December 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

We would like to first Thank You for another great year. We have been able to progress as a company and importantly make great improvements and upgrades to our software.

The end of the Year has come and I am sure we are all busy with filling orders and shipping them out. This is also the time that we spend with a lot of families and friends.

2007 Accomplishments

• SSPA Star Award – We were awarded the SSPA Star Award for Services Excellence in Consumer Support. Read more here.


• We were able to add several functions and updates to our software. Please see Technology Blogs.


• We have expanded our Merchant Services with more articles and marketing tutorials. Please refer to Merchant Services.

Important Dates

Christmas Holidays 2007: There will be no phone support available. We will be closed December 24th and 25th ALL DAY!

New Years: There will be no phone support available. We will be closed ONLY on the 1st. We will remain open December 31, 2007 and January 2, 2007.

Programming Extravaganza
One More Week for the $99.00 Website Programming Offer!
Click here for details.

iMergent Inc., parent company of Storesonline, is pleased to announce a new array of financial products being offered to our merchants through iMergent Financial Services. This new division will continue the tradition of outstanding customer service and innovation that you have come to depend on from Storesonline. iMergent Financial Services is currently able to provide residential and commercial real estate lending, credit enhancement services, and equipment leasing. Make sure to check out future additions of the newsletter for more details on each of these exciting new services.

Product Spotlight: Why should you get your commercial equipment lease with iMergent Financial Services? We can issue approvals in as little as 24 hours, over 90% of our applications are approved, we offer a variety of flexible financing programs with competitive rates, we finance almost ALL types of equipment, and we can handle A to C credit. So free up cash flow and make your business accounting more simple. Our financing specialists will help you to acquire the best equipment financing option that offers you the most benefits. There is no cost or obligation to apply, so call or email us today.

Call: 866.918.8866 OR Email: contact@imergentfinancialservices.com

Updated Software Features

Categories: Now if there is no Category Start Page selected it will no longer graft the category tree into the site map.

Dividing Lines: Before you were able to add or remove the dividing lines from a product list displayed in the center or bottom. The dividing lines were not displayed on the left or right even if this option was checked. This option will now work for the left and right sides as well as center and bottom. This is enabled by default, so most product lists in the right and left column in your licenses will display dividing lines; however, you can edit that component and click off the dividing lines option to disable them.

Surveys: You can now add surveys to your web site. This new feature can be found by navigating to the Pages menu and then clicking on the Surveys tab.

Sorting: Your customers can now view your product categories and lists in the order they would like. You will find this option once you add a category or product list element to your page.

12 Days of Christmas Safety
‘Tis the Season to be Careful

On the first day of Christmas… Keyword Navigation
Using keyword navigation by setting links throughout the text or ad copy you create for emotional response (as noted above) is very effective in driving potential customers further into your site and onto product pages where they can place orders. Consider making keywords and phrases used throughout your ad copy and other text into clickable links that link to a page or product in your site that each keyword or phrase refers to.

On the second day of Christmas… Check your Meta
To set up a meta title for a page, start with your pages tab, select the page you want to edit, open the page for editing, look for the "Edit" tab on the right hand side and click it. Then look for the "Meta Title" box and type in your title info.

For Meta description and keywords, select the "Meta" tab on the right hand side, click it, and add a Meta element for description and another for keywords

On the third day of Christmas… Unique Selling Points/Proposition
A USP (Unique Selling Point) is a subtle line or phrase that draws focus to a beneficial aspect of your product or service. A USP is advertised in such a way that it implies you are somehow different from your competitors without actually specifically saying you are different. For example, a recent advertising campaign for Sprint PCS used a USP that focused on the aspect of their network being “all digital”. It seemed to imply that they were the only company that offered mobile phone service on an all-digital network; yet there were other mobile phone service providers that were also set up on all digital networks.

On the fourth day of Christmas… Contact Info/Having an 800 number
It's often a good idea to designate a small space somewhere near the top of your page and at the bottom that lists a phone number customers can call to make inquiries and/or an e-mail visitors may use to contact you. An 800 number is suggested but any customer service number and other contact info listed near the top of the page can increase the credibility of your site and trust with potential customers.

On the fifth day of Christmas… Page list/Link in Footer
Adding a simple page list for all of your top level pages horizontally in the footer of your site provides visitors and customers more convenience to navigate to another page after reading through the bottom of the current page without having to scroll back up to the main navigation menu for your site near the top of the page.

On the sixth day of Christmas… Promotional Info
A largely overlooked technique for making your site more marketable is putting informational content on your site to accompany the product or service you provide. Informational content can be an article that relates to the industry or market your product or service fits with. Informational content increases the profile of your site for relevancy-based search engines. While articles and tutorials posted on your site may be longer than your standard ad copy, if properly optimized with a proper meta title, description, and keywords, informational pages can have a dramatic effect upon search engine rankings.

For more info on ideas and guidelines for setting up informational content to aid you in promoting the site, please refer to pages 42-46 of the “Dialing In Your Website” manual, which can be downloaded from Merchant Services.

On the seventh day of Christmas – Secure Site
It is good to have some sort of logo or icon that re-enforces the notion that your site is secure. Many merchants just use a nice looking icon or create their own icon or image that symbolizes the security of their site. Ultimately, the test of security for any site page used to capture info is to look for a little yellow lock icon in the bottom of the browser window and also look for an 's' following 'http' on the page's URL in the address bar of your browser. You may also want to use a line of text that emphasizes the security of your site, for example "100% Secure Shopping!” and make it stand out.

