Shopfitter Blog

English Surfing Federation Visit

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:33:00 +0000

We had a visit from a couple of guys from the English Surfing federation last weekend.

Rob Barber and Aidan Salmon flew up from their base in Newquay on Friday. It didn't get off to a great start; I was waiting for them at the arrivals area at a fog bound Manchester airport and received a call from Rob to tell me they'd landed - in Leeds!!!

A couple of hours later a coach delivered the intrepid surfers to me and we drove over to North Wales.

An early start on Saturday morning with glorious blue skies and low winter sun saw us all at A-Troop's Airsoft site near Afon Wen furiously attempting to shoot our opposition in an action packed, fun filled day running about the hills and woodland (not to mention swamps) of North Wales.

My two elder children, James (15) and Helena (13) joined us and the day was unanimously voted to have been 'sick' (surfer term meaning 'great').

Rob, Aidan and I had a wild night out in Chester and the least said about that the better ;)

For more information about surfing in the UK visit www.englishsurfschool.com and for pictures of the day visit my facebook profile.

Card Fraud Down

noreply@blogger.com (Shopfitter) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:58:00 +0000

It's just been announced that card fraud for the first six months of 2009 was down by 40% and of that the Card Not Present, which includes internet, sales has dropped by 18%.

This is great news for those of us involved in online and distance selling because it shows that the industry's improved security procedures are working. It's becoming too hard work for the criminals to bother with.

So what's helped. In 'real world' sales it's chip and pin that's made the difference however online the new 3D Secure system adds another level of security.

Verified By Visa and Mastercard SecureCode require a second password and often entry of date of birth which aren't stored on a card or can be 'scraped' by a card reader.

Many online shoppers find 3D secure and other apparently intrusive data requests to be irritating so it's good news to see a positive effect after the introduction a number of years ago.

Simon's Third Rule of Business - Don't Give Up

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:49:00 +0000

That may seem like an obvious statement; let me say it in a way that I think really sums it up for me:

You don't become successful by giving up

All the publications, TV and mentoring organisations hold up examples of successful businesses and the people behind them. They tell you to listen to their story, learn from what they've done and use their example as inspiration.

But I think that the single most important thing to understand is something these successful people have in common - they never gave up, they had absolute belief in what they did and that confidence helped drive them to their destination - success!

Short and simple:

Success = not giving up

Fraudulent Online sales in the UK and Trust Marks

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:50:00 +0000

According to a report by the BBC today Shildon in County Durham has the highest incidence of fraudulent internet purchases. They cite internet Internet Security company The Third Man's research showing that 24% of all online purchases in Shilden were made using stolen credit card details.

Clearly, these figures are skewed by the actions of a small group of individuals who are very active, Shildon is a small town with a population of around 10,000. So anything they do make the figures look very bad, when in fact the percentage of the local population committing internet and card fraud is probably no higher than most places in the UK.

My advice is to treat this kind of report with a health warning but be wary of accepting orders that appear even the slighest bit out of the ordinary.

However, it does highlight that security and trust is still an issue in e-commerce. With an ever increasing number of webshops appearing and then, when the orders don't flood in, the businesses behind them disappearing but leaving the site live or simply taking money with no intention of fulfilling the order customer trust is going to be the next big issue for online traders to tackle.

There have been a number online trust marks set up, many of them check the validity of the webshop business at first application and award the trust mark when the fee has been paid.

However, many of these trust marks remain on the dormant website even though the business has folded, thereby giving a false sense of security to the online shopper.

If you decide to add a trust mark to your own online shop look for one that provides a live verification link so that your prospective customer can see up to date information about your trading status.

An example of this can be seen on a number of our users' sites; have a look at www.clootietree.com for an example of Checkrate's system.

As a final thought on this subject I'd like to say that our experience shows that the majority of online shoppers and businesses are trustworthy, rely on your instincts - if a sale seems dodgy then it probably is so decline it (ensure your sales terms have a clause declaring your right to refuse orders).

