Website Setup for Beginners Part II
You may wonder what the photo has to do with this post--nothing. I meant to put on the side in the about me section and now don't know how to remove it. It is a picture of my husband's Aunt Evelyn when young who recently passed away.
This current entry is a continuation of my first trial at describing in the most basic terms setting up your own small business enterprise on the internet. I come at this subject as a person with no schooling for computers, knowing only what I needed to know to get by. I had no clue about what was involved in setting up a web business, the terminology--like a foreign language! or how much work is was going to be. My goal is to make it easier for others in the same "boat" as myself.
Each step of the way through this process I found something new to learn, something new that had to be done. This is not saying that I am done. At present I am in the process of again editing my product listings to make them more search engine friendly.
Credit Card or Payment Processing
With your own webstore site you will have to determine how payments to you are going to be made. Although very limiting, the easiest option is to accept only money orders/cashiers checks and possibly personal checks (holding your merchandise until the check clears). Easy, yes--but it will limit you in two ways. First, many buyers will not wish to go through the effort of buying a money order (they can be bought with cash only and there is a fee) and then putting the money order/cashiers check or personal check in the mail. The second reason is that if you wish to sell worldwide or if your product does better in a worldwide market, the buyer will have to pay a hefty fee for the order in US dollars--or you will pay the fee to cash it.
Three good, safe ways that I am aware of for CC processing are the following. My host company had suggestions and answered questions about entering information.
1. PayPal
2. Google checkout
3. Credit card processing service, such as ecommerce.
You will ultimately decide which way is the best for you, and here are some questions that should be asked during the decision process.
1. Set-up fee: What is the cost for setting up the account?
2. Sale fee: What is the cost per sale? Flat rate? Percentage of total sale? Is there a cut-off after a certain dollar amount when there will be no charge to you? Is there a minimum monthly fee is sales don't reach a certain dollar amount?
3. Currency exchange fee: Should you sell worldwide, what is the percentage or fee for non-USA sales?
4. Return fee: Is there a charge for crediting back a buyer's purchase?
5. How will you be billed? What day of the month will finds need to be available for payment?
Whatever you decide, you generally need to be up and running before final approval will be made. The host company that I am using wanted an application filled out, I had to be approved, and my site was checked out. I had to have certain basic information in place before the final okay--information about myself, my return policy, and a live site. One last thing, and important, is to have a secure site. There is a fee for this also, and it makes sense. If you look at my website on the home page you will see a seal of security. This means that I am guaranteed, which also gives the guaranteer responsiblity.
While you are putting all of this into place, it will be necessary to decide when the actual billing will be done--at the time of purchase or at the time of shipping. I chose to "capture" the sale at time of shipping, which means up to that point if for any reason I can't ship there is no credit to issue. Also, I chose to not have anyone's credit card numbers kept--way too much responsibility! The credit company handles that.
Shipping
Because I generally don't handle real large boxes or packages, I use the US Post Office for shipping. In fact, when I sold larger items on eBay I used them also. There is a cut-off point when another carrier such as UPS is more economical, and when packages get heavier it is worth checking out. If you search for USPS there is a wealth of information easily available about package sizes and weight. Whether the USPS or UPS, these two give small businesses the opportunity to sign up for an online service and I imagine other companies do the same. This one, at least for the USPS, fortunately has no fee. What you will do is set up a shipping program through your site, set up what kind of services you will offer and how you will do shipping rates. If you have one type of shipping and a flat rate, this will be the easiest. Another way that is seen all the time is to charge for shipping by total dollar amount of purchase.
If you ship lighter weight items as I do, it makes sense to ship by total package weight. Also, media material (books, printed music, records, CD's, cassettes) have the option of shipping at a special rate. Many buyers prefer the choice of a priority rate because media mail can be notoriously slow, especially at high mail traffic times of the year.
I have mine set up with the weight entered for each item. Then at final sale a small amount is added on to cover packaging weight and packaging materials. I caution against large charges for shipping when not warranted--this will ward off return customers in a hurry. This is the way I have found works best, and I hope the information gives you some ideas about how you want to set up your shipping process.