On the eighth day of Christmas… Blog (This is also very important during the busiest shopping season)
Consider creating a blog (you can set one up at www.blogger.com). If you can commit some time every so often to write in a personal blog, it can help increase relevancy and give search engines more links to index to your site. Keep the information you write relevant to your site and provide a link to it from your site as well as links back to your site from within your blog. Remember, a blog is different from a discussion board in that a blog is like an online journal or diary that only you would add info to.

*Note – If your site is built with StoresOnline Pro, then you may add a forum to your site to serve as a blog. A forum can be set up to be like a discussion board where anyone can contribute content to it, or it can be set up to serve as a blog (where you are the only one that contributes content to it).

On the ninth day of Christmas… Positive Benefits
Near the top of your page, you may consider listing positive benefits, such as a bulleted list of reasons why your products, business, and website will satisfy your customers. .

On the tenth day of Christmas… Testimonials
If you have any friends or know of anyone who's had a positive experience with your product or your site; request them to write up a brief testimonial for you to post on your site. This will also increase the credibility of your product, and thus your site.

On the eleventh day of Christmas… Viral Marketing
An example of this would be to have an “Email a friend” element on all pages that you would be happy to have customers refer their friends to. The more information you have on your site that would be of interest to those you are marketing to, the more likely they will want to refer other friends and acquaintances they may have that would share their interest.

On the twelve day of Christmas… Newsletters (Extremely important during ANY holiday season)
This could be critical in retaining customers. Most major sites on the internet today offer newsletters and the opportunity for new site visitors and/or customers to sign up for it. By adding a place to register for a newsletter and encouraging visitors and customers to subscribe to it, you will be able to secure customer names and e-mails, and then advertise certain specials and items through each newsletter, as well as providing useful and valuable tips, and information relating to the hobby or activity your products support.

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at www.myquickresponse.com for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat.
You may also call 801-434-8582.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline!

November 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations

Last month we went over different ways you can use various promotional strategies to help accommodate your customers during this Holiday Season. This month we will be touching on a few different ways you can use major search engines to help you accomplish your marketing goals.

Thought for the Month
This month will be the beginning of the busiest shopping time of the Year! This is a great time to gear up on your marketing skills and start driving in the traffic.

We will be discussing the 3 major search engines.

• Google - Free Submit: http://www.google.com/addurl/


• Yahoo Search - Free Submit: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request/


• MSN Live - Free Submit: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Google
Google offers a variety of marketing techniques and tools to suit your budget. One tool that we highly recommend is Google AdWords. There are 3 things you can accomplish with this

1. Your target will be reached. You can advertise to people who search on Google. This way your AdWords campaign can target new audiences.


2. You will have greater control. You would be able to edit your ad and adjust it to your budget until you get the results that you want. You can also restrict it to specific languages and geographic locations.


3. You get measurable value. You do not have a binding contract that will hold you to a minimum spending requirement and/or time commitment. And with the cost-per-click option, you're only charged if people click on your ads. This means every dollar of your budget goes toward bringing new prospects to your website.

Yahoo
Yahoo also offers a variety of marketing products.

1. Yahoo! Local - Local Listings are a great way to promote your business to customers looking for information in Yahoo! Local. Unlike Local Sponsored Search, which uses a pay-per-click payment model, Local Listings have 3 listing options; Basic (Free), Enhanced (Fee) and Featured (Fee). Visit http://listings.local.yahoo.com for more information.


2. Yahoo! Search Submit - This enables you to submit up to 5 URLs per domain for inclusion in non-sponsored search results on Yahoo! and other portals such as AltaVista and AllTheWeb. Visit https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit for more information.


3. Yahoo! Search Marketing Product Submit - This will allow you to promote your products prominently in Yahoo! Shopping and appear in highly relevant areas across Yahoo!, giving you access to millions of motivated buyers. Pay for your performance Inclusion in Yahoo! Product Search and buyer's guide pages is based on a cost-per-click price that varies by product category. You pay only for leads directly to your site. Quickly and easily update product information and monitor performance. Visit http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/shopsb/index.php for more information.

MSN Live
We have negotiated directly with Microsoft on your behalf to get you a $50 advertising credit with Microsoft's adCenter. When you establish an advertising account with them with a low $5.00 activation fee, you will receive a $50 advertising credit which goes towards clicks.

Go to startadcenter.com/storesonline and use promo code STORES07 during the setup process to receive your $50 credit. It's an awesome opportunity to spend just a little bit of money and gain valuable traffic. As you do, you will be better able to make the adjustments to your site and your marketing to maximize its effectiveness.

New Software Features

Custom Price Labels and Add to Cart text: This will allow you to customize the text used for your Add to Cart buttons and price labels. To access the custom labels ares, go to the Products tab and click on Price sets. Double click on your standard Price Set and the click the Labels tab.

Inventory Search/Pagination: Your inventory screen will have the ability to search by name or SKU. This will help with time out problems and will also benefit merchants that have thousands of products in inventory.

New Design: Check out the new design called Big Sky by going to the Site tab located in the Store Builder.

Allow Multiple Variation Ordering: This feature allows customers to buy quantities of multiple variations at once. For example, if you sell a product that comes in Small, Medium and Large, using this feature will add a quantity box next to each size. Now your customer can enter a separate quantity for each size and then click Add to Cart one time saving several back and forth clicks. To enable this feature on a specific product, you will need to be sure that the variation is being displayed as a list and then check the options box that says "Allow Multiple Variation Ordering"

DOBA Pro Memberships: The StoresOnlinePro platform now supports Doba Pro memberships. If you are a Doba Pro member, you will now be able to view products from all of the suppliers that you have access to.

Featured Merchant

"I finally got to the point where I wanted a change in my life. We wanted a business that would kind of express our passions...I love to photograph butterflies up close, you know, full frame. Now I can go do that just for fun without the stress of having to earn a living with my pictures."