How to create a web presence that improves your business

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Approach

Site Proposition

The most crucial task is for there to be objectives set for the site.
This should include consideration of:

Objectives of the business as a whole

Objectives of the overall sales and marketing strategy

Define where the website fits within the sales and marketing strategy

By defining the above it is then possible to:

Define what the website should deliver in measurable terms

Brand awareness

Enquiries

Sales

Delivery of downloadable items

Client functionality (such as upload and management of assets/collateral)

Regular communications

News and new developments in marketing sector

Retarget site content to achieve objectives set

Add analytics to measure results of activity

Technical Considerations

Build site in XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS and ensure compliance with W3C validation criteria

Employ divs and CSS for layout markup

Reduce reliance on Flash items, where they do occur use more efficient code to embed swf files

Remove all tables except for display of tabular data

Increase use of plain text and text links

Search Terms and Web Marketing

Based on business and site objectives define target market

Use target market profile to research critical search terms
Expand search terms to 'cast a wider net'

Include common misspellings and incorrect terminology words

Content Generation

Write targeted text content that meets site objectives; include critical search terms and their derivatives in body text.

Add critical terms and derivatives to relevant title tags

Add 'converting text'* descriptions for meta descriptions

Add misspellings and incorrect terminology to meta keywords

Text content is a fundamental part of Search Engine Optimisation:

Concentrate core messages on the home page

Create a magazine/blog style news and developments section – ensure this is updated regularly

REMEMBER, communicate benefits to the clients NOT all about you - the site is not a vanity mirror
Include clear and obvious calls to action - what do you want the visitor to do next?

Provide sign up for regular opt in mail outs - create a database of prospects to keep in touch with

* 'Converting text' is a summary of the page content that convinces people to click on your link in a search engine rather than one that leads to another site. Again this should focus on BENEFITS.

Simon's Second Rule of Business - Build Sales First

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:22:00 +0000

I've got loads of things to say that can be categorised as 'rules of business' but it's taken me ages to add this second rule.

Build Sales Before Anything Else

In my business career, and especially since I started running Shopfitter E-commerce, I've seen lots of businesses come and go, and watched many different management and operational styles, some more effective than others.

Observing and analysing these styles is interesting; there's a certain group of people, usually the newly self employed, who seem to do anything rather than work on selling their products or services.

What interests them the most is the process of creating what they do rather than the business of making money from what they do.

I can quite understand this, doing what you enjoy is more fun than doing something that you don't but the crux of the matter is that if you don't sell enough you'll go bust.

Sales are the fuel of business

By avoiding actively selling what you've got you're just waiting for the inevitable failure of your business.

I've seen people messing around with their stock lists, convinced that the reason they aren't making sales is because they only have 200 items on offer instead of 2000.

Others who keep 'improving' their product so put off releasing them until they've got them 'perfect'. One company has spent four years (and counting) doing this, holding back their sales and marketing people and constantly burning through their investors cash.

Whatever the reason the outcome is going to be the same; the cash reserves decline, staff and suppliers don't get paid, new stock can't be bought...

Actively selling your wares brings money in to fund all these things, it provides you with the opportunity to refine your offering (because you get real customer feedback) and evolve your business.

For many small business owners selling is difficult, scary and unpleasant, but using excuses not to sell leads you away from the success you can achieve.

In summary, don't put off starting to sell what you've got for any reason (other than legal ones) and you put yourself ahead of at least 50% of business startups.

Good luck in your sales.

Busiest Online Shopping Day

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:37:00 +0000

As reported on the BBC News website yesterday, the the internet trade body IMRG predicted that Monday 9th December was likely to be the busiest day ever for online sales.

Here at Shopfitter we can confirm that was the case, we saw our largest ever volume of sales through our online system, in fact it was more than double that of the same day last year.

I remember writing a piece earlier this year stating that I thought that shoppers still want to buy but that their behaviour seemed to be changing.

That certainly seems to have been demonstrated to be true throughout 2008. The online sales sector has continued to grow and the webshops powered by Shopfitter, especially the more established sites, have seen revenues increase by up to nearly 100%.

Many of the newer sites are doing very well too, although it does take a few months for them to become established. However, sites that went live in the first half of this year are doing quite nicely now and will continue to improve as time goes by.

One thing is for sure, the sooner you get your webshop online the better able you are to take advantage of the burgeoning online sales market more quickly.

Banking on the pressure

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:44:00 +0000

Have you noticed? The banking world is struggling a bit at the moment.

It's been difficult to sleep through, the news is full of gloom about the latest events, you can't have missed the reports.

In the thick of it has been the BBC's Business Editor Robert Peston who has been ahead of the pack with revelations about what is really happening long before anyone else right from the outset.

