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An Introduction to Our Blog
If you're reading this, thank you for taking the time to have a look at our blog. We like to keep this post pinned to the top just so that this 'introduction' to our blog is always the first thing people see. Our blog isn't quite the same as other blogs out there, so we felt it was important to write something so that you all could get the best use out of it. A lot of blogs are made up of posts which are relevant when posted but so closely tied to a current affair
What is an Online Store Builder?
An online store builder is the name give to a system which lets someone easily create an ecommerce website. Modern systems (like Sellr.com) allow you to select a base design (theme) for your website, and then enter text and drag and drop images onto the pages to make them exactly as you want. There are a few basic requirements of an online store builder. Choice of themes Tools to modify and customize the theme Ability to easily add items for sale Ability to accept and manage
Secrets of Googles Search Engine
Secrets of Google's Search Engine Google is the most used search engine on the planet. Any merchant selling online needs to understand exactly how Google works and how this understanding can be used to make your website appear in its rankings above your competitors. However, Google's algorythm is its secret sauce. Google don't say how their search system works, and from time to time, they change the way that it works which does not make it easy. It's interesting to look
How to Start an online shop - ecommerce system
HOW TO START YOUR ONLINE SHOP – ECOMMERCE MADE EASY By Georgina 19/01/17 As you will already be aware, the ecommerce industry is just a bit massive. Millions are buying online everyday, world wide, so its only natural that you might want a piece of this enormous pie. And why shouldn't you? ……But your not a web designer or a coding geek I hear you say! Fear not! There are many options available for those of us who are neither blessed with design
How to sell on Etsy
SELLING TIPS FOR YOUR ETSY SHOP by Georgina 11 Jan 2016 TAKE SOME GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS As an example of home shot images I am using a photograph I took of the amazing homemade Minecraft Stampy Cat plushie that I made for a huge fan this Christmas...just don't look too closely at the stitching! The best thing you can do to generate more interest in your products is to take decent photographs. The main thing to watch out for is the lighting. It's always
How to sell your handmade cards
HOW TO SELL YOUR HANDMADE CARDS by Georgina As a creative person, you will no doubt love the whole process of getting messy and actually making your greetings cards and will willingly absorb yourself into the whole creative process. But you will, most likely, feel intimidated at the prospect of sending your amazing creations out into the big worldwide marketplace for the first time, so here are some ideas and tips on how I approached it
How To Start An Online Business
Starting an Online Business can be rewarding, disappointing, time consuming and life changing. The key thing is understanding how to make the business work, how to bring in customers and how to actually make money. Here are the facts - as we see them. 1. If you simply build a website and do not properly advertise it, then unless you have an existing customer base it will take years to get enough traffic to run a business, if this ever happens at all. 2. If you do not
Alternatives to EKMPowershop
Alternatives To EKM Powershop With Sellr, you can either choose from over a hundred built in responsive themes, or we can design one for you at no extra cost. Each theme can be customised in an infinite number of ways, so we guarantee you will be happy with the finished website. Sellr has a number of benefits compared to EKM Powershop and most other ecommerce software: You can use Sellr for FREE. Many ecommerce software providers, including EKM Powershop
Why Is Magento So Popular?
At Sellr we produce a hosted ecommerce solution. We have created a system that has everything in it to make an online store successful, literally everything, and you can use it for free including hosting. However we have a drop in the ocean compared to the number of users who use Magento. Why is this? Marketing Model and Distribution Magento has a great way of distribution mainly because it is open source and free. What this means is that Web Designers can
Why Your eCommerce Website is Unsuccessful
That look when your website is unsuccessful. Some of the key aspects of a successful eCommerce website get completely overlooked during the development process. Every company needs their USP, and a product that can sell, but there are other factors that extend further than the service or merchandise. It's imperative to take the website, content and marketing into account for maximum results, many of these elements are the difference between success and
Predicted Strictly Come Dancing Results 2016
Google Trends shows the volume of searches made on Google for a particular term. You can do your own searches at https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore We have analysed the data on Google and come up with the following results. 1. Judge Rinder 2. Daisy Lowe 3. Danny Mac 4. Louise Rednapp 5. Ed Balls 6. Claudia Fragapane 7. Laura Whitmore 8. Greg Rutherford 9. Ore Oduba This is based on the volume of searches for each of those names over the in September and October
Can Google Predict The Results Of The US Election?
Google Trends is feature of Google that anyone can use. You can access it at https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore You can enter any keywords and it will show you the volume of searches for a specified period. Never before has so much information been available to anyone at the touch of a button. If you do a search for the last 12 months for the terms Trump and Clinton selecting USA as the country you will get the following graph. Trump is Blue and Clinton is
5 Amazing and FREE Online Resources for Businesses
Run your business without breaking into the piggy bank. Running a new online business can be an expensive venture but it doesn't have to cost the earth. Make the most of these amazing free online resources that can help stretch your pound further. 1. Gov.uk The government website is a great hub for business enterprisers to receive the latest information in new laws and tax payment methods. By keeping up to date, you'll avoid painful fines and paying for services you
5 Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Need to Avoid
Don't be a Social Media Dog. Social marketing is a great tool to market businesses and advertise products or services. With careful use, it can help emphasis your brand image and identity which in turn will interest your preferred audience. However, if social marketing is used incorrectly it can turn your brand's reputation into an embarrassing disaster. Start using social media effectively by avoiding these 5 social marketing mistakes. 1) Overdoing the voice In social
Use the Google URL Shortener for Twitter Marketing
I like it. Twitter may have recently changed the way their character limit works, but you have to admit that it can still feel a little too limiting - especially when you're trying to share a link to something! But thankfully, there is a little trick which can help to make your Twitter marketing a little easier and it's all thanks to Google's handy free tool, the URL shortener. In any social media marketing, you're going to have to include links to your
Benefis of Reporting Industry News
Reading industry news. If you're running an eCommerce website, then it would be a good idea for you to keep a blog alongside it. In your website's blog, you should write about a whole range of things, including reports on industry news. This form of content marketing can be very useful and is well worth your time and in today's blog post I shall give you a handy list which covers all the benefits of reporting industry news. It cements you as an expert in your field.
Tips for Competitor Research
This is fascinating. If you want to start an eCommerce website (or any kind of business, really) then you're going to have to get an idea of what else is already out there. You've got your very own range of hand sculpted wine glasses? Great! Now who else is selling that kind of thing? How can you do a better job than them? In today's blog post I would like to give you some tips for an easy bit of competitor research. Search for Key Search Terms and Visit the
Network With Small Business Owners
A couple of Sellr users having fun. If you're running your own business, one thing that you should be trying to do is network with as many other business owners as possible. Having lots of connections can never hurt and the more people you know, the more ideas you might get for collaborations and expansions. Because of the huge importance of networking, we at Sellr have put in place a system to make it easier than ever. When you sign up to Sellr, not only are you given
Common SEO Mistakes
She does SEO. If you want to be successful on the internet, there's one thing you're going to have to be good at whether you like it or not: SEO. Sure, some people might have successful websites without knowing anything about SEO, but they must still be doing good SEO, just without knowing about it. The problem with SEO is that there are a lot of common misconceptions floating around and in today's blog post I would like to take you over a few of the most common SEO mistakes
Socially Responsible Business
There we all are. As we move forward, there is an ever growing demand for socially responsible businesses. People are aware that a lot of the larger business out there carry out a lot of dubious and unethical practises because in the age of information, facts like these are much more readily available to the consumer. With this in mind, you might wish to make your new eCommerce venture as socially responsible as possible. In today's blog post I am going to go over some of the ways
Facebook Workplace
From your friends at Facebook. Facebook is the biggest social media network and is something which businesses can make really great use of. If you needed any proof of the fact that Facebook can be a wonderful professional tool, look no further than the fact that they have just announced a new feature called Facebook Workplace, which is a version of Facebook designed specifically for use by businesses. So why do we need Facebook workplace? Well, as social media marketers
Things You Need to Know About Social Media Marketing
He's head of the social media class. Social media marketing can be very useful for increasing brand awareness and for reaching new people with your eCommerce website. However, there are a lot of misconceptions about it and a few things that people really should know before they start up a social media marketing campaign and so in today's blog post I am going to tell you everything you need to know about social media marketing: The "social" aspect is as
You Won't Believe What They Found When They Opened This Old Box!
You won't believe what they found when they opened this old box! In the bottom of an old cellar, in a house which had been boarded up for years, the authorities found this old box hidden amongst a pile of old clothes in the corner of the room. They put it in a bag to look at later on along with the clothes and some other items. It was the next day, when they examined the items in the bag and one of them took out this small box. Although it was quite old, it was in
The Value of Virtual Assistants
Keeping in touch with the VA. A lot of businesses, particularly smaller businesses, make use of virtual assistants (or VAs) in order to complete lots of everyday tasks which need to be done. For those who don't know, a VA is somebody who does not work in the office with the other employees (and is often not even based in the same country) but who works the same hours and who is usually available to contact over Skype or other forms of communication. There are pros and cons to using
Skype for Business
Skype One thing which small businesses may suffer with is finding staff and having a place for them all to work. When you've only got a very small budget, paying the salary of any employees and office space could be significantly draining. To avoid having to spend a lot of money on a place to work, something which you might like to consider is using Skype as the main means to communicte with your employees. The internet age is wonderful because not only does it provide
Back to University Promotions
A poor student looking online for deals. In the run up to September, businesses are all thinking of "Back to School" sales and how they can make their products things which parents will need to buy their children before they go back to school after the summer holidays, but not quite enough fuss is made over university students starting their term in late September/early October. If you sell anything which university students may find useful, this is definitely something
Redirecting Domains
"Just bought a real corker." Several months ago I wrote a blog post about the value of purchasing additional domains to help boost the rankings of your eCommerce website: you can read it here. In today's blog post I would like to go over some of the other ways that purchasing domains and setting up redirects can be useful to you site. Of course, it might well be worth reading the earlier blog post first and keeping in mind that this is something of an advanced strategy and
Using Humour in Marketing
See that grin? I made it happen. When you are marketing your eCommerce business, do you ever use humour? You may think that as a business owner, you have to keep things very serious and professional all the time for people to treat you like a legitimate organisation and be interested in buying from you. But the truth is that there is room in professionalism for you to be lighthearted and to have a laugh - in fact it could actually be a great benefit to your marketing
Two Part Blog Posts
A 19th Century Blog Post You may have noticed that my recent blog post "Things to Know Before You Hire Staff" was split over two posts. The reason for this is that I was just writing a single post, but then I found that I had quite a lot to say, so I thought that it would be better suited to stretch out across two separate posts. This is quite a useful thing to do every now and again as it can help you to have a larger amount of content. Longer vs. Shorter Pieces
What Does the Google Penguin Update Mean?
Just updated. As you may have seen in one of our recent blog posts, we predicted that there was going to be an update to Google's algorithm and now it has happened. The Google Penguin update is big news for anybody who has a website which they make money from (which includes all of you) and so you need to know just what this change might mean for you and your business. What Google's algorithm does is determine the order that websites come up for different search
How Could EKMPowershop Stop Their Decline?
It's really interesting watching the path of companies that operate on the Internet. Many of them gain customers quickly, reach a peak and then begin the long wedge of doom (WOD), which can take many years. Others plateau when their system is still very popular, but their market is saturated. EKM Powershop seems to have had a more dramatic decline which is worrying for anyone using or thinking of using their system. Interest in their system is now back to the levels seen in
Things to Know Before Hiring Staff Part 2
"We all have a laugh here." You may well have seen Saturday's blog post, where I spoke about some of the most important things to keep in mind before hiring staff. If you didn't see it, check it out here. Anyway, that blog post was really just a bit of a warm up and so for today's post I would like to continue that train of thought and present you with a few more things which you need to keep in mind before hiring staff. Do Not Talk About Politics: The
Things to Know Before Hiring Staff
"I don't respect you." Eventually your eCommerce website may grow to the point where you can afford to hiring some employees to work under you and it would be a great benefit if you did hire somebody else to help you work on your business. Nonetheless, if you have never had anybody working under you, there are certain things which you really should be aware of before hiring any members of staff. If you don't really know how to manage people or aren't really aware of
Back to Basics Business
Learn from this teacher. If you've recently signed up to Sellr then that means that you are going to be planning to start up your own eCommerce business. This is a great idea because the eCommerce business is booming and the internet gives an avenue for small businesses (especially ones in remote communities) to reach a much larger number of people than they ever would otherwise! If you're setting up your Sellr account and therefore running a business for the very first time,
Twitter Character Limit Changes
Thanks, Twitter. I always wanted you to do this If you speak to social media marketers about Twitter, there's one thing I bet most of them will all agree is really annoying and that is the fact that media attachments take up part of Twitter's character limit. Twitter's big unique selling point is that their 140 character limit will stop people from writing overly long and boring posts: but how does it make sense for them to include media attachments in that? Media breaks up
Is a Google Algorithm Change Coming?
"My name is Google." Anybody who makes their living through running a business is kind of at the mercy of Google. If your money comes exclusively from people visiting your site, other than a few people who may already have you favourited, almost everybody is going to come to you through Google searches. So if the Google algorithm changes, that might mean that your site suddenly doesn't rank quite so well and you might find that you are getting less traffic and making fewer
How Do We Read Websites
Reading a website is not like reading a book. Did you know that the average person will only stay on a webpage for about twenty seconds before clicking off it? When monitoring how much traffic your site is receiving, it is elevating to see high numbers. However, it is discomforting to know that a majority of the people aren't seeing your content. Logically, to sell more products, customers will have to spend more time on your website and the longer they spend there, the more likely
Choosing Your Domain
What's your URL? For your eCommerce website to be taken seriously as a professional business, you're going to need to buy your own domain. Sure, you could start out without a domain (for example, when using Sellr FREE) but you should absolutely get yourself a domain eventually. When buying a domain, however, there are a lot of things to take into account, because obviously, a site's URL is very important! So, imagine you've been using a name for your
Majestic SEO Tool
There are so many things which effect the SEO of different websites. Obviously, the quality of the site itself, the content on it and the user experience are all large factors which are used to determine whether or not a site is worth ranking highly, but another huge and significant factor is what's going on off site; most significantly, the links that lead back to your site. One of the best tools for analysing the off site factors on a website is Majestic. Majestic is a
How to Earn Customer Loyalty
The handshake of trust, People who sell online are nearly always looking for ways to reach new customers, but not enough people are looking to keep their existing customers. If somebody buys something from your site, you've already done everything you can to persuade people to purchase your products - assuming they are happy with the product, why wouldn't they buy things from you in future? You need to do everything you can to ensure that they'll come back whenever they
Colour Psychology in Marketing
They all have a use! When designing your eCommerce website or graphics to share on your social media feeds, you are doubtlessly going to want them to encourage as many sales as possible. Obviously, attractive images of your products, great prices and things like that are going to encourage people to make sales, but the colours you use are also going to have a significant impact. Without realising it, different colours bring out different psychological responses from people and being
Sharing Other People's Content on Facebook
Great site. Do you struggle to think of ideas about what to share on your Facebook page? I can appreciate that thinking up something fresh and new every day is going to be quite time consuming and also something which is going to require a lot of creative thinking. You need to post regularly, or the Facebook algorithm will cause you to appear less often in people's newsfeeds, so something is always better than nothing. But the good news is, even if you can't think of your own
Facebook or Twitter for Business
Which is best? There's only one way to find out. If you picked somebody at random and asked them which two social media networks were the best, they'd probably say Facebook and Twitter - almost everybody knows them! So if you were looking to do some social media marketing, it would be best to use these two sites. But what if you only had time to use one of them? If you're a small business, you might be running everything yourself and social media marketing takes time! It
Finding a Gap in the Market
Time to get started. The internet is huge and there's a lot of money to be made on it. If you've decided that you want to start an eCommerce website - good idea. The eCommerce industry is growing every day and more and more people are making money from it. Running your own website leaves you in control of everything you do, but you can't just make a website, sell any random products and then live off of it! You need to plan everything out perfectly and you need to find the
The Effect of a Google Penalty
Don't get a clamp on the wheels of your website! If you make a living from the internet, a Google penalty is one of the worst things which can happen to you. If Google issues you a penalty, your site will be removed from the rankings of search results; people who have your site favourited would still be able to find you following a penalty, but traffic to your site will be cut right down and unless you are exceptionally good at social media marketing, you're most likely to see an
Attracting New and Existing Customers
He rings the bell, customers come. What's the universal goal of all eCommerce business owners? Why it's attracting customers, of course! Unless you're conducting some kind of weird social experiment or building a joke business, I guess. Anyway, what's important when you try to attract customers to your eCommerce website is that you don't exclusively target new customers as the existing ones can be an equally good source of sales. You need to make sure you're
Should You Use Google Plus for Social Media Marketing
Lovely logo. When people think of social media, they probably think of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest – all of the big ones. The social media network which people are rather unlikely to think of is Google Plus, because Google Plus is generally considered to have been a bit of a failed endeavour. Nonetheless, this is one website which you might wish to include in your online marketing campaign, because it does have certain strengths. While Google Plus might
Essential Tools for a Graphic Designer
Wonder what he's working on? If you want to have a successful eCommerce business, something which could be enormously beneficial to you is a graphic designer. With a graphic designer on board, you can get yourself a unique logo, create graphics to help make the site really pop and also help it to establish its own unique identity. Things like this can really help to solidify your brand identity and help to make your presence online instantly recognisable to your customers, creating a
Summer Holidays Marketing
Looks like a nice place for summer holidays. Throughout the year, there are loads of different factors which will determine what and how much people are buying online. Christmas and Easter are obviously two of the biggest things, but the summer holidays are something else which you should be conscious of, as capitalising on that could bring you a nice boost in sales. There are all kinds of products which people will be buying for their summer holidays: beachwear/swimwear,
Social Media Marketing Strategy
You'll need this to celebrate if you follow this strategy. A lot of people would like to do social media marketing, but they have no idea about what to do. So often you'll see business Facebook pages, business Twitter pages and other social media pages where there's an extremely small number of followers, a very small number of posts and a huge period of time since the first update: it's clear that that business has had an unsuccessful experiment with social media
Testing Your Site in Different Browsers
The browsers standing proud. Two of the most important questions for the owner of an eCommerce website to ask themselves are "Does my site look good?" and "Is my site functional?" because if potential customers come to a site which is ugly and unprofessional looking, they're not going to be incentivised to make any kind of purchase, because an unprofessional looking site might also be unreliable. Also, if your site is not functional, they might not even be able to
Facebook Business Page Management
That look when you get too many notifications. With more and more people signing up to Facebook every day, it can be a great platform for you to use to promote your eCommerce website. It's true, Facebook does have its downsides: for example, their system is kind of rigged so that if you don't pay them, marketing will be much harder, but it is still worth doing and can still be effective. One thing I'd like to advise, though, is that you set up a whole new Facebook
How to Avoid Overheating
I just snapped a quick pic through the window. Pretty hot outside. Recently, a lot of you will have realised that things have been getting a lot hotter! It's summer, it always happens. But as it gets warmer, you not only need to ensure that you're taking all the steps you can to ensure that you are keeping at a healthy temperature but also that all of your electronics are too. Make sure that you're drinking plenty of cold water throughout the day, because a case
Social Media Days
Wish this thing told me what day it was. When you're doing social media marketing, you want to make it clear to your customers that you are somebody who is very in the loop when it comes to all of the cool and trendy things that people do on those networks. Every day is an occasion on social media and so here's the week broken down into what happens on each day. #MondayMotivation - not really a theme for a day, but every Monday morning you'll find this
Sponsored Blog Posts
Giving a blogger their fee, Sponsored blog posts are something which might be very much worth investing in to help promote your eCommerce business. The internet is an enormous place and you want your eCommerce website to have as large a presence online as possible in order for as many people as possible to find it - after all, if nobody can find an eCommerce website, nobody will buy from it, it's not like with real shops were regular passers by might pop in. Sponsored
Business Benefits of a Smartphone
What a great business setup. If you're running an eCommerce website, you should really invest in a smartphone. More and more people are accessing the internet via smartphones every day and it's a bandwagon you want to get on if you want to keep up with your competitors. If you're somebody who's not quite convinced about this whole smartphone thing, then I am going to use today's blog post to try and convince you that it's definitely worth
Competitor Analysis
We'll get those competitors! When you run an eCommerce website, obviously the goal is for your site to be the one that people turn to whenever they want or need a specific product. But unless you're the owner of Amazon (in which case, I am flattered that you are reading my blog post) there's always going to be another eCommerce website out there which is doing a little better than you: maybe they have higher rankings in search engines, more social media followers and just
How to Get Around Twitter's Character Limit
This person just finished reading this blog post. Are you somebody who has trouble with Twitter's character limit? Maybe you have a lot to say about your eCommerce website? Maybe you like to write long funny posts which wouldn't work if condensed for Twitter? Maybe it just takes you a long time to explain what your business is or what your products are and you'd like to be able to do that occasionally? Well, worry not because I have the answer to your problems - I know how
Google's URL Shortener
Its own URL is pretty short, funnily enough. When doing marketing over Twitter, one thing which a lot of people grapple with is their very restrictive character limit. On the one hand, this stops people from waffling on, brings them straight to the point and helps to make tweets nice and punchy. On the other hand, this has some frustrating set backs; not only do images take up large portions of the character limit (for some bizarre reason) but it's also rather difficult to share
Snapchat Marketing
With smartphones becoming more and more prevalent, people are finding more and more ways to communicate with one another and to share information. In recent years, Snapchat is an app which has grown in popularity as a social media network and is something which owners of eCommerce websites should really look into as a platform for marketing. In today's blog post I would like to go over some of the best ways for you to market yourself over Snapchat. Snapchat is used primarily
Private Blog Networks
Typing up the latest blog post. One of the best ways to artificially increase the search rankings of your eCommerce website, is to create your very own private blog network (PBN.) I should make it clear that trying to artificially manipulate search engine rankings is something which is frowned upon by Google (the main search engine which anybody would worry about) and if you are found to be doing this, your site can be penalised and this can cause you to disappear from the rankings
Increase Efficiency with Google Drive
The logo of Google Drive. Pretty nice. As your business begins to grow bigger and bigger, you'll find that there's more and more for you to manage. With so many things which need to be taken care of, you'll almost certainly turn to spreadsheets as they're one of the most convenient ways of viewing and recording information - if you can find everything you need on a spreadsheet, it will save you having to rummage through paperwork when you need to get a specific piece of
Imitating Big Brands
One is you, one is your competitor. When you're a small independent business selling through an eCommerce website, one difficulty you may face is persuading people that you're a company worth buying from. As much as people may be attracted to the idea of supporting small, independent businesses, they're also quite comfortable with big brands as they know exactly what they're getting from them and buying from somebody else is often viewed as quite a risk! One
Keyword Stuffing
When writing the content for any website, eCommerce or otherwise, you're going to want to include relevant keywords. If you sprinkle a few keywords throughout the content on your homepage, then this will show search engines that your website is somehow connected to those words and then factors it in to how well you rank when people search for those search terms (and similar ones too.) But if you take this method too far, that's called keyword stuffing and is actually going to be
Moz - A Fantastic SEO Resource
The classic Moz logo. SEO - how much do you know about it? Well, it's an ever-evolving field and so if you think you know everything, it will never be for long! Plus, while many aspects of SEO are things which are fairly logical and basic, there are a lot of things which are very complex and technical, things which you'd never manage without a hefty dose of research. When it comes to SEO research, Moz is one of the best websites to turn to. So what makes Moz so
Is Your Site Static
Do you think your website is static? Sure it might have flashy graphics and videos and images on it, but it could still, ultimately, be very static. How often do you add new content to your site? This is a very important factor for search engine algorithms because if they don't see anything added to a site in quite a long period of time, they'll see this as an indicator that a site may have been abandoned, or at least, that it's a site whose owners don't put much effort into it.