Click Here to read Sue’s story
Sue Anderson
http://www.butterflybuzz.com/
http://www.motherearthclothing.com/

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at http://www.myquickresponse.com/ for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat. You may also call 801-434-8582.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline!

Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc.

Avoid Corporate “Bah, Humbug”

Will Your Company’s Christmas Be Full of Joy Or

Are You About to Experience Corporate “Bah, Humbug”?

Quick Facts
According to eMarketer, United States e-commerce holiday sales rose
24.6 percent for the 2006 holiday season compared to 2005.

For many retailers, the holiday season can represent anywhere between
25-40% of their annual sales.

"The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice." So Charles Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge in the holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. The story begins on Christmas Eve, with Scrooge at work. Later that evening, Scrooge is visited by three Ghosts of Christmas: Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

Our companies all have a past, we live in its present and we’re preparing for our futures. In case you haven’t noticed, the holiday shopping season is in full swing. Various consumer groups estimate that $30-$41 billion will be spent online in the next six weeks. That figure should both excite you and put the full fear of God in you. How prepared is your company’s website for the holiday season and how prepared are you to fulfill orders?

eCommerce has grown bigger and faster than any other form of commerce in the history of the world. There’s never been a time when you can sit in your basement office in Winnemucca, Nevada and purchase cupcakes at Josephine's Bakery in Rome, Italy (http://www.josephinesbakery.com).

Imagine it. $30 billion is out there about to be spent on whatever and you have an opportunity to collect on it. How? There are many reports and studies showing that nearly 70% of companies don’t have the ability to sell their products or services online. With 74% of Americans saying that they’re going to buy Christmas gifts online over the next few weeks it is ludicrous to draw traffic to your site only to lose them to your competitors who allow for eCommerce transactions.
In order to process orders your site must have three key elements:

· Shopping Cart
· Payment Gateway
· Merchant Account

For you to succeed online during the holiday season you’ll need more than just shopping cart technology. First, your site must look professional. Your site should reflect the kind of business you operate and should engender trust and confidence for consumers to buy your products without any reservations. We’ve all seen sites that make us question the security and integrity of their owners. Some sites look like the cliché used car dealership. Your site will lose more customers quicker by having a poorly designed site than anything else.

You need to make your site easy to navigate. If it takes more than one click to find your items for sale and begin the purchasing process you’re going to lose sales. At the least your site should have three items for sale on its homepage. Make sure you highlight those items you most want customers to purchase. Have high-quality photographs of the item with detailed product descriptions. Make sure the price is easily found. You should list products that a potential customer might enjoy to go along with their other purchases.

Help people find your website through a cost-effective online marketing plan. eMarketing is constantly evolving to match the evolution of search engines, Web 2.0 and consumer trends. You must adapt and evolve to stay ahead. Make certain that you work to strategically link your site, use resources wisely for your sponsored links. Optimize your site for search engines. If no one finds your site no one will buy your products.

A recent survey of online shoppers found a 60% increase in the likelihood of purchase if the site offered free shipping. If this is true you ought to consider absorbing that cost somehow. Even if the increased likelihood were 20%, don’t you think it would be worth it?

On November 26, 2007, over $700 million was spent on retail sales. Over 80% of Americans claimed that they’d spend time at home or at work purchasing gifts this week.

October 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Special Announcement:
In an effort to better serve our customers, we have asked J.D. Power and Associates to evaluate the support we provide to you. As part of their evaluation, they will be randomly sending out email messages from October 24th through 26th and asking for your help in completing an online survey. We would greatly appreciate you taking the time to complete this survey, as we value your input and want to offer the best support possible.

We are pleased to announce even more exciting new features for the month of October. Read below for a listing of the new features, tutorials, and other updated information from StoresOnline.

Thought for the Month:
We are starting to approach the holidays, so look for promotional advantages during this profitable season. You may want to pay close attention to major websites and their strategies, or use the Merchant Services tutorials to devise your own promotions for the holidays. Consider the following strategies:

• Free Shipping: Many consumers search for free shipping during the holidays


• Holiday packages: Create a kit made up of several items you sell on your site and sell it as a single product


• Holiday Coupons: Create discounts and special offers

New Software Features

Calendar Feature: You are now able to add a calendar to any page as an element. This will allow you to display your promotional events and customize your calendar. Please refer to the Calendars article in the Pages section of your Knowledge Base.

Contact Information Element: The Contact Information element lets you display your contact information on your site in an online contact card. This element recreates your information as an image, which may prevent malicious automated software from recording your personal information. It is similar to a business card, and can display the company name, phone, fax, email, and address.

Quantity Discount Pricing: If a product is on sale and a quantity discount pricing table has been defined, the product will now show the original price and sale price in a table along with their respective quantities.

Customizable “Add to Cart” Messages: You are now able to customize the “Add to Cart” button if you have a need for it to say something other than Add to Cart. For example, Buy Now, or Book Reservation etc.

Custom Site Elements: Custom Site Elements allow you to further customize your site's navigation. The site elements are the small links that appear at the very top of your site, usually above the header. Until now, there have been pre-set links to choose from such as View Cart, Login, Order Tracking etc. Now you can add links and text of your choice to this section of your site.

Simply navigate to the Site menu and the Elements submenu, select Custom from the drop down menu, and click the Add button. In the URL column, click the Ellipsis button to select any page from your site. Enter the text that you want to appear for this link in the Name column. If you want to add text to this section that doesn't link to another page, you can leave the URL field blank. One example of this would be to display your phone number or some other important messages.

Merchant Services Updates

log into Merchant Services to access these updated tutorials. Click Here

Creating Your Website v. 1.0 > Site Navigation (Navigability)
This article explains the importance of Site Navigation, or the system of links that allows your visitors to find all the important information on your site.

