How To Plan Your Shopping Cart

Good communication is paramount! Work with us. Follow these guidelines so we can save you money getting your services and website online correctly. Plan out beforehand what you intend to sell and how many items you will have in stock so your online customer knows it too. It's never cool to lose a sale online because someone wanted to order 5 items and you only had one item in stock and they didn't know it! Let us know whether or not your customers may back order your products. This product information is vital for your customer and shows you (and your webmaster) as a well thought out professional online business.

It's a good idea to show images of products that have already been sold too especially if you're an artesian and sell one of a kind items. This shows your talent!

Shopping Cart Pictures, Pricing

Plan a photo shoot with your webmaster and/or save your pictures to a CD Disk for your designer then give each picture a product keyword name. Your designer has to coordinate your items names to match your products. This crucial step will save you and your designer a lot of grief and unneeded extra time. Your designer cannot install a picture named P000004 (or whatever) and not know your intended product name or how much you intend to sell it for unless you tell them.

Keywords for Image Names

If you're selling brand name products online it's a great idea to name your pictures with under_scores using the product category name first. Here's a good example, Main_Brand_name_of_product.jpg This way when someone surfs online they may find your website before the main manufacturers website because your site has better pictures of the product and better keywords describing the product. Search engines like under_scores between words on images, they are easier for them to read. Search engines sometimes use names on images to find your websites products. More about setting up pictures further below.

Shopping Cart Shipping Methods

Measure the width, length, height and pound weight of your boxes beforehand to give your customer a basic idea of the cost involved for shipping. UPS has a pick up service and accurate scales and calculators for in store use. We need the accurate cost for calculating the customers zip code location. Let your designer know beforehand whether or not to include and create special packaging options. Package options are calculated using UPS, FEDEX and USPS (Post Office) zip code calculators whether selling you're one item or several in a package.

Proprietary Calculators

UPS, FEDEX and USPS (Post Office) zip code calculators are proprietary, therefore since each zip code address is impossible to know the exact price you will need to inform customers the exact shipping cost to there zip code address by using these the major shipping companies calculators. Allow more in your design budget for customization of package options. Packaging processes for weight and shipping options are more advanced and more time is involved to complete package layouts for any website. Our online tech support team will teach you this process included as a free service. Some of our work (such as package options) are billed hourly while working together as a team.

Drop Shipping, Will Call

If drop shipping your products (many manufactures allow this) be sure to provide us with your drop ship companies entire 9-digit zip code address of origin so we may create the shipping companies price from their shipping location. Include any additional shipping rules you may require. Some customers simply set up a $10.00 dollar shipping rule globally throughout their website and many people will pay the extra fee. If you're going to use Bar Codes, provide your designer with the numbered codes of the product. Let your designer know the shipping methods you intend to use and whether or not to include Will Call as an option for your customer. With this option (assuming their locals) they can pick up the items direct from your store to save on shipping expense.

Payment Methods

We have several electronic methods to select from. You can give the customer the option to pay with a personal check, UPS cash on delivery, Pay Pal, online electronic e-commerce methods, International Bank Draft, Credit Card using Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover.

"We recommend If you already have an in store electronic card machine to set your e-commerce up as an email order option or have your website orders faxed to you!" However unfortunately (at this time) we cannot do both but you can select either option.

This works well in the beginning when you do not know the volume your website will produce in sales and you're new to marketing your website. We need to know the payment methods you want to use. Why pay extra money for unneeded online e-commerce payment methods when you're already paying for the credit card machine in your store!

Online Orders

By selecting email order only, the customer receives an email receipt upon purchase showing only the last 4 digits of their card and the type they used on their email. You both receive an email instantaneously when your customer places the order from your website. Our system allows you to then login to your encryption secured e-commerce order section of your websites interface to retrieve your order in just a few clicks. Then you process the order just as you would an AVS (Automated Verification System) over the phone using your in store credit card machine. We can set it up your e-commerce checkout area where an email is not required of your customer to purchase the item. Some people really love there privacy and protect their email with their life so your website can respect this and still make the sale!

Retrieving Online Orders 

Here is a link to a website in Seaside, Oregon where I customized a tutorial at http://www.knottybutnice.com/tutorial.html that shows the login process to retrieve orders online and how to upload images to your new website. It's a manual Javascript image slideshow. Navigation controls are on the bottom of the page to navigate it. It's really simple to receive your online orders through your Verisign encrypted database.

We want you to save money on designer fees and to make make money with your new online website business.


Learning Keywords
For External Search Engines

I'll keep this topic short here but invite you to a link at http://www.weaverwebdesigns.com/key_words.html that is much more involved about the topic. Here you find much knowledge for developing successful keywords for your website and test the top rankings and keywords we used for our own website. Our keywording page was designed to train you how to create good keywords and how to balance them for your website. Together working with your designer you can come up with good keywords and a plan after reading this page. All search engines have different requirements and rules for website submissions. Read up on them. We show you where to install your Meta Tags and keywords for pages when you are ready to launch your site for the first time to the search engines..  

Do not expect your designer to know exactly the keywords needed for your business better than you would! That's not realistic. It has to be a team effort.

