SiteSuite - Sydney Web Design Agency

Anyone who’s stomped their way through an Asian market knows that once you’ve walked through one, the walk through the next is much the same. Market stalls begin to blur into the next and you start seeing the same mobile phone covers, the same cushion covers or the same jade statues as sold on every other stall. “Getting noticed” is the key to success. As they say in SE Asia, “Same, same but different”!

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Over the last few months there has been a growing awareness of the impact that online commerce, through the use of Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software, is having on traditional retail businesses.

Of course there have been the rantings of some notable retail luminaries, and some obvious misinformation spread about the impact of online sales and the unfair advantage that offshore businesses have by not charging GST.

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A good mate of mine is a Director of one of Australia's largest online retailers. Chatting to him this morning, he spoke about how he's working on streamlining the checkout process for his online shoppers. We discussed payment methods and the fact that an unrelated business associate of SiteSuite's mentioned to me just yesterday that his experience buying online through my friend's store was one of the best buying experiences he'd ever had. What a rap! So today I want to ask the question, are you providing your online shoppers with the best checkout options?

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As a web design business we receive a steady flow of enquiries from proprietors wanting to upgrade their existing online store so that they provide online shoppers with a modern shopping experience, to name just one of many reasons for upgrading.

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I’ve noted in other blogs that e-commerce is fast becoming the norm for small to medium businesses. Given the upsurge in interest regarding e-commerce, the following are 6 Essential Ecommerce Guidelines to guide you when planning and running an effective online store.

We’ve certainly seen a big increase in interest in the small to medium business sector, and across all sorts on industries. As a consequence we’ve been busily developing new functionality in our ecommerce tools and our next major product release will feature many new features and vastly improved standard store layouts.

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You have 8 seconds. Your time starts now. Eight seconds is how long it takes a visitor to choose to stay or click away from your site. Have you thought about outsourcing copy writing to increase conversions? Today's Blog Post,  The secret weapon to great web copy, was provided courtesy of Caroline Hermann at Ideas Into Action.

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According to a recent report, a new website visitor conversion rate hovers around the 4-5% mark (source: Coremetrics Benchmark™ for Retail Q2 2010). The glaring point of this statistic is why aren't the other 95% acting upon a call to action on your website or buying from your online store?

Here's a checklist to ensure that you're doing all that you can to convert new visitors to leads or sales.

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After the telephone, I can't think of a better way to connect and communicate with customers than an email newsletter. If you've taken the time to learn about your subscribers and provide them with regular and informative information, you'll be rewarded with loyalty and a constant, steady flow of traffic to your website. This newsletter discusses how to create special interest groups and then target those groups with information of particular interest to the subscribers within. The success of your email campaigns rely heavily on the 'Open' rate for your emails. This list is a focus on how to get and maintain respectable Open rates campaign after campaign.

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It wasn’t so long ago that the hardest part about selling websites was convincing the business owner or manager why they needed a website at all. In 2010, a web site is no longer a luxury or something that sits on the periphery of a business marketing plan, it’s a “must have” for any small business in the digital age. The conversation we have with business owners these days is not about whether to have a website or not, it’s about how to make a website effective, so this blog provides 15 Essential tips for your online marketing strategy.

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This week I’m going to take the opportunity to talk about a couple of passions of mine. It might seem odd to some people that anyone could be passionate about something as seemingly commonplace as ecommerce, but coming from the pre internet generation, the ability of online tools to change how business is done still excites me. It’s not actually the technology but simply the fact that incorporating online tools can completely change the game for so many businesses. But what many businesses miss is that ecommerce and customer service need to go hand in hand.

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Is free shipping an expense to your business or should it be treated as a marketing strategy and part of your overall business plan?

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Reported today in a post on Techcrunch was a keynote address at Google I/O (Google's Largest Developer Event of the Year) which provided a graphic illustration of comparative media use growth and the impact the web is having on traditional media.

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t’s probably not too surprising that two weeks sitting on a beach can provoke a clarity of thought and direction that might normally be lacking when faced with the day to day demands of a business, (and probably also not too surpising that I wasn't exactly thinking about Australian online buying trends!)

Indeed, after two weeks on the Sunshine Coast I was very clear that I wanted to spend more time there! Unfortunately, there are always bills to pay and things to do, besides which there was a strong chance that I might be hunted down and dragged back to the office kicking and screaming.

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When promoting your product or service, the written word should evoke emotion in your audience. Photos should be the support to those words, filling in the gaps that words can't always cover. Video, on the other hand, takes care of all of that and more. When used effectively, video can be a powerful medium to supplement existing product information especially for online buyers who aren't able to hold a product in their hands, rotate it, and get a "feel" for the product.

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What is it that your customers are greeted by when they enter your online store (usually your website's home page)? Are they presented with something fresh and inviting or are they staring at the "same old, same old" they saw during their last visit? We're visual creatures and we judge by appearance.

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