The first suggestion of IECSP is not adding the watermark on the pictures of the product. The purpose of adding the watermark to the product not only avoid that the pictures are filched, but also let the customer who saw the pictures of the product find your shopping cart by the character of the picture watermark. We can solve this problem with the way of not adding the watermark. The best way sumed up by IECSP is that: the method of affixation by taking photo. Print a card attached the name of your company ,Logo and website before taking the photo for your product.( It will be better if this picture is printed on the transparence plastic and glass). Its size have to be variety with the size of the product, then put it on the edge or the middle of the products, cover a part of product and not affect the beauty. The last is to take the picture. The advantage of this method is obvious, firstly, it is to decrease the workload of the picture watermark, simple and quick; Secondly, it almost make no difference on the quality of the picture; Thirdly, avoid the copyright of the picture to be infringed. fourthly, the customer can find your shopping cart by the picture; fifthly, it is very hard for the infringer to delete it by Photoshop; Sixthly, it is benefit for enhancing the image of the company and propagandizing the brand.

Many pictures from the large B2C shopping cart don’t contain the watermark, for they are afraid of affecting the quality of the pictures. Usually speaking, there are the professional workers who specialize in tracing and dealing with infringement, which will increase the managing cost undoubtedly. You can decrease the managing cost effectively, if you adopt the above method mentioned by IECSP.

If the manufacturer have taken the pictures for you and you cann’t adopt the above method, you have to quit the idea of adding the watermark or add the watermark manually. Many shopping cart system can add the watermark to the product pictures automatically, as long as you prepared the content of the watermark picture. The advantage of automatic watermark is high effect and low workload; the disadvantage is that it cann’t adjust the location of the watermark neatly and it affect the appearance of the product. IECSP suggests that you’d better deal with the picture watermark manually, if you have enough time. You have to pay a close attention to the followings:
1. The size of the watermark should be moderate, and cann’t cover the main part of the product or in the middle of the picture.
2. The size of the watermark should be moderate, cann’t be the exterior of the product, and in the middle of the picture, and the area of the single background color.
3. The watermark cann’t be too thick, you’d better adopt vacancy or translucence, and avoid to affect the effect of the picture.
4. The watermark must contain Logo and the domain name, and be neat.
5. The location of the watermark must be moderate, the location of lower left quarter or lower right quarter is the best choice. The watermark cover a part of the picture and the best location is the plenty color area, which purpose is to avoid that infringer modify the picture or remove the watermark.

The detail is the key of the success. You have to dispose the picture well, if you want to manage your shopping cart well. To sum up, the best method is the affixation by taking photo, then adding method manually. IECSP can design the watermark for you, and integrate the picture and the watermark perfectly.

In the showcases of IECSP , some have the URL,some have not URL, the reason is as follows:
We will add the linkage of IECSP to the Footer of the shopping cart of the client, if we are allowed by the client. Some client would not like to done like that, we will delete it. That is why you can see the link of IECSP on some site and can not see on others.

We respect the client privacy entirely. When involving the the privacy of the client, we will get the permission of the clients in advance.

Learn it by your heart. Opening case on IECSP
can bring you some traffic. The shortcoming is that your shopping cart are learnt and copied sometimes. For example, copy the pictures or text, ect.

IECSP.COM have already accumulated the substantial experiences through operating his own several shopping carts, and would like to share these experiences with our customers. Our final goal is to assist our customer to get profite rather than only make a gaudy shopping cart.

The ecommerce promotion involves many methods. Here, we only introduce some DIY methods not depending on the high AD charge. Only in this way holding your own lasting promoting methods can you get a long lasting profite and the brand effect.

The experiences introduced by IECSP.COM cann’t give more assistance to those experienced shop owners perhaps, but we hope that those shop owners can share their experiences with the fresh men, and give some instruction to them.