Writing Descriptions
All of the details can really bog you down and take a whole lot of time. It may seem that sometimes it is all you do. The nitty gritty of the whole thing--getting buyers to find you--comes down to how you write up your descriptions. There are several parts to the whole process. I suggest that when you are checking out hosting sites and programs that you examine how the companies have their programs organized--whether it will be complicated or smooth when you do this all-important task.
This is the most important reason to study, read and learn what you can--how the search engines find you depends on it. To begin I would like to talk about three of the most basic parts.
I will tell you that after almost two years and over a thousand positive feedbacks on eBay it wasn't until recently that I truly understood what keywords are and their importance. What is a keyword? What is a search engine? How do the two meet?
A search engine is a large conglomerate that finds information people put out for others to see and know. Google and Yahoo are the two biggest and most important of them. There are other search engines that are very important, but for different reasons. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is what you want for your site. You will need to enter data in a specific way to not only be found by the SEO's, but also be important enough to make it to the top of the list. What you see when you first search a topic is called the first page--that is, of course, the best place for your site to be. Where you land in the search engines--at the top, farther down, or not on the first page--this is call page rank.
Keywords are what the search engines find when they are seeking information. They send out something that they call spiders to find and put out this information. Spiders only will accept keywords. There is a whole list of words that spiders ignore called stop words. Here is a link to one list.>> --that is what you want to have the least of in the first two-hundred words you use for a product. However, because the SEO system changes so fast, just when I was finding this link I noted that google is beginning to include a few stop words. Here is an article about that.>>
Back to keywords--there are places to find keywords that best suit what you are selling. There is a lot of free information to utilize if you have the time to seek it out. Other ways are to obtain a book--be sure it was published yesterday! Or, you can pay for a service; or, if you are paying for advertising such as google adwords, you can get suggestions there. The problem I had with google's keywords was that there were so many and not necessarily the best ones. The line can be very fine--here is an example: With book selling it can matter whether I use the word book or books depending on the subject and category of the book I want to sell.
To determine what will be the best keywords (and maybe even a few misspelled words) for your product I suggest doing some survey work. Ask people you know the question, "If you are searching the internet for this product, what words will you use to look?" Next, determine your target market and study how they think and their buying practices. Why? Because you can't just have a whole string of keywords describing what you are selling. So, ask. What kind of descriptive wording will attract my target market and make them decide to buy from my website instead of another? Do some searching on google and yahoo. Look for the same or similar to what you want to sell--how do the stores with the best page rank use their keywords?
To close off keywords for the present, I would like to share a couple of tips about punctuation.
1. If you put quotation marks around something important in your description, leave spaces inside the quotes. Otherwise, what the spiders will read is the quotation mark. Examples: NO-- "house" YES-- " house " or NO-- house:boat YES: house : boat.
Before I stop typing I would like to mention photographs. For your descriptions if at all possible include photographs. You know the phrase, a picture speaks a thousand words. Think of a picture as a visual description of your product. Also, if there is a complaint you will have a good picture to which you can refer. You don't have to have the best and most expensive photo equipment, but it will help a good deal if you practice. Where is the best lighting? Should I set up a little studio to take my pictures (that is, lights, back drop and tripod for camera.) How can I use a scanner for good pictures? More later about this.
Also a little more on shipping--
Whatever you sell, you will not be successful with unhappy buyers. Package in a way that your product will get to its destination clean, dry, and in one piece. And, don't settle for good enough Remember that part of the perception of your product how it is perceived upon arrival at its destination. Your packaging should not only protect what you are shipping, it should be perceived as being packaged to go around the world and back.
I can tell you that when I have made a mistake with shipping weight or price I have had to bite the bullet and pay shipping for more than my profit. I have never yet (but will) had a box or envelope arrived damaged. What I have had is packages not arrive--which is not by any wrongdoing on my part. Lastly, don't do less for inexpensive products but treat each sale like gold. That buyer may not ever come back, or may only buy inexpensive things from you--ever. That buyer may also return to your site and make larger purchases because you have proved yourself trustworthy with a small dollar amount sale.
What else? More on keywords, descriptions, metatags, robots, shipping, more! more! more!