Microsoft Buys LinkedIn
In an unexpected turn of events, Microsoft has purchased the professional networking site, LinkedIn for an enormous $26 billion! What makes this especially interesting is the fact they are paying in cash and also that this means that they are essentially paying over $60 for each individual profile – but it is all of the profiles (and the information which can be gained from each one) which is actually what has given LinkedIn that value. All the data that Microsoft obtains about people in
How to Check if Your Site Has Been Indexed by Google
This person knows how to click "search" When you're doing content marketing you are doubtlessly going to be writing lots of new blog posts for your eCommerce websites and each new blog is a new page. Content marketing can be very effective indeed, but if your new pages aren't getting indexed by Google, then they're not going to come up in searches and you'll find that they're a lot less effective than they could have been. So how can you be sure
Google Rules
Whoogle? Yoogle. Owners or eCommerce websites are dependent upon Google, because Google is the search engine which most people use and the main way that anybody is going to find your site in the first place. The title of the post doesn't mean "Google Rules" as in "they're the best" (although they are doing the best in the search engine world), rather it refers to the rules that they expect all websites to adhere to - if you break these rules then you may be
Adding Captions to Images
He's happy with the benefits of captions Sellr users will be delighted to hear that we have improved our blogging feature and added the ability for users to add captions to images. We're always striving to make our service as beneficial to users as possible and adding caption functionality seemed like a logical step. All you have to do, when adding an image, is tick a box which indicates that you would like to add a caption to an image and that's that! It's a nice and
Perfecting Your User Experience
A lot of online businesses tend to focus solely on their products and give little thought to the user experience on their eCommerce website. There's a mentality of "If my product is really good, I don't need to worry too much about the site" but this is a pure untruth. While having a worthwhile product with a good, unique selling point is very important, the importance of perfecting your user experience also cannot be understated. Try looking at your site from
Do Outbound Links Damage Rankings
When people are doing content marketing, they're often a little concerned about including links to other sites in their content. A lot of people believe that search engines work like this: every site has a certain value and when it links to another site it is giving them some of its value and, therefore, decreasing its own value. Because of this, some people do not like to link to other sites unless they know that they can get a link back from the site that they linked
The Risks of SEO
Everybody with a website, and especially those with an eCommerce website should be doing all they can to optimise their site for search engines. But is it always a good thing? Well, yes, when you do your SEO properly it can be a good way for you to increase your search rankings and also to improve the user experience on your site, but when done badly, the ultimate effect can be very different. Google is the search engine that most people are concerned about (because it's the
Try This Grammar Quiz
If you're doing content marketing, then you want to be sure that you are good at spelling and grammar. Any kind of content with poor spelling and grammar in it could make potential customers view a business negatively and maybe even make them decide that they don't want to buy anything: poor spelling and grammar is often seen as an indicator of an unreliable site. Not only will it look bad to human beings visiting your site, but also to the Google spiders that are crawling it. They can
What Happened to My Blog Guest
If you've ever wondered whatever happened to My Blog Guest, you've come to the right place. My Blog Guest was a website designed for content marketing: writers would post pieces of content, business owners could come and look for content and many nice combinations were made. There were also lots of links built up to and from My Blog Guest and it was a service which was valued very highly by those in the internet world: it was good for SEO, presented good opportunities for writers and
Understanding How Google Works
Anybody running an eCommerce website will be keen to optimise their site for search engines because good SEO can be the difference between getting lots of traffic and getting almost none. For most people, SEO should really be called GSEO because most people really main "Google search engine optimisation" as that is the search engine on which most internet searches are done. So for those hoping to gain a better understanding of Google, I'd like to draw your attention to Matt
Try This SEO Quiz
If you think you're an SEO expert, there's an SEO quiz which you might like to try. Moz is quite a big name in the world of SEO and they've created a free SEO quiz for business owners to use to test their knowledge. It's always worth trying small things like this, just to make sure that your knowledge is up to scratch. If you find that you're lacking in some areas, then it could be well worth your time to do a bit of research and study: a good place to start is
Get Content Ideas from Answer the Public
When you write pieces of content, one thing you have to be sure of is that you are writing things that people actually want to read. If you write a post about how amazing your business is, you're not likely to get people that excited about it, because nobody is going to be interested in reading a very obviously sales-oriented piece. But loads and loads of content is consumed every single day and you need to make sure that your content is the content that people want. To help you
Free Keyword Density Analyzer Tool from SEO Book
When you do content marketing, you may well be writing your pieces in a way that ensures that they have certain keyword densities. Perhaps there's a certain word or phrase which you'd really like to rank in search engines for - in which case you'll repeat it throughout the text so that it recurs around 2% of the time. Keyword densities aren't a thing you definitely have to adhere to (sometimes it's best to just write perfectly naturally) but it's the kind of thing that
Social Media IdentityTheft
One thing which a surprisingly large number of businesses do is put a links to social media accounts which don't actually exist on their home page. For example, an eCommerce website might have links to a Facebook and Twitter account, even though they don't actually have profiles on either one. Why would they do this? Well, the most likely explanation is that they assume that people will never check the pages to confirm that they exist, and just take their word that they are there and be
What is Outreach?
Outreach is a very good method for improving your rankings on search engines - you may have heard that quite a few times, but what exactly is outreach? Well, if it's not a concept you're familiar with, don't worry because in today's blog post I am going to provide a useful introduction to the idea of outreach. It's an extension of content marketing and so if you don't do any content marketing, you'll struggle to do outreach, but if you do, you're in the
Free Stock Images from Pexels
Free stock images are something which anybody with a website is likely to need at some point: sure, it is often better to take your own photographs (or to hire your own photographer), but this isn't always possible. For new and small businesses especially, free stock images can be very important because they're often bound by more limiting budgets. The problem is that finding free stock images can often be quite tricky, especially if you're looking for something substantial! If
Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch
One thing that business owners (especially owners of smaller businesses) should be familiar with, is the concept of an "elevator pitch." Don't worry if you don't know what that is (those who are new to the business world are not too likely to) as I am going to explain in today's blog post, as well as giving advice on how to perfect your own elevator pitch. It's a small thing, but it might just come in handy for you at some point. An elevator pitch is a
Free Magento Alternative
When looking for an eCommerce solution, you might come across Magento. Magento is an eCommerce solution used by a lot of big businesses. As I am sure you can guess, Magento is quite an expensive package and the kind of thing which might be out of the price ranges of a lot of people, especially owners of small businesses who may not yet have much of a budget. So, understandably, a lot of people may be looking for a free Magento alternative and I have one for you: Sellr. Sellr is
Free Invoice Software
Easily Create Professional Invoices for Free and Allow Customers to Pay Online Invoicing is something that most businesses do from time to time. Even if most of your business is completely automated, for example as an online store. You will eventually get someone who wants you to invoice them for the goods that they are wanting to purchase. Invoicing is essentially a request for payment to the customer. Some
OpenCart Alternative
OpenCart is an open source eCommerce solution that is used by a lot of people. As a free package, it's something that is used by a lot of people, but if you were looking for an alternative to OpenCart, you've come to the right place! Sure OpenCart is pretty good and a lot of people use it, but it has its drawbacks and it isn't perfect (which I suppose is to be expected from open source software) so if you've ever been dissatisfied with OpenCart, you might like to try using
Watermarking Your Images
The internet is a big place and, sadly, that means that there are some people out there who cannot be trusted. There will always be scammers who want to steal images for spamming purposes and as the owner of an eCommerce business, you want to avoid that happening. If somebody was using one of your images for spam and a customer saw that, it might lead them to believe that you were somehow involved in that spam. To avoid people using your images, you might want to try watermarking them, because
The Benefits of Content Marketing
Content marketing is a very useful and important thing to do to help boost your eCommerce website. The problem is that a few people have yet to fully embrace the concept, so in today's blog post I'd like to go over the main benefits of content marketing. You have probably heard people say "content is king" and the reason they say that is because it really is an enormously important aspect of building up any website, eCommerce or otherwise. The main thing
How to Incentivise Sales
If there's one thing all eCommerce business owners have in common, it's the fact that they all want to make as many sales as possible. In fact, that's true of all business owners! But if you've got an eCommerce website, what can you do to incentivise sales? Well, if you're not selling as many products as you'd hoped, then perhaps some of the following ideas will be able to help you sell a few more things. Flash Sales If you offer products at an especially
Simple Link Building Tips
For an online business to be successful it needs to have good SEO and to have good SEO you need to have lots of links leading back to your site. Of course, links aren't the only contributing factor when it comes to SEO, but they are one of the most important ones. In today's blog post I would like to take you over some simple link building tips which can help you to get links leading back to your site and then hopefully help your eCommerce website to rank more highly in internet
Free Photo Editing Software from Paint.NET
If you want to start up an eCommerce website, then one thing you will need to have is some good photo editing software. You'll need something substantial if you're going to have a high-quality logo and other things like that and if you don't have those little pieces of graphic design around your site, then it's going to look less professional and if it looks less professional then people are going to be less likely to make a purchase from your site - after all, people
Budgeting Your Business
Starting an eCommerce business can be a good way for you to make a bit of money - some people even go on to use it as their sole source of income. However, one thing you need to keep in mind before you get things started is that you're going to need to plan your budget in advance. If you end up pouring too much money into something before it's making anything back, you might just end up out of pocket and then the business may well be doomed to fail. In today's blog post, I would
Call to Action Ideas
In social media marketing, content marketing and even on generic copy in your site, you want to have a good call to action. It seems like a small thing, but people are actually much more likely to engage with your business if you include a call to action where appropriate. If you find it difficult to think of appropriate calls to action, then you've come to the right place! In today's blog post I am going to go over some of the best ideas for a call to action. Different
Web Page Authority
Anyone with an eCommerce website will be hoping that the pages on their site all have good SEO, but how can you ensure that something has good SEO? Well, there's a huge list of contributing factors to SEO: links back to any given page, traffic to that page, the length of the content on a page, the quality of content and much more. One thing that has a determining factor in a page's ranking is its authority and in today's blog post I would like to give you an easy tip to help boost
Is Ekmpowershop Worth the Money?
If you want to do business over the internet, you're going to need an eCommerce website. One of the most popular eCommerce solutions is Ekmpowershop, who provide a fairly easy to use template based eCommerce website creation tool. Crucially, however, their service is not free to use and if you're running a business you need to make sure that you're getting a worthwhile return on every expense. So before you sign up to Ekmpowershop and use it to create an eCommerce website, you have
Back Up Internet Access
If you run an eCommerce business, then your income is going to depend on your ability to connect to the internet. Internet access is the kind of things which you might take for granted, but if it suddenly goes you're going to notice it! So do you have a backup plan for any time you may find yourself without your usual means of accessing the internet? If not, you should definitely think of something soon because being unable to get online could be quite damaging to your
Why Write Listicles
I'm sure you've noticed more and more that people are sharing listicles online. If you're not quite sure what I mean by a "listicle": it's just a word used to describe internet articles based around lists. An example of a listicle might be "10 Flavours of Ice Cream We'd Love to See". They're very popular. But why are they so popular? Well, here are some of the main reasons that listicles seem to do so well: 1. They are easy to
Important SEO Factors
SEO is a very complex and complicated subject, but there are some important SEO factors to keep in mind. While there are hundreds of factors, there are two things which are probably most important to remember: the first is how much content you have on the site (that's high quality, useful content) and the second is how many other websites have links to your site on them (that's proper, non-spammy links.) But what can you do to do well with these things? Content If you
Using LinkedIn for Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing can help you to reach new people and to present your business in a positive light. There are lots of social media networks out there and each of them will give you access to different groups of people and require a different approach. For today's blog post I would like to talk a little about LinkedIn and how it can be used for social media marketing, LinkedIn is the most professional of the social media sites and therefore also requires the most distinct
Acquiring Additional Domains
Imagine you're in a position where your eCommerce website is doing quite well and you're living comfortably on the profits (well, maybe you don't have to imagine it, maybe it's a reality!) In that situation, you may well be thinking of ways that you can expand your business even further. How could you get even more customers and make even more sales? Well, one thing you might like to think about is buying another domain. "Why would I buy another domain?" I
SEO Friendly Blogging
Keeping a blog along with your eCommerce website is a good way to keep traffic flowing to your website. Not only will this give existing customers a good reason to keep returning to you, but it will also help to bring new people to your site because it will increase the number of internet searches that lead to you (because you'll be covering more subjects with your site.) But there are certain things you can do to make blog posts especially SEO friendly and I'm going to go over them in
SEO Loopholes
When it comes to internet businesses, everybody wants to have good SEO. Good SEO brings you up to the first page of internet searches and so does a lot to help you get more customers. SEO is supposed to work like this: if a site has good content, provides a good product/service, is well laid out and is running ethically, it will come up highly. However, sad as it may be, things don't quite run so smoothly and there are lots of little things that people try to do to trick the system so that
Skyscraping Content
Content marketing is a fantastic way for you to increase traffic to your website, but there are lots of different content marketing methods to be aware of. On the one hand, there's the most common form of content marketing where you write lots of blog posts or articles on your website so that you'll have lots of different keywords covered and therefore pop up in lots of different internet searches. But one thing that's also worth trying is getting your content onto other websites to
The Face of Your Business
So you've made an eCommerce website and things are going swimmingly. There's good traffic on the site, you're making more than enough sales to get by, your social media pages have a lot followers, you've hired another staff member or two so that things can run more efficiently and it's just generally a good time for you to be in charge of your business. Perhaps a local newspaper wants to get in touch so that they can run an article for your success story. Fantastic! Surely
Ideas for Social Media Content
Social media grows bigger every day, with more social networks cropping up and more people getting involved all the time, so it's no surprise that this is proving to be an excellent way for businesses to market themselves too. But for some people. coming up with fresh content for their social media feeds can be difficult. What can you do to ensure that your social media feed is full of stuff that will make people want to come back to you? Well, you might like to try some of these
The Free Alternative to Adobe Photoshop - GIMP
When you run an eCommerce website, it's important for everything on your website to look professionally designed. You'll want a logo that looks good, graphics to highlight sales, maybe a mascot and much more. As such, you're going to need to have some good image manipulation software. Abobe Photoshop is the one piece of design software that everybody knows about (the phrase "that's been photoshopped" didn't come from nowhere) and so you might want
Smartphone Blogging
Content marketing is a very effective way to help boost your SEO and to reach new people. When doing content marketing, it will be more effective if you stick to a regular update schedule as this lets people know when they can check back for more from you and also helps to make you look more professional. But what can you do if your often out and about? You won't always have the time to update a blog because, as the owner of a business you are going to be quite busy! Well,
The Decline of Twitter
Twitter is one of the most well-known social media sites. Up with Facebook, Twitter has been around for years and people have been using it to market their businesses for a long time. But will it last? Well, in a very interesting turn of events, Twitter is actually on the decline. Over the last year, they've had fewer and fewer people signing up to Twitter accounts and more and more people closing their accounts. What does this mean for the future of Twitter? Might it go the way of
Free Alternative to Auctiva
Auctiva is a piece of software created to help people manage eBay listings. They let you manage all of your products from one easy place, which can help to save you a lot of time. What's more is that they help you to present and market all of your products in ways to expose them in an appealing way to as many people as possible, and all of that for some small monthly fees (which get bigger, the more comprehensive the package you go for.) But, actually, it's not all that amazing because
Free Google Shopping Listings
When you think of the internet, what's the first business that comes to mind? Google, I'm sure (sorry if you were thinking of something else). Google run the search engine which is most popular by quite a margin, offer one of the most popular email services, have their own web browser, amazing translation tools and so much more. Because Google are so big and, specifically because their search engine is so big, the advertising services that they offer are extremely popular and extremely
Good Bad Marketing
The other day I was going about my daily routines when I found myself on a business's website. I shan't say the name of the website because I don't want to upset anybody, but I clicked to go to a "Meet the Team" page and what I found there was (probably unintentionally) hilarious. Instead of regular photographs of the staff, there were illustrations of them and these illustrations made them all look hideous. Now, it's possible that the illustrator was going for this so
Why You Should Update Your Website
A lot of people building their eCommerce websites add content to the pages, list their products and then leave it at that. Once the general structure of a website is finished, people will generally only bother to change any of the text on the website if it becomes factually incorrect and, other than that, any new work on the site is likely to be based mainly on new products that come in and so forth. However, it is a good idea to always be updating every aspect of your website and I am going to
RomanCart Review
If you want to start up your very own eCommerce website, then there is a vast array of options available to you. Sellr, Ekmpowershop, Shopify, ShopWired and many others too. But today I'd like to tell you a little about RomanCart. RomanCart has been around for many years and is used by a huge number of businesses with eCommerce websites. So if you wanted a more in-depth understanding of RomanCart, here's our review. RomanCart is advertised as the perfect thing to turn any
The Pros and Cons of Ekmpowershop
If you're thinking about starting up an eCommerce website, you might think that Ekmpowershop is the best platform for this endeavour. Ekmpowershop is one of the best known eCommerce providers around and one of the biggest in the UK, so it's likely that that will be the first thought for a lot of people. So if you were thinking that you'd like to make an eCommerce website with Ekmpowershop, then here's a list of their pros and cons, which should be useful to any of their
Google Changes - 2016
For a lot of small businesses, paid Google search results are essential. Do you ever use their advertising system? It can be a really effective way of bringing traffic to your site - although it is a little expensive. As there is a good chance that many Sellr users will be using this and that it will be a big factor in bringing people to their site, I thought that it would be a good idea to write a blog post on Google's recent changes to this system. How is it Different? Well,
Facebook Reactions Have Launched
A while ago there was talk of Facebook replacing the classic "Like" button with a whole set of "Reaction Buttons" which allow a broader set of emotions to be conveyed - this has now happened for every Facebook user! Now, instead of merely being able to convey that they 'like' a post, they can also click to show that they 'love' a post, that it made them say "haha" or "wow" or if it made them 'angry'. This is quite a good
Invoice Services from Hiveage
Invoicing is something which all businesses will be aware of, but for small businesses it can often be hard to find the best invoice service. In today's blog post, I'd like to talk a little about the virtues of an invoice system called Hiveage. A lot of the time you'll find that all the good invoice systems are not free to use and for smaller businesses this additional fee is not something they'll want on their limited budget. But Hiveage is a good, comprehensive invoicing
Everything You Need to Know About Ekmpowershop
If you're planning on starting an eCommerce website, then there's a good chance that one of the services you're interested in using in Ekmpowershop. However, if you are planning on using Ekmpowershop, it's probably best to make sure that you know everything about it beforehand. As such, we decided that it would be beneficial to provide a nice and simple one stop shop for everything you need to know about Ekmpowershop. 1. Ekmpowershop only offer one payment
Promote Content with StumbleUpon
Every website owner wants their content to be found and something that can help with that is StumbleUpon. What's tricky about getting your content found is that there are so many other businesses that are also producing content. What is there to ensure that people will find yours and not somebody else's? Well, the main thing to do is to produce something which is very high quality and unique, but you also need to be sure that you are giving people as many ways as possible to find your
How to Attract Customers to your Website
Attracting customers to your website is vitally important to make money from an ecommerce website. Many merchants put a lot of effort into the creation of an online store, but then fail to do the steps which will actually get people to go to their online store. The answer to this is marketing. Marketing is the name given to the processes you need to put into place to get people to hear about your store. You need to be doing as many methods of marketing at the same time to ensure that
Having Multiple Email Accounts
How many email accounts do you have? I think that for people running an eCommerce website (like you do) three would be a good number. Firstly, I think it would be a good idea to have one email address which is for all your personal uses; you'd email friends with this, have it connected to your personal social media pages and so forth. Secondly, it would be good to have one for your business enquiries; a perfect place to manage your emails from customers and other businesses. So what would
Ekmpowershop Problems and Risks
Ekmpowershop is a well-known eCommerce solution, but did you know that it actually has quite a handful of problems and risks? Yes, it's true, when it comes to Ekmpowershop, they have more than their fair share of issues. If you were thinking about using Ekmpowershop to create your own eCommerce website, then you might first wish to read through this blog post just so that you can be completely sure that that is the wisest decision for you. To make things simpler, here is an easy to digest
Apple Working on a Search Engine?
