My definition of eCommerce consists of the following attributes:

• Standard format design
• Visually stunning design
• To sell goods online
• Used for communication
• Highly flexible

It is more than likely you would choose this package if you wanted to sell your goods to your potential online customers, as well as keeping an audience informed of new products and stock availability. It is an excellent means of marketing via Yellow Pages and other online Search engines. You would choose this package to cut out eBay and sell goods professionally from your own website. It is also the better option if you want to use something as simple as eBay but much more powerful.

Below, you will find a video to help explain the concepts of CMS, that we will build into your website. The relevance of this video, is that the eCommerce Software that we use, works on similar lines as the CMS.

 

What do I get for my money?

I use Zen Cart Open Source Software as the backbone for our eCommerce Websites. The features included as part of Zen Cart include:

• Allows customers to shop your store 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
• Easily keep your products/catalogue updated – no HTML coding required to add, delete, or modify products.
• Secure – no one but your administrative personnel can access your customer/catalogue data.
• Merchandise Pricing options – single and multiple items can be put on sale. Sale options include percentage-off, fixed amount off, new price, etc. Sales can include or exclude product attributes. You can add or exclude a discount from a special. You can put a whole category or the entire store on sale.
• Products can be marked as free or Call for Price.
• Products can be marked as Featured for specific highlighting/attention.
• Products can be linked and/or copied to multiple categories.
• Minimum or maximum quantities and units – you can sell one per customer, or require at least four and in multiples of two. You can set requirements on a per-product basis.
• Quantity discounts can be configured per-product for varying pricing levels or quantity levels.
• Product attributes can be added, either as radio buttons, check-boxes, drop-down lists, text boxes, file uploads, file downloads, and more. Attribute options can up-charge the price of an item, and an item can have its price completely controlled by attributes. Attributes can be configured as read only so as to provide a features list.
• One-time fees can be added to products via attributes.
• Attributes also support text pricing, such as price-per-word or price-per-letter for personalizing.
• Store layout can be controlled in great detail simply by switching settings in the Admin area. Choose your side column and box widths, bread crumb separator, which side-boxes you want to appear where on the page, enable/disable links in various places.
• Entire categories of products (or individual products) can be enabled/disabled with just a few clicks.
• Sort order of products is easily controlled in the Admin area.
• If you need to take your site offline for a period of maintenance, you can do it easily by posting advance notices, as well as a friendly Down For Maintenance page that’s also search engine friendly. Webmaster and web designer can specify IP addresses to override maintenance and still access the site for testing.
• You can send administrative emails on most customer shopping activities to various administrators as desired. Email addresses are protected from abuse, as they are not displayed on-screen. The Contact Us page can be configured to support multiple destinations, such as sales, technical support, webmaster, and so on.
• Nearly every piece of information about your products can be controlled in the Admin area, giving you the ability to fine-tune how your products and services appear to your customers. Features and options can be enabled/disabled quickly and easily.
• Multiple items can be added to the shopping cart by simply entering quantities and clicking Add.
• The product type feature allows you to customize information fields and display format for different products differently. Products for sale vs. documents for viewing, vs. music downloads, and the list goes on.
• You can add multiple images to your products, in small/medium/large format. Popups are available if desired for viewing of larger images.
• A verification for agreement to the Terms of Service has been added for compliance with new laws regarding privacy and disclosure.
• CVV2 card verification number support is available for compliance with most merchant agreements. This feature is enabled/disabled in the Admin.
• Shipping options – multiple carriers are supported, including hold for pickup, free delivery in an area, and most major couriers and postal services.
• Customer access control – you can set up your shop to only allow customers access to pricing or pricing but not buying until after being authorized by an administrator. You can restrict them from browsing at all too, if desired.
• Showcase – you can set your store up to be simply a product showcase, without pricing at all.
• Search options allow you to search for products based on name, description, metatags, price, and more.
• Meta tags keywords and descriptions can be controlled at the per-product level, all from the administrative interface.
• Automatic detection of search engine spiders.
• Intelligent generation of metatags content for search engines.
• Built in WYSIWYG page editor for modifying non-database pages.
• Tight security on password handling, login/logout, and more.
• HTML-style email supported.
• Email archiving supported for audit trail.
• Administrative activity logging enabled for audit trail – especially beneficial with recent merchant agreement requirements concerning tracking of activity related to accessing customer information.
• Advertising banners – show information about your business colleagues and track banner link activity. Banners can open in new windows so that customers never really leave your site.
• Shipping estimator allows your customer to get an idea of their shipping costs prior to checkout.
• Coupons and gift certificates are easily handled both by customers and administrators.
• Customer group pricing allows groups of users to receive a set discount amount at checkout.
• Newsletter and product notification systems.
• Low order fees can be configured.
• COD fees can be added.
• Shipping tare, large package handling to give fine-grain control over shipping services.
• Tax rates, tax zones, etc easily configured in the Admin area.
• PayPal™ IPN and many other popular merchant services supported.
• Customers can write product reviews (approvals can be required by an Administrator).
• Low stock notifications to administrator when inventory is getting low (level can be configured).
• Scalable from small shops to larger shops with hundreds of thousands of products.
• Track who’s online interactively.
• Multiple language support.
• Multiple currency support.

Design Process

The first goal to achieve at this stage is to create a design with visual appeal. If your site doesn’t look good, the chances are it is not reaching its sales potential. For most website designers, once they have produced an appealing design their job is done. However, I invest just as much time in organising the content so that it may deliver everything it demands from your audience. Guides that we keep in place are as follows:

• To clearly show what your company has to offer (Aims/Services)
• Achieving a good priority listing of products/services, so which ever benefits you most is displayed first
• Site navigation needs to be crystal clear
• Your contact details for clients must be clearly marked
• Points of sales need to be simplistic and intuitive
• Avoid cluttering the site as this will put many people off from first impressions
• Content should be clear to the reader

They are very simple guidelines, however if implemented correctly, can make or break you from your competitors. There are always exceptions to this rule, for example portfolio or hobby websites.

Once I have created a template, which you are happy with, I will use it as a backbone for the rest of the site… However, I will make minor adjustments to sub-pages as to stop the website from boring the client to easily.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Pretty much every web development company out there offers search engine optimisation (SEO). The main difference, which makes Wolf Web Design stand out from the rest is that I will monitor your website on google to make sure your website is not slipping down the pages. Every time I learn something new, or a new algorithm is put in place, I will submit the adjustments.

Search engines are constantly evolving with the aim of providing higher quality and more relevant search results.

 

Consultations

It is extremely important to find out what my clients need. The better I can understand your goals, the more likely I am to end up thinking on the same wave-length in order to bat ideas to one another, rather than going cold. We will initially consult online or on-site in order to answer some of the following questions and go through any potential templates:

• Explain the process
• Explain the benefits of one package over another
• Decide on the type of look your after
• Work on how many pages you will require
• Decide what sort of images will do best
• Take on board what facilities you may have to cater for
• Set you some homework with regards to the content you wish to have