Going Live and the Testing Process > Getting 100 Visitors to Your Site on a Daily Basis
This article details the process of increasing the number of daily visitors to your site after publishing your site for the first time.

New Services Offered
StoresOnline is constantly negotiating with other online business companies to provide you with special offers to help you better your business. Please remember that your feedback, whether about StoresOnline software or our integrations with third-party software or services, is very valuable to us and we appreciate it very much.

Operation Dropship:

We have recently added Operation Dropship to our list of dropshippers. They provide IN STOCK drop ship products to your customers. They normally charge $39.95 monthly for this service. But during this limited beta test period, you pay a one-time fee of $3.00 for six months worth of service.

Visit http://www.operationdropship.com/storesms for additional information.

Microsoft adCenter:

We have negotiated directly with Microsoft on your behalf to get you a $50 advertising credit with Microsoft's adCenter. When you establish an advertising account with them for a low $5.00 activation fee, you will receive a $50 advertising credit, which goes towards clicks.

Visit http://startadcenter.com/storesonline for additional information.

Logoworks:

Logoworks and StoresOnline have teamed up to provide your business with a logo design solution that offers tremendous value.

Visit http://www.storesonline.logoworks.com/?source=STRSS1WL2&lpn=StoresOnline+Landing for additional information.

Makau Corporation:

Makau Corporation is the leader in online education, providing online education content for such companies as the Dell Learning Center, IBM, Net G Press and others. Makau has created an online educational environment exclusively for StoresOnline merchants. All courses are available to you at deep discounts, allowing you to continue your education on many technological topics, including Microsoft Office, Business Communication, Quickbooks & even network administration.

Visit http://storesonline.learningitnow.com/storesonline.asp for additional information.

Atto Solutions:

StoresOnline has teamed up with Atto Solutions to provide you small parcel cost saving services which include; Discounts with DHL and "Atto Alert" an innovative service that will contact your customers when the carrier has missed their delivery commitment, working with them and the carrier until the package is successfully delivered. Now that is Customer Service at its Best!

Visit http://www.attoautoship.com for additional information.

eLayaway:

eLayaway makes it easy for StoresOnline merchants to market their new payment option. You can download free banner ads, promotional ads and other creative digital assets from eLayaway's Merchant Account page. Simply sign-in to your Merchant eLayaway account (set up during the opt-in program) and download what you need. There's even a section devoted to sharing marketing ideas that work. Properly marketing eLayaway on your site can help increase sales conversion rates and reduce shopping cart abandonment. Thanks to eLayaway's growing network of consumer members, you may also see considerable increases in traffic to your sites.

Visit http://app2.elayaway.com/partner_splash/StoresOnline for additional information.

Veriship:

Through VeriShip, all StoresOnline merchants can have their UPS and FedEx shipments audited for free. VeriShip will work with you to discover over charges and mistakes in invoicing from these shipping companies and will get you credits on your shipping invoice. They only bill 50% of the credits actually attained. In other words, if they don’t save you money on your shipping, you pay them nothing.

Visit https://www.veriship.com/RegisterOnline.aspx?RefId=1 for additional information.

Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at www.myquickresponse.com for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat. You may also call 801-434-8582.

As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline!

September 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Reviewing Your Site: A 24-Point Checklist

When you are considering publishing your website, here are 24 points that you should check in order to make sure that your site is ready.

1. SITE LOGO/HEADER - Display a picture of your product(s) and a byline with the name of your site (store). These site elements help identify what you sell.

2. LOGOS FOR SECURITY/PAYMENT METHODS - Be sure to display logos for all of the credit cards and payment methods you accept. Normally, these images appear near the top of your home page and/or along the bottom of every page. Many merchants use a professional icon or image that symbolizes the security of their site. You can create this image yourself, or you can use a generic clip art image. Displaying this image along with your payment method logos helps emphasize the security of the site.

You may also want to emphasize the security of your site with highly visible text, such as "100% Secure Shopping!” Ultimately, the best indicators of security for any internet page are an 's' following 'http' on the page's URL in the address bar of your browser and a little yellow lock icon in the bottom of the browser window. Look for these marks before sending your personal information to a website.

3. CONTACT INFO/800 NUMBER - It's often a good idea to designate a
small space somewhere near the top of your page that lists your contact information. You could include a phone number for customer inquiries or an e-mail visitors may use to contact you. An 800 number is suggested if you can afford it, but any customer service
number and other contact info listed near the top of the page can increase your site’s credibility
and trust with potential customers.

4. MAKE AN OFFER/BUILD VALUE - Always try to build the value of
your product or services for your customers. For example, you can create an e-book with
useful tips or info on how the potential customer can use your product or service, place a
value on it, and offer it free with every purchase. Along with physical products or information, you can include free shipping offers or discount coupon codes as other possible buyer incentives. Be sure to emphasize the value of any promotional item with descriptive phrases, such as “a $5.00 value”.

5. EMOTIONAL RESPONSE (ad copy) - Make sure your ad copy (text)
is well thought out. Use action verbs, write in the active voice and use words that trigger
and appeal emotion. Always write in the active voice because the passive voice is
much less powerful and effective, as shown in the following comparison:

• Passive Voice: “Marked improvement in clarity has been experienced by our
  clients.”


• Active Voice: “Our clients experienced marked improvement in clarity!”

You should also use action verbs. Carefully consider which verbs you use as you develop ad
copy (or text) for your website. Some verbs are more general while others are
more specific and exciting. As you write your ad copy, use verbs and adjectives
that will heavily influence the mental image and emotional response you want
your readers (visitors) to have.