Everybody knows that Google is the giant in the internet arena. Almost everybody uses Google as their default search engine and even if you combined the number of people using other search engines it still would not come close to the high number of Google searchers. Then, of course, there's the fact that they offer loads of other features (like Google Translate and Google Web Master Tools) which really help to strengthen Google's reputation. Any business that has some reliance
Content Editing Services from Kitewriting
We've written about why content marketing is a great way to improve your search engine rankings and reach new people countless times, but when content marketing is done badly, it will have the opposite effect. If you had a blog post which was riddled with typographical errors and/or was written in a poor writing style, people would deem that your website was unprofessional once they had read it. If they felt you were unprofessional, they would probably not buy from you. To avoid things like
Twitter Character Limit to Change?
Since its original launch, Twitter has had a 140 character limit on all tweets. The idea behind the character limit was that everything would be nice, short and punchy. With everything at 140 characters or less, there was never any risk of people sharing long blocks of text that others might find boring. But the 140 character limit wasn't a solely good thing; some people felt that it was far too restrictive and forced a lot of users to have to use text language and so forth in order to get
Is Ekmpowershop Any Good?
If you're in the eCommerce world, you'll know about Ekmpowershop. If people want to make an online shop, one of the first places they'll turn to is Ekmpowershop. Does being well known mean it's really any good though? You need only to look to the world of music to see that many consider the most popular of songs to actually be of inferior quality. Is that also true of eCommerce solutions? Are the big names like Ekmpowershop churning out nothing of substance, while the small
Submitting Pages to Google
If you're hoping to do a little better with your search engine rankings, one thing you need to be sure of is that you are regularly submitting your pages to Google. You see, Google makes its rankings by crawling through each page on the internet and then, based on the content, key words, URL, traffic and so forth, will decide how highly a page will rank when people search for it. Every time a page is changed, once Google has crawled through it, its ranking will change. Another
Why Sellr is Better Than eBay
If you want to sell something online, the first place you probably think to turn is eBay. While eBay may be all well and good if you just sell the odd item once every year or two, it's not a good choice if you're going to be selling things regularly. While there are people out there who do do a lot of regular selling over eBay, there are a huge range of services out there which are much better: Sellr is one of those services. In today's blog post I would like to talk to you about
Improve your Search Engine Ranking With SEOquake
Anybody who runs an eCommerce website, or indeed any kind of website, will want it to rank highly in search engines. The problem is that search engine optimisation (SEO) can be hard and you may well struggle to know what needs to be done; this is why you might be interested in a little something called SEOquake. SEOquake is a handy web browser plugin which you can use to monitor pages to ensure that they are as SEO friendly as possible and therefore improve your search engine
How To Increase Sales On Your Ecommerce Website Part 2
Content is King - But What Does That Actually Mean? So - like everyone - you want to see your website ranking at number one for every good search term you can think of. The problem is that so does everyone else - and there is only one number one position. As soon as Google spiders your site - it will appear where Google thinks it should. In my experience, the only way you can move it from that position is by getting more backlinks, Changing the
PCA Predict and PostCode Anywhere
PCA Predict and PostCode Anywhere aim to save you money by avoiding shipping and delivery problems. PostCode anywhere have been around for a while. Their main offering is something really simple, but equally really useful. You enter your postcode on a websiite checkout and their system provides a popup showing all the addresses at that postcode. From there you scan select your address. You've probably seen this on many internet shops and
Why Sellr is Better Than Ekmpowershop
When people try to find a business to help them launch their own eCommerce website, one of the first things they'll come across is Ekmpowershop. Ekmpowershop has been around for several years and is quite well known as a common solution for people's eCommerce needs. But what you need to bear in mind is the fact that just because Ekmpowershop are well known, it does not mean that they are necessarily the best choice. There are many other businesses that offer an equal or greater service
CloudFlare Review - Online Store Owners Must Read This
CloudFlare is without question the best new Internet system for website owners which has appeared in the last 10 years. Cloudflare offers 5 major things. Firstly you can add SSL to any website. Even using their free version! (As long as you don't need to support old browsers). Secondly it adds a web application firewall. This inspects all traffic going to your servers and looks to filter out unwanted traffic. This might be malicious
How to Increase Sales On Your Ecommerce Website Part 1
Every Ecommerce Website Owner Wants To Make More Money From Their Website! Here's How It's Done. Creating an E-Commerce Website is just the start. The internet is a bit different than the high street, because your shop does not initially have any passing traffic. In fact it doesn't even have a road in front of it, and no one knows it exists. The first thing you need to do is to tell the search engines that you
Why Sellr is Better Than Shopify
If you write "eCommerce website" into a search engine, you'll find that Shopify is one the first things that comes up. So for people who want to make an eCommerce website, there's a good chance that they'll end up using Shopify because Shopify has a good search engine ranking. But the fact is that a good search engine ranking is not a strict comment on the quality of a business. There are several other businesses out there which are equal to or better than Shopify. In
How eBay Alienates Sellers
If people want to sell something online, they'll turn to eBay a lot of the time. Since eBay has been well known for a large number of years and almost everybody's heard of it, of course it will be the first place that a lot of people turn when they want to start selling online. However, this certainly does not mean that it's the best solution for selling online; many would even tell you that it's not even a good solution for selling online! A lot of eBay
Free Ecommerce Website with SSL
In 2014, Google announced that they were going to take into account a websites SSL status when calculating the ranking for a site. Essentially, this means that if you have SSL on your website you may be ranked higher than sites which do not have SSL. Of course, Google takes many factors into account when working out where to rank a site however anything you can do to make your website rank higher in Google's natural listings is something which every merchant should seriously
eCommerce Infographic
Infographics are always nice. They're a great way to share information in easy to digest bites; you can make summaries of things and use visual designs so that they'll really stick in people's minds. People love to share infographics too, simply because they like to share information! So infographics make for great pieces of content marketing because, not only do they cement the businesses that share them as experts in their field, but they are also naturally highly sharable
Happy New Year from Sellr
So that's it! 2015 has come to its end and 2016 has now arrived. How was 2015 for your business? Good? Bad? Would the you of 2014 be impressed if they could see where you are now? Don't worry if not! Businesses don't really grow overnight; it's a slow and steady process which may take some time, but which will doubtlessly pay off for you in the long run. Of course, whether or not your business did well isn't the most important thing: what's most important is that you and
eCommerce Christmas Wishes
It's Christmas Eve! Time sure has flown by; it feels like just yesterday it was the middle of the summer and very soon it will be 2016. Have you experienced a spike in sales over this Christmas season? If so, congratulations! I hope you are able to enjoy the profits. If not, I'm sorry to hear it and now may be the time to reflect on that. Did you do any marketing for Christmas? If not, that is something you should really think about doing next year. Also, keep in mind that the Christmas
Customer Birthdays
On what day are people most likely to make eCommerce purchases? Well, there are lots of days that a customer might be more likely to make a purchase from an eCommerce website and one of those days is their birthday. One of the most commonly given gifts on a birthday is money and since people are not that likely to go to actual shops on their birthday (they probably have other plans) that means they might just head to an eCommerce website instead. When people order things for themselves on their
Death and Social Media
When somebody dies, you can have their Facebook page turned into a special memorial page. This means that your Facebook page can remain relevant even after you have died. It may be a rather morbid subject, but actually, there are a lot of social media services available for the eventuality of your death. You can write lots of messages to be sent on certain dates or at certain occasions so that you can continue to interact with your family and friends (in a sense) even after you are dead.
Cross Posting on Social Media
Social media marketing can be difficult because it means that you need to be thinking of things to say to your customers on a daily basis; those funny images and witty one-liners all have to come from somewhere! This might seem even harder if you're active on multiple social media outlets. If you're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest then you might think it would be a lot easier if you just reposted the same images and text on all of your feed; it would save you the time of
How to do Outbound Links
When you run a business which has a large internet presence, then there will be times when you need to provide outbound links which will take people to other websites. If you're reporting on a piece of industry news in a blog post and you want to source some facts that you are mentioning, then that would be a time you'd need outbound links. If you've been working with another business, then that is another time that you'd need to provide outbound links. The problem is, that you
Internet Mainly Accessed via Smartphones
About fifteen years ago, if you wanted to know what people most commonly accessed the internet with, it would definitely have been with their home computer. A few years later, this probably would have been laptops. Just recently, the most common thing that people used to access the internet was tablets, but now that has changed once again! According to the most recent study, smartphones are now the most commonly used device for accessing the internet. What can you learn from
Creative Freedom at Work
If you're somebody who's naturally creative, then you will doubtlessly feel unfulfilled in your life if you're not really given the chance to create anything. The problem is that creative jobs are somewhat harder to come across, so you'll likely have to do something with less creative freedom as your day job. Creativity requires energy and so, if you're spending eight or more hours a day doing generic work, by the time you get home you might just want to sit back and relax,
Merry Christmas vs Happy Holidays
During December, some businesses say "Merry Christmas" and some businesses say "Happy Holidays" and to a lot of people, it doesn't really make much difference at all. They're just two slightly different phrases which essentially mean the same thing. But to other people there is a huge and significant difference, because there is actually a large ongoing political debate about which phrase is the best to use. If you're not really familiar with it, then
Season of Giving
We're now a good half way through December and Christmas is a mere seventeen days away! Christmas is, of course, the season of giving and a lot of charities are very likely to see a large increase in donations during this time of year. It's a time of year when people are more generous with their own money as well as being a time when people are more likely to appreciate the generous actions of others. Have you considered making any charitable donations in the name of your business?
Business Jingles
When a business has a jingle, that jingle can often get stuck in your mind for a very long time. If a business gets stuck in somebody's head, then the chances of that person buying from that business are greatly increased. If you need to buy a rather specialised product and have already heard of one of the businesses offering it, they'll be the one you probably turn to. Often it won't even be a conscious thing, but if one business feels more familiar to you in some way (maybe you
Making a Gmail Account
As is occasionally the case, today's blog post is one for beginners. If you already have an eCommerce website with Sellr, then this post is not likely to contain any information that will be useful to you. However, if you're new to the internet or even new to computers in general, then this blog post might be for you. I'm going to write a little about setting up a Gmail account and why it would be a good idea for you to do so. You should think of an email account as a
SlideShare Social Media Marketing
The ultimate goal of social media marketing is to put your business out there, to get its message known and to attract lots of customers in the process. There are various different outlets you can take for social media marketing and each have their own unique strengths. In today's blog post I'd like to tell you a little about SlideShare and how that could prove to be a very handy social media marketing tool for you. I suppose I had better start, however, by telling you
Content Marketing for Christmas
Gather round people so that I can tell you the tale, of the unfortunate business, doomed to fail. To make matters worse, it was at Christmastime, that this independent business started to decline. Sales were dropping and spirits were low. If the business failed they'd have nowhere to go. But at their darkest moment, they got word, that their business woes could still yet be cured. They heard of a being; The Content Market Ear, and it only comes just one time a year, well,
Customer Accounts from Sellr
As I've mentioned in a previous blog post, we are bringing in a new and completely revamped control panel for Sellr which is much easier to use and comes with a plethora of new features. Many Sellr merchants are already using the new control panel and they are loving it! The new features, like Sellr chat and the customer location mapping software, are all proving to be extremely useful and everybody enjoys using them. Today I'd like to reveal to you yet another new feature that Sellr
Twitter Buttons
If you're doing some Twitter marketing for your eCommerce website then you are doubtlessly going to want to get as many of your customers following you as possible. If somebody buys something from you it could be a onetime thing, but if somebody buys something from you and also follows you on Twitter, then there'll be an ongoing connection between you and them. When a customer sees you lots of times in their Twitter feed, especially if they've purchased from you in the past, their
Boost Your Music Career with an eCommerce Website
The music industry is perhaps one of the hardest to get into. Sure, being able to play an instrument may be a specialist skill (and very admirable too) but it's a specialist skill that a lot of people have, meaning that there are a lot of out of work musicians. If you are a musician, you may well be working another job in order to pay the bills, but you won't want to give up your dreams. Maybe you do a few gigs every now and then, or maybe you do a bit of busking on weekends, but what
Using Keywords
When writing pieces of content for your eCommerce website, the ultimate goal is to increase traffic onto the site. Content writing is at its most effective when you are conscious of SEO. To make sure your content is all very SEO friendly, you have to be sure that you are incorporating all of the right keywords into it. If you find it hard to determine what keywords you should be using in your content and how often it is that you should be using those keywords, then read on! I am going to use
Using Google Alerts for Business
Google Alerts is a handy tool which people use to keep up with the news. All you have to do is write in a word or phrase and then Google will send you periodical emails which will contain a list of recently posted news articles which contain that phrase in their titles. As I'm sure you can tell, this has many uses: if people love to keep up with the gossip surrounding a celebrity, they can make a Google Alert for their name, if they follow a political party they can set up a Google Alert
Missed Black Friday? Now for Cyber Monday
So yesterday was Black Friday; the Friday that immediately follows Thanksgiving and a day on which many businesses offer their products at a reduced price. As you can tell, this is an exciting opportunity for customers and business people alike... but now it's over. Did you forget about Black Friday and fail to offer any kind of promotions from your business? Did you forget about Black Friday and therefore miss out on your chance to buy lots of great products for a reduced price? Well, if
Using Social Media for Recruitment
When you run a business, if it grows at a steady rate you will eventually find yourself in a position where you need to hire more members of staff. Sure, in the early days you can probably handle things by yourself, but as the demand for your product increases, there'll be more and more work to do. Eventually, working by yourself might actually be detrimental to your business. Finding employees can be hard, so in today's blog post I'd like to talk a little about using social media
How to Avoid Spam Emails
At the start of each day, it's nice to ease yourself into work by leisurely going over the emails in your inbox. You'll doubtlessly have a lot of emails which are important to read and to reply to, but you'll probably also find that you have a huge number of spam emails. Of course, you can delete your spam emails quite easily, but it's still frustrating and they might not all be identifiable as spam right away. A lot of spam will go straight into your spam box, but sadly not all
Thailand eCommerce Grows
As seems to be the case very often: there is some good news in the world of eCommerce once again. This time the news comes from Thailand, where we hear that the eCommerce industry is growing at a good rate. An amazing two thirds of Thai internet users make at least one purchase online every single month; that's an enormous number of people! Plus, rather interestingly, it shows that more than half of those people are making these online purchases with their mobile phones. This shows
Student Career Tips
There are a lot of students out there who aren't really sure what they're going to do with themselves once they leave education. There's a lot of pressure for students to have a solid plan for their lives from an early stage, but the truth is that those with no plan don't need to worry so much. You might not have a plan at the moment, but things will fall into place as you begin to realise which path is best for you. In the meantime, what can you do in order to set yourself up
Making a Business Twitter
When you create your own eCommerce website, you might be tempted to use an existing Twitter account to market it. If you've already got 5,000 followers on your personal Twitter, why would you bother starting a new one for your business when you already have such a large number of people that you can already market to? But actually, there are many reasons that making a new Twitter account for your business is a good idea and I'm going to go over them in today's blog
Password Security
Anybody who's active on the internet will likely have had to make their fair share of passwords over the years. Almost every website that offers some kind of service will require you to make an account before you use their service, this account will need a password and to make an account you'll need an email address, which will also have a password and so on. I guess I don't really need to explain it to you, because if you just take a minute to think about all the different things
Social Media Monitoring
Anybody who runs an eCommerce business (or indeed, any business of any kind) will be keen to know what their customers and prospects think of them; either they'll want to know where they're falling down, so that they can take steps to improve, or they'll want to know what customers would like to see in future, so that their thoughts can be considered in future developments, But where can you get this information? Well, there are a few ways, but in today's blog post I'd like
Web Designer Opportunity
Sellr is a great way for people to start up their own eCommerce website. You can use our templates to build a website for yourself (without having to pay us anything) or you can pay for one of our larger subscriptions and we'll build a website to your specifications! Perfect. But did you also know that web designers can use Sellr as a way to make money? It's true! In this blog post I'd like to talk to you about the opportunity for web developers that Sellr
Business Advent Calendars
With Christmas fast approaching (now only five weeks and a day to go) it's doubtlessly on the minds of a lot of people. If you run an eCommerce website, you need to prepare for Christmas in advance because if you have a good plan, you really stand to see an increase in sales. Many people start Christmas shopping in November, so you should really already be in the first stages of your plan, but if you don't have a plan yet; don't worry! You still have enough time to prepare your
Content Idea Generators
Content marketing is an effective way to keep your customers coming back to your website while also helping new people to find you. If you have some kind of blog with lots of interesting posts on it, why wouldn't your customers keep coming back to see what you post next? Plus, the more blog posts you have, the more keywords you'll have which will bring your website up in internet searches. The problem is that producing such large amounts of content is difficult and there's a chance
Using Emojis in Marketing
Over the last few years, emojis have started to overtake emoticons as the way for people to express emotions over social media (and through chat systems). It was Apple who really helped to cement the popularity of emojis when they included them in the software of iPhones (and many other brands of smartphone followed suit). But let's backtrack for a second here: there's a good chance that some of you may not actually be familiar with the concept of emojis, so I shall explain. Emojis are
The Sello App
Shopify has been in the news recently because they've recently launched a new app called Sello. You may have noticed this because it was trending on a few social media outlets and people were getting pretty excited about it. Does that mean they're offering something which is really rather fantastic? No, not really. You see, because Shopify is so well known, anything they do will cause a huge reaction. As an example of this phenomenon, look at the time that popular musician Justin Bieber
Google's Smart Reply
Almost everybody on the internet will receive a large number of emails; the more places you sign up to, the more people who gain access to your email address. Of course, many of these emails will be spam and won't require any kind of reply, but if you're quite active on the internet, you're likely to have ones which will require a proper written response. Nobody knows the feeling of lots of emails more than eCommerce business owners and replying to emails might actually take up a
Shopify Alternative
If you're looking to start up your own eCommerce business, then the first thing you think of might be Shopify. But, while Shopify might be the first thing you think of, there may also be a large number of reasons that you would not want to use Shopify. It does have a lot of problems. Unfortunately, because Shopify is the biggest eCommerce business, everyone assumes it's the best and only option, but actually there are alternatives, superior alternatives. Sellr
Public Domain Images from Good Free Photos
Something you need to keep in mind, is that no matter how good your product is, or how low your prices are, if your website doesn't look very appealing people are not very likely to buy from you. A good way to make your website look more appealing it through the use of images, but for people who lack photography skills or the funds to hire a photographer, it might be hard to find pictures which they can use professionally. Thankfully, there are several websites out there which offer a nice
The Sellr App
You may remember a blog post from a few months ago which went over the ways in which apps were becoming more predominant in the world of eCommerce. If you haven't already read it and don't have time to do so now, I shall summarise: Flipkart, a big name in the world of eCommerce, made the transition and became app-only. Some people may worry that the whole world of eCommerce will quickly become app-only and they'll get left behind, but I don't think that will happen any
Skoov Shopping Search
Anybody who runs a business online is likely to be familiar with SEO and to spend a lot of time trying to make sure that their website has good SEO. Most of the time, if we're honest, when we say SEO we should really say GSEO (Google Search Engine Optimisation) because Google is the search engine that most people use for their web browsing and it's Google's first pages that businesses want to be on. But in the future, eCommerce businesses might just be more interested in another
Support Independent Businesses
If you want to buy something from the internet, it's likely that one of the first places you'll turn to will be Amazon. Amazon have virtually everything available for sale and it's quite easy to just head there for all your eCommerce needs. But the thing is, while there are a few independent businesses selling through Amazon, most people buy things directly from Amazon and then there's the guilt that you're actually just supporting a huge corporation which is
Content Based on Customer Feedback
Look at this lovely person to the right; that's the Content Market Ear. You know what it does best? It listens. On many a time has somebody come and sat with it, talked for hours about their problems and felt much better just because they knew there was someone to listen. Now, it may just be a product of genetic engineering and incapable of human speech, but it understands that there's a lot to be learned simply by listening to others. It's also a content marketer and, believe
Thanksgiving eCommerce
We know that a large number of Sellr-users are based in England (or elsewhere in the UK) and it's reasonable to assume that those UK Sellr users might not think that a blog post about Thanksgiving will be relevant to them. Thanksgiving is not celebrated in the UK and a large number of you may not even know when it is. Well, I can tell you that Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday of November (this year it will be on the 26th of November) and, actually, it would be a good
Pinned Tweets
When you're doing marketing over Twitter and interacting with lots of prospects, you might worry that when people come to your Twitter page, all they'll see is lots of fragments of conversations and so forth. If somebody did only find that then the chances of them seeing something of yours that they liked or clicking through to your website are somewhat diminished. That's why it's a good idea to make use of the often overlooked function which allows you to
No Shave November
You may or not know that November is, for many people, a month in which they do not shave. No Shave November it's called (also sometimes Movember, joining together moustache and November). It's all done in the name of raising awareness for different types of cancer and donating money to cancer charities. Some people like to make a one off donation and other people like to be sponsored in their non-shaving, posting photographs to show the progress of the hair growth. If you want to
eBay Order Mix Up
There's a rather funny story in the news recently which involves eBay. A woman named Jacqueline Johnson ordered a table from eBay, but on the day of its arrival there seemed to be some kind of mix-up. Rather than the table she ordered, Jacqueline found that she had been sent forty bags of fish. I should be clear: the fish in the bags that Jacqueline received were not processed, it wasn't the sort of thing that anybody would eat, it was forty bags of living fish, all just
Customer Location Mapping Software
I've mentioned that the Sellr control panel is going to be updated soon and talked about the new live chat system which will come with the update. Today I'd like to tell you all about yet another new feature which will be coming to Sellr with the update. I'm sure you've read this blog post's title and I don't really need to tell you, but the new feature I'll be discussing today is customer location mapping software. Are you familiar with what customer
Live Chat With Customers
In a recent blog post I mentioned that we'll soon be updating the Sellr control panel in order to make it even more user-friendly. But the exciting news is, we're not only going to streamline the control panel, but we'll also be adding several new features! As I'm sure you'll probably have guessed by this post's title, Sellr will also receive added live chat functionality, which will help to improve the customer experience on your eCommerce website. Today
How Long Should a Domain Name Be?
