From the President Message from Rob Bell, President & CEO of 1ShoppingCart.com

Breaking The Chains

A large part of our mission here, along with our Private Label Partners, is providing you with more free time and the lifestyle you desire.  We are work hard so you can break the chains that require you to lock yourself in an office, tied to your desk and a computer or commute long distances.

A web-based system, like a 1ShoppingCart.com-powered solution, combined with increased wireless access allows you to take advantage of automating your business and running it from anywhere.

There are many reasons a browser-based system makes sense and essential to any business wanting to leverage Internet advantages.

• Cost Savings: Cutting down on commuting time helps address the rising cost of gas and keeping a car on the road, stressful traffic jams, and even environmental issues.
  
  
• Mobility:  The ability to travel while staying in touch with your business; regardless of whether you’re attending a trade show, educational seminar or skipping town for a good time in the tropics.
  
  
• Access: Check on your business from any computer with Internet access and a browser.  Whether you are at an airport or hotel public computer terminal or an associate’s office, you can check your sales or send out an email broadcast to your customers and prospects about an immediate opportunity, e.g. a teleseminar, at any time!
  
  
• Security and Peace of Mind: Critical and important data is stored off-site. It’s stored in one of the world'’s most secure and advanced IT environments with power redundancy and armed security 7/24. And there are convenient options if you would like to download your data for local backups too.
  
  
• Free Upgrades:  Never have to bear the costs of upgrading software and hardware or supporting the infrastructure required to support your ecommerce online.

There are so many business advantages to a browser-based ecommerce platform that you can add your own benefits to this list.  In fact, I’d love to hear from you; tell us about how your business and life has changed since implementing your 1ShoppingCart.com or Private Label solution.  Your story could be featured right here in ShopTalk News in our Merchant Spotlight!

Break free and enjoy!

Rob Bell, President & CEO
www.1ShoppingCart.com

Religion and Money: Helping Non-Profit Groups Succeed

Meet Dr. Rod Rogers, the founder and president of Leaderskills International, Inc., a church consulting firm specializing in general fund and capital fund raising through stewardship development and leadership training.  He is also a writer and the author of several works including his latest, Pastor Driven Stewardship: 10 Steps to Lead Your Church to Biblical Giving.

Rod uses his 1ShoppingCart.com-powered online marketing system as the publisher of the Dynamic Giving Newsletter—a free ezine for pastors and parishes.  He created a 10-step general fund stewardship development program, The Dynamic Giving System™, which has been used in over 900 churches, in many denominations, in 13 countries worldwide, with phenomenal results.

One pastor said this about the program: "We applied your stewardship teaching verbatim in our church and the first year our offerings increased 30%, almost $2,000 per week.”

Rod shows church leaders and councils how to implement fund raising activities to see increases of 10 to 60 percent in just five weeks! In fact, like all leading marketers, Rod even offers a no-risk 100% money back guarantee!

Rod sells his products and services online utilizing all parts of his shopping cart solution.  He attracts subscribers with his opt-in and then sends their free ezine via autoresponders and broadcasts.  His helpful money-raising products and services are all available for sale online while he’s on the road addressing spiritual communities around the globe.

We proud to support his efforts and recognize his combination of good will, public service and applying the power of Internet marketing to help others succeed.

If your church, or friends of yours in other groups, need help fund raising then check out
Rod’s site at www.LeaderSkillsInc.com.

How To Treat Website Visitors With Respect

One important way to show respect to website visitors is to treat what they type in as something precious.

Have you ever been in these situations?

You fill out a form and submit it. You made a slight mistake (maybe missed a field). When the form comes back to you it loses all - or at least some - of what you have entered. Luckily, such clueless websites are getting quite rare.

You accidentally click on "Reset" button and everything you typed is immediately wiped out. Is it your own fault? I do not think so - web developers should not have put this button on the form in the first place. A Reset button is an old - and I think very stupid - convention they blindly followed. Do you ever really need a "Reset" button?

You accidentally click somewhere outside of the webpage you are working on - maybe on a link to another website. It loads in your browser and your current form entries disappear in the void - Back button does not help...

You are distracted with a telephone call. You come back to a half-filled form, complete it, Submit... only to get "Your session has timed out. Please login again." All your data is lost. ARGH!!

I have just lost all my very own precious time on an airline reservation website. I filled out the form and was asked to login to confirm my status. After I typed an incorrect password, my flight data disappeared.

What can - and should - be done about it?