First of all, a main principle should be made clearly before introducing the promoting methods of ecommerce: the main purpose of shopping cart promotion is to get more product orders and more sales profite! Why we emphasize this point? The resean is that we really touched some failed promoting methods, for example, someone pay the high AD charge resulting in the deficit, and become the servant of advertiser. Someone add the adult videos and pictures to their website for the purpose of increasing traffic. Yes, the traffic can be increased, but the quantity of the orders cann’t be increased, meanwhile, the reputation of their website will be damaged. Someone boost the search engine ranking of their website with the method of SEO cheat, of course, the traffic can be increased, But their achievement will be deleted if the seach engine like Google notice that.All the effort will be zero.

According to this principle, taking the best and the most correct way, accumulating gradually, we are sure we will be successful.

To be continued: Part2

Many unreasonable function and deploying of many shopping carts affect the quantity of the orders directly. For example, the same product, price and traffics, but the different function design and buying experience. The result is definitely different. As the owner of the shopping cart who want to optimize the profit, you have to try your best to increase the efficiency of the shopping cart.

How to enhance the buying experience and the customer buying rate, IECSP has the following suggestions:

1. According to the statistics, over 46% online customers quit the shopping cart for the reason of the over-high shipping cost, which is the most important reason. Aimming at this point and the lower goods, we suggest to adopt the free shopping if the consumption meet the certain point; for the high price goods, we can treat the free shipping as the benefit point for promoting purchase. Most shopping carts have the flexible setting for shipping cost now. Free shipping for full amount is very popular, you can make a innovation on the basis of it, in order to find the more suitable shipping and pricing method.
2. Contrast price and information of goods attribute. 37% customers hope that they can contrast the similar attribute and information of the goods fully for the purpose of choosing the most suitable product. The shopping cart can display the price floating about the product in one month, for the convenience of customer’s view.
3. Price factor. 36% customers show that the price have exceeded their limit. Being shortage of money is a very realistic problem. For the shop owner, if they can give a price that cann’t be refused by the customers. It is impossible to lower the price illimitably. The customer won’t believe that this kind of product are good, so, the additive benefit, discount or free shipping is a good choice. Display the product price information while displaying the same product in the other shopping cart, simulate the customer to buy in the advantage contrast.
4. Discount information. 27% customers hope that the shop owner can give an obvious discount. Pricing high in advance then giving a discount is better than pricing real price directly, which will give the customer a good psychology leading.
5. Off-line purchase. 26% customers hope that they can buy the product of the shopping cart in the real shop. If you have the real shop, you can put the photo of the real shop on the most obvious place, which will give the customer a good trust feeling.
6. Method of payment. 24% customers show that they cann’t find the preferred payment method. The payment of method for the shopping cart must possess the more choices, credit card(Visa/Master)、Paypal、Google Checkout.
7. Good service help. 22% customers show that one of the reason that they quit the shopping is that they cann’t find the online customer service when they have troubles. The customers can understand the shopping cart not like what we image. Especially for some new visitors, they even don’t know the step of shopping online, so you have to pay a close attention to the quality of customer service. You’d better provide 24X7 real online customer service, if you are the international sale. Of course, if you have prepared the comprehensive FAQ/Q&A，it is helpful for increasing the experience of the customer.
8. Safe care. 21% customers are still worrying about the safety of shopping online. The shopping cart have to pay more attention to the safety of the shopping cart, for example, SSL shopping cart encrypting, or Mcafee shopping cart safety authentication etc. If the customers cann’t confirm the safety of the shopping cart, they always make a choice according to the safety authentication. They have gradually grown up a custom—— only visit the shopping cart possessing the safety authentication.

If you can deal with well the above 8 factors that can affect the sale, you must increase your sale. However, if you want to optimize your shopping cart orders fully, you have to know more about the technology. For example “One Page Checkout”function, “unregistered purchase”etc. You can consulte IECSP for the advancing function of the customer experience.