Mr Peston has been critcised for making the situation worse, I've even heard of hate blogs being set up against him. But surely this is just 'shooting the messenger'? Without doubt he has influence, he has a seemingly unrivalled pool of knowledge and information, his communications network work at lightning speed and his ability to turn around the next big story is impressive.

In my view, Robert Peston is demonstrating the same verve and determination in his role as BBC Business Editor as any entrepreneur does in his own field. Indeed, the skills required are similar; market understanding, the ability to 'feel' the underlying trends and the analytical skills (instinctive or intellectual) to take small items and represent them in a fashion that demands attention.

What I get from all this is that the signs were there for a long time that economic turmoil was coming, the scale of it has come as a surprise to many because they didn't want to believe it, the gravy train was going to go on forever.

However, those of us who've invested a lot of time and effort into our e-commerce businesses are reporting excellent growth. Neville Fox, webmaster at Knit and Sew, told me on Monday that they had just had their best ever weekend with 148 sales, up nearly 50% over the same period last month. And in a conversation with Bob Bagley today I discovered that Fountain Filters has seen 25% growth for the last two years and is well on target for 35% growth in 2008.

Clearly, the whole of the economy has not gone into freefall, there are still lots of success stories around but they don't seem to be getting much attention at the moment. I guess it's true to say that only bad news sells papers.

Let's hope Mr Peston and his colleagues catch on to the one sector that really seems to be bucking the economic trend at the moment and gives the burgeoning small online business it's due recognition - we are after all, to paraphrase Napoleon, a nation of (online) shopkeepers.

Dreamweaver Templates and Shopfitter 4

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:34:00 +0000

Here at Shopfitter Central I've been telling Simon D that I could make a theme that could be converted into a Dreamweaver template for some time.

At long last this has been done and the resulting template can be downloaded from the following page: Download Dreamweaver Template

The benefit of this is that website designers who are familiar with Dreamweaver but don't want to learn how to create bespoke themes for Shopfitter 4 can now build an e-commerce website in html with Shopfitter and then do all the design and styling in Dreamweaver (or even FrontPage).

There are instructions included in the downloadable zip file which are also available as a pdf or MS Word file.

As with all Shopfitter products and services support in the use of the SF4-DWT Template is completely free of charge.

On The Shoulders of Giants - Howard Guest

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:18:00 +0000

Howard Guest is a photographer (and Shopfitter user) who has just published his new collection of photographs in conjunction with an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

On The Shoulders Of Giants - Portraits from the University of Cambridge is the result of over two years work by Howard and is a collection of images of the people who work, at all levels, within the university. This is particularly relevant today as the University prepares to celebrate it's 800th anniversary and Mr Guest has recorded pictures of a cross section of the 'inhabitants' for the first in it's history.

The exhibition, a first for the Fitzwilliam, can be seen between Tue 10 June 2008 to Sun 28 September 2008, Mellon Gallery (Gallery 13). For more information visit the Fitzwilliam Museum's website.

To buy Howard Guest's On The Shoulders Of Giants - Portraits from the University of Cambridge please visit his website - www.howardguest.co.uk.

Looming recession - is it time to panic?

noreply@blogger.com (Shopfitter) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:58:00 +0000

The news has been full to the brim of stories about the so called 'credit crunch', banks failing and being nationalised (Northern Rock) or forcibly sold for a knockdown price (Bear Stearns) to a competitor.

Is this all an over-reaction, are we really seeing the first signs of a major recession? Or are there some positives amongst the doom and gloom?

Well, it's true to say that bad news sells better than good news, a good recent example was when there were numerous reports of a slow down on the high street during the Christmas period. Marks & Spencer confirmed this, however, their huge growth in online sales hardly got a mention. And this is a trend seen across most of the major retailers.

This is most definitely a glimmer of hope, what is really happening is not necessarily a slow down in the consumer economy but a change in shopper behaviour precipitated by the internet.

It seems that people still want to buy stuff, but what's changed is that they want to get what they need at the best price possible - even a few pennies less can make the difference and the internet makes this easy and comfortable. In addition, there just doesn't seem the appetite for traipsing around the shops or phoning them all up to make a comparison. This could well be due to the effect of out of town developments not necessarily having all the competition within a small area as it was when town centres were the main shopping areas.