In the various blog posts which tell you how to use different domains with Sellr, I gave some general advice about choosing a domain name. In case you've not read any of them, I'll summarise what I said there now: for SEO purposes, I advised including a key word that is related to your business because then, when people search for that keyword by itself, your website might just come up in their Google searches even if they aren't at all familiar with you yet. So, if your
Twitter Polls
Twitter has recently added a new feature which you may or may not have noticed: the ability to add polls to your tweets. I'm sure some of you are thinking "that's all very nice, but, respectfully, what difference does this make?" but the fact is that this might just prove to be very useful for anybody who is doing social media marketing over Twitter. As Twitter is one of the best ways to reach new people and to stay in touch with existing customers, if
Graphic Springs Logo Generator
When you think of big, successful businesses, what do you see? I'm sure when somebody says 'McDonald's' you picture the big yellow M, when somebody mentions Sellr you visualise the classic, lower-case orange text, when you think of Microsoft you are doubtlessly seeing the iconic four coloured window. I'm sure you get the point I'm trying to make: successful businesses all have memorable logos. So I think it would be a good idea for your own business to have a logo too,
Win Wednesday
Social media marketing can be extremely effective and that's why such a large number of businesses are making good use of it. But the thing about social media marketing is that it's so big. I can't cover everything in a single blog post because if I did that blog post would probably end up being novel length! So I think it's best to focus on small things in each post and today I'd like to talk to you about a little something called #WinWednesday. #WinWednesday
Amazon Alternative
These days, when somebody decides that they want to buy something online, the website they're going to turn to will almost certain be Amazon. It didn't take them long to grow into the blue whale of the eCommerce pond and virtually every internet user is familiar with them. So you can understand why it is that Amazon is also one of the first websites that people think of when they decide that they want to start selling online. The problem is, for all the efforts Amazon make to
Blog Topic Idea Generator from HubSpot
Content marketing is the new big thing that lots of businesses are using to try and reach new people and to keep existing customers coming back. If you're not familiar with the concept, let me explain it to you; it most commonly takes the form of a blog and in this blog you'll write a whole range of post which all relate to your business. The more subjects you cover on the blog (and every business will have a range of related subjects to blog about) the more likely you are to come up in
Plot Generator for Content Inspiration
Content marketing is a great way to reach new customers and to keep the existing customers coming back. If you've got a regular supply of interesting, insightful blog posts, why wouldn't they keep coming back for more? Plus, the more subjects you cover in your various blog posts, the more likely you are to come up in a large number of Google searches; of course, the more Google searches you come up in, the more people find your site and then, hopefully, the more people buy from
Red Website Design Alternative
If you're somebody who sells online, then having your own eCommerce website is going to be a good idea. Whenever you do decide to start selling over your own website, you might first think to turn to Red Website Design because they are one of the most well known UK-based web design services. But, quite honestly, this is not a good choice to make if you want to get an eCommerce website; something like Sellr is much better and I'm going to use this blog post to explain
Why This Christmas is the Best Time to Get Your Own Website
Last month I wrote a blog post about preparing your business for Christmas, but now I have something more to say on that subject. If you don't have time to go back and read that older blog post, I'll summarise it now: essentially, I was just saying that it's best to get your business ready for Christmas nice and early, as you stand to see an increase in sales (and therefore work). Because of this it's a good idea to really push your marketing forward so you can
Back to the Future Day
If you have been on social media at all today, or if you've read a newspaper or anything else, then you'll probably know that today is Back to the Future Day. What is that? Well, in the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II protagonists Marty McFly and Dr. Emmet Brown briefly travel from their home time (1985) and into the future, and when they arrive in the future it is the 21st of October 2015; which is today's date! So people are quite excited about that, especially
eBay Sponsored Ads
People who have been selling over eBay have recently been frustrated by an addition to the service which is damaging to their sales. The thing that's been causing this problem is the fact that eBay has starting putting sponsored ads all over people's pages. This means that, if somebody ran an eBay shop, then a customer coming to buy from it would see adverts; adverts which, more often than not, lead to that person's competitors. Sometimes it was other eBay sellers and sometimes it
eBay Alternative
Are you one of the many eBay sellers who has felt put out by their policies? They often seem to favour the customers over the sellers which can lead to unfair rulings where customers have been deceitful and sellers end up out of pocket because of it. I guess it's down to the fact that, for eBay, customers are a much more direct source of money than sellers and so that's why they're always favoured in disputes. So what if you were looking for an eBay alternative? Well, might I
Keeping a Good Work-Life Balance
If you have your own business and eCommerce website then that means that you're your own boss. So the length of time that you put into your business is entirely down to you. Do you also work a 9-5 job alongside the running of your business? It's not uncommon to do so! Especially during the early days of a business venture when there's a chance that you're going to need an extra source of income. What you need to be careful of is maintaining a good work-life
Sellr Control Panel Update
We've got some exciting news for those of you who have been using Sellr for a long time; we're updating the control panel! This may not sound like much to some people, but we've realised that certain aspects of the control panel are not exactly the most user-friendly things and so we're changing it and getting rid of all these minor issues. After the update the whole system will be much more streamlined and easy to use; hopefully this will save you all a bit of time whenever you
HelloFax's Paperless Faxing
If somebody were to sign up to Sellr today, create their own eCommerce website and get their business started, they might not think of a fax machine as an essential item. In some ways, fax machines are a relic; after all, they're mainly just used to send paperwork long distance and with the ability to send Word Documents via email, this has become a little redundant. But there are a few uses for fax machines; if you wanted to get a document with somebody's signature on it, it would be
YouTube Management from TubeBuddy
After a hard day at work, a lot of people head to YouTube and unwind with a few five to ten minute videos. YouTube is far and away the number one place that people go to find video content and so it's no surprise that many businesses are using it for marketing purposes. YouTube marketing is tricky because you're going to need filming and editing skills to do it; it's also somewhat harder to think of ideas for it. Nobody goes on YouTube to just watch adverts; you need to think of
How Discounts Drive Sales
There's been a story in the news recently which does a good job of illustrating how discounts can drive sales. There was a pound shop in London (for American readers, that's pretty much the same as 99c stores) and they started offering things for half price. Even though their products were already very cheap, this additional discount attracted enormous numbers of people. There were literally hundreds of customers queuing for hours and buying loads and loads of things. I'd not
Content Inspiration from Klock Work
If you've got your own eCommerce website then you'll know that it's very important to be doing lots of marketing. With an offline shop on the high-street, people will see it whenever they walk past, but nobody will walk past a website. The internet is a huge place and there are millions of different websites; you need to be doing all you can to draw attention to your own or else it will never be discovered. Content marketing is what a lot of people are doing these days; if you keep
How To Leave Shopify
If you ever wanted to make your very own eCommerce website, then I expect that the first place you went to was Shopify. Shopify is the big name when it comes to eCommerce website creation tools and if people have heard of only one, it will be Shopify. But Shopify is not best for everybody and has quite a few flaws, eventually you may realise that you made a mistake by signing up with them. If that is the case, then don't worry! Here is a simple guide on how to leave
Monday Motivation
For a lot of people, getting back to work on Monday can be very tiring and therefore they suffer from a lack of motivation. You only need to go onto Twitter to see that #MondayMotivation is trending pretty much every single Monday morning. Personally, I am not affected by this issue (I love blogging!) but it does affect a very large number of people, including those who are self-employed and live off of their own eCommerce website (because everybody has to go 'back to work' at some
What is the eCommerce Capital of Europe?
The eCommerce industry is one which is growing every single day. Once people realised that the internet was a great way to sell things, they started to do so and have never stopped. But who, specifically, is doing all of this eCommerce? "What is the eCommerce capital of Europe," you might ask yourself. Well, I have the answer for you: it's us, the UK! It sounds like we're in exactly the right place then. The study which came to this conclusion found that four out of every
Plagiarism Online
If you're going to do content marketing for your eCommerce website, then you are doubtlessly going to need a large supply of ideas. These ideas can come from all kinds of places: things that happen to you during your everyday life, current affairs and even from the blogs of your competitors. Yes, that's right; it's perfectly fine to 'borrow' some ideas from your competitors, but let me use this post to give you a quick guideline for doing
Social Media Management from TweetDeck
Twitter is one of the most popular and useful social media platforms when it comes to marketing. You can stay in touch with existing customers, reach new customers and share interesting content which is related to your business. This is what a lot of people will be doing with their Twitters, but what many people don't know is that having a Twitter account gives them automatic access to a very useful service called TweetDeck, which is an official part of
Meeting Customers Offline
The internet can give you many very useful ways for you to interact with your customers and prospects. On social media you can share things which you expect will be useful/interesting to your customers and you can respond to any questions or queries that come through on it. With emails, you can send out regular newsletters to make sure that your customers know all about all the current sales and promotions that you have on and what things you have planned for the future. You can also create
Increased Free Listings From eBay
For a lot of people, eBay is the main way to sell things online. When you do sell on eBay, however, you are only allowed to post a limited number of listings for free. For a long time people have complained and requested that eBay increase the number of free listings and now eBay users will be very happy to hear that the limit is being increased! Currently you can list up to twenty products for free but once this changed has been enacted (on the 15th of October) that limit is going to
Weebly Review
When you write "create a website" into Google, one of the options which comes up on the first page is Weebly. Weebly is one of the most well-known website creation tools and is generally quite popular. You can use it to make an eCommerce website, or you can use it to make a regular website for a different purpose. I have a good idea of what it is like to use Weebly (having done so in the past) and therefore I want to let you all know what it's like to use. So without further ado,
Why It's a Good Idea to Start Your Own Website
It really surprises me to see how many eBay sellers there are who don't yet have their own websites. Having a website is hugely beneficial, and it's most likely that if these eBay sellers had one, their business would benefit greatly and they'd see a real increase in sales. Are you an eBay user who does not have their own site? If so, why is that? I think, for a lot of people, the reason they don't have websites is that they think of it as some huge task which will cost them
UK Alternative to Weebly
Are you hoping to start up your own eCommerce website? Either as a wholly new venture or as something which will be the 'next step' for your existing business? Well, if so, then you've doubtlessly been looking around the internet and considering the options which are available to you. One of these options is San Francisco based service Weebly, but what if you also are keen to not use Weebly? It does have more than its fair share of problems! Well, let me introduce you
Volusion Review
If you want to start an eCommerce website, there are lots of tools available on the internet which can help you to do that. Volusion is one of the better regarded of these services and so I decided to investigate them. Most people in the eCommerce world know Volusion and so they must be doing something right! So here is my review of Volusion; you might just be surprised about some of the things which I have to say! Volusion provides you with the tools you need to create your own
How To Sell Photos Online
Photography is one of the most popular forms are artistic expression. People use it to make a record of events and to capture the beauty of reality. Are you a budding photographer? Or even an established photographer looking for a new platform? Well, if the answer is yes then Sellr might provide you with exactly what you need in order to make money selling your photography work on the internet, which is definitely something to consider in today's online age. Which photographs
eCommerce on Twitter
Not too long ago, Facebook added a new feature so that business pages could sell their products directly on Facebook. This became known as fCommerce and a fair number of people became very excited about it. Now, in response, Twitter are taking steps in the same direction so that they, too, will be able to allow businesses to sell directly over them. I doubt that anybody will ever called it 'tCommerce' though, because people might think the 't' stands for
Sellr: The Alternative to Bigcommerce
Do you want to launch your very own eCommerce website? If so, then you've doubtlessly discovered that there are a huge number of eCommerce solutions available to you through the internet. One of these popular options is a business called Bigcommerce, have you heard of them? Maybe you have, but maybe what you've heard was that their customers were unsatisfied. To avoid you experiencing that same disappointment, I'd like to introduce you to Sellr, a worthy alternative to
Halloween eCommerce
So today is the first day of October! Goodness gracious, this year certainly seems to be flying by at an alarming rate. Before you know it October will nearly be over and we'll be facing Halloween. Does Halloween stand to have any effect on your business? Yes, it does! Not too long ago, I wrote a post about how you should be preparing your business for Christmas and now I want to do the same for Halloween. Christmas, of course, is a much bigger occasion than Halloween and so will
Facebook Down
Are you a regular user of social media? If so, then you doubtlessly know that Facebook went offline for brief periods a couple of times over the last week. People were outraged. I suppose this is understandable; if you were getting ready to share some photographs, having a heart to heart talk with an old friend or were expecting an important message, then it's no surprise that Facebook suddenly becoming unusable will have been an irritation. Anyway, what can you, the owner of an eCommerce
Ekmpowershop Review
Ekmpowershop is probably the best known UK eCommerce solution. If somebody knows only one UK-based eCommerce solution, then the chances are that they know Ekmpowershop. You see, they've been around for years so it's given them time to build up this good reputation. Since they are so well known, they must be doing something right, so I have decided to investigate and see what it is like to use Ekmpowershop. What I discovered surprised even me... They have a standard
Social Media Management with Hootsuite
Social media is very popular; not only are a very large number of people using it for marketing, but an even larger number of people are using it for their social interactions. Millions and millions of people are on social media. As such, it should be no surprise, therefore, that there are a very large number of social media outlets: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and many more. Obviously, you won't be on every social media platform, but it wouldn't be on a
Shopify Review
Shopify is the big name when it comes to eCommerce website creation tools. If people have heard of only one service which can give them an eCommerce website, it will probably be Shopify. Obviously, they've earned this level of renown for a reason, so I decided it would be a good idea to sign up to Shopify and find out what it is that they're doing such a good job with. Here's a review of what it is like to use Shopify and you might just be surprised by what you
Appealing Content
You saw the title of this post and thought "Wow, that sounds like it will be appealing, I better take a look" and opened it right up, didn't you? If so, I'm pleased that the title was able to hook you in and I hope that it will live up to your expectations. Anyway, in this blog post, I actually want to talk a little about making the appeal of your content as broad as possible. The more people who can enjoy it, the more who are likely to share it and the more who are likely to
Computer Time Saver
There's a small trick you can use on computers which will make browsing through documents, spreadsheets and websites a whole lot easier. Imagine, for example, that you had a huge spreadsheet and there was one specific thing to find. The spreadsheet has hundreds of thousands of things listed on it and you know what you're looking for, you just can't remember where exactly it is. Are you then going to have to slowly trawl through everything until you can find it?
National Punctuation Day
Yesterday was National Punctuation Day and while I am sorry that there was no blog post on the actual day, I think that it still provides a good talking point for a blog post. A lot of you will be making use of Sellr's blog feature in order to do content marketing for your eCommerce website and when you're doing content marketing you'll want everything you write to be as flawless as possible because some people will harshly ridicule even the smallest of mistakes. There are some
Proofreading Advice
Content marketing is a great way to drive sales on your eCommerce website. If you've got a regularly updated blog full of content which will be interesting to your customers, then they are likely to keep coming back to see what you write next. Each time a customer returns to your website to read the latest blog post, they have a chance of spotting a good bargain for sale, or seeing something they really want and making a purchase. Furthermore, when a potential customer is using Google to
Facebook's Dislike Button
For years, Facebook users have said that they would like a 'dislike' button to be added to the service. For those who're unfamiliar, let me explain: Facebook features a 'like' button so that every time something is posted on Facebook, people who see it get the chance to 'like' it. This can be a good way for people to express what it is that they are interested in. When somebody 'likes' something then it also appears in the newsfeeds of everyone on their
Why Sellr is Better Than Volusion
When somebody decides that they would like to start up their own eCommerce business, they will find themselves with several options. They're going to need a service which will help them to create an eCommerce website, manage and list items for sales and also which can handle marketing. Does that sound like something you've been looking for? Volusion is one of the most common choices, but Sellr provides a similar (but better) service and in this blog post I am going to go over all the
Get Competitive Pricing with Pricing Assistant
What is it that makes your product better than your competitors? Is your product more durable? Is yours more finely detailed? Do you use more environmentally sourced materials? Maybe you offer more variety? I'm sure that there are many strengths which your product has over its competitors. But, the thing is, there's only one main thing that the majority of your customers will realise: the price. Are you more or less expensive than your competitors? You want to offer your
Health in Business
Do you run your own eCommerce business? Do you do it alone, or have you expanded to a point where you are able to hire other people? Well, either way it's very admirable and I hope that you are finding the venture to be successful. But if you do do it alone, make sure you're not pushing yourself too hard. Do you have a full time job that you are doing as well in order to make sure you've got a steady income beyond your business? That could mean that you're doing a pretty large
Is Google Docs Useful?