How do you avoid these problems in you web app? (And you really want to do it. Even if it happens once in a 1000 times, it generates a lot of ill-will - and hurts your business results)

One simple approach is to split long entry forms into several steps/screens. Ask for the most important information first - like name, email, phone number. This makes good business sense because if your visitor does not complete the form, you can follow up. Quite possibly, he/she might have meant to complete it - but was distracted. One gentle reminder can boost your conversion rates!

Another good idea for a lengthy form is to let people save their work at any moment - and come back to finish it later. Maybe they are missing some key piece of information - or maybe they have an urgent task to do. Give them a button like "Save Draft".

When you implement such a feature - do not bug them to fill out all mandatory fields, let people save whatever they have. Only check mandatory fields when they submit the final form.

Going further, implement auto-save of user input every few minutes. A really nifty way some websites are doing this is auto-save your input immediately after you go the next field. Since the save happens in background (using Ajax), user is not inconvenienced in any way - he does not have to wait. Google Gmail is a good example - it auto-saves your draft email every few minutes and you can also save manually at any time.

The auto-save feature can work even if user is not logged in (using cookies) - but be careful - this has privacy implications. What if a visitor uses a public PC to access your website? His information can be accidentally made visible to the next user of that PC. Let people know if you are auto-saving their data - and let them disable this feature and/or delete saved data at any time.

Finally, about those "session timeouts."  My recommendation is that whenever possible you should not kick people out of your system if they are in the middle of a long form. Geeks call such code "keep-session-alive". Sometimes this is not wise due to security issues - then you have to ask them to login AND still keep the submitted form data (not easy but doable).

Bottom line: Showing respect is always a good idea - whether we are talking about someone's communication skills or about a website.

Dmitry Buterin is the Chief Apricot at www.WildApricot.com and offers additional usability strategies at his blog, www.Usability.ca.

1ShoppingCart.com is Sponsoring an entry in the 2006 World SEO Championship

We receive a large number of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) related questions every month and so, when two of our employees, Michael Valiant and Matt Bloom, told us they were going to be competing in the 2006 World SEO Championship this fall, we agreed to sponsor them in exchange for some of their coveted knowledge.

Now, not only will Matt and Michael be fighting their way up the Google results page for the contest, they have agreed to document their struggle and share the steps they take during the competition with you, our Merchants.

So please join us in cheering for the home team in this SEO contest, and pick up some valuable SEO tips and tricks to help with your own website at the same time!

If you would like to support Michael and Matt in the SEO Competition, the best possible help would be to offer a link from your websites to their contest page with the keyword in the linking text.  We have provided the necessary code on our Blog to make it easy.

Thank You for your Support.

I am not very technically inclined and am having a hard time setting up my account. What can I do?

Setting up an effective storefront with your 1ShoppingCart.com account can sometimes seem like a daunting task.  In many cases, when considering the comprehensive list of features available in your 1ShoppingCart software solution, getting your business up and running while taking advantage of all offered functionality may seem like a daunting task.

And while a time investment may be required, the ability to not only sell your products but to up-sell new products, offer discounts and promotions, maintain an affiliate program and an effective customer follow-up process, run an automated ezine, track your link and ad stats and to generate detailed reports based on sales and other statistics are all available within your 1ShoppingCart software solution and crucial to effectively run and grow a profitable business online.

For our DIY merchants we have provided a comprehensive user guide, quick-start guides, a wide-ranging knowledge base and even a suite of Video Tutorials to get you on your way.  For the DIY’s, these tools, coupled with our knowledgeable and friendly Client Services staff are all you may need to realize your online goals.  But we also understand that for some people, setting up all the features you may want to take advantage of can sometimes take more time and seem more overwhelming than you are ready for.

If you either don’t have the time, or you don’t have the patience or know-how to integrate our plug and play software, maybe our Quick-Start Program is the solution for you.  The Quick-Start upgrade program provides you with one of our experienced Integrations Specialists to handle your account setup and get you started as quickly and hassle free as possible! 

Our Quick-Start program allows you to concentrate on the more important aspects of your business while our specialists take care of the integration grunt work for you. 

Of course, because we don’t want to setup everything up for you and then simply cut you loose to try and figure out for yourself how to manage your new Online Business, once our Integration Specialist has set up your account they will also provide you with a full hour of One-on-One targeted training geared towards YOUR business needs.  This time spent with your specialist is invaluable towards helping to you understand how to manage your new 1ShoppingCart softare account and how to make it work for and benefit YOU!

For more information on any of the tools mentioned in this article, or to schedule your Quickstart Program Integration, please feel free to contact any of our client services staff by ticket or telephone today!