Here is a link to my site.
This current entry is a continuation of my first trial at describing in the most basic terms setting up your own small business enterprise on the internet. I come at this subject as a person with no schooling for computers, knowing only what I needed to know to get by. I had no clue about what was involved in setting up a web business, the terminology--like a foreign language! or how much work is was going to be. My goal is to make it easier for others in the same "boat" as myself.
Each step of the way through this process I found something new to learn, something new that had to be done. This is not saying that I am done. At present I am in the process of again editing my product listings to make them more search engine friendly.
Credit Card or Payment Processing
With your own webstore site you will have to determine how payments to you are going to be made. Although very limiting, the easiest option is to accept only money orders/cashiers checks and possibly personal checks (holding your merchandise until the check clears). Easy, yes--but it will limit you in two ways. First, many buyers will not wish to go through the effort of buying a money order (they can be bought with cash only and there is a fee) and then putting the money order/cashiers check or personal check in the mail. The second reason is that if you wish to sell worldwide or if your product does better in a worldwide market, the buyer will have to pay a hefty fee for the order in US dollars--or you will pay the fee to cash it.
Three good, safe ways that I am aware of for CC processing are the following. My host company had suggestions and answered questions about entering information.
1. PayPal
2. Google checkout
3. Credit card processing service, such as ecommerce.
You will ultimately decide which way is the best for you, and here are some questions that should be asked during the decision process.
1. Set-up fee: What is the cost for setting up the account?
2. Sale fee: What is the cost per sale? Flat rate? Percentage of total sale? Is there a cut-off after a certain dollar amount when there will be no charge to you? Is there a minimum monthly fee is sales don't reach a certain dollar amount?
3. Currency exchange fee: Should you sell worldwide, what is the percentage or fee for non-USA sales?
4. Return fee: Is there a charge for crediting back a buyer's purchase?
5. How will you be billed? What day of the month will finds need to be available for payment?
Whatever you decide, you generally need to be up and running before final approval will be made. The host company that I am using wanted an application filled out, I had to be approved, and my site was checked out. I had to have certain basic information in place before the final okay--information about myself, my return policy, and a live site. One last thing, and important, is to have a secure site. There is a fee for this also, and it makes sense. If you look at my website on the home page you will see a seal of security. This means that I am guaranteed, which also gives the guaranteer responsiblity.
While you are putting all of this into place, it will be necessary to decide when the actual billing will be done--at the time of purchase or at the time of shipping. I chose to "capture" the sale at time of shipping, which means up to that point if for any reason I can't ship there is no credit to issue. Also, I chose to not have anyone's credit card numbers kept--way too much responsibility! The credit company handles that.
Shipping
Because I generally don't handle real large boxes or packages, I use the US Post Office for shipping. In fact, when I sold larger items on eBay I used them also. There is a cut-off point when another carrier such as UPS is more economical, and when packages get heavier it is worth checking out. If you search for USPS there is a wealth of information easily available about package sizes and weight. Whether the USPS or UPS, these two give small businesses the opportunity to sign up for an online service and I imagine other companies do the same. This one, at least for the USPS, fortunately has no fee. What you will do is set up a shipping program through your site, set up what kind of services you will offer and how you will do shipping rates. If you have one type of shipping and a flat rate, this will be the easiest. Another way that is seen all the time is to charge for shipping by total dollar amount of purchase.
If you ship lighter weight items as I do, it makes sense to ship by total package weight. Also, media material (books, printed music, records, CD's, cassettes) have the option of shipping at a special rate. Many buyers prefer the choice of a priority rate because media mail can be notoriously slow, especially at high mail traffic times of the year.
I have mine set up with the weight entered for each item. Then at final sale a small amount is added on to cover packaging weight and packaging materials. I caution against large charges for shipping when not warranted--this will ward off return customers in a hurry. This is the way I have found works best, and I hope the information gives you some ideas about how you want to set up your shipping process.
Writing Descriptions
All of the details can really bog you down and take a whole lot of time. It may seem that sometimes it is all you do. The nitty gritty of the whole thing--getting buyers to find you--comes down to how you write up your descriptions. There are several parts to the whole process. I suggest that when you are checking out hosting sites and programs that you examine how the companies have their programs organized--whether it will be complicated or smooth when you do this all-important task.
