15 Basic Steps to Starting an Online Store

Many people wants to start their own online stores, whether clothing, gift basket or toy stores on the Web. Using a clothing store as an example, here are some basic steps to creating your online storefront:

1. Define your business. The very first step is to always know what it is you want to do. This [...]

How Small Online Businesses Can Increase Conversion

In today’s business climate whether you have recently started or whether you have been in business for a while, you are very likely to have a website. If you think about it carefully, it does not matter if you are selling a product or service, your aim is to increase conversion rates and get more [...]

How can Shipping Costs Affect Your Business?

Someone asked me an interesting question about the impact of shipping costs to the bottomline.

The asker has developed a product that is considerably better and resolves the problems of the main competitor’s product. This new entrant will also offer more with the product in terms of features and size. The competitor’s product is simplier and [...]

8 Factors to Get Customers to Recommend Your Store

The loyalty marketing consultant and magazine publisher Colloquy has created a Retail Loyalty Index to answer a key question: To which retailers do consumers profess their deepest loyalty, and why. The Index is based on a survey of 3,000 U.S. consumers in six demographic segments: Affluent household heads, Young Adults, Seniors, Women, Hispanics and a [...]

Explore More Payment Options for Your Buyers

Much ado has been made about the comeback of layaway programs. KMart is even advertising heavily their layaway program, which allows customers to pay the item over an 8-week period

During these tough economic times, take the cue from big retailers and explore more payment (even credit) alternatives for your customers. The goal is to [...]

How to Position Your Online Retail Business When the Economy is Down

I was just listening to the late night news, and they reported that the upcoming Holloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons may not be merry holiday seasons for retailers. As the financial markets crisis deepen, there are fears that people will not spend as much this year for gifts, holiday preparations and other items (worse, they [...]

10 Reasons Why Online Retail Entrepreneurs Succeed — and Fail

The book “How to Start a Home-Based Online Retail Business” by Jeremy Shepherd is one of my favorite startup guide for starting an ecommerce business. The author writes from the perspective of someone who will run the business from a small office tucked in the kitchen with the inventory located in a spare room or [...]

Starting a Website: Build a Broad Authority or Niche Site?

Someone posted a very interesting question in Yahoo Answers: when you start a website, should you build a broad authority site, or a smaller niche site? The asker wants to know the impact of the size of the website in terms of search engine optimization as well as potential revenues.
Personally, I would go for a [...]

43 Website Features of Top Online Retailers

Ever wonder what sets big businesses apart from small businesses? Of course they have the resources, and with it they can get the best talents and top-of-the-line technology to outsell othe retailers and develop features that can only turn a small business green with envy.
Take a look for example at online businesses. Beyond their sleek [...]

Cost Effective Online Marketing Methods

One of the interesting data in the Shop.org/Forrester Research’s report “State of Online Retailing 2007″ is the most cost effective online marketing method.
Per the study, the amount of dollars online spent by an online retailer to get an order based on various methods are as follows:

Email (to customer list) = $6.53
Affiliate program = $17.47
Paid search [...]

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