Statistics recently published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK indicate that total online trading was worth £130 Billion in 2007 and internet retail alone is worth £4 Billion per month, showing a 30% growth.

What this means in real terms is that those of us who are already successfully trading online should either feel no effects of a downturn and may even see sales increase.

Simon's First Rule of Business

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Allen) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:29:00 +0000

I spend a lot of time talking to people, both Shopfitter customers and those I meet at ecommerce events or who just ring up for a bit of information. They all want to know pretty much the same thing; how to create a successful ecommerce website.

I think it's fair to say that there's no secret formula, no magic bullet and no one right way to do it. However, there are a number of things that are common to all successful businesses whether they trade online or only in the 'real' world.

As a seasoned conference speaker I've become reasonably adept at distilling much of these critical business activities into succinct 'Rules of Business' and then talking about how these apply to an online enterprise: this is the first.

Simon's First Rule of Business - Know your market

OK, I know it may seem obvious but there's a lot more to selling online than just sticking a load of products on a website.

Marketing is not selling or advertising (although they do come into it) it is about understanding your marketplace and doing things to fulfill it, here's a bullet list of what you need to know to know your own market:

What do people want to buy?
How much will they pay?
How do they find those goods or services?
What drives the marketplace, is it segmented?
What competition is there (and what are they doing)?

So taking those into account it show us that marketing affects what our products are just as much as the way we advertise or sell our products. Marketing shapes our products and services to suit what our potential customers want to buy.

What do people want to buy? To find this out you need to talk to people, ask friends neighbours, existing customers, anyone, what it is (in your line of business, obviously) that makes them want to part with their cash. This information is extremely valuable because it gives you details about what customers' needs are.

For example; if I retail T-shirts and have black and white I need to know if people want other colours, I may be missing lots of sales because I don't have red, blue, yellow or orange T-shirts, in fact, it could be that the market for black or white is only a fraction of the total. I won't know unless I ask people.

How much will they pay? Price is (almost) always a factor, especially on the web because it's so easy for customers to compare your prices with other people. However, price isn't the only factor, speed of delivery, better quality, gift delivery to an alternative address and nicely packaged with a message are examples of why someone may pay more. Trust is a big factor too, if your website is low quality and unprofessional looking it could be perceived that your whole business is the same, so an item bought from a higher priced competitor will be chosen.

How do they find goods or services? This is where website sales differs most from 'real world' sales channels. Something like 80% of visitors arrive via a Search Engine, which one varies from country to country. In the UK Google holds around 70% of the search market whereas it's lead is much smaller in the US (nearer 50%).

This is where there's a sub First Rule - Know your search terms. This applies only to selling on the internet. People type words into search engines, if these terms don't appear on your website then there's no way a search engine will display a link to your site in its search return.

For example, if someone types "red tshirt buy online" into Google and it exactly matches what is on my site I'll get a search listing, if the words don't appear on my site at all I have no listing.
So you must find out what sort things people type into search engines to find the sort of products or services you sell, again, talk to people, guess and test and use the tools that Google et al provide to find how much each term (and their variants) are used.

In addition, this also means that creating a website that follows search engine guidelines is a critical factor in your marketing. But more of that in other posts and pages on the Shopfitter site.

What drives the marketplace, is it segmented? You need to know something about what the most important factors are in people making their buying decision, it may be price, rarity, customisation. Whatever it is there's a good chance that there will be segmentation to understand too.

For example, there may be a market for a higher quality variation of your product for which you can charge a premium price. This will, of course, only be attractive to a segment of the buying public, so you need to know what makes them want premium goods and also how to attract them to your website.

What competition is there (and what are they doing)? Your competitors are doing you a favour by existing because they act both as a barometer of your marketplace but also give you the chance to create some differentiation. In a price sensitive market this would be lower prices, or it could be free delivery, or providing unusual sizing, for example.

You can also look at how and where they advertise and compare your own activities with theirs and come up with something different and better. Never be afraid of competition, they force you to improve what you do.

I hope thats been of use, much of it goes without saying - but it's definitely better to state the obvious than overlook it when there are so many other things going on when you're trying to improve your online selling.

Good luck and don't hesitate to get in touch if there's any way Shopfitter.com or I can help.

Simon :)

Online sales up by 50%

noreply@blogger.com (Shopfitter) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:57:00 +0000

Yes it's true, the BBC news is reporting that once again businesses who are selling online are taking advantage of the opportunities for growth available in virtual market places.