If you run any kind of business then you doubtlessly have lots of important documents which will need to be regularly updated in order for them not to become inaccurate. New orders come in all the time, stocks are changing, prices are changing and different customers have different needs. To keep up with all of this, you'll need to have lots of documents and, in today's age these documents are likely electronic. But with different people within the business having copies of the same
Redesigning Your Website
One thing you will notice is that all the big websites out there get updated periodically. Amazon, eBay, Google; they've all undergone several redesigns and changes over the years. So why do they do this? Well, there are two main reasons. Firstly, as technology changes, what looks good changes too. Things like the sizes of the screens and the way in which people browse websites all have a big effect on how good a website seems to people and so it will need to be updated regularly in
Sellr: The Alternative to Yahoo Stores
Are you hoping to start up your own eCommerce website and make all your dreams come true? If so, you doubtlessly would like to take a look around the internet in order to try and find the service which is best for your plans. One of these services is Yahoo Stores (part of Yahoo Small Business) and potentially you're looking into that as the option for you. But wait, before you take any drastic action, you should consider Sellr as Sellr is an alternative to Yahoo Stores and, actually,
How to Offer a Student Discount
Some products will appeal more to students than anybody else, like pencils, folders, paper pads and even certain electronic goods. The problem is that students don't tend to have much money and so, if your product is too expensive you might have priced yourself out of the market. That's why a large number of businesses offer special discounts for students! If students are part of your consumer base, then you should certainly think about offering a student discount on your eCommerce
Online Self Employment
Are you struggling to find work? In today's economic climate, there are fewer jobs around and so the jobs that do come up have a huge number of applications meaning that the chances of you being the person who's chosen will be very low! Of course, I don't want to suggest that you don't have any qualifications or experiences, because you probably do and you're probably a very hard worker, but the fact is that there are a lot of people like that and, unfairly, it still might
Vlogging for Business
Are you familiar with vlogging? If not, I'll provide a quick explanation. Vlogging is basically the video version of keeping a blog and, actually, the word vlog is an amalgamation of video and blog. So, instead of writing a five hundred word post about a certain subject and sharing a few related images, you can make a video of yourself talking about that subject, perhaps showing some appropriate clips or whatnot. If you can come up with ideas for a blog, you can come up with ideas for a
Managing Your Internet Presence
Are you thinking of starting up your own eCommerce website? Do you, maybe, already have your own eCommerce website? If so, do you have any other kind of presence on the internet? For example: vlog videos, a blog, photography, artwork or, indeed, any other kind of work? Well, if so, then perhaps you should make it clear that it is the same person who is behind all of these things. Make a clear brand for yourself to help strengthen your integrity and give your customers more faith in
Write a Wikipedia Page
Wikipedia has grown considerably over the years and while academics consider it unreliable for research (and rightly so) it is still an extremely useful repository of information. If you find out the name of something and you want to find out more, what are you going to do? Well, you might search it on Google but then you might find it hard to know which page will provide you with the most useful information. So then you might search on Wikipedia: Wikipedia provides clear, easily digestible
Why Sellr is Better Than ShopWired
If you want to start an eCommerce website then a good idea is to look around the internet in order to find out what services are available to help you to do so. One of the well-known choices for eCommerce is ShopWired and you might be thinking about using them. But if you are thinking about using them, then I suggested you reconsider. In many ways, Sellr is much better than ShopWired and I am going to use this blog post to highlight all of the strengths that Sellr has and ShopWired
Social Media Marketing
Every time I mention social media marketing, I say that it is very important for a business to make use of it. I say this because it's true and there're a surprisingly huge number of businesses which have no social media presence or which are making rather miniscule use of social media. The problem is, I think, that people are not entirely sure of how to use it. That's why I've written a large number of blog posts on subjects relating to the world of social media marketing:
Sellr: The Alternative to Wix
If you want to create an eCommerce website, there are a myriad of website creation tools available to you online. One of the bigger names is Wix and it might be the one which you think of/come across first. But what if you've heard bad things about Wix? Or maybe you just didn't want to go for the first big name you hear? Well, in that case, I'd like to introduce you to Sellr, a worthy alternative to Wix Not only does Sellr provide an alternative to Wix, it
Artificial Competition
If you have an eCommerce business, you doubtlessly think that it's a pretty good one. How can you make people see your business in the same positive light that you see it? Well, one thing you might like to try is creating some artificial competition for yourself. Are you familiar with the concept of artificial competition? If not, I am going to use today's blog post in order explain it and also to tell you how you can use it to help boost your own business. Artificial
How To Avoid Telemarketing Calls
Telesales can be an extremely useful tool for marketing. There could be a product or service which could really help to boost your business but which you didn't know existed, only for you to have a call and be made aware of it. It can be great for customers and it can be great for businesses too. If you call fifty people a day, you'll doubtlessly find several new customers throughout the week. As such, you can see why so many places make use of this strategy and so many people are aware
Find Keywords With Hashtagify
When it comes to content marketing, and even social media marketing, it's important to know which keywords are relevant to your business and product. If you can find out what the people who are interested in your product are also interested in, then you can try to produce things which will reflect their broader interests and it will give you a good idea of the things you can do to appeal to as many people as possible and to attract more people to your website. But what can you do
How to Prepare a Business for Christmas
In the world of business, Christmas starts in September. Do you have your Christmas plans ready yet? If not, you really need to start thinking about what you're going to be doing over the festive season. Of course, I don't want to worry you; it's not too late to get started and you can still get everything ready before December arrives, but it is just better to start the preparation sooner rather than later; a case of being safe rather than sorry. But, anyway, what can
Shopify Vs Sellr
Shopify is the big name in the world of eCommerce. It's been around for over ten years which has given it time to gain the reputation of being the go to business anytime somebody wants to start an eCommerce website. So, surely, a small independent UK business like Sellr can't compete? Well, I'm afraid that is an erroneous presumption and, actually, Sellr can proudly stand toe to toe with Shopify and offer a service which many would consider superior to
Sellr: The Alternative to Volusion
The eCommerce industry is continuing to grow and become more and more profitable. Therefore, it's no surprise that numerous eCommerce businesses which provide people with the ability to create their own eCommerce websites are starting to appear all over the place. If you're somebody who's looking for that kind of service, you might be looking through the options and find Volusion; Volusion is quite a well-known and respected eCommerce provider. But what if you wanted to check
Image Tagging
When it comes to content shared on the internet, there's a bit of a hierarchy of what is the most popular. Going upward, text alone is least popular, followed by images, followed by videos. Take this with a grain of salt, however, because people won't always find themselves in situations where it will be appropriate to watch videos; but there will be much fewer things which stop people from reading an article or looking at a graphic. This is all to do with time: If you're scrolling
eCommerce Definition
Have you ever thought about starting an eCommerce website? "Well, I might have," I hear you reply, "if I knew what eCommerce meant!" Well, don't worry, I suppose it is something of a technical term and I should take a moment to explain it to you. Basically, it's very simple: eCommerce means electronic commerce, or, electronic commercial activity. So, really, all kinds of things fall under the umbrella term of eCommerce; paying Facebook to boost your posts, paying to
What are Payment Gateways?
Perhaps you've decided to start up your own eCommerce website; very good that's a very worthwhile endeavour. But perhaps you're also a bit in the dark when it comes to the more technical side of eCommerce. For example, you might see references to payment gateways in several places on Sellr and wonder what exactly they are; that's why I'm going to use this blog post to introduce you to the concept of payment gateways. When you have an online shop, you might be
Sellr: The Alternative to Squarespace
Have you been hoping to start an eCommerce website? If so, then you've doubtlessly been looking over the options to see which ones are best for you. One of the most well-known services for website creation is Squarespace and I expect you've probably already heard of it or that you found out about it shortly after starting to research the subject. But before you make any decision about Squarespace, be sure that you look over the alternatives! Sellr is an alternative to Squarespace
The Best Option for eCommerce
Are you hoping to start up your own eCommerce business? Or are you maybe hoping to take your established business onto the internet for the first time? If so, then you're doubtlessly looking over the options to see what services are available to help you with this venture and which ones seem to be the best to use. That's always the wisest approach in these situations and, if that is the case, then I would like to put forward the argument that Sellr is the best option for
The Hipster Logo Generator
When somebody mentions the name of a business, what's the first thing that pops into your head? Is it their excellent customer support? Their low, low prices? Their unique product? No, it will most probably be their logo. If I say to you "McDonald's" then you're most likely going to visualise the big, yellow McDonald's M. If I say "Amazon" then you'll probably picture their logo with that smiley tick thing they have underneath it. The point is that logos
How to Leave Bigcommerce
Have you ever wanted to start an eCommerce business? If so you have doubtlessly looked around the internet in order to find the best service to help you get started. One of the most popular choices is Bigcommerce, but if you're reading this then you have doubtlessly tried Bigcommerce but found their services to be unsatisfactory. If that is the case, then rest assured, we've got this helpful guide for you to use to leave them. If you decided to test their service with the
What is Cyber Monday?
Are you familiar with a day called Cyber Monday? If not, are you familiar with Black Friday? Black Friday is a day when a huge number of shops offer extremely low prices on a lot of their products. The prices are so low that you aren't likely to ever find products for such good rates on any other day of the year. While businesses make less money on each individual sale, they make so many more sales and therefore still make a much larger profit than they do at any other time. The fact that
What is a Blog?
In today's internet world a large number of businesses keep blogs on their websites. Blogs are the key to a successful content marketing strategy. This is a blog post on a blog. But I know some of you may ask "What is a blog?" and while the answer to that question might seem quite obvious to some of you, not everybody has the same level of computer experience and that certainly doesn't mean they don't have a high level intelligence. Maybe your business has been
How to Sell Clothes Online
When you start an eCommerce business, you're going to need to choose a product to focus on. Some people might like to sell food, others photography, but a popular product for eCommerce is clothing. If you'd like to make a name for yourself on the internet by selling clothes then read on! This blog post will hopefully provide you with a useful introduction to selling clothes in the world of eCommerce. First, you need to think about where these clothes are going to
UK Alternative to Big Cartel
If you want to start your own eCommerce website, then you're doubtlessly looking around on the internet in order to find a service which can be used in order to get things started. Having a quick look, you'll find that there are a huge number of options available. The eCommerce industry is very profitable and growing all the time so you can see why there are so many businesses in that area. One of the most popular choices is Big Cartel. You might be interested in Big Cartel but
Use SEMrush to Boost SEO
When you run an eCommerce business you want as many people as possible to find your website. Therefore search engine optimisation (SEO) is very important. A big part of SEO is the layout of your homepage, but another equally significant part is the use of keywords and that's just one of the many things which a service called SEMrush stands to help you with. SEMrush can be used in order to monitor the traffic coming onto your website and also the traffic onto the
Sellr Review
One of our customers has had a very pleasant experience with Sellr and wanted to put her positive feelings into words. If you've been sitting on the fence about using Sellr, then maybe reading this blog post will help you to make a decision. Anyway, I'll let the testimonial speak for itself. * I'm Ann and I'm 50. I started school with a chalk board and Mum and Dad hired a telly to watch the moon landings. I did not grow up with computers.
How to Avoid Typos
When you do content marketing you want to be sure that your content is posted with the smallest possible number of typos. I'll admit, it is virtually impossible for you to eliminate typos completely; hugely successful novels go out with typos in them and how many times do you think they were proofread? How many different proof-readers do you think there were? Yet they still slipped through, so what chance do you have? But that doesn't mean that you can't eliminate them
Work from Home with Sellr
In today's economic climate, it is rather tricky to find employment because jobs are rather scarce. So, if you are unemployed have you considered making your own work and starting your own business? It's a route that more and more people are starting to take and, with services like Sellr, it gets easier to do so all the time. You might think that starting your own business is too much of a daunting task, but I think, really, it's something which almost anybody could
The Value of Email Marketing
I talk a lot about social media marketing and content marketing, but I don't think I talk often enough about how important email marketing is. Social media marketing and content marketing can be good ways of reaching new people and getting people to come back to your website, but email marketing works just as well. Something which is especially useful is a periodical newsletter. When people sign up for your website, which they need to do if they want to buy from you, one thing
Content Marketing Humour
You wouldn't believe it. The Content Market Ear, our favourite member of staff here at Sellr, is absolutely hilarious. Of course, it can't talk, but it can produce content and that content... Well, if you were to have a line up which included The Content Market Ear and several of the world's most renowned comedians and I was asked to pick out who was the funniest, well I just might pick out The Content Market Ear. I mean just look at what it wore to the office the other
How to Leave Magento
Let's imagine a scenario: a young go-getting entrepreneur figures out a genius idea for an eCommerce business. What's the first thing he or she does? Why they look around on the internet for an appropriate service to help them get started, of course! There are so many options available: Shopify, Magento, Sellr, Mal's E-commerce, RomanCart and, after a bit of research, the young entrepreneur decides to go for Magento. All seems well and good at first, but they eventually realise
Amazon Working With Nintendo
Once again, we've got an exciting piece of eCommerce news from Amazon! They are now working with Nintendo to offer digital downloads for video games on Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS consoles. Before this, Amazon was already offering video games for digital download, but this is their first time working with Nintendo and this is the first time that Nintendo has ever done anything like this. So that's good news if you're a Nintendo fan, but what does it mean
How to Keep Customers Happy on Social Media
Over the past decade and especially so in the last couple of years, social media has given customers a voice. In the past, there was no easy way for a customer to let a business known how they felt; they'd maybe have to write a letter, or put something in a suggestion box and there was certainly no way that they could easily make their concerns public. These days, however, if a customer takes issue with your business, they can post it publicly on social media and everyone will be able to
Cheap Custom Website Designs from Sellr
In the modern world if you want to start a business, you're more than likely going to want to get your own website as well. If you sell specific products with that business, you won't just want any old website, you'll want an eCommerce website so that you can sell your products to people all over the world. So you'll doubtlessly want to approach a web designer; there are a huge number of them around the internet and they're all keen to get you as a client. But if you
Sellr: The Alternative to Shopify
Are you looking to start an eCommerce business? Or are you maybe thinking of branching out your existing business into the world of eCommerce? If so: excellent! It's always nice when somebody shows initiative like that and you clearly have the right frame of mind to survive in the world of business. Anyway, you're probably going to be looking for a service which can help you to get started. Of course, Shopify is going to be one of the first things you come across. But what if you were
How to Do Telesales
If you run an eCommerce business, or indeed, a business which has recently expanded to include eCommerce, you doubtlessly have a range of marketing plans. One of the oldest and most common forms of marketing is telesales. Telesales, as I'm sure you know, is when people are called and a business is promoted to them over the telephone. Sure, telesales does have a bad reputation as being something which is very irritating, but it can be effective. If you do do telesales then here are
Increase Your Business Appeal
When you run an eCommerce website you doubtlessly have a good idea of your target audience. Therefore, it's good to do marketing with your target audience in mind. Having said that, one thing you must never do is assume things about your customers. Maybe you sell military memorabilia and you might write "Alright lads, we've got a new batch of vintage gun replicas in today" on Twitter, assuming that your customers are all male. A female who was interested in buying from you
How to Use Images on Twitter
Twitter is one of the best social media platforms to use if you want to reach new people. Twitter makes good use of hashtags, which are used to 'tag' a tweet with the things that are relevant to it. So, therefore, if you sold clothes, you might use things like #fashion #clothes #style because then people who are using Twitter to look through those hashtags will come across your tweets. Of course, the people who are looking through those hashtags are people who are interested in
Memes in Marketing
Internet memes are shared around the internet in large quantities. Are you familiar with internet memes? If not, I'll offer a brief introduction to the concept. In many online threads, people will post memes instead of regular, written responses. These memes come in all kinds of forms, but are usually images; one shows a picture of Michael Jackson eating some popcorn and is used when somebody has posted something controversial which is likely to prompt an argument. Another is a rather
eCommerce Law
When you run an eCommerce business, or indeed, any business, you have the responsibility of ensuring that you methods are on the right side of the law. Of course, I know you won't be sending thugs round to your competitors to beat them up, or burning down their stock supplies, because those things are obviously bad and illegal. However, in the age of the internet, you have to be very careful with what you do with your customers' contact details and things like that. Did you
How to Leave eBay
You've doubtlessly heard that the astute business person can make money over the internet. Maybe, therefore, you decided to sign up to eBay in order to start selling things online. At the time, it seemed like the ideal platform, but, eventually you realised that it wasn't quite the best match for you. You felt a little too restricted and anonymous, just being one of the millions of eBay users who sell through it. If that is the case, then I am going to use this blog post to
Google's New Logo
If you've been doing much on the internet either today or yesterday then there's one thing which you've doubtlessly noticed: Google has a new logo. If you go to their main search page you'll find that they've got a nice animation of the previous logo being erased and the new one then being drawn in crayon to replace it. It's a sweet little thing and I have to say that I'm rather fond of their new, rather minimalistic logo. Because so many people have been
Starting a Business as a Photographer
You may look at Sellr, see that it gives you everything you need to create your own eCommerce website and think to yourself "This isn't for me, my skills don't really fit with that" and decide not to use it. But the thing is, almost anybody can use an eCommerce website to make money. It's not just a case of buying things cheap somewhere and selling them for a profit, because you can use your online shop to sell almost anything. In this blog post I am going to talk about
The Ideal Length for Content
When running your eCommerce website, you might well decide that you would like to start doing some content marketing in order to promote yourself. Content marketing gives people a reason to keep returning to your website and, also, makes it easier for people to find it in the first place as it will then come up in more internet searches. But making the leap from doing no content marketing to getting into a regular content marketing routine must seem daunting. How can you know where to
Back to Work Motivation
Is your eCommerce website your main source of income? Do you treat it much like a regular job? If so, then there's a good chance that you're getting back to work today after a nice three day weekend. Having those three days off must have been lovely, however, during that period you likely got into a much more leisurely state of mind and now coming back to work might feel tough. Maybe you lack the motivation; if that is the case then I would like to use the blog post to try and
AmazonFresh to Come to the UK?