6. IMAGES WITH ALT TAGS/DESCRIPTION - Make sure to enter a description for each image that you place on your website using HTML “ALT” tags. You should include any relevant target keywords in these descriptions. If you use StoresOnline Pro, you can simply include relevant keywords in the image “description” field when adding or
editing an image placed in a text element. Adding keywords to your image descriptions can help increase the keyword relevancy of the page for relevancy search engines.

One way to see if you have sufficient “Alt” tags for images is to hold your mouse over the image. If you have completed the “Alt” tag for the image, a small box appears next to your mouse. You can use this method to review the keywords and other content included in your “Alt” tags.

7. KEYWORD NAVIGATION - Drive potential customers towards your product pages through keyword navigation links. Create links throughout the text or ad copy you create for emotional response, using your keywords and other important phrases as anchor text. When your visitors follow these clickable links to specific product pages, they have a greater chance of purchasing your product.

8. UNIQUE SELLING POINT/PROPOSITION (USP) - A USP is a subtle line or phrase that draws focus to a beneficial aspect of your product or service. A USP advertisement implies that you are somehow different from your competitors without actually claiming that you are different. For example, a recent advertising campaign for Sprint PCS used a USP that focused on the aspect of their network being “all digital”. It implied that they were the only company that offered mobile phone service on an all-digital network; yet, at the same time, there were other mobile phone service providers that also offered all-digital networks.

9. POSITIVE and/or NEGATIVE BENEFITS - Consider listing positive benefits near the top of your website. You could format these benefits as bulleted list of reasons why your products, business, and website will satisfy your customers.

You can also use negative benefits to push a sale, if they can be applied to your products. Negative benefits would be a list of frustrations or complications customers may experience by going elsewhere or using a different product and then show how your site or product is the solution to those problems.

For further info on using positive and negative benefits, refer to pages 35-37 of “Dialing In Your Website”.

10. INFORMATIONAL CONTENT – Adding informational content to your site is a largely overlooked technique for making your site more marketable. This content should accompany the product or service you provide. An example of informational content is an article that relates to your product’s industry or market.
Informational content increases the profile of your site for relevancy-based search engines. While articles and tutorials posted on your site may be longer than your standard ad copy, if properly optimized with a proper Meta title, description, and keywords, pages with this kind of information can have a dramatic effect upon search engine rankings. If you do a periodic newsletter with tips and info related to what you sell, you should create an archive of previous newsletters.

For more info on ideas and guidelines for setting up informational content to aid you in
promoting the site, please refer to pages 42-46 of the “Dialing In Your Website” manual,
which can be downloaded from Merchant Services.

11. NEWSLETTER OFFER – Offering a newsletter could be critical in retaining customers. Most major sites on the Internet today include the option for new site visitors and/or customers to sign up for their newsletter. Adding an invitation to register for your newsletter will help you legally advertise directly to your customers’ e-mail inboxes. When you advertise certain specials and items through each newsletter, as well as providing useful information relating to the hobby or activity your products support, you encourage your prior customers to become repeat customers.

12. TESTIMONIALS – Along with your invitation to join your newsletter, you should also include an invitation on your site for your visitors to send you their experiences and comments. If you have any friends or know of anyone who has had a positive experience with your product or your site, encourage them to write up a brief testimonial for you to post on your site. Including testimonials from satisfied customers will increase the credibility of your product, and thus the credibility of your site.

13. VIRAL ADVERTISEMENT – A viral advertisement encourages your visitors to share your site with their friends. For example, creating an “Email a friend” element on your best pages encourages your visitors to send a link to your site to their friends. In turn, these friends may pass your site along to their friends, and your site has the potential for exponential exposure.

The key to viral marketing is to keep your visitors’ interest. If you create interesting and useful website content, your visitors will be more likely to refer their friends and acquaintances, many of whom will already be interested in your product.

Along with direct invitations to email their friends, you can invite your customer to “bookmark” your site, whether on their own computer or with a social bookmarking service such as del.icio.us.

14. PAGE LIST/LINKS AT BOTTOM – Along with listing all of your top level pages at the top of your site, you should include these links across the bottom of your site as well. This provides visitors and customers with more convenient navigation after reading to the bottom of the page, letting them avoid scrolling back up to the main navigation menu.

15. GENERAL INFO PAGES - Make sure these pages are all accessible
from your home page. Some common pages that most commercial websites have for
posting general info are:

• Company Contact Info - Make sure you have a company info or contact page is easily accessible with complete contact info for your company, including, but not limited to: company name, mailing address, street address, phone numbers, fax number, e-mail address, etc. (This info is often required for approval for a
  merchant account)


• About Us - This would be a page where could summarize any history your company has and if you don’t yet have a history to share, you can state what the company’s mission is or what your goals are and things of that nature.


• Shipping Info - This can be a page used to state general info about what shipping methods and carriers you offer, what your shipping rates are, etc.


• Return/Refund Policy - This would be a page where you state any policies and instructions you want your customers to know for those who may seek to return or exchange their product and/or request a refund. (This info is also often required for approval for a merchant account)


• Privacy Policy/Statement - This would be a page where you state how customer contact information and any other personal information that your customers submit to you will be handled, such as if you will be sharing it with any 3rd parties for marketing purposes or if you intend to keep it all private and secure strictly for your own business. (This info is also often required for approval for a merchant account)

16. FAQ’s - Think of all the questions your customers could possibly ask about your site, your business, and your products, and list them on a page with their accompanying answers. Name the page “FAQ’s” (Frequently Asked Questions). A “FAQ’s” page shows that you care about your customers and your business.

17. BLOG - Consider creating a blog, or an online journal or diary. Blogs are more personal than discussion boards, with most of the content coming from the blog’s author. If you can commit some time to occasionally write relevant information in a personal blog, you can help increase your site’s relevancy with search engines. Along with including links to your site from your blog, include a link to your blog on your site. These links will help search engines index your site.

