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How Do You Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software

By on March 28, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

How Do You Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software?

Anyone who desires a successful Internet business understands the importance of a good shopping cart. There are so many shopping carts online now that it can be difficult to wade through all your choices to locate the one that will work best for you.

One way of knowing which shopping cart is best for you is to read shopping cart product reviews that you can find online and in IT magazines. Read about what others think of the shopping carts, make note of the features discussed and compare what is offered to what you need.

Another way to find what is the best shopping cart software for your business is to do some comparison-shopping yourself using a list of what you need in a shopping cart and your budget.

When you have pared down the possible candidates to just a few, then it is time to look at live stores that use each of the candidates shopping cart programs. Notice how easy or not it is to navigate, search for products, add to or delete products from the shopping cart and the features available for the customer. Look to see if the shopping cart software companies offer a customer service and give them a try to see how they respond to you.

When you are paring down your list of possible shopping cart candidates do it by comparing price, feature, and by reading the reviews of each shopping cart. Look for the shopping carts that seem to be up to date on the latest technology, are easily integrated with payment processors and your Website. Make sure you discard the shopping carts that are older or have lower quality.

When investigating live stores that use the various shopping carts that you have pared down your candidates to you want to get a feel for how the shopping carts work when in use. Typically the shopping cart companies will provide a list of several online stores that use their shopping cart. Some of the things you will be looking for are how well the shopping cart blends in with the Website and does each store look different from the others? Actually use the shopping carts on these stores to see how the carts perform.

When filtering out the candidates use a list of the top 3 things that you are looking for in a shopping cart and if a candidate does not have one of the top 3 than cross it off your list. Make a list of the features that are important to you and which ones you cannot do without this will help to narrow down your list of candidates.

If you know you will be using electronic certificates that cross off any shopping carts that do not offer this feature.

Make sure you investigate how good each company’s customer service department is by sending them each an email asking some pre-sale questions and make notes about how fast they respond, if they respond with a canned reply or really give you individual attention.

Do the candidate shopping cart companies have technical support? Take a look at the FAQs and index of help topics to see how helpful they are and if they are easy to understand. Download the user guide and review it to see if it is understandable.

Read shopping cart review from respected sources to see what is recommended. See if you can find user reviews on each of the shopping carts that you have decided are the biggest contenders for your money.

Once you have your list narrowed down to just 3 or 5 shopping cart software companies than it is time to look at the total cost of using each shopping cart, and also look at what the strong points are for each of the remaining carts.

Look at price, features and support and make your best decision.

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Interested In ElegantThemes Premium WordPress Themes-Discover ElegantThemes Here

By on October 3, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Interested In ElegantThemes Premium WordPress Themes? Discover ElegantThemes Here

Overview of ElegantThemes

When you start learning about ElegantThemes, a premium WordPress theme developer, there are two things that really grab your attention.

This is one of the most affordable premium theme developers out there today, yet their quality and attention to detail remains very high.
Their customer service and dedication to pleasing clients is exceptional. You won’t find that combination in many theme developing services today.

You have a sense that you are in good hands when you take up your ElegantThemes membership. All themes are guaranteed to function properly in the dominant browsers and have been tested to ensure that. It is also noteworthy that all sidebars on these themes are ready for widgets and some are ready for AdSense ads right out of the box.

Easy Theme Customization with ElegantThemes WordPress Themes

One of the nicest features of a WordPress theme from ElegantThemes is the easy customization using the famed ElegantThemes ePanel.

The ePanel is the mechanism in their themes where you customize and set your website layout. You can dictate the navigation, home page, color scheme (if more than one color scheme is offered by a particular theme), search engine optimization, blog settings, and more. The best part is you can do all this customization in the ePanel without knowing any coding at all.

Pricing & License Model

This is one of the most interesting points about ElegantThemes. As a premium WordPress theme developer, the service is definitely one of the more affordable options. Everything operates off a membership system and there are two licensing options.

The basic license after joining gives unlimited access to all themes for a full year and you are allowed to make any changes to customize the theme to your personal needs without giving credit or stating anything about ElegantThemes on the site. The only restriction is that you can only use the themes on sites that you personally own. No redistribution is allowed.

The cost for a personal membership with the basic license is $39 a year (as of the time this article was published). This is definitely one of the best membership pricing models on the market today for an all-theme access premium WordPress themes developer. Yes, for $39 you get access to ALL the themes created – including future themes for the duration of your membership.

If you want to use one of these themes as a part of a professional web design or development service, you need to pay the one time distributor fee of $89 when you sign up (at the time this article was published). This gives a more advanced license to use all themes on as many domains as you like, with any modifications that you like, and this includes putting them on sites that will be sold to others.

The distributor license does not include selling the actual theme itself. It must be packaged with a domain name that is sold as a complete project to your clients.

PSD Files Included

Every theme offered from ElegantThemes comes with the PSD files that makes editing the graphics fast and easy within Photoshop. Also, each theme comes with blank logo images so you can do some customizations even if you don’t have access to Photoshop. Often PSD file inclusion is a premium cost with other theme developers.

Technical Support

Technical support is one area where other theme developers could learn something from ElegantThemes. They stand behind their themes and openly offer to fix any problems with installation or functioning. There is an active support forum open to members and an FAQ file that answers practically any question you could have, including defining basic terminology and concepts for beginners.

The catch here is that they are willing to keep their themes compatible with future WordPress releases as long as you are a member of the service. Once you cancel your membership and a new version is released, they may not be as willing to get it up to date without a restored membership.

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Improve Your Shopping Cart

By on March 14, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

Improve Your Shopping Cart

If you want visitors to your site to use your shopping cart you need to make improvements to the usability of the cart and to make the purchase process as simple and short as possible.

Did you know that the checkout process is where more sales are lost than any other time during the buying process? Check your analytics and see if you have a large number of individuals leaving your site before finishing the checkout process, if this is happening than you know that you definitely need to make improvements. In order to determine where you need to make shopping cart improvements you can ask someone who is not familiar with your website to go through the process and check out the usability of your shopping cart. Ask them to specifically comment on how accessible the shopping cart is, if it is easy to use, if they ran into problems were they able to find instructions on how to use the cart, and did they find the shipping and payments methods that they prefer to use?

Investigate how easy it is to navigate around finding products. Do you have a search feature and does it give accurate results?

If you belong to any business forums ask members to rate your site and their shopping experience.

Ask yourself how organized your site is, how secure do people feel making purchases and how user friendly is the shopping experience on your site?

Your shopping cart is one of the most important parts of your Website. Periodically evaluating the shopping cart from a user’s point of view can improve not only your shopping cart but improve your sales as well.

Look at your shopping cart objectively does it meet all of your needs as the administrator? Can you manage all of the product fulfillment, payment and shipping needs in a timely manner without mistakes? Evaluate the hosting, customer service and technical support of the company who’s shopping cart you are using. How happy are you with the features? When upgrades are available is there an additional fee or are upgrades free to existing customers?

Does your shopping cart blend in well with your Website? Do you receive the information you need about your customers and their sales? Does your shopping cart have the capability to have an affiliate program, produce a newsletter or evaluate the shopping experience of your customers?

Does your shopping cart grow with your business or have you outgrown the shopping cart?

What do reviewers say about the shopping cart you are using? Can you find customer reviews of the shopping cart and if so, are they favorable?

After evaluating your shopping cart is customer service responsive to your need to make improvements? Do they give you suggestions or upgrades?

Seeing how important your shopping cart is to the success of your online business spending time evaluating how well your present shopping cart is performing and finding out what your customers think about your shopping cart is important and should be done on a regular basis.

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