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As part of the 2010 UK emergency budget given by Chancellor George Osborne, it was announced that VAT would rise from 17.5% to 20% on 4 January 2011. Other VAT rates aren't affected such as zero-rated items (such as children's clothes, foodstuffs, and books) and reduced rate items (such as safety items, sanitary products, and household fuel and power).

 

If you haven't already considered how your business will handle the VAT increase, now is the time to do so. While it may mean a difficult time to come over the next few years, those who come out on top may have bigger profits to come in the long-term.

 

 

It is expected that this move will create £13 billion extra revenue for the government every year. However, it will undoubtedly also hit consumer spending and retail jobs.

 

The Centre for Retail Research have predicted that 9,480 stores will close in 2011, and a further 5,000 in 2012. If that wasn't bad enough, 47,000 staff will lose their jobs, accounting for 1.6% of the available labour force.

 

This is gloomy news to be sure, but this isn't the case for all sectors. Discount stores are actually expected to increase, as more people try to pick up bargains.

 

 

Richard Dodd, from the British Retail Consortium, and Maureen Hinton, from retail analysts Verdict, have both suggested that the VAT increase might bring a rise in consumer spending on e-commerce websites in 2010. A short-term increase in e-commerce may occur due to consumers bringing forward their purchases to avoid the increase. 

 

In the midterm, customers may turn to the Internet for cheaper prices than they can find on the high street. However, in the long-term all retailers are probably going to have to work harder to make consumers part with their money.

 

 

The big question facing businesses is whether to absorb the increase, to pass it on to customers, or to take the middle way.

 

eBay surveyed 600 of their top sellers regarding the VAT, and 25% of them said they would absorb the entire increase. The Centre for Retail Research, mentioned above, suggest that the extra VAT will be passed on in full to the public as increased prices. Their survey found that 64% of retailers would pass on most of the increase to consumers within the first month.

 

The VAT increase will affect both consumer demand and the profitability of your business. If you don't want your income to be affected by the increase, you must consider how to streamline your business -- to lower your costs and increase your revenue.

 

You can read a detailed guide concerning the VAT increase on the HMRC website.

 

Selling to 2% of the people who visit your site instead of 1% might seem negligible, but in the world of conversion rates that means a doubling of your number of sales. And when you consider that making that jump to 2% might mean making one small tweak to your store, you will realise how worthwhile improving your conversion rate could be.

 

Below are a number of suggestions on how you can improve your e-commerce store's conversion rate.

 

 

Nobody wants to be ripped off. Anyone visiting your store for the first time, in order to make a purchase, must be satisfied that you aren't going to run off with their money. They want to know that you are a real company with ordinary and friendly people behind it.

 

Anything you can do to overcome that nagging doubt will improve your conversion rate. And if you make them feel comfortable enough to purchase from you once, then you will also have more repeat customers.

 

This could mean using making sure your website is secure and letting people know about it with things like a secure payments logo, having an About Us page that lets your customers get closer to you, having a contact telephone number, and having a professional-looking website generally.

 

 

Making it easy to navigate your store is deceptively difficult. This is because your site must cater to several different types of visitor: there are those looking for a particular product; there are those that wish to browse through a particular category of product; and there are those who simply wish to browse randomly.

 

Amazon typifies great e-commerce navigation. Realizing the your store must help visitors with different objectives is key to creating more sales. 

 

 

People don't want to buy something they will later regret. When reading copy, the customer may fear that the product is being exaggerated in order to create more sales. You want your description to be authoritative, and your customers to trust rather than doubt. 

 

Customers want to make an informed decision, based on what they want. By telling the customer the features and the benefits of a product in a compelling yet understated way, they will be much more likely to buy.

 

 

After customers have made the decision to buy, it is critical that you put them on a greased slide towards purchasing. This means that pages should load quickly, nothing should take the customer out of the shopping cart, customers should only have to type in their details once, and the process should be easy. 

 

A small stumbling block between the time the customer decides to buy and when they actually make their purchase can lower the conversion rate of your e-commerce store considerably. But on the bright side, identifying and removing such a stumbling block will instantaneously increase your income.

 

 

There are many things you can do to improve your conversion rate. For many, the amount of things that could be done is daunting. When you already have the day-to-day running of the store to contend with, such things get put on a to-do list and then never get done.