*Note – If your site is built with StoresOnline Pro, then you may add a forum to your site
to serve as a blog. A forum can be set up to be like a discussion board where anyone can
contribute content, or it can be set up to serve as a blog (where you are the only one
that contributes content). If your site is not set up in StoresOnline Pro, you can set a
blog up through www.blogger.com).

18. SITE MAP - A site map is a page or element that is like an index of all other pages and sections of your site with links to each page, organized much like a flowchart. You will want to keep it simple with no images. Having a site map enables your visitors to quickly navigate to a certain section of your site without having to click through multiple levels or pages. The larger a website gets, the harder it is to maintain 100% intuitive navigability for every page. A sitemap is a navigational safety net, a place where your visitors can find a list of every page on your site if they get lost.

A sitemap is also important because deep-indexing, relevancy-based search engines like Google follow all the links they find on a site. If a page on your site is orphaned, or not linked to any page other than the sitemap, Google will still be able to find it and index it.

19. LINKS - Continue to search for relevant sites for link trades. Contact them to request a link trade. (Your site should be published before doing this, since most web site owners will want to see your site before agreeing to trade links.)

20. PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS/SUMMARIES - Set up descriptions and summaries for each product. That way, when you set up a product list on a page, customers will be able to see a summary for every product on the list. You can add summaries and descriptions as you edit each individual product.

21. PRODUCT CROSS LINKS - Consider providing links to other related products on each product page. For example, when selling a scarf, an accessories site might add links to the matching handbag page. For these links, use a heading such as “Customers who bought this also bought the following”.

22. META – Meta tags are an important section of your site’s HTML code. This section is usually close to the top of the page. A meta tag is information about the web page that does not actually display on the web page. Meta tags tell search engines about what the web page deals with. Search engines take the information included in the Meta tags and build the listing for that particular page. Meta tags provide information that does not appear on the webpage itself but that can be accessed by indexing search engines and by people who view your website's source. It is widely believed that Meta tags can have at least some positive affect on page rank in relevancy-based search engines, if they are used wisely and appropriately.

The three most important Meta tags you want to be concerned with are meta title, meta description, and meta keywords. To set up a meta title for a page, do the following:

1. Click on the Pages menu


2. Select the page you want to edit


3. Double-click the page, or click the Edit button


4. Select the Edit submenu on the right hand side


5. Enter your title information in the Meta Title box.

For meta description and keywords, follow the above instructions, but select the Meta submenu instead of the Edit submenu. On this page, you can add one meta element for description and another for keywords.

*Note: Your home page may already have a meta tag for description and keywords
already in place. Just simply edit those elements and fill in with the relevant info for each
one.

For more info and tips on creating meta tags for your pages, see "Create Page Meta Information" under the
Pages section of Help. Also see "Relevancy Search Engine Optimization" under the "Getting Traffic (visitors) - Basic" section in Merchant Services.

23. MERCHANT ACCOUNT/ CREDIT CARD PROCESSOR - If you are taking orders and intend to secure payment through your site, make sure you've established and connected a merchant account and/or payment processor. (i.e. ECI or Paypal)

24. ORDERING RULES - Make sure your site is set up to charge the necessary sales tax in accordance with your local government's tax laws, where applicable. Also, if you will be charging for shipping, make sure you have ordering rules set up to calculate the appropriate shipping and handling charges for your customers' orders.

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August 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

New MAP Pricing Feature

MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price. It is a method for suppliers and manufacturers to protect or at least have some control over their pricing structure. As an online merchant, it means that your website cannot display a price lower than the Minimum Advertised Price, but you can still sell the products at a lower price if you decide to do so.

In order to make this possible, StoresOnline has created a MAP pricing option in the Store Builder. When this option is used, you are able to enter a MAP price which will be displayed on your product listing page as well as the detailed page for a specific product. Then, when a customer clicks the Add to Cart button, your actual price, which can be lower than the MAP Price, will appear.

Some merchants will make mention on their site that in order to see their lower price, the customer must click the Add to Cart button. That way the customer knows that the original price they see is not necessarily the price that they will have to pay.This satisfies most suppliers and also gives the merchant more flexibility. Every supplier is different so you may want to read your supplier's policies regarding MAP pricing before you decide to use this option.

The steps in using this tool are simple:

1. Go to the Edit Product screen for a specific product in the Store Builder. Enter the price that you want to use for the MAP into the Suggested Price field.


2. Enter your lower price into the Price field. Leave the Sale Price field blank.


3. Check the box for "Use Minimum Advertising Price (MAP) in the Options area.


4. Test the process; make sure the prices are showing up correctly. There are 2 pages where the MAP Price should appear, the product listing page which is usually a page that contains multiple products with a thumbnail image and a brief summary, and the more detailed product page which contains all of the information about the product as well as the Add to Cart button. Then, when you click Add to Cart, you come to the View Cart page and this is where your lower price will appear

After following these instructions, you have successfully used the MAP option in the Store builder.

If you have any questions about this tool, feel free to contact Customer Support through the Online Chat at www.myquickresponse.com or Call the Customer Service Line at 801-434-8582..

One more month to take advantage of

our Programming Department's Special Offer! - CLICK HERE!

Using Custom Page URLs

You may already be familiar with the custom Page URL feature in the store builder. If you are not already using it, we suggest that you consider it. A custom URL gives your site a more professional look and helps search engines interpret the purpose of your site.

Let's suppose that you sell paper as one of the product lines. When you add a page in the store builder to list your paper products, the default page URL will look something like this: www.example.com/store/LICENSE/page/1251436.The number on the end is a random number generated by the Store Builder. By using the Custom URL feature, you can make it look something like this: www.example.com/paper. As you can see, the custom version looks cleaner and is easier to remember.