Your Statistic Tracker

Our software provides statistic trackers that show you the exact keywords people previously used to find your website and the pages that were found for your products. This vital information helps you learn (over time) what search engines and popular keywords were used to find your products. This way you can learn accurately which popular keywords were used on a specific search engine to focus on when creating keywords for your site between doing monthly site submissions.

More On Images

A good looking e-commerce website will have 3 sizes of a product images, large medium and small. We suggest medium pictures on your pages where you are advertising the product and to put an Add Item button below the medium picture so your customer can enter the cart area and purchase the product immediately. We also recommend an entire catalog view page. A good size for a medium picture is vertical at 300 wide by 400 pixels high. You have the option to make the medium picture on the page a linked POP UP for the largest picture of the item. There is a simple link tool pre-programmed to do this in the image section area where the link gets custom entered. This falls into the realm of additional designer customization as the coding process requires more time and effort than a single unlinked image alone. 

You also have the option to make any image on your page a mouseover if you want to show two angles of the product. New window links are initiated only on the users command and are safe and friendly to use. We create Alt Tags (a miniature window on mouse hover) telling your surfer to "Click for the Largest View" We then tell the surfer to turn off there pop up blocker if they wish to view linked new pop up windows.

Creating Thumbnails

Catalogs use thumbnails images as the smallest image at 100 pixels or about 1½ inches wide. The height of the thumbnail is auto set depending on the height of the image itself so it's a good idea to keep your larger pictures all the same size. For your convenience our system auto creates your thumbnails for you. After you’ve created your shopping cart items and installed your pictures, there are two final steps to initialize the system to create your thumbnails. In the e-commerce product catalog management area you simply click on a link called Update Catalog Images and another link called View Update Status where you can see the system creating your largest images into thumbnails. This works very fast.  We can make a 100 thumbnails out of huge pictures in less the 3 minutes.

Marketing Your Website

One of the best ways to market your website is to set out a fish bowl with a weekly or monthly drawing to capture those business cards with those email addresses on them and include this as an option from the email form on your website. We have this set up already for you on your Feedback or Contact page. Then we teach you how to use your email contact management tools provided in the back end of your interface to send out emails to advertise your specials and upcoming sales events using your real websites email business address. 

This is good! Most customer email programs look to validate original website email addresses from actual websites instead of alias ones. This keeps you from getting thrown into someones Junk email folder. So yes we also provide custom email set up you@atyourwebsite.com with your new website at no additional cost. We provide 1 gig of email space with your website. 

Have your employees invite your customers to your website every time they make a sale in your store and to ask your customers if they would like to be added to your email address list. This gets you well known fast in your area and beyond. People remember emails and tell other people about you using word of mouth! Put your website on everything, your checkout bags, your car, your store front window and throw in a business card in every bag with every sale with your website address on it! Remember you are in the Generation X period where everyone shops online now!

Internal Search Engines

Decide whether or not you want to include an Internal search engine window for your website. If you do, you will need to create keywords for the internal sites search engine about each specific item you want your customer to find. If you require special notes about specific items during the checkout phase, let us know that too.

Customization

These are the basics that will get you started. Complete customizations are extra for internal site and external site key wording, databasing and additional customization, like flash slide shows, custom image and text content linking, javascripts, java applets, flash links, video commercial takes, video and audio screen shot advertisements, background music etc. etc. If you've seen it somewhere online and liked it then we can probably re-create the gizmo or look it for your website! 

Professionalism

We are serious about professionalism. At Weaver Web Designs we are professionals who guide, train and teach you how to become successful online. If we have contacted you about a website? Take our offer and this information seriously. We know what we're doing! You will not find another designer in your area who's faster or with a finer product with this much design power and capabilities at there finger tips. Sorry but, No! We are not humble because we are good at what we do and we are proud enough to tell you we know were good! We're truthful!

Your Commitment, Our Commitment!

Make a commitment yourself and to your designer, they cannot work with you until you make a committed decision to clearly consult with them how to make the Internet an extension of your existing business. A quality complete 100 item e-commerce website can take anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks to 3 months to implement, design, keyword and construct depending on how fast we receive your input and information. Know your designers qualifications, the server infrastructure they intend to use and their knowledge base. With quality planning you will save yourself time, money and costly mistakes before launching your website to the Internet.

The Learning Curve 

Expect to have a learning curve to learn how modify and maintain your new website but also expect free technical support provided through our tech team of knowledgeable top IT professionals at your side. We invite you to use our LIVE CHAT SUPPORT chatrooms and to call our 1-800 tech support team at 1-877-435-7891.

Other Website Ideas

Some people buy a website just for fun to share photos back and forth on the Internet with family and friends. 

You can send customers to your website to show them what you want them to know about your business including a Google satellite map with print out driving instructions to your place of business. We have tons more tools and are always upgrading. As a Weaver Web Designs site owner you receive all of our feature upgrades free when they are launched. Our team is constantly upgrading and is coming out with even more exclusive features this year.

In Closing

Every business on the planet needs an e-commerce enabled website as you are losing Generation X sales to your competition every day until you get one. We can help you succeed and believe in earning your business first!