Amazon's always been trying to defy expectations. When it originally started, all it sold was books but it has slowly grown and grown and now encompasses pretty much everything in the world of eCommerce. If it can be sold online, you can bet that Amazon are doing it already or planning to in the near future. One of these many different branches of Amazon is AmazonFresh. AmazonFresh, as you may be able to guess, deals with the sale and delivery of fresh foods. If people
The eBay Song
As today is a bank holiday, I guess there's a good chance that you're sitting back and enjoying an extra day off. Maybe you're using the extra time to work hard on your eCommerce website, or maybe you just want to devote the day entirely to relaxation! That's your prerogative, but to me it felt appropriate to write a blog post which was somewhat more relaxation oriented. So here's something fun for you. It's a song by musician "Weird"
How to Leave Mal's E-commerce
Perhaps you wanted to start an eCommerce website and perhaps you decided that Mal's E-commerce was the best service for you. But maybe, a little while later, you realised you were wrong. You're a humble person and you're not afraid to admit when you've made a mistake and so, rather than toiling on with this service which is clearly not right for you, you're looking for something else! Well, good for you. If you want to leave Mal's E-commerce this blog post is a brief
Popularity of Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing
When starting your own eCommerce business, you're likely to start wondering about which marketing strategies to use. I'm sure the first thing you'll be thinking about is social media marketing; everyone does social media marketing. You might also be thinking about content marketing, but you'll probably decide that social media marketing is your focus. But, actually, recent studies show that content marketing is growing in effectiveness while social media marketing is
Use Social Media to Find New Prospects
When using social media, in particular Twitter, you can interact directly with people who stand to be customers. But the thing is, how do you know who stands to be a potential customer? Well, one thing you can do is search through the hashtags and see which Twitter users have been tweeting about the subjects related to your business. It may not necessarily mean that they are going to buy from you, but there's a chance! But how else can you find these prospects? Well, something you might
Expanding Your eCommerce Website
When you first start your eCommerce website, you'll doubtlessly be focused on a few related products which share a niche. This is the best way to get the ball rolling because if you are targeting a niche, there's a chance that they have not been targeted before and you will therefore be more likely to make sales. After all, if you're selling something which most people do not sell, then the people who want to buy it are quite likely to turn to you! But once things are
How to Leave X-Cart
Perhaps you wanted to start an eCommerce website and had a look around the internet to find a service which might best suit you. You came across X-Cart and thought that looked pretty good. You downloaded their shopping cart software and used it for your website. Eventually, however, you realised that it wasn't really that much of a great match for you. Sure, some people might get a lot of use out of it, but others might be left wanting. If that is the case, I'm going to use this
Learning About eCommerce the Fun Way
The idea of this blog, generally speaking, is to teach people about eCommerce, marketing and business and to give them ideas to apply to their own business. Sellr is a service which was designed to be accessible to everybody; therefore, we think it important to write blog posts which can appeal to everybody too. Sometimes we write things which some readers might call simple, other times we're a little more advanced. Everyone has a different level of knowledge and understanding and we hope
Set Up Your Domain Through Daily
If you want to open up your own eCommerce website, one thing you might like to do is to buy your own domain. Having your own domain is a good way to make your website look more professional and it could well prove to be a good investment if you are just starting up a new business. You need to be cautious when you're choosing your name, however, as your domain will have an effect on your search engine optimisation (SEO); using your own name or the name of your business might seem like a good
Making a Work Routine
Like most people who start a business, there's a good chance that you are managing your eCommerce website on the side while dedicating most of your time to some full time employment. This is quite an intelligent approach as it means you've got a very firm safety net and source of additional income to fund the business if the early days are rough. But, of course, when you do have a full time job it can be a little hard to dedicate time to your own endeavours. After a hard day's work
How to Use Images in Content Marketing
Content marketing is something which can be great for attracting lots of customers. If you're regularly posting new things on your website, that gives a reason for the people who are already familiar with you to regularly return and if you cover lots of subjects related to your business, then potential customers who are having a general internet browse will come across you as well. It's an effective, proven method and something which everybody should be doing. Having said
How To Leave Wix
Perhaps you wanted to launch an eCommerce website or blog and decided that Wix would be a good outlet for that. You signed up, got started but then realised that Wix didn't seem to be quite appropriate for you after all. Doubtlessly you'll want to close your Wix account, but how can you do this? Wix is actually a little complicated, when it comes to closing your account, so this blog post will act as a guide. You might notice that when you click on your name at the top
Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Expert Rule
Practice makes perfect, they say, and if you're working on any endeavour you're going to have to put the time in. Journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell says that, for a person to become an expert at something, they need to spend 10,000 hours working on it. If that seems like a lot, you're right! It will take years to gain 10,000 hours' worth of experience and, actually, this ties in quite nicely with the internet's two year success rule (and you should read my earlier blog
Amazon Dash Buttons
It seems that you need only keep your eyes on Amazon if you want to see new, unexpected developments in the world of eCommerce and just recently they've come up with something new which nobody expected; Dash Buttons. Obviously, that name alone means nothing to you, so I shall explain the concept: these are literally, physical buttons which you can buy (not things to click on a computer screen) and, when you press them, that's an automatic order. So you might buy a toilet paper dash
Get Listed in a Business Directory
Once you've got your eCommerce business started, something which you should always be doing is thinking of ways to reach new people and to increase the number of customers that you have. Something which is worth doing is getting yourself listed in a local business directory. You should have connections to your business in as many places as possible and there are many benefits of getting listed in local business directory which I shall go over in the blog post. Firstly, people
Facebook's Response Rate System
A new feature that has been popping up on Facebook business pages over the last few months is the 'Response Rate' ranking. This is directly tied to the way that you use that page to interact with other people; if, for example, a customer sent in a question and you sent them a reply instantly, it would list you as getting back to people within a few minutes 100% of the time. This new addition is both good and bad and I'm going to go over its strengths and weaknesses in this blog
No Experience Required eCommerce Software
Though the world may be moving ever onward into a more and more technological age, it is an unavoidable fact that not everybody is knowledgeable about computers. A lot of people are quite down on themselves for not being good with computers and consider it a sign of unintelligence, but that's just not true at all. Sellr was designed to accommodate everybody; computer geniuses and the technologically illiterate alike! So if you'd thought about starting a business on the internet, but
How To Leave Weebly
Perhaps you always wanted to start a blog or an eCommerce website and you choose Weebly as the platform with which to do it. Eventually you realised however that, no, Weebly is not appropriate for your needs; another service would be better. Well, if that sounds like the situation you are in, then maybe Sellr is the right service for you. After all, there are many reasons you might choose to go for Sellr over Weebly. Whatever you want to leave it for, this blog post will give you all the
Create a Mascot For Your Business
One thing you might like to do for marketing purposes is to create a mascot for your business. A mascot is a good way to keep your business in the minds of your customers because, if you've got a unique and memorable character popping up around your website, customers are likely to remember it and therefore you. Of course, not every business will be well suited to having a mascot and you need to consider whether it would be appropriate; do you sell funeral wear? Well, if so, people
What is Click & Collect Shopping?
Have you heard of Click & Collect shopping before? Basically, it's as simple as it sounds: people make their orders online and then just go somewhere to collect them. It's something which is becoming increasingly popular in the world of eCommerce with more and more businesses (like Sainsbury's) starting to adopt it. So if you run an eCommerce website in conjunction with a physical shop somewhere, perhaps this is something which you'd like to
Can You Be Creative in Content Marketing?
Need I remind you of The Content Market Ear? It's a member of staff here at Sellr and handles content marketing and our Click Booster service. Of course, we've got a whole office full of Content Market Ears, all of them churning the stuff out, but this was the first one we created through genetic engineering down in the Sellr labs. The rest are just clones. That's right; we break the barriers of science to bring you the very best service
Customer Response
No matter what you do for marketing, one big way that people will get an impression of your business is through your interactions with customers. Whether somebody was a customer themselves, or has merely come into contact with another customer's thoughts on the matter, your customer service is going to be something that reflects your business. Sadly, more often than not, this will not be in your favour. Imagine you go to a shop, the service is excellent and you get exactly what
How Marketing Ties Together
There are lot of different marketing techniques out there; social media marketing, content marketing and email marketing are the three that users of Sellr are most likely to use in order to promote their eCommerce websites. But while each of those three are distinct concepts and very different, there is a lot of crossover between them. When used well, they can all feed into each other and they will all grow as a result. So if you're doing them all, but you're not really doing much
eCommerce Revenue
It has been reported by The Hindu newspaper, that the eCommerce industry generates revenue of $1.2 million every thirty seconds! That's just under a million in pounds, but still that's an unimaginably huge amount of money. It only goes to show how common it has become for people to buy things over the internet; everybody does it all the time and though regular shops are still the most common place for people to buy things, the popularity of eCommerce is not to be snuffed at. So if
Facebook Live
I recently wrote a blog post about an app called Meerkat which allows you to do live video streams over Twitter. That's quite an exciting idea and there are lots of innovative ways that this could be used for marketing. I guess it shouldn't a huge shock, therefore, that Facebook has recently announced a similar service called Facebook Live! It looks like live video feeds could be the next big thing in social media marketing. So far, however, Facebook Live is only
Avoid Social Media Procrastination
Social media marketing is an essential marketing strategy for all businesses and especially for those based exclusively on the internet. Social media is also very addictive. Let's say you had your day planned out and part of that day was dedicated to working on your eCommerce website. One of the first things you need to do is make a Facebook post. Oh. But, look, Tony has uploaded his holiday photos. It'll only take a few minutes to give them a look! Now Jane has sent you a message; it
Be Honest About Your Business
It was reported by GrowthBusiness.co.uk that more and more people are being disappointed by their eCommerce experiences, the reason? Businesses are failing to live up to the promises they make. That's not to say that times are hard in the eCommerce industry, because it's quite the contrary; business just keeps growing and growing! But with so many eCommerce businesses out there, you're going to need something which makes people go for you rather than any of your
When to Hire More Staff
Do you have a one person business? Perhaps you had an idea for a business in your mind and then came across Sellr. You thought it would be the perfect place to bring your business to life and so spent the next few days putting together your eCommerce website and getting your products together. Now you have a comfortable number of customers and are making some money. But is this sustainable? At the risk of sounding too negative, I do not think that it is. When you first start your
The Value of Friday Sales and Promotions
Happy Friday, everybody! I'm sure you've worked hard this week and are looking forward to a rest tomorrow. I have to admit that I'm already getting excited about staying up late with pizza and a bowl of ice cream. That's Friday for you, the day to let your hair down and relax. If you run an eCommerce business through Sellr and work a 'day job' the rest of the time, then I guess you may be looking forward to getting to work on your true passion over the next few days.
How Testimonials Can Boost Your Business
Is your eCommerce business coming along nicely, with a few loyal customers? But you'd also quite like to reach a few more people? Well, if that is the case, then one thing you might like to try is asking your customers for some testimonials. If you do have people who buy from your regularly already, there is doubtlessly a reason that they keep returning to you; why not try and ask them if they'd be willing to write you a testimonial? Though you obviously can't force
Save Your Work As You Go
The other day I was working hard on a blog post. I'd been writing for a good half an hour and the post was almost done; I was actually pretty pleased with how it was shaping up. I was just getting towards the end of the post when the screen went black. I thought it was strange, but I assumed it was just a minor error with the monitor; a few moments later the screen came back on and informed me that the computer was shutting down in order to perform an update. Uh oh. Though I hoped that
Use Google for Market Research
Whether you're already running an eCommerce business or if that's something you'd like to start doing in the near future, it could well be worth your time to do a quick Google search for your product. It doesn't need to be done over Google specifically but it would just be best to use Google due to the simple fact that that is the most commonly used search engine. So what does doing this achieve? Well there is actually quite a cove of information which will be
What is the Difference Between Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing?
In this blog, two of the things I talk about most commonly are social media marketing and content marketing. There are lots of different approaches and strategies you can take towards either of these and I have offered ideas in the past, but, of course you're not all at the same level of understanding and perhaps there are some of you reading this who are not quite sure what the distinction between content marketing and social media marketing actually is. If that sounds like you, then read
Linking Back to Your Website
In the early days of your eCommerce website, you want to have as many people as possible find it. So what can you do to make sure that your website doesn't remain neglected in a cold and empty corner of the internet? Well, of course there's social media marketing and content marketing, but I want to talk about something in this post which doesn't really fall under either of those terms; something which, like them, can also be done without having to spend a
Clickbait for Marketing
When you're doing content marketing, you want to be sure that your content is interesting because, if it's not, nobody will read it. One important part of your content is the title: most people are likely to see the title of your post before they see the post itself and so it is the title which needs to be used in order to hook people in. You might, therefore, start to think that it could be a good idea to make titles sound really exciting and dramatic "The One Invention Which
Use Dropbox to Backup Your Files
If you run an eCommerce website, you've doubtlessly got a lot of computer files which you would like to keep safe. Maybe you've got a spreadsheet for your finances, a document with all your passwords in case of emergency, plans for the future or whatever else. If you're running a business, you should have a lot of documents like that, but what would happen if your computer broke? You'd lose everything! So, of course, you want to find ways to keep these files safe: there're
How NOT to Run an eCommerce Website
I'm going to start this blog post by telling a little bit of an eCommerce horror story; or, to put it less dramatically, a story of my own negative experiences when using an eCommerce website. I shan't name any names, but I was planning on attending an event and so I headed to the official website in order to book my tickets. Sadly, the website was rather unclear and I wasn't entirely sure what kind of ticket I needed to buy. I emailed their customer support address and got a short,
Borrowing Ideas for Content Marketing
The Content Market Ear; it exists only to produce content for content marketing. Its giant ear is always listening out for facts and pieces of information which can then be used to produce content. That is its one and only purpose and let me tell you, nothing gets in its way. The Content Market Ear is devious; it has no sense of morality on its never-ending quest. If it has been suffering a dry spell of ideas, one thing it does it turns to the blogs of its competitors where
Facebook's See First System
Facebook is always being changed and updated, usually in ways which make it harder for businesses to use for marketing. One of the most recent additions is the new See First feature which allows users to choose which pages' content they 'see first' in their news feed. You might think that this sounds like quite a nice and pleasant addition to that social networking website, but actually, it was probably made with making money (off of people like you) in mind. People can
Taking Time off Your eCommerce Business
So there you are, reading the freshly posted Monday morning Sellr blog post written by me, and I'm not even at work today. Since it's a day off, there's a good chance I'm not even out of bed! But the blog continues to run, business as usual, even without me there to maintain it. In fact there'll be some Twitter and Facebook posts too. As you can tell, here at Sellr, were at very efficient and, using our services, you too, can be just as efficient. Of
Robotics and the World of eCommerce
Robotic technology is one of the more futuristic areas of science that seems to have been developing lately. If the day does eventually come, where robots are extremely commonly used and found in all areas of our society, how will it impact the world of eCommerce? Well, if you're thinking that there might be eCommerce websites for which robots are the target audience, then you'd be wrong. But if you're thinking that robots might be used in warehouses and the like for logistic
Why People Are Switching from Magento to Sellr
If you want to start an eCommerce business you are doubtlessly scouring the internet and looking over all of the options. One of the options, of course, is Sellr and a lot of people go for us. Another option, meanwhile, is Magento. Both offer the tools to create your own eCommerce website and so I could see why you would be considering them both; but, ultimately, how can you make a decision? Why should you use Sellr over Magento? Well that is the question I hope to answer in this blog post.
Linking to Other Websites in Content Marketing
If you're doing content marketing, there are going to be times when it will be appropriate to link away from the article. Maybe you are writing about another business and you want to link to their website, maybe you have made reference to a specific fact or statistic that you'd like to provide a source for, or maybe you've written something about the subject before and you want people to see what you've said before, whatever the reason, there are lots of times when you should
Implement a Customer Survey
Doubtlessly, you're always going to be looking for ways to enhance and improve your eCommerce website, but sometimes it can be hard to figure out what needs to be improved. How do you know what your customers would like to see from you? If you just try and guess at their needs, you might make an 'improvement' which, in the eyes of the customers, has actually made the website less appealing. But have you considered... asking them? The best source of information about what your
Is Content Marketing an Art?
How broad is your definition of what constitutes art? Of course, pretty much everyone accepts paintings and other forms of visual art, those one are a given. Some people would call the great works of literature art, maybe even all pieces of literature. Many would also include film and television productions these days as well... but content marketing? Surely that's just, cheap, substance-less pieces of work made for no other purpose than to increase traffic to websites? Well,
Live Video Streaming on Twitter With Meerkat
If you want to market your eCommerce business, you are likely using social media to do so. Twitter is one of the most useful tools for that and I have written about how handy Twitter can be before. But in this blog post I want to tell you a little about a new app called Meerkat which can actually be used so that you can live stream over Twitter. You might not think that sounds like anything very exciting, but it actually stands to be a very valuable marketing aid. In
The Value of Business Cards
If you've just started up (or are planning to soon start up) your own eCommerce business, then one thing you're doubtlessly wondering about is how you are going to get people to find out about your business. There are many things you can do to get your business noticed; two of the most prominent methods are social media marketing and content marketing, but I write about them a lot and today I want to talk about something else which you could be doing. Of
Why to Write a Blog
One of the things we've been focusing on a lot lately is the Sellr blog feature. We're always trying to improve and enhance it to make it as useful and accessible as possible. At this point, it'd be worth your time to sign up to a free Sellr account simply to use our blogging feature as it can be used entirely independently from our eCommerce website creation tool. Have you been thinking of starting a blog lately? If so, I'm going to use this post to try and persuade you to do
Remote Logout From Facebook
Imagine you're having a day 'off' and are relaxing in a library or in an internet cafe, any place with public computers. Then you get a text; it's a very exciting text. You've just been told that an exciting deal has gone through; you'll be working with another business and offering a fantastic, exclusive product on your eCommerce website! Excellent. This seems like the perfect time to get on Facebook and officially announce this exciting piece of good news to all of
How to Keep Old Customers
I've written quite a few posts which talk about ways for you to reach new customers and all over the internet you'll find people promising to bring you new customers (and most of them are scammers!) so you would think that that was the most important thing when it comes to marketing. However, this is not true; making sure that your existing customers keep coming back is just as important as reaching new customers, especially for an eCommerce
Social Media Sweepstakes
This is certainly not the first time I've written that social media marketing is very important for every internet business and it most likely will not be the last either. It is baffling how many businesses there are online which have no social media presence. So if you've got your own eCommerce website, but are not on social media, then I would heavily suggest that you open up your feeds soon. I'm going to use this blog post to take you over one specific example of social
Google Restructure
Google is an important part of the internet. Let's face it, a good deal of internet businesses rely on Google; be it Google AdSense, Google Analytics, Google Trends or something else, most businesses are going to get some vital help from Google, and that's not to mention the number of searches which are conducted through Google and lead people to those businesses! So it should be of interest to anybody who has a business online (or even whose business is just
Use YouTube to Promote Your eCommerce Business
In the modern world, if you want to run a business on the internet, you need to make use of social media marketing. There are the obvious two: Facebook and Twitter, both of which I have written about before, but there's one large thing which I have not yet addressed: YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google and is one of the most popular networks on the internet. YouTube is a service which allows its users to upload their own videos; other people can then subscribe to each user
Why You Should Choose Sellr For Your eCommerce Website
If you want to start an eCommerce website, you're probably going to be looking around on the internet in order to find an eCommerce website creation tool. But as with any service, there are numerous businesses which offer the same kind of thing in different ways. When there are so many options, how can you decide which is best for you? It's certainly not going to be easy! You don't want to just pick the first one you come across, because you won't know how it compares to the
Keeping Up With Technology
If you want to run an eCommerce business, one thing you're going to need to do is keep up with the ever-changing world of technology! As an eCommerce website would be inherently tied to technology, this is something that you are doubtlessly thinking about (or are maybe even concerned about) if you're hoping to open up your own online shop! If you are worried about that, rest assured that Sellr will have you covered! With Sellr you would be using a template for your website
Picking a Business Name
Having a good name for your business is very important. The ideal business name will give people an idea of what you do, while also being easy to remember and easy to spell. So think of those as the main three factors for picking out a good business name. In this blog post I am going to go over how to pick out a good business name, so if you're planning on starting an eCommerce website, I hope this will be a helpful guide for you. Take Sellr as an example. To be honest
Content Marketing on Holidays
Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach new people over the internet. If you're providing regular, interesting, informative and even funny content on subjects related to your business, when your potential customers search for the things they're interested in or looking for they'll find your blog where you've covered everything! But the problem is that a regular stream of fresh content is tricky to produce. Thinking up new content on a regular basis for an
The Value of Bundles
The reason that people go for eCommerce websites over real life shops is convenience. With that in mind, you should do everything you can to make your own eCommerce website as easy to use as possible. The majority of all purchases are still made in physical shops and so you need to think of ways that you can be faster, easier and more convenient than a trip to the shops. There are lots of small things that you can do to enhance the experience on your eCommerce website, but in this blog