Custom URLs can also help you with your permission marketing campaigns. For example, you could create a page listing all of your specials, and customize the URL for this page to read www.example.com/specials. Then, if you were to send a marketing email to your customers, you could say, "Go to www.example.com/specials for our most current special offers". Not only is the URL easy to remember, it also looks more professional. Having a customized URL also helps when you want to verbally tell someone how to get to a particular page of your site.

Another benefit of using custom URLs is that it makes the structure of your site more search engine friendly. When deciding what words to use for the custom URL, try to incorporate some of your main keywords into the URLs of the various pages of your site. Adding keywords into your URL is just one small and simple step in the overall optimization of your site.

Setting up these custom URLs is easy. From the Pages tab of the Store Builder, double click on one of your pages. This takes you to the Page Edit screen. About half way down the page you will see Page URL. Click the Add button and a new line will appear where you can type in the word that you would like to use in your URL. Do not use spaces. If you want to use a two word phrase, just remove the space from the phrase.

July 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Getting Traffic

Reciprocal links are a very important piece of your overall marketing strategy. We recommend you trade links with sites that have a Google Page Rank of 4 or higher.
If your site has a low PR and you are having trouble finding sites to trade links with, we suggest reading about a newer link building strategy called Stealth Linking. This tutorial can be found in Merchant Services. Click the Merchant Services link when you login to one of your storefront licenses. Enter "Stealth Linking" into the search bar.

Dialing in Your Website

At any stage of your website, you should revisit the Dialing in Your Website tutorial. Each time you read it, you will appreciate different parts as you learn and grow as a website owner. This too can be found in Merchant Services. Enter "Dialing in Your Website" into the search bar.

Getting on Chat

We've had reports of trouble accessing chat. Most computers come pre-loaded with Java 1.1 and our system runs Java 2.2. To ensure that you have the most current version of Java, visit www.java.com We will be making adjustments in the future to make our system compatible with 1.1.

Customer Service Hours

We welcome all the new merchants that have come aboard and as a reminder, our live Customer service phone support hours are Monday through Friday 7am-6pm MST. We also offer 24 hour chat support at www.myquickresponse.com

Frequently Asked Questions from the month of June

Q. Does StoresOnline supply email addresses when registering a domain name?

A. StoresOnline does not supply email accounts but we do offer email aliases for each domain name that you use with your website. An email alias incorporates your domain name such as info@yourdomain.com and then forwards any messages sent to this address to an existing account that you already have such as hotmail, gmail, yahoo, comcast or any other email that you own. Displaying a domain related email alias on your site gives a much more professional look and feel than using a personal address.

Q. If I do have an email address through my domain registrar, can I still have email accessibility with my Stores Online websites?

A. Yes, you can still have that capability to use the email account that you have been provided by your domain registrar. You will need to make sure that you have the DNS codes of your domain name point to the Stores Online servers at NS1.STORESONLINE.COM and NS2.STORESONLINE.COM. You must also request what are called MX records from your domain registrar for the given email account that you so wish to use and provide them to StoresOnline.

Q. Once I have registered a domain name with Stores Online is there anyway that I can return it for another one that I like better for my website?

A. Due to the process of registering a domain name with Stores Online, once you have registered that domain for the length of time that you wish to do so you will be the owner until the end of that period. We are not able to swap domains once one has been registered.

Q. What is Avail 247 that I purchased at the workshop

A. Avail 247 is a communication solution that manages phone, fax, email, and your contacts all from one easy-to-use web application that Stores Online has provided you. Learn more at www.avail247.com

Q. What is stealth linking?

A. "Stealth Linking" is an unconventional approach to getting links in ways most online merchants would not consider. With this approach, you will utilize the interactive features of many websites to post messages, such as blogs with reader-comment functionality, Web-based message boards, forums, and websites with guest books. The reason you are doing this is to build incoming links to your site.

Q. What is the message that keeps popping up when in the Store Builder?

A. Stores Online has implemented a new reminder system that prompts you to use the Help Button if it recognizes you have been idle in the Store Builder for about 90 seconds. This is just to remind you that the help feature is always accessible to you whenever you are in need of help or assistance.

Another Special from our Programming Department! - CLICK HERE!

June 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

We have been discussing ways in which you can improve your website's conversion rate. Last month, we discussed Website Navigation and how you can make your site's navigation easy for a customer to find what they want in quick, clear, and concise ways.

This month, we will be going over the Critical Pages that are necessary in every website. Each website needs certain clearly written pages that inform customers of important topics regarding your business, your policies, and your products, answering the basic questions they may have. We will teach you the value of providing critical pages. You will learn the benefits of why critical pages should provide easy to understand and user-friendliness in websites. You will also learn how to mitigate the problems of unnecessary pages.

Critical pages are essential to a website because it can help expedite the customer's need to find what they are searching for in a timely manner. Make sure that you have all the pages that are essential to your website. If web users are have a difficult time searching for information on a web site, it is obvious that critical pages are missing, since the user's need is still pending. If such is the case, your potential customer will become someone else's actual customer by going to their site.

