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.

Today, I encountered an article that announced YouTube.com was going to allow users to post videos that were now under 15 minutes in contrast to their 10 minute mark. To view the whole article, click here. It’s current competitor, Hulu.com, which provides free streaming of video that ranges from a couple minutes to almost two hours for some season finales and premieres, YouTube seemed to make the change to keep on top of the video streaming world with all of the electronics coming out that have video streaming.

How This Applies To Your Website

Video Tutorials

This reminded me of one thing that YouTube has done that could be applied to websites everywhere – video tutorials. Video tutorials -  like how to make a smokey eyeshadow look, how to apply vinyl to your wall, how to feed your sugar glider – are really vital when it comes to your customers. If whatever you are selling on your website might be better explained through video – embrace that. With something that looks completely foreign to you – like getting a completed vinyl piece for your wall for example – is very daunting. Watching someone apply the vinyl to the wall a couple times, and have the video streaming when you’re doing it yourself is a great tool to build the confidence of your customers. Whether you upload your video to YouTube and use the embedded code in your website, or simply add a video to your site, they’re very beneficial.

Coming back to the new increase in time with YouTube videos, it’s important also to remember to edit them down. If you have a video that’s shot in one edit, then some tedious things that you might be doing – like if you have a cooking website and are showing how to frost cupcakes, you don’t want to sit there and watch someone frost twenty-four cupcakes the same way over again. Have your videos edited down so that maybe only four cupcakes were shown when you were frosting them. It’s important to keep the customer in mind who might just want to see how you’re doing something who wants the short quick version in comparison to the person who will be following you and the video – it’s good to be right in the middle. Not too long, not too short.

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.

A couple blogs ago, I wrote that your main goal should be to make customers first, then the income would follow. One of the surest ways to at least entice a customer to come back to your website is through promotions and e-coupons. Especially when the economy is where it’s at right now, people who, in the past, haven’t really paid heed to coupons, certainly would not mind having a discount here and there on their online order.

How To Use Promotions To Make And Retain Customers

1. Customer Loyalty Programs

Amazon.com is a good example of having a customer loyalty-esque program in place. They have items that when you purchase them and purchase a certain amount of products from them you get free shipping or a certain percent off your order. For example, if you need to buy printer ink, a new mousepad, and a new digital clock, you can order those items from three different companies, or you could spend a little more and get them from Amazon LLC. If your order equals $25 or more, they will ship your products for free. Sometimes, your products might equal $22.35 in which case you might throw in a new pack of pens that you weren’t necessarily going to buy.

2. Rewards For Returning

I think hair salons are really good about running these kind of promotions. If you get your hair cut from a certain salon, they will give you a coupon for x amount off your next purchase of products they’re selling, or a certain amount off your next hair cut. If you’re not really partial to what salon you go to, having five dollars or half off your next purchase might sway you to go to that salon again. The same concept works with your customers online. If you issue them an online code that they can use on their next purchase of a certain amount or on their next purchase of certain products.

3. First-Time Customer Perks

The coupons you find in things like value pages are a good example of first time customer perks. A lot of the coupons will offer incentives just to get you into their store and potentially hooked on their products. For example, we received a value book in the office today and there was a tanning salon that was offering a free treatment of a UV weight loss treatment. I had no idea what it was, so looking at their website, these treatments can essentially cost a lot of money. So, this coupon was designed to have customers come in out of curiosity, who have never used the product, and potentially end up spending hundreds on the treatments. The same can be applied to your online store with first some registrations – give them an extra ten percent off, an extra ten free pictures, or something as an added bonus for them signing up.

4. Add-On Sales

Another idea is to offer discounts on add-on sales. For example, if someone is buying a printer, you could offer ink cartridges at 30% off.

5. Subscription Incentives

Newsletters are a way to get people to not forget about your website, and it’s a good method to show your promotions, new products, and get your customers attention even when they’re not necessarily on your site or even in the mood to go shopping. Many restaurants will offer coupons and special offers through their newsletters, in exchange you have customers signing up and giving you their demographic information so you can know how to better suit your audience.

In previous blog entries, we have gone over the importance of having a niche when starting out your dropshipping or wholesale business. With a niche you’re able to specialize instead of having a lot of random items that you might have some general knowledge and interest in, but no real in-depth knowledge. One of the most common questions I receive is “how to I find my niche market? How do I know what is going to sell and what people are interested in right now?” Today, I’m going to try to address these questions as much as possible to give you the keys you need to continue to update and grow your business.

Finding What Products Are Hot

1. EBay Pulse

I know that not everyone is going to be selling on eBay, but this is a good place to start out. They have picked out the most popular items sold on eBay and listed them on the front of their eBay pulse, as well as each top trending item by category. For example, if you’re just curious what most people are interested in today, you will see that the most popular searches are:

1. ipod touch

2. cricut cartridge

3. iphone

4. ipod

5. coach

6. laptop

7. xbox 360

8. wii

9. coach handbags

10. lot

Now, you can see that some of the searches are very similar which is why it’s important that if you do list things on eBay to make your headlines effective, but that’s another topic, which you can click on to view. Imagine that since you saw this list and know that people are interested in Coach purses that’s what you want to dropship or sell wholesale. However, remember that not everything is available dropship or wholesale – usually top name things like Apple and Coach fall into that category. If you were interested in selling baby products, you could click the drop down category to baby and find that the popular searches for today are:

1. baby clothes

2. formula coupon

3. baby

4. clothes

5. shoes

6. stroller

7. baby boy clothes

8. baby girl clothes

9. diaper bag

10. custom wall letters

These kind of items are really easy to find dropshipper or wholesale providers for. Even the last search, custom wall letters might not have been something you originally planned on including in your inventory, but since they’re so popular it might be a good idea to look into it. If you have a couple niches you’re looking into, check out the categories and go from there.