 

Implementing changes like those mentioned above can significantly increase your revenue. Even if you already have a busy schedule, it is worth finding time to make these changes. Your bank balance will thank you for it.

 

At this moment in time there are around 90,000,000 active .com domain names out there on the internet. That's a lot! The figure, courtesy of a monitoring service provided by IntelligentEye, also does no take into account .co.uk, .net, .org domains and so on.

 

Of those 90 million .com domains, 374,579 active domains also contain the word "store". While that doesn't necessarily mean that those domains are ecommerce stores, and while this figure does in no way account for all of those ecommerce stores that don't use the work "store" in their domain, the point I'm making is that there are incredibly high numbers of websites out there, and a fair number of these are ecommerce websites.

 

So what can you do to make yourself stand out in this ocean of ecommerce websites? Well, you can start by understanding what makes a successful ecommerce website and making sure that yours fits the bill. The following are a few of our suggestions as to what makes a good ecommerce website:

 

Have you ever visited a website where there was so much information that you didn't know where to click first, or whether you should click at all? Chances are you didn't stay on the website very long and you didn't take anything away from the site when you left.

 

Keep your ecommerce store simple and straightforward. Make important information easy to find and keep your click paths as short as possible. If people have to click more than 2 times to reach a particular goal, they tend to take their clicks elsewhere. 

 

This fits in well with keeping things simple. Know who you are selling to and what they would want to see. It isn't always easy to know what your audience wants, but if you're in the right market, you've done your research and you're confident in your product or products, then you should have a good idea about how to sell to your target buyers.

 

Categorise your site according to what will capture your audiences attention and make on-site decisions as easy as possible for the site visitor. Make use of opportunities to cross or up-sell and with all of your site content and ask yourself if it is relevant; will my audience care?

 

It's well known that when people look at website on the internet, they browse. They don't read, they simply skim for things that might capture their attention. Therefore it makes sense to try and use images and graphics to convey who you are and what you sell. 

 

Of course that doesn't mean that text should be neglected, text is just as important, but it's knowing when to use it and how to use it. For example, you should have clear headings and use emotive words. If these are well placed on the page and can help visitors find exactly what they're looking for then your site will be far more successful than a website that has a lot of small descriptive text that gives far more information than necessary at that stage.

 

A call to action is a feature of your website that asks your customer to perform a function. Examples of these are buy now buttons, contact us buttons, newsletter sign up forms and free trial sign up forms. 

 

Calls to action are very important and should be used in prominent places on every page of your site. Some websites make the mistake of placing all of their calls to action on their homepage, but visitors doesn't necessarily enter your site at the homepage. The whole purpose of having a website at all is that you can connect with your audience. You need them to click to buy or to sign up to your newsletter. You need your visitors to try your free trial or to get in touch with you. Do yourself a favour, and give your visitors every opportunity.

 

A lot of activity online is supported by the fact that people are able to feel safe and secure on a website. If a visitor doesn't feel safe or secure then they will not interact with your website. There are various things that you can do to make your visitors feel safe and reassured such as, displaying your safety certifications on your site, including safe payment logos. You should make sure that you give your visitors enough information about shipping and delivery so that they feel well informed on the situation when dealing with you, and you should offer ways for people to get in touch with you if they need to. 

 

Overall, making a success of any ecommerce website is to know your audience and understand what it is that encourages them to buy online. With this understanding you can choose the right images and text, you can answer any potential concerns they may have before the even have them and you can encourage the visitor to perform certain actions on your website. If you are able to take these points into consideration, and you are not afraid to test out different approaches, you can be guaranteed that your website will more successful than a large number of those that are currently out there.

 

InovicaStore are pleased to announce that they have won a contract with a Californian company to design and build a new ecommerce website for the sale of equestrian goods.

 

Company Director, Gerald Fisher, searched the internet for a company who could develop a bespoke website solution for his business, which focuses on the sale of carriages and equine accessories needed.

 

After contacting us initially we spoke on the phone with Gerald to piece together exactly what he was looking for in an ecommerce site, and to develop a plan for moving forward. We have been working steadily with Gerald now for a number of weeks to create something which will add to his business and expand his market beyond that of California and the West Coast of America. 