A Good Work Environment
Have you got a Sellr account? Did you have plans of putting together a superb eCommerce website, only to have life and procrastination get in the way? Well, if that is the case, then I am going to try and offer some helpful advice in this blog post. So if you're stuck staring at the homepage of your website and you know you need to write some text about your business, but have so many distractions to hand (including, perhaps, this blog post) then read ahead, as I might be able to get you
Choose the Best Social Media For You
There are a lot of social media services on the internet and pretty much all of them can be used for marketing. Off the top of my head, there's: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and I'll stop there because otherwise I'll turn this blog post into a list of social media outlets! So many to use and each potentially bringing you to new customers. Managing them all will mean that your social media marketing is going to take
Making a Food-Based eCommerce Website
What's your talent? Knitting? Crafting? Sculpting? Painting? While those are all very impressive skills and things which you could base an eCommerce website around, in this blog post I am going to talk about something else; something you might not have thought it would be possible to build an eCommerce website around: cookery. Yes, you can sell food online and, yes, it is profitable, but there are certain things you need to keep in mind, which I am going to go over now. While
Free Postage, Amazon and Your eCommerce Website
Amazon used to offer what it called Super Saver deliveries and, to be honest, it was a 'super saver' because it was great to be able to get free deliveries on your order. Sure, you had to wait a day or two longer for your items to arrive, but it felt like it was worth it to save the money. The problem is that Amazon has recently changed this system and now you only qualify for a free delivery if you place an order that costs more than £20! This isn't such a good deal
Social Media Networking
For many, social media is a platform on which to promote your business and, it's true, that is one of the many uses that social media has. However, it's not just about promotion and a key part of social media marketing which often gets overlooked is the 'social' side of it. Yes, you can make lots of posts about why your business is good, but you should also be interacting with others. This is a great way to build up the number of your followers, to reach new people
Experimentation in Marketing
Some people think of marketing as something you need to do 'by the book' and will do a few generic things (posts on Facebook, the odd tweet, a newsletter) and usually just repeat the same old marketing lines about their business over and over across different platforms. If you're persistent, this kind of thing can work. It's the standard marketing affair and the sort of thing that people have begun to expect. However, as it is so generic, that also means that it will not
The Human Side of Business
If you look across the internet you'll find several eCommerce websites sitting stagnantly in some cold and lonely corner of the internet. If you were to use Sellr and make your own eCommerce website, how could you ever be sure that it wouldn't happen to you as well? Well there's one thing that all of those obscure websites have in common: poor marketing techniques. They're probably on Facebook or Twitter (possibly both, but it's not that common) and you'll see maybe five
Free Stock Photos from PublicDomainPictures.net
If you want your website to look attractive, you're going to want to have photographs (and not just photographs of the product either). You can't just do a quick search on Google Images to get your pictures, because you never know what kind of copyright issues surround them. So what can you do? Well, it could be a good idea to take your own pictures; if you have photography skills, you should put them to good use! But not everybody is that good at
External Factors in Business
Do you rely heavily on social media marketing? Do you specialise in the kinds of tools which would be used by people hoping to escape from prison? Well, if you did just launch your social media campaign for your prisoner demographic, I've got bad news for you: prisons in Scotland are really coming down on inmates who are using social media. Social media is banned in prisons and so the prisoners are resorting to illegal means to access it, which is why they have to really crack down on
Adding an FAQ Page
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages are very common throughout the internet. When somebody comes across a website for the first time, if they have any uncertainties, the first place they'll go will be a FAQ page which, if it's any good, will have all the answers they need. When a confused customer sees that there is no clear FAQ page they might just abandon the website and never return. This is just one of several reasons that having an FAQ page is a good idea and I shall go over
Paying for Facebook Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the best ways to stay in touch with your old customers and to try and reach new customers. Facebook is one of the most popular social media outlets and I can see why you might want to use it. In the past, I wrote a post about how to best use Facebook for social media marketing; you can find that post here, and hopefully it will prove to be quite useful and interesting to you. If you are not hugely familiar with social media marketing, please read that
How Artists Can Make Money From an eCommerce Website
Have you ever painted before? Do you dabble with art in your free time? Perhaps it is even your life's passion? If so, wouldn't it be great to be able to make some money from the art that you create? When people think of eCommerce, they probably think of people buying things cheap from one place and then trying to sell them for a profit and while that standard business idea is commonly used for eCommerce businesses, it is also not uncommon for independent artists to make a living off
Common Content Marketing Mistakes
Keeping a blog on your eCommerce website (or indeed any kind of website) is a great way to drive traffic. If somebody visits your site and sees an interesting, regularly updated blog, then they may well decide to come back again later to see what else you've had to say. Equally, if you cover a wide range of topics related to the main subject of your website, then when people search for those subjects they'll find you and as those people must clearly be interested in those subjects,
How To Raise Prices Without Losing Customers
It's a fact of business that sometimes prices have to come up. Maybe it's down to inflation, maybe you've fallen on harder times or maybe you just want to quit your day job; whatever the reason, if you run an eCommerce business for an extended period of time, it is almost an unavoidable fact that you're going to have to raise the prices at some point. But won't doing this make your customers mad? Maybe even to the extent of them not wanting to do business with
Email Marketing With Sellr
Perhaps you already have an eCommerce website. Perhaps you already have some other form of popular internet presence and you don't ever want to expand to include eCommerce. You're probably thinking "what possible use is Sellr to me?" well, actually, Sellr comes with several features beyond the mere eCommerce website creation tool and, even if you have your own eCommerce website which was made with no connection to Sellr at all, you could still use Sellr to aid that
Why People Are Switching from Wix to Sellr
There are a multitude of website creation tools out there and if you want to make your own eCommerce website you are doubtlessly looking over them to see which one is best for you. One of the options that you might be looking at is Wix: Wix is a free website creation tool which is popular and used by a lot of people. Though it can be used for free, there are also premiums available which give you access to more advanced features... This is much the same as Sellr, so how can you decide which is
eCommerce in Rural China
It has been reported that, as rural areas in China begin to catch up with the western world in terms of wealth and technology, they are also making the leap to eCommerce! With the size of China's population, this is no small increase in eCommerce customers; this has actually caused a worldwide boom in eCommerce sales! Are you feeling it? I certainly hope so, but if not, let's consider why it might be! These newcomers to the world of eCommerce will be buying
Content Marketing Fun
Are you hoping to start your own blog? Maybe just for the sake of writing a blog, but also maybe to do content marketing for your eCommerce website? Whatever your path of logic, there are many reasons you might want to start a blog. But what might be holding you back? One of the most commonly cited reasons for not starting a blog is that people worry they won't be able to think of a regular supply of content. If you start up a blog but then can't maintain it, an un-updated blog will not
Why People Are Switching from eBay to Sellr
If you want to sell things online, the first place you probably think of selling is on eBay. eBay is, perhaps, the most well-known of eCommerce websites and is used by millions of people. It's a simple service which can be used for free where you just sign up, make listings for your items and then either sell them for a set price or hold an auction. It's a well-known business, but in this blog post I am going to take you over the reasons that people switch from eBay to
Facebook's Algorithm
Facebook is one of the biggest social media outlets and, arguably, the most popular. Furthermore, it is also a huge part of the social media marketing scene and if a business is on only one social media site, it will probably be Facebook. I've written about Facebook's potential as a marketing tool before and it would definitely be worth your time to give that post a read if you haven't done so yet. You should make good use of Facebook as it is free to use and a great way
Why People Are Switching from Mal's E-commerce to Sellr
If you're thinking of starting up an eCommerce website, you're likely researching the market and finding out what services are available to you. If you're reading this blog, you've doubtlessly come across Sellr and hopefully think of it as a viable option. But what about all those other businesses that offer their own eCommerce services? What about Mal's E-commerce, for example? Why should you choose Sellr over Mal's E-commerce? Well that's the question I hope to
Recycle Your Content
For social media marketing and content marketing to be effective, you need to be regularly tweeting, writing blog entries and posting on Facebook. While very time consuming, this is a very effective marketing strategy. However, some people may be under the misconception that you always have to create new content; but the truth is that it is actually perfectly fine to recycle your content once you have created it. But what's important to keep in mind is that there is a right way
Setting Up Your Domain
If you want to start up your own eCommerce business there's a good chance that you will also want to purchase your own domain. Of course, you don't need one: Sellr can be used with or without a specially purchased domain, but if you want to use one then this blog post will be for you. There are a variety of services out there which you can use to buy your own domain and in this blog post I am going to list a few of them and give you links to our guides on what to do
How to Use Inbound Marketing
If you want your eCommerce website to be a success you are going to have to spend some time on marketing. I don't just mean opening a Facebook page and making a post every few months; for marketing to be effective you need to be doing something marketing-oriented every single day. In the past, people tended to rely on what is now known as traditional marketing; this was when people placed advertisements in newspapers or magazines, had posters put up in public places and so on. This was more
Use Typekit for Custom Fonts
When putting together your own eCommerce website, you want it to look unique. There are lots of other eCommerce websites out there and even other businesses which are offering products which could rival your own! So you want something to make your own website stand out, something to make it visually appealing and to make it a unique reflection of the ethos of your business. What can you do to make sure you achieve this? Well, one service which you might wish to consider
mCommerce and fCommerce
The world of eCommerce is always growing and expanding. Recent innovations include the development of both fCommerce and mCommerce which both seem to be starting to take off right about now. If you're worried that you and your eCommerce business might fall behind: relax. In this blog post I am going to take you over both of these new developments and show you that it will be very easy for you and your Sellr store to keep up. So, firstly, mCommerce, which is simply eCommerce
Amazon to Make Top Gear Follow Up
It was announced today that Amazon have arranged a deal with Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, who used to be the stars of the BBC programme Top Gear, and they will soon be producing a new and similar series for Amazon Prime's Instant Video service. As there are a lot of dedicated Top Gear fans, it is very likely that this will see a sudden rise in people signing up for Amazon Prime so that they will be able to watch it: and since they'll be paying
Offering Free Shipping in eCommerce
A recent study has shown that a large number of people say that they would be more likely to make an eCommerce purchase if free shipping were offered. This makes perfect sense if you think about it; when people buy from the shops they never have to pay for shipping and it's possible that this additional fee could push the price over the amount that a product would go for on the high street. People tend to go for online shops for the sake of convenience, and additional fees
Create a Blog With Sellr
Sellr gives you everything you need to make and run your own eCommerce website. But that's not all it does. Sellr also gives you the power to easily create your own blog. Initially the idea was that you'd then use that blog in relation to your eCommerce website for content marketing purposes, but as we continued to grow and enhance the blogging feature we realised that you could get a lot of use out of Sellr without ever starting an eCommerce website and solely using our blogging
Business Strengths
If somebody makes a large donation to charity, it's generally viewed as a negative thing if they then always tell people about it. "They don't care about that charity," people might think to themselves, "all they care about is their ego!" and, in a way, you can understand why people might think that. You can also understand, therefore, why it might be that someone who cut their business's budget for the year so that they could donate a large sum to charity, would
Structure in Content Marketing
If you ever take a writing class you'll know that there's one thing that any author will tell you: every piece of writing you do needs to be well structured. Well, they'll tell you many things beyond that (always proof read, don't repeat words, etc) but structure is one of the more important points. Though you may not think it, this also applies to all of the content you write. It is the structure of a piece of writing which keeps people reading and, of course, you want your
The Internet's Two Year Rule
As the years go by we're seeing more and more people and businesses become successful over the internet. The world wide web is, as it says, world wide and so getting on the internet gives you a platform with the potential to reach millions of people! So I can see why somebody might want to start an eCommerce website: maybe you've got a unique product that you want the whole world to know about, maybe you just realise its capacity and think it would be a worthwhile venture: whatever your
Why People Are Switching from Volusion to Sellr
If you want to start up your own eCommerce website, there are lots of options open to you. There are so many options, in fact, that you might find it hard to choose between one and another. Why should you choose Sellr, for example, when Volusion offers a very similar service? Well I want to use this blog post to take you over some of the strengths that Sellr has over Volusion and to show you why it is that people are switching from Volusion to Sellr. Sellr trumps Volusion in two
Listing Product Weight and Supplies on Sellr
When you run an eCommerce website, you want things to be as customer friendly as possible. That's why, when listing your products for sale through Sellr, we allow you to list both the product's weight and the amount of stock that you have in. It's all quite easily done when you are on the spreadsheet that shows all of your current products; all you have to do is click on whichever one you want to add these things on to and then you will see several boxes where the data can be
Content Marketing On Other Websites
You may be running a blog on your eCommerce website in order to bring new people to your business. A blog is an effective content marketing tool and I am sure that you are using it to produce high quality content which will bring in lots of people. But is that all you can do in the name of content marketing? A lot of places might have you believe that writing blog posts or articles on your website is the full extent of content marketing, but in this blog post I am going to talk about
Why People Are Switching from WordPress to Sellr
Do you want to start your own eCommerce website? If so, that's good! It's always nice to show initiative and ambition. But I guess you want to be sure that you find the best thing for you and your business idea. There are lots of tools out there on the internet which you can use to create your own website and you're going to want to ensure that you choose the best one. Why should you use Sellr, for example, when you know that WordPress can also be used to make an eCommerce website?
Respecting Customer Privacy
One thing that you as somebody who runs an independent eCommerce website should know is that it is important to respect the privacy of your customers. In today's modern age, people fear that everything they do is being recorded or followed and one advantage that you have as a small business is that you will not be associated with any of this. It has been reported that Amazon seems to have been monitoring customers' social media feeds. This is not going to make
Visual Marketing From Creative Market
As cannot be stated often enough, marketing is very, very important. You could have a brilliantly laid out website, with a wonderful product and fall over dead from shock because it's just so unbelievably low prices, but without good marketing what guarantee is there that anybody will find you? So that's why dedicating time to marketing is just as important as things like budgeting, because without marketing you might not get any customers at all. Thankfully, there are many
Why People Are Switching from Bigcommerce to Sellr
Are you somebody who's hoping to launch your own eCommerce website soon? Are you looking over the options to see which service will be the best for you? If so, that's very wise. It's best not to simply go for whichever option you see first! So maybe you're looking at a few of the options: you think that Sellr looks pretty good, but you also think that about Bigcommerce. Why should you choose Sellr over Bigcommerce? Well that is the question I hope to answer in this blog post!
How to Set Up a Google Account
These days Google is huge. Google has bought out several businesses and also provides several unique services of its own. As many of these services are invaluable to anybody who runs a business over the internet (such as an eCommerce business), users of Sellr would do well to open up their own Google account. In fact, even if you don't use Sellr, it would be a good idea to sign up for a Google account! This might seem a bit of a basic guide to the more advanced internet user, but not
Why People Are Switching from Squarespace to Sellr
Are you somebody who is hoping to create their own eCommerce website? Or maybe even just your own blog? If so, I imagine you're looking around the internet and weighing up all the options. There are many website creation services out there and you want to be sure you go for the one that suits you most. So how can you decide? For example, if you're considering both Sellr and Squarespace, how can you choose which of those is best for you? Well, in this blog post I plan to show you the
Hustle, Crush It and Go Big to Increase Traffic
I'm sure you may be wondering what the title of this blog post is in reference to; it just sounds like a phrase designed to sound inspirational but which actually lacks any kind of substance. Well, you'd be right in thinking that, because it is actually a reference to a comedy video featuring Gary Vaynerchuk, but while it may simply stem from a comedy video, there is a lot to learn from it! So let me tell you a little about that video. Gary Vaynerchuk is somebody who
Amazon's Weaknesses
I can imagine there are some people who have thought about launching their own eCommerce website, but don't because of Amazon. I can understand that reasoning; Amazon is a huge business and when people want to go and buy something from the internet, Amazon will almost certainly be the first thing they turn to. Not only that, but Amazon has literally millions of different products for sale and often has them for especially cheap prices too. Surely an independent eCommerce website, such as
Marketing Tools With Sellr
Some people think that they can just create an eCommerce website and people will come flocking to them and business will boom. The sad truth is that things are not quite so simple; the internet is huge and there are hundreds of people who're trying to start a business out there and if you just make a website, there's a good chance that nobody will find it. There could be a business selling a really amazing product, something which you and I would buy in a second, but which has
Why People Are Switching from Weebly to Sellr
If you're going to use a service, it's best to go over the options and see what is available to you. So, if you wanted to start an eCommerce website, you might be looking at Sellr and thinking that it seems pretty good, but at the same time also be looking at Weebly and thinking that that also seems to be a pretty solid website creation tool. So if you're having a hard time choosing between those two, this blog post will help you to see the strengths that Sellr has over Weebly.
Building a Relationship With Your Customers
The fact is that while eCommerce is very popular and only becoming more and more popular as time goes by, it is still far from being as popular as shopping in actual shops. So, if you have an eCommerce website, what you need to do is build a relationship with your customers; building a relationship with a customer is what will make the difference, for them, between visiting your website once and never returning, and becoming a regular customer. The first thing to do is to get on
Blogging With Sellr
On this blog we talk a lot about how Sellr is a great tool to use to start up your own eCommerce website. But, actually, Sellr could be very useful for you even if you have no plans of starting an eCommerce website! You see, not only does Sellr provide you with the tools to create a great eCommerce website, it also provides you with all the tools you need to create your own blog! So if you wanted to make a blog, you could sign up to Sellr just for that. Our blog system is very
Email Marketing With MailChimp
Email marketing has proved to be very effective over the years and it's especially important to people who run eCommerce websites. Social media marketing is good, because it manages to keep you in the minds of your customers and ensure that they will return, but email marketing works just a little better because it is much more personalised. People can zone out the marketing they see on their social media feeds, but every email they get in their inbox is going to get their full attention
eCommerce Business Tips
If you are planning to start up an eCommerce website, or if you've recently launched your own eCommerce website, you've doubtlessly got a few of your own ideas. While I have full confidence that your own ideas for your website are air tight, I want to use this blog post to suggest five things that mustn't be overlooked when you're just starting your eCommerce website. 1. Social media Everyone is on social media, and therefore customers
Implement Social Media Buttons in eCommerce
The main reason to be on social media is that it creates an ongoing connection between you and your customers. It cuts down the chances of somebody visiting your eCommerce website, liking what they see, leaving, forgetting about you and never returning. It's not uncommon for somebody to come to a website (maybe while at work) and not really be in a position to make an online purchase, so what they might do is 'like' them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter so that they'll have
PayPal Splits From eBay
You may or may not have known that PayPal was owned by eBay. This had been the case since 2002 but as of Friday, PayPal has split from eBay! PayPal is now an independent company and, on Monday, was valued at being worth £34 billion! We'd known the split was coming for a while, but it is still big news for the world of eCommerce now that it has. The fact that PayPal is worth £34 billion says a lot about the current world of eCommerce. That's an unimaginably
Why People Are Switching from X-Cart to Sellr
If you're hoping to find a website which can help you to start up your own eCommerce website then that's good. Maybe Sellr will be able to help you. But take your time; investigate all of the options that are open to you. We want to be sure you make the right decision for your business. I imagine that somebody might think "What does Sellr have that the others don't? Why should I go for Sellr over X-Cart, for example?" That's a good question and one I'm going to
"Google Translater" and Keyword Searches
I know what you're thinking, "My goodness! Sellr has put out a blog post with a typo in the title. How unprofessional!" but the truth is that that typo was an intentional one. I thought it best to put in quotation marks though, just so there was less risk of somebody seeing what they thought was an error and condemning the blog without even reading it! So why have I written a blog post about the erroneously spelled "Google Translater"? Well, I want to give
Use Google Analytics to Monitor Your eCommerce Website
If you've got an eCommerce website there're several questions that you're going to be asking yourself: who's visiting my site? How are people finding my site? How many people who visit my site also buy from it? and so on. If you knew the answers to these questions it would help you to better understand your audience and to find out what they like. You'd be able tailor your business more to your consumers, making them happier and, in turn, making your business more
Email Creation Tools With Sellr
Marketing is especially important for eCommerce websites. With shops that are out on the street marketing is important too, but they'll get a reasonable number of customers just from the fact that people walk past them every single day. With the internet you don't have that luxury. Somebody might come to your website, love it, buy something and then never come back and forget about you. There's no promise that people will return to you. This is why marketing is so
Sell On An eCommerce Website
You've probably heard it said that "there's money to be made on the internet" and that's actually entirely true. You can make money over the internet and many people make a living from it. One of the best ways to make money online is with an eCommerce website, and that's essentially just a term for any online shop. Sellr provides you with everything you need to start your own eCommerce website. Whether you're somebody who has years and years of
PEST Analysis
Sellr provides you with an easy way to turn your dreams of running an eCommerce business into a reality. However, while we give you the template to make your own customised website and provide you with all the tools you need to handle your own marketing, this is only half of the work. You're going to need to have a solid business plan if you want things to go well. That's where the PEST analysis comes in. PEST is an acronym that gives you four things to consider before starting any
What are the PayPal Transaction Fees?
