Ecommerce Web Design Blog

Writing for your website is not the same as writing for a print publication. Online you have very limited time to make an impression on your audience. Only writing that is clear, interesting and easy-to-read will get the attention of your potential customers. You also have to be mindful of search engines - you need to ensure that you have the right density of keywords otherwise your page will appear either unimportant or spam to Google. Getting the mix just right is essential.

So how do you choose a good copywriter for your shopping cart website?

The first step in the process is to evaluate the websites of the people or businesses on your shortlist.  Does their website sound like it was written by Australians for the Australian market or by somone with poor language skills? If they can't write for themselves and promote their own business, how can they promote yours? Be careful of sites that do not make sense or appear to use the same word over and over and over for effect. These are the kinds of sites that will eventually get hammered by the search engines for 'keyword stuffing' so stay clear of them or your site could suffer when they come crashing down.

Hiring a professional website copywriter for your shopping cart website can help your website stand out from the crowd, which can be essential in a market that is highly competitive and crowded with competitors selling similar products.  There are plenty of people and international companies claiming to be professional copywriters on the freelance job boards, but if they can really write quality copy, expect to pay top dollar. 

As an experiment for this blog we have hired some freelance copywriters from job boards with a theoretical copywriting exercise for our own website. We will report back in another post when the results are in.

Lessons: What to look for the following when you hire a web copywriter

• Do their writing samples seem interesting an inviting? Would you buy from them?
• Is the writing actually useful to the target audience or does it appear to have been written for search engines rather than people?
• How much do they charge? Is it per-word, per-dollar, or per-article?
  

Osc Works offers website copywriting service for current customers or non-customers alike.

 

How can you get a competitive edge for your shopping cart website?

If you have a shopping cart website, you are already taking advantage of the hundreds of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders who use the Internet to search for products and services to buy.  How can you get more from your shopping cart so you really stand out from your competitors? Competition is tough and studies show you have about 8 seconds from when a customer clicks on your site to make a lasting impression on them and keep them clicking. Every little edge will help your shopping cart get filled with products and not your competitor's.

One way to gain an edge is adding a talking character (avatar) to your website. Just like the one below.

You can wait for your site visitors to click on the play button or set the page to play automatically. The choice is yours.

You could add a talking character to your home page, a content page or even as a side box on your whole site to add and enhance the shopping cart experience for your cutomers. If you have a complex product, want to highlight a sale or just explain your products and services in more detail then a talking character is for you.

To order a talking character for your website (with free installation if you are an ozCart shopping cart customer) please visit our website add-ons shop.

This week, the credit card turned 50 years old.  Credit cards are an invaluable part of everyday life and for many owners of online shops, essential.

The worldwide credit card network was started by American Express in 1958. Bank of America followed quickly with their BankAmericard. The Bank launched the card in a novel way, sending out 60,000 cards to consumers in the area. At first, few had any idea what to do with the cards but they learned the benefits of credit cards quickly and a year later customers had spent more than the equivalent of over $70million Australian dollars on their cards. This inital drop of cards was followed by another 2 million cards throughout all of California, USA. The credit boom never looked back.

Bank of America's overseas affiliates programme which operated with their card evolved into the system that eventually became Visa. A group of banks then also set up rival MasterCharge in 1966 - which later evolved into MasterCard.

Accepting credit cards is an important ingredient in running a high volume, successful shopping cart. There are many payment options online: third party providers like Paypal and Paymate as well as internet payment gateway providers like eWay, Camtech, ANZ eGate, CommWeb, and DirectOne.  All of these payment gateways are supported by ozCart shopping cart software. New Zealand customers can also opt to use NZ based payment gateway providers like Payment Express (DPS) or Paystation.

For an introduction to payment gateways or information on starting your own shopping cart website that accepts credit card, have a look at the information on our website and contact us at Osc Works to find out how we could help you run your own online shop.

Want to turn a paid shopping cart into a free one?

Osc Works offer shopping cart software packages from between $34.95 to $109.95 per month, but with some smart lateral thinking, you could have an ozCart shopping cart website for free. So can you get your own free shopping cart website?