 

Never having met, we have found working remotely to be as effective as working with clients here in the UK. By ensuring that we built an understanding of how to work together in the beginning of the relationship, we are able to comfortably move forward with this project, constantly taking positive strides in bringing together Only Equestrian.com.

 

While the project is still currently underway, please check back at onlyequestrian.com to see the finished and populated site.

 

 

You may look at Facebook and Twitter, then look at your online business and think; what's the connection? No doubt you will have heard that social media can be beneficial to your business, but you may not be 100% sure how to go about reaping those benefits. 

 

There are a number of different ways that social media can be an effective tool for your business. The biggest and best thing that social media can do for you is to raise awareness about business. You should set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account for your business and then set about losing all of those preconceived ideas about Facebook being a place to put your holiday photographs and Twitter being a place to let people know that you are in the kitchen making a cup of tea. Who cares?

 

Well that is kind of the point, what do people care about, and want to know about? If they choose to follow your business because they're interested in what you sell or what you do, they're going to want to know about new products that you have, special offers that you are running, if you are going to appear at a specific trade fair or are looking to recruit new staff. If there is some important industry news that pertains to your products, they might want to know about that. They might want to see photographs of new products or they might want an easy way to let their friends know about what you do, which is the aim of the game with social media.

 

Once you have mastered the art of sending useful information to a group of interested customer and potential customers, the hope is that the network of people who know about your business will start to expand through the social media network. Friends of friends of friends will see updates about your business on someones page and become interested as well. You might end up starting a dialogue on Twitter that brings people to your site to find out what all of the fuss is about.

 

Another key factor in social media is blogging. Ideally you should have a blog on your own website where you can write about anything and everything pertaining to your business and your industry. Think outside of the box; write about things which your audience would be interested in outside of the products that you sell. The blog shouldn't really be a place where you whole-heartedly plug your products. Sales should come as a result of the right kind of audience finding your website and seeing that you really know what you're taking about. 

 

Social media is about broadening the horizons of your business by increasing awareness and building interest. If people don't know you exist then there is no point in being online. Let people know that you are there, let them know what you have to offer, and let them know that they can trust you to know more about your industry than anyone else out there.

 

Shipping can be a complex task in itself. Packaging up the goods and making sure they get from A to B in good condition and on time, at a fair price is a challenge that all business who ship for themselves will face.

 

There are a number of strategies that you can implement when it comes to charging your customers for shipping. The effectiveness or your strategy will really depend upon what sort of items you are shipping, who your customer base is and what sort of margins you are able to make on the products that you sell. 

 

Here we will go through a few really basic approaches that might work for you:

 

Depending on your product, you might already be making great margins on the sale price alone, so you may be able to offer free shipping in the hopes that offering your customers a deal will encourage sales. If you don't have particular large margins on the sale of the products alone, you might want to consider increasing the prices slightly and then offering free shipping, again in the hopes that your customers will see free shipping as a bonus, even if they have to pay a little more for the item in the first place.

 

Working on the principle of a flat rate of shipping, no matter what it is that is shipped, lets your customers know that you are willing to be reasonable when implementing pricing. This can increase confidence in people buying on your site, both in the fact that your shipping policy seems very fair, but also in the fact that they might feel that they are getting a deal if they purchase more items. 

 

This is a favourite amongst many online retailers, and you should be able to easily set up a variable shipping policy very easily with your ecommerce store platform. This works on the basis that shipping will start of fairly cheap for low cost and low weight items, or if there are only one or two items in the basket. As the price, weight or number of items increases, so does the shipping price. The best way to do this is to have a base rate, and then set an additional incremental price structure that lets you cover your costs, but doesn't weight to heavily on your customers wallet or purse. 

 

Based on your products, margins and customer base, you may already know which of the above methods would be best to suit your online business. If not, don't be afraid to test and evaluate different strategies. Making a success of an online business can be a case of trial and error until you get everything just right. Treat the experience as a learning process so that, like any business, you can aim to grow and develop, making good choices along the way.

 There are some fundamental, and simple, steps that you can take to improve the ranking of your site and just as importantly the product pages within your store. The following are ten tips that we recommend

 

 

You might think you know what your customers will search for to find your site and to find your products, but guesswork should not be a tool that you use.  If you don’t already have one, set up a Google Adwords account and use the keyword tool to find out what keywords people actually search for. This way you know the keywords and phrases that you should use on your site.