While high street sales are in decline this Christmas internet based retail has grown again, this year by a massive 50%.

And that's something we at Shopfitter can confirm, in fact we're seeing a 300% increase in the number of sales through our servers. Naturally we're very pleased to see our users becoming more successful each year, and the longer the e-commerce sites exist the better they seem to do.

Over the years we've had people hesitate over whether to take the plunge and start trading with a webshop, concerns over security and not being able to cope with increased demand put many small businesses off.

Fortunately, the buying public has, on the whole, got over the worries about security, online systems are now seen to be as secure as any other form of transaction.

With regard to not being able to cope with a massive influx of new orders, the reality is that it takes months or years to really build up the order numbers - and because it's fairly organic growth it's easy to extend the capabilities of your business as you need to.

One thing that's certainly clear, the internet retail growth is set to continue. So if you don't have an ecommerce website at the moment but would like to share in the online boom next Christmas then now is the time to be planning and building your webshop.

Remember, it will probably take a couple of months to build your site, even with an easy to use system like Shopfitter 4, then another three months for Google and the other search engines to notice and index your site. That takes us into early summer, just right for getting ready for Autumn and the busiest month online - November.

So don't put it off too long, the sooner you get started, the better you'll do next Christmas and the one after that...

Improve Web Sales Figures

noreply@blogger.com (Shopfitter) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:46:00 +0000

With the launch of Shopfitter 4 getting closer I've been thinking about 'spreading the word' by looking at our site analytics to see where visitors are coming from at the moment.

As always seems to be the case, I got sidetracked into looking at an interesting (if you like reading about e-commerce ;) ) site called WorkZ based in the US. Speciifically a really good article about improving conversion rates (turning browsers into buyers) by using your site statistics.

Have a look at Improve Web Sales Figures Forever And Ever Amen! written by Steve Jackson.

He mentions a number of website analytics, also known as stats, systems but it's well worth looking at Google Analytics because they're very good and completely free. Plus there's a new panel in Shopfitter 4 (Tracking Code on the Advanced tab) where you can paste their code to make it work.

There are some good tips in the article so it's well worth a read.

E-commerce software

noreply@blogger.com (Shopfitter) — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:18:00 +0000

I thought that for the first topic it would be good to write a brief definition of what we at Shopfitter mean with the term e-commerce software.

Lots of different systems, applications and services provide website owners with the capability to create an online catalogue (or catalog for US purposes) and shopping cart.

But these are just part of the requirements of selling online. We feel that e-commerce software should give its users the facilities to build an entire website and not just the product, cart and checkout pages.

A proper e-commerce software system should also provide 'back-end' functionality. What that means is a secure order processing system that stores order details: customer contact and delivery details, payment method (and there should be a choice - more later). It should also store all details both for the shop owners records and to comply with any statutory regulations.

Then there's the need for a confirmation and notification facility. In general, this is fine by e-mail; a summary of the order details, price and a unique order number should be included but no payment details, especially credit card numbers - e-mails are not secure.

The security of an e-commerce software system will be of paramount importance to customers of goods and services online shops, therefore the system should have Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - that is, connects to the personal and payment details pages via an HTTPS web address.

This will then adhere to Data Protection legislation in most (if not all) international regions.

To provide more reassurance to both the online shopper and webshop owner the online order server should hold a security certificate from a recognised body; in the case of https://orders3.shopfitter.com this is from Thawte, one of the best known in the business.

That more or less covers what we mean by 'e-commerce software' - a full end to end website building program that includes e-commerce and non selling pages, a secure order processing and customer details storage system and a confirmation/notification system, usually by e-mail.

New Blog - Ecommerce and beyond

noreply@blogger.com (Shopfitter) — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 13:36:00 +0000

Hi all, and welcome to the new Shopfitter blog.

We've been advising people for a couple of years that running a blog is a great form of marketing for your website. And as many people have found the marketing of your site is a lot more involved and time consuming than submitting to Google, Yahoo, MSN et al.

In the coming weeks and months we'll be posting content here that will be topical both for the Shopfitter system and service as well as trialling tools and providing knowledge we've got that will help YOUR online shop become successful.

E-commerce success doesn't happen by accident, this blog should help everyone learn what to do and how to do it.

Good luck

Simon