The answer is to take advantage of the Osc Works affiliate programme, that all ozCart and Information Website customers are entitled to join.  Just purchase an ecommerce website from us and put a special banner or link to  Osc Works on it. If your website visitors click-through and then buy their own ozCart shopping cart website within 30 days, then you can earn cash for every sale!

This makes it really easy for you to take advantage of the many new businesses getting online  or expanding from 'brochureware' to online shops.

If you were to refer just two customers to us per month, then you have paid for your own starter shopping cart website, with credits left over to buy ozCart add-ons.  Three customers pays for an Advanced site (allowing you to accept credit cards).  For just five new customers buying sites from us a month and you could have your own Platinum shopping cart with all the Platinum Privileges that come with it! For free!

Take the Osc Works affiliate challenge today and you could be on your way to your own ozCart shopping cart website for free.

UPDATE 16-Jan-2009: With our new payout rates you can reach these goals even faster! We now pay up to a massive $100 per sale for referrals to our Platinum shopping cart.

How do you find the best shopping cart for your business?

Shopping cart providers sometimes overwhelm potential cutomers with jargon  about ecommerce, payment gateways, layered navigation, merchant accounts, localisation, 128 bit SSL, PCI DSS compliance, the list goes on. With so many terms to get your head around, it would be easy for a business owner to be deterred from starting a shop. It need not be so difficult. There are a number of ways that at Osc Works we would like to help you choose the best shopping cart for you and your business.

Some tips include:

1. Decide how you want to accept payments first. Will you or won't you accept credit cards?  To answer that question try to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. How would they like to pay? What are your competitor's sites doing? If you are going to accept credit cards, then you have two basic choices - keep customers on your site and pass the collected credit card information to a third-party payment gateway for processing, or redirect customers to a specialist payment website like Paypal or Paymate for processing.
   
   Redirecting customers to another site has the disadvantage that you lose control - if they click away in the payment process you may not know about the order details. The disadvantage with some shopping cart providers is that you need to ensure your site has encryption of data that goes through the checkout process and meets Visa and MasterCard's strict PCI DSS compliance requirements. ozCart shopping cart software websites take the worry away from this aspect of your planning, because our servers are already PCI DSS compliant. You just need to make sure your business processes are compliant too and you will meet the standards required.
   
   Osc Works ozCart shopping cart software supports a number of Australian, NZ and international payment gateways as well as Paymate or Paypal. You choose.
2. Think about your postage/shipping options. There are a huge number of options for selecting your postage or shipping options for an online store.  If you are a wholesaler for example, you may wish to allow your customer's main office purchase from you online and then have their order shipped to each of their stores. Multiple shipping addresses is an option in only a few shopping carts so if that is an important feature for you, choose carefully. Other considerations include whether you want to include a live Australia Post calculator, have flat rates or offer different options for customers in different state. With ozCart these are all possible, but not every shopping cart is so flexible - especially ones derived or directly licensed from American distributors.
3. Think about your customers. Having a nice easy to use managment system will save you time so this is absolutely essential. But equally important is the experience for your customers. How easy is it for customers to add a product to their cart and buy from you? Does your shopping cart offer a progress bar telling customers how much further they have to go? Try the ecommerce demo of the shopping cart you are planning to buy and ask yourself if your customers would find that process easy.
   
4. Make sure you will get great support. Whatever you are thinking of doing, ask your potential shopping cart provider if you have any questions. How they answer questions will give you an idea of what type of support you will get. See if they have a knowledgebase, if they have a ticket system and whether they seem willing to answer your questions promptly or not. Do they confuse you or make it easy for you?
5. Do they have an online ordering system as well as phone orders? If you are buying an online shopping cart from a provider that doesn't have an online ordering system themselves, isn't that a bit strange? Don't they have confidence in what they do? 

Choosing an ecommerce shopping cart that is well suited to you and your business will put you on the way to making money from your ecommerce website. Tap into the thousands of Australians looking to buy online today - especially with Christmas coming up.