If you have the experience of designning WordPress, Blogspot, it means that you have already had the ability of designing the shopping cart. You have to learn some basic knowledge in advance, if you have no any experiences. Of course, even though you are able to design the shopping cart, it’s unequal to that you can design it well. That you can design it well or not is another topic. We only talk about how to design your own shopping cart here yourself.

Necessary basic knowledge: HTML，CSS，Photoshop，Dreamweaver。

The first two are the grammars needed to be understood and remembered, the last two are the tools. Don’t let yourself be cowed down by these grammars and tools. In fact, the best study method is just to study while designing the shopping cart templet. Finding, learning and solving the problems are the fastest methods. The process of study is from the point to the surface gradually, which won’t be quited due to vanpidity. According to the templet design of Opencart, let’s introduce the process of study.

After downloading Opencart, open:/catalog/view/theme/default/, default catalog is just the sopping cart design. There are still three catalogs, they are image, styesheep and template catalogs in which the pictures, CSS files and the templates are stored.

Step 1. Copy Default to a new catalog, and give it a name you like, usually the domain name of your website. For example, IECSP catalog, there are the folders and the files that are the same of Default in this catalog.

Step 2. Update the new catalog to the space of your shopping cart host ( In terms of how to install Opencart to the host, you can find the details concerned at Opencart website). The new catalog is in the same class of default, the parent directory is theme. Then go to the soft managing centre of opencart to change the templet to your new folder IECSP. Here, the webpage layout of your visiting is the same as default design.

Step 3. Find the stylesheet.css file from stylesheet catalog, open this file with Notepad++(download from sf.net), you will see many CSS sentences. Don’t worry about not being able to understand it, our study method is just doing while learing.

Step 4. Let’s try to change the background color into black. Find body { margin: 0px;padding: 0px;text-align: center; } sentence, add one sentence :body { margin: 0px;padding: 0px;text-align: center; background:#000000;} , then save this file. Update to the same catalog of the shopping cart host, cover the old file.

Step 5. Refresh the webpage, you will find that the background color of the webpage have been black. Though it is ugly, it is your work already.

You can change Logo in the next step. According to this thought, look for the color you want to change, the location of the font, then modify it in CSS file. If you are not able to do it, you can search the CSS grammar in Google, try it again and again, you will find that the more you change, the nicer the webpage is. You will get a sense of accomplishment when the design are different from the default templet.

Here, I don’t want to write the study of the basic knowledge, I only hope that give the beginner a good way. I think that the first step of learning one skill should not depend on the books. If you can DIY with the materials concerned, it is easier for you to keep a lasting interests.

Twitter is one of the most popular promoting methods for shopping cart now, which has not only the function of increasing the traffic of the website but also the effect of keeping
a long connecting with the customers and exchanging the information. You will receive a very good effect if you post the discount or coupon code on twitter. What we will talk about in this article is just how to use twitter to promote your ecommerce shopping cart.

1.Twitter ID. This is the basic skills. The ID of Twitter must has the personality and be well-known. For example, some superstar’s name or the famous movie’ name, you’d better make it close to the products concerned your shopping cart. If you still cann’t find the better ID, you can use the domain name of your website, at least , it is better than your own name. After setting your ID, you have to update your own avatar, which can be your photo, or the photo of the superstar, in short, give people some lovely and familiar feeling.

2. You have to follow others if you want to be followed. You must try your best to follow others. When you search other people’s Twitter account, don’t add those who didn’t set avatar, for which is usually one-off account. Further speaking, don’t add those who have too many followers but less friends, and those who don’t often update.

3.You applied the Twitter, and followed others, then others followed you too. Don’t think that you have already done it, for the real promotion didn’t start yet! The key of now is that you still need to follow other people, meanwhile, post the original short message or news frequently. Only in this way can attract the eye of those who are following you. The message you post must have the quality, the more interesting,the better; the more novel, the better it is. Never to copy some outdated information, for which will bore the people. If the people you are following are your potential customers perhaps, you must post the information which involve the value to them, for which will bring the better effect.