This is the most important reason to study, read and learn what you can--how the search engines find you depends on it. To begin I would like to talk about three of the most basic parts.
I will tell you that after almost two years and over a thousand positive feedbacks on eBay it wasn't until recently that I truly understood what keywords are and their importance. What is a keyword? What is a search engine? How do the two meet?
A search engine is a large conglomerate that finds information people put out for others to see and know. Google and Yahoo are the two biggest and most important of them. There are other search engines that are very important, but for different reasons. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is what you want for your site. You will need to enter data in a specific way to not only be found by the SEO's, but also be important enough to make it to the top of the list. What you see when you first search a topic is called the first page--that is, of course, the best place for your site to be. Where you land in the search engines--at the top, farther down, or not on the first page--this is call page rank.
Keywords are what the search engines find when they are seeking information. They send out something that they call spiders to find and put out this information. Spiders only will accept keywords. There is a whole list of words that spiders ignore called stop words. Here is a link to one list.>> --that is what you want to have the least of in the first two-hundred words you use for a product. However, because the SEO system changes so fast, just when I was finding this link I noted that google is beginning to include a few stop words. Here is an article about that.>>
Back to keywords--there are places to find keywords that best suit what you are selling. There is a lot of free information to utilize if you have the time to seek it out. Other ways are to obtain a book--be sure it was published yesterday! Or, you can pay for a service; or, if you are paying for advertising such as google adwords, you can get suggestions there. The problem I had with google's keywords was that there were so many and not necessarily the best ones. The line can be very fine--here is an example: With book selling it can matter whether I use the word book or books depending on the subject and category of the book I want to sell.
To determine what will be the best keywords (and maybe even a few misspelled words) for your product I suggest doing some survey work. Ask people you know the question, "If you are searching the internet for this product, what words will you use to look?" Next, determine your target market and study how they think and their buying practices. Why? Because you can't just have a whole string of keywords describing what you are selling. So, ask. What kind of descriptive wording will attract my target market and make them decide to buy from my website instead of another? Do some searching on google and yahoo. Look for the same or similar to what you want to sell--how do the stores with the best page rank use their keywords?
To close off keywords for the present, I would like to share a couple of tips about punctuation.
1. If you put quotation marks around something important in your description, leave spaces inside the quotes. Otherwise, what the spiders will read is the quotation mark. Examples: NO-- "house" YES-- " house " or NO-- house:boat YES: house : boat.
Before I stop typing I would like to mention photographs. For your descriptions if at all possible include photographs. You know the phrase, a picture speaks a thousand words. Think of a picture as a visual description of your product. Also, if there is a complaint you will have a good picture to which you can refer. You don't have to have the best and most expensive photo equipment, but it will help a good deal if you practice. Where is the best lighting? Should I set up a little studio to take my pictures (that is, lights, back drop and tripod for camera.) How can I use a scanner for good pictures? More later about this.
Also a little more on shipping--
Whatever you sell, you will not be successful with unhappy buyers. Package in a way that your product will get to its destination clean, dry, and in one piece. And, don't settle for good enough Remember that part of the perception of your product how it is perceived upon arrival at its destination. Your packaging should not only protect what you are shipping, it should be perceived as being packaged to go around the world and back.
I can tell you that when I have made a mistake with shipping weight or price I have had to bite the bullet and pay shipping for more than my profit. I have never yet (but will) had a box or envelope arrived damaged. What I have had is packages not arrive--which is not by any wrongdoing on my part. Lastly, don't do less for inexpensive products but treat each sale like gold. That buyer may not ever come back, or may only buy inexpensive things from you--ever. That buyer may also return to your site and make larger purchases because you have proved yourself trustworthy with a small dollar amount sale.
What else? More on keywords, descriptions, metatags, robots, shipping, more! more! more!
Here is a link to my site.
Labels: SEO how to, SEO keywords, website credit card processing, website set up, website shipping
posted by babamarusia @ 9:20 PM
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