How often have you heard a sales pitch begin something like:
“The STZR711P2000 hyper advanced database engine built on the Web 3.0 times a trillion plus platform is designed to substantially improve your business performance and enhance your management capabilities.”
Do you ever wonder who makes this stuff up? They just don’t get it do they? All you want is a website that increases sales and lowers costs.
We get it!
We’d like to show you how to increase your sales and lower your operating cost with an ecommerce website that is designed to do just that. We also get it that these are tuff economic times and you must squeeze the most out of every dollar.
To achieve what you want, you have to give the customer what they want. So what does the customer want? In a nutshell, the customer wants five things.
The customer wants to:
• Find products and services online.
• Research products and services online.
• Purchase product and services online.
• Get pre-sales support online.
• Get post-sales support online.
Your website needs to address all of the above. And to be successful it needs to do it as well if not better than your competition.
Let’s first examine what it takes to meet the customer’s needs. After this we’ll examine your needs which are to sell your products and services and do to so in the most cost efficient manner.
To find your products and services online, they must be online. This means that each and every one of your products and services must be listed on your website. Because most people use search engines to find products and services, your website must be designed to help the search engines find them. Your website must also be designed to compete with others for higher ranking in the search results. The good news is that the search engines advertise your website for free. The bad news is that you have lots of direct and indirect competition for search engine rankings.
As you probably know, the process of getting your products and services listed on the search engines and achieving higher placement (ranking) is called search engine optimization or more commonly referred to as SEO. We have designed our website publishing software for SEO. This means that our software will help you optimize your website so the search engines will find your information and give it higher rankings. Our software makes it easy for you or one of our SEO experts to perform this process. This is an ongoing process and that’s why we have made it easy to update this information. The search engines also use your website’s history in determining their rankings and this is why it is important to get started with SEO right away.
Ok, the customer has landed on your website. The first consideration is that customers don’t always land on the page containing what they are looking for. This means that from every page on your website, you need to make it easy for customers to navigate your website and find what they are looking for. We have designed our software to make it easy to setup your website’s navigation, automating most of the process. This includes menus, drop down lists, search options, product catalog, and more. We automatically index your products so customers can quickly search and view the results. We automatically create your product catalog complete with filters, breadcrumbs (shows path in catalog with links to step backwards), add to cart buttons, view details buttons, next page buttons, previous page buttons and more. We also make it easy to present related products, accessories, comparable products and price comparisons, product images, and just about any type of digital information. We format it all so it’s attractive and easy to navigate. We make it easy for you to attach documents such as brochures, diagrams, schematics, specifications, etc. and they can be stored in any file format including HTML, PDF, etc. We also make it easy to attach videos and FLASH presentations. Our software is designed to make it easy for you to provide the customer with the information that they need to make a decision to purchase your products and services.
When customers are ready to purchase your products and services, our software provides everything they need to complete their transaction online. It includes product or event availability, quick registration, secure shopping cart, secure credit card payment with automated approval processing, credit terms and pay by mail options, shipping choices and rate calculations, tax calculations, invoicing, and email confirmation. If the customer is not ready to complete their order it provides the option to save it for future completion. Our software also makes it easy for customers to purchase your services and signup for memberships online. It automates each step of the process including signup, approval and billing. We also make it easy to deliver your products and services online. Digital products are available for download immediately after purchase. Online services are made immediately available after signup or when approval is required, immediately upon approval. Email confirmations are automatically sent to customers.
If the customer has questions along the way, we make it easy to present them with a variety of tools to get their answers. They include online request forms, discussion forums, an Ask the Expert feature, and phone attendant plug-ins. We also make it easy to prominently display your phone number on all pages. If your product or service requires the customer to submit a request for a quote, we automate the process so your customers can submit their requests online. Once you have priced their request our software will automatically email the customer a quote and they can complete their order online. Sometimes customers want to complete their transaction at your facility. That’s why we make it easy to create a Contact Us page with automated mapping to each of your locations.