4,When you update, never forget to lead the customers to browse your shopping cart. The content of your message can be close to the content of your shopping cart. It will be ease to move the people who follow you, if you add your emotive language.

5. The last skill is that you can publish the content of your shopping cart’ RSS Feed to Twitter. First of all, register a OpenID, then log in Twitterfeed.com. After setting the RSS Feed of your shopping cart, this website will publish the RSS content to Twitter, then convert the URL address to TinyURL short address automatically.

The most free or charging shopping cart software are all based on the templet. Usually speaking, there is a set of default templet. The designer can redesign the new interface according to the templet structure of the shopping cart software. The shopping cart templet design introduced by the designer of IECSP is the shopping cart structure designed for the customer and is close to the default templet. The differences is the Logo, Title, Title background, Color style, Button style, Font style of the shopping cart, etc. This design is comparatively simple, but is different from the default templet, and the design color and mode are unique still.

In addition, some shopping cart which sell the shopping cart templet, the design doesn’t merely sell to one customer. The same design maybe sell to several customers, which is a very bad influence to the development of the website of the customer. Though they also offer the unique buyout, but the price is very expensive. Other people maybe bought it before you buy out. The example based on the templet design of IECSP.COM;

2. Shopping cart professional design;

Relative to the templet structure of the shopping cart the professional design have comparatively change, and is different from the default templet. The most people don’t know which shopping cart software is being used from the design if the “Powered by” isn’t shown. The professional design of IECSP is the most popular one among the customers, for which can meet the requirement of the most shopping cart building. If the product sort or total quantity is superabundance, the professional design is suitable choice. The example of shopping cart professional design of IECSP is as follows:

3. Shopping cart personality design (note: “personality” means creative):

The personality design is divorced from the structure of the shopping cart templet entirely. The design style is jumping, active, unique. This design style of the shopping cart is suitable for the unique brand products, or the shopping cart in which the quantity of the products is less. The most suitable one is just like this if the customer want to promote a brand. How to enhance the brand value and express the brand style is this design idea. About the personality design of IECSP, see the following examples, please:

4.The big store design:

The big store design is to satisfy some customers who want to operate the big online store. The big store design usually have no the strong design style, and focus on expressing the products, the page layout clean and the convinience of the buyer. The products of the big store usually are classified in many sorts, the AD button will be shown on the homepage of the page layout. The big store is just B2C and C2C. If taking B2C, we can use CS-Cart, while C2C need to be developed independently. Amazon website is just the big store. If the shopping cart you want is like amazon, you can only choose the project of the big store.

After that, the customer will look for the product they want, this moment, one of the factors affecting the sales is just the price, picture,and introduction of the product. Let’s talk about the importance of the picture of the product.

Selling online, the customer can’t see the real product. The picture is the main method for the customer to understand the product. The product picture must meet the requirement of the customer: show the product really and comprehensively. Trying your best to let the customer understand the detail, color, size and quality of the product, etc.

We’d better obey the followings when we make the picture of the product.

1. Both the thumbnail picture and the big sharp picture are necessary. For the big picture, the 400px above width or high is good.
2. The color of the product picture shoud be close to the real product, you maybe need to dispose the color of the picture by the software like Photoshop. You can increase the sharp feeling through adjusting the contrast of the picture and sharpening the picutre moderately.
3. Take the more pictures from every part of the product, one product is against several product pictures. The customer can know the detail and the quality of the product by these pictures.
4. You can show the size of the product by the reference before taking the photos. For example, a toy model of eggbeater. If you set a cigarette box near it, when you shot. The customer will estimate the size of the real product.
5. The product picture’ file name should contain the keywords, which merit is propitious to be embodied by the search engine and get a good ranking. For example: ecommerce_promotion.jpg
6. The protecting watermark should be added to every picture of the product. But the watermark cann’t be set in the middle of the picture, should be at the margin of the picture. The appearance of the product picture cann’t be affected.
7. It is better if every product contain the video show.

