Ecommerce Web Design Blog

With margins squeezed and competition fierce, many people in business are under much higher levels of day-to-day stress than they once were. It is very easy in periods of extra stress to get frustrated with your suppliers and be overly demanding when you are ordering something, making an enquiry or when you experience delays in receiving product.

The thing that is often overlooked is that these suppliers are businesses just like you and if you are under stress chances are they are too. After all, in most cases they deal with many stressed out business owners every day - not just you. 

The secret: customer service  is not just about how you deal with your customers. It is about how you behave as customers too.

With this in mind, the way to get what you want from your suppliers is to go back to basics and the more stressed you are the more understanding you should try and be. Particularly at Christmas. Don't just demand, ask politely, and when you get what you want, say thank you. Sounds all too simple? It is, and it is always worthwhile to remember this when dealing with any supplier you are working with. A little humility and understanding helps build long term business relationships not simple one-off supplier/buyer transactions.

Here are just some quick tips to get you thinking. You could try when you are next dealing with your suppliers:

1. After you get your products, write them an email and say thank you. If you are impressed by the products or the packaging or their service, tell them.
2. If you receive a positive comment back from a customer who your supplier has dropshipped to, pass it on. When under stress complements matter. Don't you enjoy receiving them for your business?
   
3. Suggest something useful that could help them run their business even better - great ideas and suggestions are always appreciated by any business.
4. Refer a customer to them or write them a testimonial for their website - no business would ever turn down that!

Customer service and supplier service is not rocket science. Just good business practice.

Whether you are selling online or offline, pricing your products is a key part of doing business.  What methods can you use to price your online products? Here are a few tips you may wish to consider.

Some common methods to price products include:

• Cost-based pricing (also called cost-plus pricing. this is the price that you paid for an item plus a mark-up)
• Market-based pricing (what your competition is selling items at)
• Value-based pricing (what your customers value your products at. You may apply a premium to reflect your brand, to depict quality or the value of your product in the marketplace)

In practice, the price you place on your products will often depend on a combination of the techniques above.  There are also many different strategies that you can use to price products depending on your objectives in the market.

For example, if you are a new business online you might run an introductory sale, you may have some products of popular items priced equal or below the competition to get people to your store and other products priced using value or cost-based pricing. 

Some  online businesses also use a technique called a loss leader of pricing one product below cost to match or better competition, to get people into your online store and looking around. If they buy that item and you can cross-sell it with others, you could build up a sizeable cart and make a profit overall, even if one item is sold at a loss. 

Whatever you do, make sure you look at the prices of your products as a whole and not only individually, as it will depend on your competitors, your products, your shopping cart website, your advertising and your brand as to whether customers will be prepared to pay your prices.

For a wary online consumer, one way to assess whether an ecommerce website is safe and secure to purchase from is to look at whether the site is kept up-to-date.

A well designed website that has a good selection of products, an easy-to-use checkout system, an active newsletter and is obviously well maintained is more likely to inspire confidence in the buyer that the products they order from you will be of high quality and actually get delivered to them.  Keeping your shopping cart website up-to-date by reflecting seasons and events (such as Christmas, Chinese New Year, Valentines, Easter,  etc) and sending out a regular newsletter to your subscribers/customers can therefore be a big influencer in whether your customers keep buying from you.

At the start of each year, mark on a calendar or in your online diary your planned promotions, events and seasonal messages for the year.  Allow your sales,  promotions or seasonal messages to run for at least two weeks prior to each event to allow people to find you and buy from you during your sale period.  For big sales, you may need to run them for four weeks to get maximum benefit. Each promotion will depend on the time of year, what you sell and your industry - there is no set formula.  Also, make sure you stay aware of what your competitors are doing as they will probably be keeping track of you.

 

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.

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.

When shopping for ecommerce software to start your own online shop, features and the monthly costs are important factors to consider.  But even if the monthly payments are affordable for your business, what about the setup cost? Small businesses need every cent they can save when they set up given the costs of business registrations, phone and Internet connections, business cards, stationery, suppliers and buying stock.  So why spend too much for your ecommerce store setup?

What does setting up your website involve? At most of the top shopping cart providers you will be paying for their specialist technicans to install the ecommerce cart into the website and pre-configuring it for Australian business conditions. At many, the customisation of the graphics and colours to suit your business will also be included.  Setup also covers the level of features you get in the shopping cart software and being entered into the cart provider's billing system to make your ongoing payments.

There is a lot of variation in the setup costs of hosted shopping cart software providers in Australia so it can pay to shop around.  For example, some providers charge $800-$1,000+ to get an ecommerce website set up whereas others charge between $100-$400 setup for a similar level of customisation and as many features.

Ask also whether the price of gst is included or excluded. Even if you can claim back the gst against your tax, paying the gst initially is still a cash flow expense that you must meet. For a small business setting up, this could be significant for you. It pays to check.

If you are unsure about what you are paying for, just ask your potential shopping cart software provider exactly what their setup costs cover.  We think a competitive price in today's market is between $100 - $400 including gst depending on the level of features you are receiving, but what you are prepared to pay will depend on the value you feel you are getting from that shopping cart provider.  

One important point to note is that ensuring you don't pay too much does not mean that the cheapest ecommerce website is necessarily the best shopping cart.  You still need to consider how many ecommerce features the site has, how much flexibility you have with payment and shipping options, the ability to import and export products and customers, and how images will be displayed. Most importantly how will your customers experience your shopping cart? If it is not easy for them, it doesn't matter how easy it is to manage.