Critical pages may provide information to a question and/or a solution to a problem. Consider the following list of critical pages:

Home Page

The home, or front, page of your site is obviously essential, as it will provide a general "overview" of your site. Make sure that you give your customers a reason to purchase from your site. Use the 15-second rule to explain what you sell on your site and the benefits of purchasing from you; for example, you could include something like "FREE shipping on orders of $100 or more". You might also include several descriptive paragraphs that include information on featured products. Or you may also want to include links to those products. Within the body of your home page, your customers should be able to navigate to each of your product categories. If you only sell a few products on your site, the customers should be able to navigate to those products directly

Links page

A well-organized Links page (one that has the links separated by categories) is much more than a simple repository to display the links from your link-trade partners. Visitors consider a good Links page, containing links to other useful and relevant sites, a good resource. Having such a resource will also help you in your Relevancy Search Engine listings, since these will see your site as an "Authoritative" site on the subject matter. A large Links page subconsciously communicates your general involvement in the industry and the online community dedicated to your subject matter. This, in turn, communicates credibility. A great Links page also gives your website stickiness, as visitors might return to your site just to use your comprehensive list of links to other related sites. Always have each link open in a new window when it is clicked so you never lose a visitor to your web site.

Site Map page

This page will list ALL pages that comprise your site. You will list all your top-level pages (such as: home page, contact us pages, etc.) and your sub pages (such as: product category pages). Customers can also turn to your sitemap page as a safety net, where your customers can always go to find a list of all your pages. This page is also a good resource for marketing. For example, Google uses sitemaps to index your pages. Another reason to include a sitemap page is that many Live Directories will not include you into their directory until you provide a sitemap page in your site.

Shipping page

This page should provide your customers with information on shipping prices, method of shipping, delivery times and policies. You could also include information on what the customer can expect before and after they make a purchase (for example, shipping prices and timelines).

Search and Browse page

This page will offer customers a way to search your site by using keywords or by typing exactly what they are looking for. This will result in a list of pages or products that pertain to their specific search.

Refund page

Some merchant account companies require that you have this page or that this information be included as a disclosure on your website. It is also helpful to provide this information to your potential customers as some will want to know the answer to this question before they make their purchase. Remember, as was mentioned earlier, you need to answer ALL of your customer's questions on your site or they will go somewhere else.

Shopping Cart page

This page will allow your customers to switch back and forth between your product and shopping cart pages to view items in their shopping cart. You may also use this page to include instructions on how to fill out your order form.

Testimonials page

The purpose of the Testimonials page is to enhance credibility. Internet users may judge a website solely on its testimonials. If testimonials are believable, the user may rely on the website and eventually make a purchase or bookmark the page for future reference.

About Us page

This page will give your customers a brief background on your product and/or company. If you use a drop shipper, you will probably want to use the page to relay information about your product(s) and their benefits. You will also want to include your mission statement. This page will also add to the credibility of your site.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page

This page provides frequently asked questions from previous buyers or site visitors and the answers to those questions. The benefit of including such a page is to provide answers to your users so they will continue using your site instead of searching another website for the answers. Your FAQs page will probably change somewhat frequently. The reasoning behind this is that when a customer emails or calls with a question about the site, in all likelihood, the question was not answered on the site. Thus, questions from all customers must be considered and included to ensure that all possible customer inquiries are answered.

The FAQ page should provide detailed answers to your customers' questions. Some items to consider including in the FAQs page are:


1. Specific Website Navigation Questions

• Ways customers can find what they are looking for


• Recommendations on how to best search by keyword


• Where to find certain pages: i.e., Privacy Policy, Terms, Contact Us, and other pages


• Etc.

2. Specific Company-Related Questions

• How long the company has been in business


• How to get support after the sale


• Questions about lead time and shipping issues


• Etc.

3. Specific Questions about Products, Services, or Information

• Questions about features


• Questions about advantages


• Questions about benefits


• Questions about limitations


• Questions about price


• Questions about warranties and/or guarantees


• Questions about availability


• Etc.

4. Any other appropriate or Miscellaneous Questions

Contact Us page

Disclosing contact information is very important and crucial to a website. Any site that hides the owner's information raises a red flag in the mind of the buyers. Having your information displayed on this page will truly gain the trust of your customers. Contact information may include the following: company name, mailing address, phone number, fax number, and email address. To reiterate, providing this information will add to the credibility of your site.

Privacy Policy page

This page includes information that will help your customers feel safe ordering from your site. StoresOnline has a default privacy policy page that you can modify or expand to relate to your specific situation. This will assist your customers to know that you are up to date on Internet privacy issues. Furthermore, many live directories (i.e. Yahoo! Live Directories and DMOZ.com) will not list a site if its privacy policy page is not clearly marked on the site. This is definitely an essential page to have on your site.

The home page is key in displaying a website's links to its critical pages. As mentioned in one of our workshops, the home page serves as a door or an at-a-glance guide.

Another factor to keep in mind is to ensure that critical pages are in synch with search engines. Currently most of the major Search Engines have problems with the following:

• Links accessible solely through frames, image maps, or JavaScript


• Very short pages


• Flash pages


• Long JavaScript (JavaScript should be placed in an external document)


• Dynamic URLs

Thus, when creating critical pages on a website it is not only important to create the page but it's also essential to create the page effectively so the search engine will lead more users to your page.

Critical pages should be informative and easy to navigate. Do you want happy customers? Give them the answers they want by providing effective necessary pages.


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We are pleased to inform you that StoresOnline has formed a relationship with shipping auditing company VeriShip. Through VeriShip all StoresOnline merchants can have their UPS and FedEx shipments audited for free. VeriShip will work with you to discover over charges and mistakes in invoicing from these shipping companies and will actually get you credits on your shipping invoice. They only bill 50% of the credits actually attained. In other words, if they don’t save you money on your shipping, you pay them nothing. The reason we are excited about offering this to you is that this kind of service is typically available only if your shipping volume is high. By pooling all our merchants together we were able to get VeriShip to provide this to merchants of all size. Keep up the good work and save on shipping. For more information, visit VeriShip online at https://www.veriship.com/RegisterOnline.aspx?RefId=1 Or contact them directly at 800.903.3073 or via email at info@veriship.com.