Firstly, you must know what is your shopping cart’s requirement, before choosing a shopping cart. How many products do you want to show, where are the buyers from, sell to the other country or not, etc.

If your products need to be sold abroad, your shopping cart need the support of multi-language, multi-currency, international shipping, which are all necessary. Supporting multi-language not always need to be translated into multi-language edition, but reserve this function for the future. Many popular shopping cart have integrated many main stream language pack now, which can be obtained free.

If the products of your shopping cart is less than one hundred, you need not a very powerful shopping cart, for which will cause the low efficiency, and increase the host burden.

You need a powerful one if your products is above hundreds even thousands. A managing function of the powerful shopping cart is very necessary, which is mass adding, the function of modifying the products and catalogue, and which is very useful for some shopping carts contained many products.

The basic function of the shopping cart:

Front:
Cart, Catalog, Account, Information, Manufacturer, New products, Reviews, Bestsellers, Relate Products, Track order, Coupons, etc…

Admin:
Product features, Languages, Currencies, Import, Export, Payment, Shipping, etc…

The extending function of the shopping cart:

Front:
Filter by price, Wish list, News, Evnet, Testimonlals, Tag Cloud, Tell a friend, Compare, Track order, Recently viewed, F.A.Q, Gift Certificate, Wholesale, Points, Promotions, Site Maps, Contact us, Blog, Live Chat, Order Barcode, RMA, One-page checkout, SEO URLs, CMS, etc…

Admin:
Bulk category add, Bulk product add, Access restrictions, Statistics, Newsletters, News subscribers, Manage ads, Form builder, Affiliate, Free shipping, Verification, Memberships, Suppliers, etc…

nopCommerce is a very excellent open source solution for Ecommerce, which is powerful, safe and can be extended. It’s free under the nopCommerce licence clause. Its current edition is perfect, possess the complete shopping cart function, background managing function, payment shipping integration and promotion function, etc.

Developed by ASP.NET 3.5, nopCommerce use MS-SQL2005 database, and can be deployed in the windows series host of godaddy. Deploying it need only several minutes if the the environment of the host matched is good.

Attention please. You cann’t delete or hide “Powered by nopCommerce” links if you want to use it free, which will be showed in every bottom of page layout. If you want to delete it, 50 dollars need to be paid once.

Official site:

http://www.nopcommerce.com

Shopping cart demo:

http://demo.nopcommerce.com

1. The misplay of choosing the shopping cart software result in the unsafety and instability of shopping cart. For instance,some nameless new systems were not tested long and safely.
2. The unreasonable basic construction of shopping cart is not suitable for the promotion of SEO, such as the shopping cart software of not supporting SEO.
3. The confusion of the logic and view of shopping cart increase the cost of upgrade even can not upgrade. For instance , some shopping carts created by small companies .
4. In order to pursue the personality, the system logic of the shopping cart template design was modified tremendously, which undoubtedly embarrass the upgrade of system soft.
5. Not know PHP/MySQL,ASP/ASP .NET/SQL-Server,Coldfusion,Java well, which cause the increase of the cost of server afterwards. For instance, Choosing .NET will pay more than PHP of free open-source.

The above problems are in the level of technology. As a shop owner,you are unable to know and judge these things,which need the responsible suggestion from the professional shopping cart company.

