Give us 7 minutes and we’ll show you how simple the world of social media can be…

Social media and blogging are the talk of the Internet, literally.  It’s actually HOW we talk on the Internet. Everybody’s talking and blogging and trying to figure out how to profit from their conversations.  That’s the nature of the new Internet…  It’s called Web 2.0 but it’s even going beyond that simple designation.

Have you been playing with social networks like Facebook and Twitter but not really figuring out how to turn that into new sales or prospects?  Have you “friended” yourself until you’re blue in the face but still aren’t seeing the value in the social media world?  We have felt your pain!  That’s why we created YSME Club…

What if you could learn a step-by-step method to creating organic Google Love (that’s what we call Page 1 traffic rankings) and could literally ATTRACT your market to you?  How would your business look then?

We understand the value of your time and we know how important it is for you to work ON your business, not IN your business.  YSME Club gives you the opportunity to grab a new bite of information every  time you have a few minutes free to learn something new.  Give us 7 Minutes and we’ll show you the Social Media World!

How to Pick a Shopping Cart that Makes You Money

Where to Start?

When a client asks me to help them find a shopping cart, I often start with the feature lists from different cart vendors. I copy all the features into a column in a spreadsheet, and add a column for my client to assign priorities: 1 = must have, 2 = should have, or 3 = nice to have. Then we sort features by priority and add columns for each cart we consider. This feature-oriented process helps my clients focus on what they need. Using a feature list helps figure out whether they need a basic cart or a more complex one.

While we’re looking through the feature list, I work with them to understand exactly what they want to accomplish. Is the online business their entire business or just part of it? Does the shopping cart need to integrate with their accounting system, for example, QuickBooks? What are their products and how complex are their products—for example, will they offer quantity discounts?

There are other important cart features to test. Can customers see their order status online? Can you easily edit all outbound emails used to confirm sales, notify customers when a product is shipped, and so on? If your online business has several employees, can you restrict the reporting to just certain users? How hard is it to add options to products?

Another great question to ask is, how is credit card data stored in the database? Credit card processing companies have strict rules about storing card data. My advice: avoid storing any important customer data. Let payment-processing services handle that risk.

Once you’ve evaluated all the features you need?and sorted them into “must have,” “should have,” and “nice to have” features, the next step is to evaluate actual shopping carts to determine what works best for your business.

Simple Carts

If you’ve only a few products to sell, or you want to test the waters, then you have two options for selling online. One is to use an existing site such as eBay, Half.com, Etsy, or a similar site. For example, my wife sells all our spare books on Half.com because it makes no sense to bother with anything more complicated.

Your second option, when you have only a few items to sell, is to use the payment-processing capabilities of another online service, for example, PayPal, Google Checkout, or Mal’s e-commerce. These ”add-on’ carts work especially well if you have a web site that already exists. They let you use their site to configure your products, and they generate payment button code that you can copy and paste into your web pages. The code creates a button on your web page that, when clicked, sends the site visitor through their service for payment.

We highly recommend Hart Cart

Also, visit Jerry Hart.com