a way to offer your customers similar products to ones they have purchased before, viewed, or are about to purchase.  Many e-tail storefronts allow you to offer a similar product at the time of checkout (”If you liked the emo band t-shirt, you may be interested in the distressed skinny jeans”).  In other instances, like with an eBay store, you may want to send a promotional email a week later (”Mr. Jones, I noticed that you recently purchased a model plane from my eBay store Planes and Trains. I thought you might be interested in knowing that all our WW2 aircraft models are 15% off this week”.)

3. Add video

The popularity of online videos continues to surge.  Video consumption has moved far past funny clips on YouTube to full-scale integration on newspaper apps, how-to sites, and e-tail storefronts.  Adding video to your dropshipping website is a great way to promote your products.  It could be a how-to video using the products found on your site (i.e. how to make a charm bracelet with the jewelry-making kit), a demonstration of how to use the product (how to get grape juice out of your carpet with the mini carpet-cleaner), or a simple product review.  Feel free to be creative or humorous with your videos, as long as you maintain your professionalism.

4. Aim for single page checkout

In no case should your checkout involve more than 3 steps, but the goal is to allow your customers to purchase on one page.  The smoother and easier the checkout process, the less abandoned shopping carts you will get, and hence the more sales.

eBay, website design / help

When building a dropshipping website, you’ll need some kind of storefront or shopping cart software.  Many e-commerce entrepeneurs use template websites, often available at minimal cost from your web host.  However, just because your storefront software is cheap doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for your online business.  You’re going to have to put a lot of hours into customizing your template site, everything from choosing colors, fonts, photos, writing content, and uploading products.  You don’t want to waste 100 hours doing this, only to realize that your storefront software doesn’t really fulfill the requirements of your online business.

5 Things To Look For When Choosing Software For Your Dropshipping Website:

1. Features

You may be tempted to choose the most simple software to get you started.  However, like I said, you’re going to put a lot of time into this website, so you want your site to be able to grow with your business.  Your software should offer the following:

• Site search bar
• Purchase history for customers
• Ability to offer up-sell options and similar product suggestions
• Email database with opt-out for customers who don’t want to receive promotional emails
• Ability to calculate shipping costs to foreign locations and from multiple dropshippers
• Ability to attach a message board, forum, blog, series of educational articles, videos, etc.
• Enough pages to allow for growth
• Integrated software to monitor your inventory levels, accounting, etc.

Your dropshipping website may require other features – make a list of what your specific needs are, so you don’t accidentally get started with a website that won’t work for you in the long term.

2. User-Friendliness

Your site needs to be complicated enough to do all the things you want it to do, but simple enough for any customer to use.  The most important part of the experience for the customer is the shopping cart / checkout section.  Up to 65% of customers abandon their shopping carts without completing their purchases.  Often this is because the checkout process is too complicated.  Make sure your shopping cart is easy to use, with a minimum of steps and a minimum of information required.  It helps if your checkout is 3 steps or less, with the customer shown which step they are at in the process.

3. Room For Growth

A template site can easily handle 10 or 20 orders a day.  But what will happen if you get 200?  Check the bulk order capability of your storefront software – what you are looking for here is speed.  If it takes you 20 minutes to process each order, there is no way you’ll get through 200 in a day.

Also, make sure your web host or store host doesn’t charge a transaction fee in addition to your monthly subscription.  1 or 2% of each order may not seem like much, but as your business grows it will really add up.

Finally, ensure that your host can handle all the traffic.  Most “unlimited” packages are actually anything but – they may have restrictions like no audio or video downloads, and if you use more than the expected amount of bandwidth, you can be charged hefty fees.

4. SEO Compatibility

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process by which your website becomes highly ranked on search engine response pages.  So, for instance, if you are operating a wedding favor website, you want your website to be the first one that pops up when somebody googles “wedding favors”.  The way you become highly ranked is by optimizing your website.  This means your dropshipping site needs to have keywords, quality fresh content, inbound links, and the ability to be easily “crawled” by search engines.  Before you choose storefront software, ensure that it is designed with SEO in mind.

5. Support

It is crucial that your dropshipping website operates smoothly 100% of the time.  Security is a huge issue for online shoppers, and website difficulties like crashes, dead pages, and broken shopping carts make you look unprofessional and unreliable.  If your site isn’t operational when a customer tries to visit, they will probably never return.  So make sure your storefront software comes with 24/7 support – a direct phone line, not just an email address.

On a related note, check the uptime of your website host.  “Uptime” is a measure of when a system is “up and running” as opposed to “down and not useable”.  Uptime is measured as a percentage, i.e. the system is up and running 99.99% of the time.  If the uptime of a hosting service is only 99%, that means their system is down and inoperable for 14 minutes and 24 seconds per day.  That’s actually a long time – you could lose a lot of customers in that 14 minutes and 24 seconds.  If your hosts’ uptime is 99.99%, their server is only down for 9 seconds a day.  (Uptime is usually calculated according to scheduled maintenance, so unexpected problems may add to downtime.  Check reviews online to determine if a hosting company has more downtime than they admit to.)

website design / help