The zero stock mentioned in this article does not indicate that the products have been sold out , but is the products that the shop owner even never saw and only have the pictures and files of the products. The shop owner have to contact the real dealer immediately, after he sold these products. The real dealer will send the goods according to the address provided by the the shop owner. The buyer are seldom interested in if the goods are sended from the shopping cart where he ordered. The zero stock shopping cart is just this mode. The small-scale zero stock shopping cart have to contact the real dealer on his own initiative, and must pay enough to the dealer before sending the goods. Simply speaking, the shop owner need to buy one immediately after selling one ,then send the goods. The potential of this type of mode is valuable. After being well-known, the suppliers will jion in you on their own initiative.The shop owner need not to pay the dealer in advance after building the mutual credit,which can not only allow the settlement to be made after a period of time but get the better wholesale price.
The advantage and disadvantage of zero stock is as follows:

Disadvantage:

1. The shop owner need to buy the product from the dealer after selling it,which will cause the high purchase price and low profit.
2. It is difficult to supervise the quality of the goods without the real product and sending goods personally.
3. Shipping the goods by the dealers result in the delay of shipping.
4. The technique support and exchanging the purchase can not be done smoothly, or some unpredictable things exist perhaps.
5. It is very difficult to balance the quantity between the products of the shopping cart and the dealer, which will cause that the goods of the shopping cart have been sold but the real goods from the dealer is out of stock.
6. The style and quality of the products from the different dealers is various, even some of them have the watermark, which will affect the image of the shopping cart.

Advantage:

1. Everyone can make it with this simple mode ,as long as you have a computer connected the internet.
2. No product investment and unnecessary wholesale products, the cost can be down largely.
3. This mode is also an effective method to investigate the market. The shop owner can operate various products and analyze and investigate the market according to the sale.
4. Based on the lowest investment ,this mode can help the shop owner to accumulate the operating experience effectively, and upgrade the his shopping cart to a “non-zero stock”mode, when the time is ripe.
5. Another advantage is controllable scale, which allow the shop owner to add any products needed.
6. When the market demand change fiercely, the zero stock can adapt to it quickly and adjust the product structure in time.

1. I have only the products and know nothing, but I want to open the shopping cart. What is the beginning, how can I do?
2. I do not even have the products, and only possess the time and zest, want to open a shopping cart. The zero stock is suitable for me, how should I do?
3. My shopping cart only have English version, but I want to sell my products to Japan, and I do not want to employ a Japanese translator, what sould I do?
4. The shipping cost is too expensive, many buyers lose the zest for purchasing when glimpsing at it. How to do can lower the shipping cost.
5. Which payment method is suitable for me? How to do can lower the cost generated by receiving paymnet.
6. It is very important to promote. Could you give me some methods to promote.
7. I want to make Google AdWords AD, but I am not able to do it myself, how can I do?
8. … …

You can find all the answers from IECSP.

There are many skills and methods for shopping cart promotion, IECSP divide them into the two types: one is DIY, the other is the AD to charge.
Needless to say the AD to charge, it is no more than the Google AdWords charged even other media AD.
We hope that the customers can learn the promotion themselves and we are sure we can turn every fresh men into a veteran. The purpose of IECSP is to make the business of the customers better and make the customers rich, rather than meet the requirements of the customers simply. the customer`s failure is our failure, for we did not give you a suitable instruction for promotion in time.
Assisting the customers to promote is free. We bet you are going to get the orders, as long as you do with our methods long and continuously.

Our suggestion is that the client adopt the two methods simultaneously if they have enough money and energy. Building their own shopping cart while selling the good on the platform of C2C.

However, not everyone can afford to do like this, in this way, we suggest that the client build their own shopping cart directly and independently, the reason is as follows:

1. The first thing of building the independent shopping cart is to register your own independent domain name, which will bring the value along with the enhancing of the reputation of the shopping cart.
2. No other cost almost after one-off investment. The most part of C2C need the long investment.
3. The shop owner work for themselves in promotion, will get the long return.
4. Trading in the C2C is not a good choice. If you leave it, you will lose all the things you have possessed.
5. At the beginning ,you can get the order easily with the C2C, but the order gotten by your own shopping cart is more valuable.
6. At your own shopping cart, it is up to you, you are boss.
7. … …

To sum up, IECSP suggest that the client start form the independent shopping cart, in order to build a solid fundation for the future success.