Once the customer has purchased your products and services we make it easy to offer them a variety of post-sales support features. They start with the ability to view their order and shipping status, along with the ability to view their order history and retrieve copies of past orders. When they need to return an item, you can offer them an online return request form. We make it easy to provide a variety of support information online including troubleshooting guides, repair manuals, warranty information and more. Customers can browse this information by categories or use search tools to locate the information they need. Our software provides a complete online Help Desk where customer can submit and track their requests. It provides the ability to provide the help desk services for free or to charge for it including the ability to process their payment online. It also provides the ability to signup customers for service and maintenance agreements.
So far we have discussed how to give the customer what the customer wants. This is half the battle and is guaranteed to increase your sales. Now it’s time to talk about how to operate more efficiently so you can lower the cost of running your business and generate higher profits. By its very nature doing business online costs less because it automates a labor intensive process. It eliminates costly salespeople and it reduces the staff required to take and process orders and provide customer support. But building a competitive website to do all this can be costly. That’s why we built our software. Our software and services are designed to make this affordable. Our software can eliminate up to 90% of the typical development cost. It is also designed to save you a ton of money over the long haul by making it easy to maintain your website without the ongoing cost of web programmers to add and update content.
Our software includes an administrative control panel that allows you to manage every aspect of your website. From the administrative control panel you can easily manage your orders, customers, products, promotions, and more. You can change the style and content on individual pages without programming. You can bulk enter customers, prospects, products and digital information using our import feature. Simply create files in Excel and import them. The import process makes mass product updates quick and easy.
We make it easy to create promotions to offer customers discounts, free items, free shipping and more. You can easily define the rules including purchase qualifications for discounts and free items including “Buy one get the second one for 50% off”, etc. We also make it easy create add on sales at the point of purchase. Our shopping cart can suggest accessories and other items. It can even offer signup for customer loyalty programs.
Not everything can be automated (at least not yet, but we’re working on it). In the meantime you need someone to create a professional design, to create and format beautiful pictures of your products, to write compelling copy to sell your products and services, to select the right keywords to help people find your website using the search engines, and to coordinate and manage the project. We offer everything you need. One vendor! One solution! No headaches! Our team will work with your staff to coordinate everything that needs to be done. Our system provides the framework to organize and simplify the process.
It’s easy to get started. The first step is to call us or submit an online request. A consultant will contact you to:
• review your existing website,
• document your requirements,
• gain an understanding of your business,
• discuss options,
• and help you develop a budget that makes sense.
Once that process has been completed we will create a work plan. The work plan:
• describes each task,
• what is to be delivered as an outcome of the task,
• who is responsible for performing the task,
• a schedule for the task,
• and the cost if we are to perform the task.
We will provide you with prototypes of all template design work and will iterate through the process until you are satisfied with the design.
The work plan is typically broken into phases based on priority (most bang for your buck). Your website should be an ongoing, evolving part of your business. With this in mind, we designed our system with the flexibility to easily adapt to change. As your needs change we will be there to assist you.
We also provide hosting (or you can host it yourself). We’ll manage the technology so you can focus on running and growing your business. When you need technical assistance or someone to explain how to do something, we’ll be there to support you.
Start increasing your sales and lowering your costs. Contact us today for a free consultation and price quote.
Call 800.268.6649 x709
Your local Ecommerce Web Experts - Brolin is a professional web design firm located in Orange County, Southern California, and has been developing custom ecommerce websites and custom software solutions since 1994. Content related to this page includes Custom Ecommerce Website, eCommerce software, shopping cart software, shopping cart solution, online product catalog software, online product catalog solution, website content manager, web content manager, website solutions, eCommerce solutions, web business management solutions, web based backoffice management, back office management, content management, website content management, web content management, small business content manager, web builder, website builder Orange County, web designer Organge County, web designer Irvine CA, web desgin serving Southern California, website development, website developer, Brolin Corporation.