 

 

The page title is single most important factor in your on-site optimisation, so it is critical that you have your keywords and phrases within this tag.  We suggest a maximum of 65 characters for the title tag, so you need to be concise.  Also, try to include the keyword towards the start of your title tag and ensure that each page is unique.

 

 

Meta information is hidden information that does not appear on the web page itself.  A meta description tag, for example, is usually used as part of a search engine serach result.  It is therefore important to include your keywords within the description.

 

Images within your pages can have ALT tags. These are hidden tags that the search engines view and are also important in on-site optimisation.

 

 

Use H1 Headings on a page to emphasise the most important keywords for your page.  For example, put your product names into these. You can also use H2 headings for secondary terms.  We would suggest that all your content should have unique title tags and headings, targeting 

 

 

Ensure that that your ecommerce system can handle keyword-friendly URLs. Often sites have a URL that could look similar to this:

 

https://www.domain.com/catalogue.html?product_id=147&back=search&category_id=549

 

The following would be better:

 

https://www.domain.com/kitchenaid-k5-planetary-food-mixer-d147.html

 

 

All sites should have a sitemap to help both the search engines and site visitors to navigate a site.  It is also possible to create a sitemap that is easy for the search engines to catalogue a site and these are called XML sitemaps.  In conjunction with a robots.txt file, sitemaps are a powerful way of providing the search engines with 

submit it. Link to your sitemaps from a from a robots.txt file.

 

 

Google Base is an online database provided by Google that provides a mechanism to store structured data and for it to be searchable.  It is ideal for uploading product information and our experience is that it can drive good search volume to a website

 

 

Although writing blogs can take time, they are a great way of creating keyword-focused content that search engines like.  For an ecommerce site, create a blog on your site and write about topics such as new products added to the database, industry information or tips on how to use some of your products.  Keep the information fresh and genuinely interesting and the search engines will like it.

 

 

Optimising titles, meta tags and URLs are all important, but creating content on your pages is also key to show the search engine what the topics are about. Consistency in the keywords, in the tags and content is very important.  We also suggest that you try to ensure that your keywords are as close to the top of the page as possible.

 

 

The search engines visit your online store on a regular basis looking for new content and often they make the assumption that newly added content is the most worthwhile.  Updating your site regularly, including your blog, new products and updating your product information keeps the search engines visiting, catalogue and ranking you.

 

There is no magic bullet here, but each and every one of the tips above when used in combination are very powerful. Ensure that the keywords used remain constant on each page to maximise the effect.

If you have never had any dealings in ecommerce before, it can be a daunting task to start your own online store. There is a lot to learn as part of setting up an ecommerce store but once you have gotten to grips with everything, running an ecommerce store is a very rewarding activity.

 

The following are a few things that we recommend thinking about when approaching ecommerce:

 

1) Think about what you are going to sell. There is very little that you can't sell online these days but it makes it that much easier to be passionate about selling something you are interested in or knowledgable about. If you have been selling something offline for years, great! You might be surprised as just how easily your experience and understanding of the market can translate online.

 

2) Think about how you are going to distribute your products. Whether you are an individual or a large established company, are you going to stock items and ship them yourself? Are you going to use drop shipping? Are you going to work on an affiliate or reseller basis? 

 

3) Managing your store. Any good ecommerce solution will be both comprehensive, but also easy to use. You should be able to easily manage your product database and information on your store to keep customers informed and up to date. You should also have a wide range of settings that allow you to configure your store to work the way that you want it to.

 

4) How you will accept payments. You might think it's a little early to start considering this if you don't even have a store yet but that isn't the case. If you are going to stick with Paypal or Googlecheckout then setting these up will be very fast, however most serious ecommerce stores will have credit card processing and this can take a little longer to set up. You will need a merchant number from your bank and a company to process the payments for you. This can be relatively easy to set up, but can take a number of weeks to get all the details sorted out so it pays to think about, and be proactive in arranging this as soon as possible.

 

Once you know what you're going to sell, how you're going to handle what you sell, through which platform you are going to sell it and how you will take payment for it you are more or less at home with ecommerce. 

 

It is important to remember that if you are buying into a tailored ecommerce solution, you won't be alone. You should be dealing with professionals who have a great deal of experience with ecommerce who will be able to help you with any aspect of your store.