2. RSS Feeds and Mailing Lists

Do you have a particular website that has news RSS (really simple syndication) feeds? If there’s a news website you like, or a store that you’re trying to get ideas from, then subscribe to their RSS feeds and/or their newsletters. People send out the hottest trends and ideas via those avenues, so if you have access to them, it could spark some more ideas for you.

3. Check out the world

If you’re at the doctor’s office, grocery store, or really anywhere that has people / media, check out what they’re writing about, wearing, saying, or holding. Try to notice what kind of people are holding or using the kind of products you’re trying to sell online, and what you can do to match that audience.

Amazon made a new deal with Wiley Agency, who controls a lot of e-book, this week in attempt to shut down it’s competitor Barnes & Nobel – and their e-book, the Nook – and gain superiority in the e-book industry. Amazon got the rights to offer 20 exclusive books  called the Odyssey Edition on their Kindle store which includes books like Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, Rabbit Run by John Updike, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, Philip Roth’s Jewish-American literary masterpiece Portnoy’s Complaint, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The benefits of this deal that Amazon made is it will essentially cut out publishers who negotiate with retailers when they sell books. Since the books will be electronic, Amazon will be able to sell them at a higher rate which means more royalty money for the authors of the books.

What we can learn from this is the idea of always trying to improve your business. If your business has a competitor, always work to get the edge over them. In the case of Amazon, they got the special publishing rights for these books, which gives them that extra added edge over Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Whether it might just be keeping an eye on your target audience and figuring out what they want, and adjusting to that change quickly, to completely making / finding a new and improved product that will set you apart from your competition.

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.

Recently, I had to buy some vinyl for a project I was doing, and I noticed that a lot of the websites I visited to get what I needed had three ways to place an order. The first was through an online shopping cart where you found what kind of vinyl you wanted, selected the amount of yards, put it in your cart and checked it out. The second method was to call the company and place the order over a phone, and the third was to fax your order in. As an administrative assistant, I receive a lot of faxes, and there are some faxes that I get that are dark, hard to read, or just complicated. This brings me to our topic today: why you should avoid using faxes, or how to build a system where fax orders are actually effective.

Steering Clear Or Embracing Your Wholesale Fax Orders The Right Way

Why Fax Orders Are Detremental

1. They’re Expensive

In the case of actual dollars and cents, faxed orders cost paper, labor, etc., as well as other expenses like low customer service or losing a customer all together. Studies have shown that a faxed order, due to it’s manual nature, can cost up to $60, whereas the typical online order can cost a mere $1-$3 to process.

2. They Could Lead To Errors

When people fax things in, they sometimes are typed documents, but my experience has shown that most are either one of thee categories. Some people will type something out, but then write on the paper they fax it, others will have something completely typed, and there’s the completely written faxes. Depending on the quality of your fax and their fax, their message could turn into a dark mess of things that are partially clear and legible, but that’s not something you want when trying to process an order for someone – you need to know exactly what they want and how they want it. Aside from the actual receiving of the fax, there’s also the amount of handling, or the number of hands that touch the one order, that could cause error. For every person that touches the fax, there’s a possibility for error and it also makes it hard to keep track of the status of the order.

3. Limit Productivity

Because faxed order take longer to process, they limit your productivity levels.

How To Make Faxed Orders Actually Worthwhile

1. Avoid These Programs

Some companies opt for electronic faxing systems that turn the faxes into an image or places the information into a template. However, these can also have their downsides. When it comes to things that are hand-written, a system software could have a hard time figuring out an s and a 5, an I and a 1, etc. Also, if you have to change something in your system, it could possibly make all your previous templates / orders in the system change which could corrupt your possibility of looking for something in the archives for a repeat order or an audit. In general, these kind of systems have a hard time distinguishing between handwriting as well – if people have a hard time figuring it out, the computer might as well.

2. Get Something To Do It All

If having faxed orders is something that you would like to have with your business, make sure to invest in a software that covers basically what an automated order would cover – the ability to handle document routing, data capture, automatic archiving, prioritizing orders, and will keep track of when an order was received in case that customer calls soon after to change something.

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.

I just recently came across an article about a new e-commerce search engine called TheFind. This is the second most used e-commerce search engine, and I didn’t even know about its existence until a couple minutes ago. It’s number two spot was recently achieved in May when it overtook Yahoo’s Shopping’s search engine. The powerhouse Google is still in the number one slot when it comes to e-commerce searching. When I need something, I usually just type it into Google and sift through the results. This is probably one of the slowest and time consuming things I could do, so I’ve recently started to check out Google’s shopping searches for a more effective search. However, after using TheFind for just a couple searches, I like how clean it is compared to Google’s shopping search. You can use a scale to fix a price range, and there’s a huge color pallet if you’re looking for something in a specific color.

One of my favorite features that I’m excited to look into is the coupon section. As someone who has been raised in a house where I helped my mom cut coupons from every Sunday paper, I’ve become a definite coupon fan. With Google, you would have to through sites like retailmenot.com to find something that you might be able to use when you checked out your online order, but this looks like it made that a lot easier for you to find these money saving codes.

Merchants can list with TheFind for free, and if a sale is made due to someone finding their product through TheFind, they will split the revenue.To set up an account, a store would go here to create an account and find more information about how TheFind works with their products.

“The industry is growing quite rapidly despite the recession and high unemployment,” said founder and CEO Siva Kumar. “That in fact helps us, as it is also causing people to search much more to make sure they are finding the best options. People are looking for coupons, local stores, bargains.”