PayPal provides a very handy payment gateway which can be used to accommodate a large number of customers. If you have the PayPal payment gateway on your eCommerce website, customers can pay with their credit or debit cards, their own PayPal accounts and via several other means too. It's important to have something like this, because you stand the risk of losing a customer if they are unable to pay via their preferred payment method. But something which is important to take
Creative Marketing With Vine
The importance of marketing cannot be stressed often enough. In the past I have written posts about social media marketing (with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) and also content marketing, but there are a lot of other options available. The ones I've already mentioned are the standard forms of social media marketing that most people use, but the internet is a large place and there are many tools available to you. If you have your own marketing idea which nobody
Easily Upload Images
Are you making good use of Sellr's blog feature? You should be, because running a blog in conjunction with your eCommerce website is a very good idea. Anyway, assuming you are maintaining a blog too, we just updated the image repository and made it much more convenient to use. In the past there were only a certain number of images you could upload for blog posts and they were all listed on the same page, but now you can have an infinite number of uploads and they get listed across
Why People Are Switching from CubeCart to Sellr
Are you hoping to start up your own eCommerce website and investigating all of the options? You may be looking at our website and thinking to yourself "Sure, Sellr looks good, and it is free, but then again, so is CubeCart. Why should I go for Sellr over CubeCart?" well, that's a good question and one which I am going to answer with this blog post! Then you'll see why people switch from CubeCart to Sellr. The first advantage of Sellr is that it is a lot more user
Social Media and Young People
I've spoken many times about the importance of using social media in order to promote your eCommerce website. Everybody is on social media and they'll expect your business to be there too. If you're still not convinced about the popularity of social media, a recent study shows that social media has started to become more popular than alcohol amongst young people. Classically, alcohol has always been very popular with young people, so that should say something about social
Social Media Marketing With Sellr
If you run an eCommerce website you should be making use of social media marketing. If you read this blog regularly, you've probably realised that I say that a lot, but the reason I say it a lot is because it's true! You could start up an eCommerce business and it could be spectacular; you might have a sensational product that literally everybody will want and you might offer it at breathtakingly affordable prices... but if you do nothing to market it, it's possible that
Why People Are Switching from Ekmpowershop to Sellr
Are you in the market for a service that can give you your own eCommerce website? I'm guessing there's at least a reasonably sized chance that you are, since you're reading this blog! You might think that Sellr seems good, but wonder what it really has to edge out its competition. Why choose Sellr over Ekmpowershop, for example? Well I'm going to tell you why, and then you'll see why people are switching from Ekmpowershop to Sellr. If you take a look at their
Things to Avoid With Social Media Marketing
Social media is great because it's a free tool which anybody can use to market their business. However, as everybody is able to use it, that does also mean that some people get on there and do things all wrong. If you do social media marketing wrong you might just make your business look bad and turn people off of your website. This is the exact opposite to what you want your social media marketing to do! So in this blog post I am going to go over a few things to avoid so you can
Use Bitly to Monitor Your Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is something that everybody should be doing in order to try and promote their eCommerce business. Whether you use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or whatever else, it doesn't matter; just use whichever platform you're most comfortable with and seems to have the most potential for your business. If you're not on any of them, I'd suggest you sign up for at least one as soon as possible! So how can you monitor how effective
Why People Are Switching from Shopify to Sellr
If you're thinking of starting up your own eCommerce website, Sellr is something you might be considering. But only considering; you've not made a solid decision because you know that there are so many other businesses out there who are offering the same services (Shopify, for example). So why should you pick Sellr over Shopify? Well, that's what I'm going to go over in this blog post, so read on to find out why people switch from Shopify to
How an eCommerce Website Can Drive Sales in Your Offline Shop
A lot of people think of eCommerce websites as a modern 'replacement' for the more traditional form of shops. Some people would have you believe that shopping online will eventually replace physical shops entirely and that people will never leave their homes because of it, and other misinformed things like that. The truth is that the majority of all retail is conducted out in the world, in actual shops. Shop owners shouldn't be afraid of the growth of eCommerce either, because you
Amazon's Prime Day and the World of eCommerce
Tomorrow is going to be Amazon's Prime Day. I'm sure you've heard of it, but just in case you haven't, let me explain: Amazon offers a paid service called Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime is a monthly subscription where the customers are given access to much faster shipping options, as well as additional features such as free movies with Amazon Prime Instant Video and music with Amazon Prime Music. Now that Amazon is close to reaching its twentieth anniversary, as a form of
Manage Your Business Accounts With Xero
This is a blog post more for the experienced Sellr user. Has your business begun to grow much more than you ever imagined it would? Do you have ideas for how you could expand your business, but think that it would prove to be far too difficult to keep on top of all your funds if you were to implement those additions? If these sound like the kind of problems you are currently facing with your eCommerce website, then perhaps Xero is a service which can help you. Xero offers
Make Money Advertising Sellr
Are you a Sellr subscriber? If so, did you know that it is possible for you to make money advertising Sellr? It's true! As somebody who uses Sellr yourself, you know first-hand just how useful the service is, so you're in an excellent position to tell others about it. If you know anybody who might be interested in using Sellr and you recommend it to them and they then sign up for one of the paid Sellr services, we will give you up to £40! Not only that, but the person who you
Satoru Iwata: Death and Business
There was quite a big piece of sad news today: Satoru Iwata, CEO and president of popular video game company, Nintendo, has died aged only fifty-five. This has been a huge shock to many as his regular video presentations meant that fans of the business got a good idea of what he was like, which made this much more of a personal loss. His last presentation was less than a month ago and, in it, he seemed to be in perfectly good health, which only goes to strengthen the shock and the pain of his
Set Up Your Domain Through Hover
If you want to start up your own eCommerce website, there's a good chance you're also thinking of buying your own domain. A popular webhosting service is Hover and in this post I am going to talk a little about why getting a domain could be a good idea, how to pick a good name for your domain and then, after that, how to use your Hover-purchased domain for your Sellr store. The main upside of owning a domain is that it makes your website look just that little bit
Social Media Etiquette
The Guardian recently posted a very helpful article on their website about things to avoid when you are using social media professionally. If you're thinking of taking the first steps into the world of social media in order to promote your eCommerce business then you would do well to read it! But, if you don't have time, I'm just going to use this blog post to provide you with an overview of the points discussed in the article, as well as adding a few of my own thoughts
Apps in eCommerce
In an interesting turn of events, India's biggest eComemrce company (Flipkart) has made a shocking transition: it is now available in app-form only. If you did a Google search and hoped to find their website all you'd find would be a page telling you to use their app. If you don't have a smartphone, this is one business you won't be able to use! So, we have to wonder: is that the future of eCommerce? Will there be no eCommerce websites, only eCommerce apps? Will the Sellr of
Social Media Marketing Overview
Social media can be a very handy marketing tool. You'd be hard-pressed to find a big, successful business that didn't have a strong social media presence as that's just the direction in which things are headed. If you've recently started up your own eCommerce website but have yet to dip a metaphorical toe into the pool of social media, hopefully this blog post will be helpful for you. I'm going to go over the three biggest social media outlets and explain to you what each of
Streamline Your eCommerce Business With Aramex
No matter what your eCommerce business does, there will always be ways you can streamline it. Businesses need to be constantly growing and evolving to meet the needs of the people, which are also constantly growing and evolving. Maybe it's storage, maybe it's delivery, maybe it's whatever, but there'll always be some ways that you can make your business just a little bit better and one service which can help you with this is Aramex. Aramex is a business
Set Up Your Domain Through Yahoo Small Business
If you want to start up your own eCommerce website, whether as a wholly new business venture or as an extension of an existing business, then something you might want to consider doing is buying a domain. A domain makes your business look just that little bit more serious and just that little bit more professional, not to mention that it is better for search engine optimisation purposes. Yahoo Small Business offers a popular webhosting service, so in this blog post I am going to talk about
How To Open An Online Shop
This is a blog post for those of you who are new to the world of selling online. If you've been using Sellr for a while, but read the blog just to find interesting information or things to integrate into your business, this post won't be for you. But if you're somebody who has heard that the internet is a good place to earn money and open up your own shop, you've come to the right place! I'm going to go over the basics of opening up an online shop and hopefully provide
How to Buy a Domain From Google Domains
If you want to start up an eCommerce website, one thing you may well be thinking of doing is buying your own domain. While it is not essential to own your own domain, it is a good idea because it adds to your website's air of professionalism. A popular web hosting service is Google Domains and in this blog post I am going to talk about choosing your domain name and then buying it through Google Domains. When you buy a domain, you need to make sure you get something
Shipping Options With Sellr
If you want to start up your own eCommerce business, you might think to yourself that getting the stock and everything shouldn't be a problem, but that it will be potentially difficult to keep on top of the shipping. After all, it must be hard to keep up a constant supply of parcels, bubble wrap and whatever else you're going to need to send off your products, not to mention making such regular trips to the post office! It could well turn out to be a huge portion of all the work you do.
Professional Invoices From The Invoice Machine
For some people an automated email is enough confirmation of their order. For others, especially customers of more specialised goods, an invoice is what will be expected. A nice PDF that can be printed out and added to the files. But this could be tricky for you; are you very good with Microsoft Word? Could you put something together which looked really professional? If the answer is no, then The Invoice Machine may be the service for you. The Invoice Machine generates
Pay As You Go With Barclaycard ePDQ
When you need to make use of another business's services in order to continue the smooth running of your own, it can often be difficult to determine what will be a good investment for your company and what will be a waste of your money. These sorts of things often have you paying for up to a year at once and not only is that a big dedication, it's also a lot to pay. So it's good news that Barclaycard ePDQ now has a new pay as you go option! If you had been wondering about which
Sellr on Facebook and Twitter
If you're reading this, you probably already know that we have taken the initiative to provide you with new blog posts every single day. We hope that they will prove to be both helpful and interesting for those of you who use Sellr to run their own eCommerce website or even for those of you who have only a passing interest in opening an online shop! But we've not just started blogging more often! We have also set up pages on both Facebook and Twitter (we
eCommerce Business Becomes More Profitable
A recent study has revealed that the eCommerce business has become even more profitable! So much so, that mid-level people in the eCommerce industry are making more money than senior executives in the IT industry. This is good news for you, me and everybody else who is a part of the world of eCommerce. The future is bright. The reason that it is becoming such a profitable industry is that people are making greater use of technology in more and more areas of their lives. When
Improve Customer Support With Olark Live Chat
The satisfaction of your customers is key with any business, and while there may be less direct interaction with the customers when you are running an eCommerce website, you still need to be sure that they're as happy as possible. There are lots of ways to keep your customers happy; accepting a large number of payment options, having a simple to follow website design, offering discount codes and many others. Something which it is important to get right is customer service; you might have
Producing Evergreen Content
I've spoken before about keeping a blog on your eCommerce website and I want to continue that with this post. Today I'm going to talk more about the benefits of keeping a blog and also of the importance of evergreen content (and, of course I shall explain the concept too!), but if you're completely unsure about how to get started with a blog or anything like that, then it might be a good idea to read my earlier post first. The concept of evergreen content is
Make Sure Your Website Looks Trustworthy
The sad fact is that there are a large number of scammers online who spoil the internet for everyone. Because of this, if people come to your eCommerce website and decide that it looks untrustworthy, then they aren't going to make a purchase. Ensuring that your website looks trustworthy should be one of your priorities. If that sounds like it might be difficult, don't worry! I'm going to use this post to go over some ways that you can make sure your website looks
eCommerce Growth
The eCommerce industry is one which has continued to grow and grow since it started out. As more and more people have become technologically capable and more and more people have gained access to computers, it's only natural that eCommerce would become popular. The internet now provides people with a tool which they can use to order whatever they want whenever they want, saving them having to look through shops, and with things like Amazon's recent one hour delivery service, you
How To Sell Online
So you want to learn how to sell things online? If so, that's fair enough! You've come to the right place (we are called 'Sellr' after all!). We provide you with all you need to set up your own online shop. It's a very useful service and one which is completely free too. Users have found success with the websites they've created with Sellr and you might just do the same! In this post I'm going to talk about getting your idea up and running. The first
On Demand T-Shirt Printing From Print Aura
If you're thinking of starting up an eCommerce website, something you might consider selling is t-shirts. A lot of people like t-shirts and it won't be too difficult to ensure that your product is unique. It's the kind of business for a more creatively oriented person, because you can make up your own images or phrases which would then be used on t-shirts. In the past people have become very successful because they've been able to think up a phrase which everybody loved and
The Pros and Cons of Using Google AdSense on Your eCommerce Website
Making money from your eCommerce website isn't always going to be easy. Don't get me wrong, it's a very viable source of income and a growing industry, but you can't expect to be an instant success. In this blog post, I'm going to talk a little about the pros and cons of Google AdSense which can be used to help you earn a little more money through advertisement Do you ever have days where you look at Google Analytics (or whatever else you
Improve Your Customer Experience with Zopim
When you run an eCommerce website, it is important to have a good product, a unique selling point and affordable prices, but there's something more important than all of those things. If you're site isn't very customer friendly, they'll leave before they even realise how good you are. Maybe you make the absolute best dresses; they're comfortable and stylish and made to suit all body types... But that will mean nothing if your customers abandon their purchase after
Get 'Sellr Go' Free For a Year With Barclaycard ePDQ
I have mentioned this already in another post, but as it was quite an exciting piece of news, I thought it warranted its own post. As a special promotion with Barclaycard, if you implement their payment gateway, Barclaycard ePDQ, we will be happy to offer you 'Sellr Go' for free for a year! And, before you even think it: there's no trick attached, you don't have to pay for a second year or anything, you will simply get 'Sellr Go' free for a year and have no
Use Zendesk to Improve the Customer Experience
When you run an eCommerce website the main thing you need to do is accommodate your customers. Your website needs to be easy to use and have its check out process be as simple as possible. The things which are most likely to stop potential customers from going through with their purchases are long sign up processes and complicated payment gateways. You have to be sure to eliminate these things and make your website as streamlined as possible. Zen Desk provides you with the resources
Unique Fonts from Google Fonts
One thing that a lot of eCommerce website owners will be conscious of is how unique their website is. If you lack graphic design skills, or the budget to hire a graphic designer, you might worry that your website will begin to look bland. No matter how good your service, or product, if somebody comes to your website and thinks that it looks boring, they might just leave. In a world where the internet provides everyone with such a large range of choices for every purchase they want to make, you
Use Google Merchant Centre to Promote Your eCommerce Website
For any business to thrive, you need to invest in marketing. In our modern age, the internet provides excellent tools which can be used for free promotion. I've already written about how Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can all be used to promote your eCommerce website for free, but today I'd like to discuss one of the options available to you if you've got room in your budget to spend something on marketing. I'm talking about one of the many useful
How DHgate Can Help Your eCommerce Website
When running your eCommerce website, something which might seem like a challenge is knowing where to go to get your product. Like working in a real life market place, if you want your business to do well, you're going to have to trade with other businesses. DHgate is one such website that handles business to business transactions and provides you with a great way to get in touch with businesses in China. Most people, who do not use DHgate, will have no access to the
Set Up Your Domain Through Network Solutions
If you want to start up your own eCommerce website, there's a good chance that you're going to want a domain. Whether you're starting your business with the launch of your website or launching a website for an established business, buying a domain is a good idea. If you can't afford one right now, that's fair enough, but domains are useful things to have. Domains give a website an added air of professionalism and authority and will make customers feel more confident about
Name Your Business Without a Business Name Generator
I wrote a blog post in the past about how you could use a business name generator in order to name your business. Hopefully that post has been, and will be, useful to anybody who was hoping to start up their own eCommerce website, but what if you don't want to use a business name generator? I can see why you might not want to use one; it just feels more natural and more authentic to come up with the name yourself. From a professional perspective, it doesn't really make a
eCommerce Grows in Turkey
The news has just come through that, in Turkey, the eCommerce industry has grown in value and is now worth the equivalent of £4.5 billion! This accounts for 1.6% of all Turkish retail business, which is certainly an exciting prospect. As we move forward through time and become more and more technological, I imagine this trend is going to continue. This is good news for all of you with Sellr accounts, because business is likely to just get better and better! It's
Increase Traffic With Click Booster
Getting people to find your eCommerce website is difficult. You've got a great business idea, a unique selling point and affordable prices, but what do you do to get people to find it? It's sad to think that there might be a truly amazing business hidden away in some dark corner of the internet. So how do you draw attention to yourself and your wonderful business? Well, one approach is social media, which I've talked about before, but social media is only
Set Up Your Domain Through Crazy Domains
If you're planning on setting up your own eCommerce website, then there's a good chance that you're also thinking of getting your own domain. It's not a requirement (Sellr lets you create your own site without a domain) but it could be a good idea because having a domain is just one of many things you can do in order to make your website look more professional. Crazy Domains is a popular domain provider so in this blog post I am going to talk about how to choose a good domain
Professional Website Designs from Sellr
If you want to create your own eCommerce website, you want it to look professional. There are lots of services on the internet that are based around helping you to create a website, but some of them may be quite difficult to use and not really be made with the average person in mind. Either it will be very basic and not really allow you to make something that looks professional or it won't user-friendly, meaning that while it may be possible to make a very professional site with the tools
Set Up Your Domain Through eNom
If you want to start up an eCommerce website for your business, then something you may well be considering is buying a domain. While it is not required, owning your own domain is a good idea because it helps to make your website look more professional, which in turn will help people to take it more seriously. Of course, you might want to get started without your own domain at first, but it's something you should think about eventually if you don't do it right away. A popular web hosting
eCommerce Business Help From Crazy Egg
People are unpredictable; no matter how you design your website, you don't know how they are going to look at it. Do they scroll down on the homepage to see the current special offers? Do they click on the links to your social media? Do they ever go to your blog? If you had the answer to these questions, you'd be able to make your website even more customer-friendly. Well, the good news is that Crazy Egg will give you the answers you're looking for. Crazy Egg
How Chinavasion Can Help Your eCommerce Website
If you run, or would soon like to run, your own eCommerce website, one thing that you might wonder about is where you are going to find your stock. After all, if you want this business to be sustainable, you're going to need a steady supply of products to sell! There are, of course, many options open to you, but in this blog post I am going to focus on a website called Chinavasion. Chinavasion is a website which sells electronic and tech goods in large quantities from
What is SEO?
You may have heard the term SEO used when reading about online marketing, you may even have a full understanding of the concept, but if you don't, I want to use this blog post as a general introduction to the idea. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which is basically just the ways in which you can try to ensure that your website is more likely to come up on searches through Google and other search engines. So what SEO techniques can you use to ensure that your
eCommerce Politics
On Friday there was a very unexpected announcement; same sex marriages were to be made legal across America. Previously, the law had only allowed same sex marriages in a few states, so people were quite surprised to find that such big change had happened so quickly. How does this relate to your business and the world of eCommerce? Well, you may have noticed that a large number of businesses have been showing their support for these new laws on social media; posting photographs of rainbows and
Exciting New Deals With Barclaycard ePDQ
When you run an eCommerce website one of the most important things for you to ensure is that the customer experience on your website is as easy and convenient as possible. After all, nobody wants to buy things from a website which is really difficult to use! So it is good news that Barclaycard have just launched some new, more affordable, payment packages, which means it may now be much easier for you to enhance the customer experience on your site even more. It would be
Set Up Your Domain Through Bluehost
If you're thinking of setting up an eCommerce website, either as an extension of your existing business or as a wholly new project, then you may well be thinking of buying your own domain. Owning your domain is a good way to make your website look just a little bit more professional as not everybody will be dedicated to their business enough to purchase one. That's fair enough, because if you just have a rough idea for a business which you'd like to try and get started using the
Selling on Facebook With Our Facebook App
When you're running a business which makes use of an eCommerce website, you want people to be able to buy things from that website as easily as possible. Sometimes this will even mean having people able to buy the products from the website without evening visiting it. I've written before about how you can use Sellr to list items on your website and eBay simultaneously and you can also sell items over Facebook with a helpful app which we have created. If
Setting Up an Email Address
Emails are incredibly helpful things and having one opens the doors to a large number of services on the internet (including Sellr!) so you should absolutely get one. Furthermore, if you're going to set up an eCommerce website, then there are certain things you need to keep in mind, regarding emails. In this post I will talk about setting up your own email address and what to do with that in regards to an eCommerce website. I know that, for a lot of readers, the act of setting
Marketing Strategies for eCommerce
Are you in a position where you want to get started with an eCommerce business, but you're worried that nobody will ever find your website? Well, if so, this blog post might be very helpful to you, as I am going to go over several marketing strategies which will doubtlessly come in handy for anybody with a growing business. The first thing to try is Up Selling. If you're not familiar with the concept, Up Selling is when a customer is about to buy a product and then you
What is Sellr?
So you've seen our homepage and read an overview of what Sellr can do. Presumably you liked the sound of it and decided to head over to our blog, so in this post I'm going to talk in a little more detail about what Sellr is and why it's good. I'll also talk about what you stand to gain by using the paid versions of Sellr rather than the free version and hopefully this will provide you with the strong understanding you need, before deciding to use Sellr. Sellr is a
Uploading Images onto Your eCommerce Website and Blog
When starting up your eCommerce website through Sellr, you will doubtlessly want to include images. It's important to provide your customers with some visual stimuli because otherwise you risk your site looking boring. If it's all text, it's unlikely that newcomers will stay for very long. Images break things up, catch the eye of prospects and generally do well for your business. But, of course, with images, you enter the complicated world of copyright. If you think
Branching Out Your Business
Imagine things go well. Imagine things go very well and you're making a living from your eCommerce website. At this point in life (and if you've not opened your Sellr store yet, it could be a while away) you may be wondering whether your business could possibly get any bigger and asking yourself "What next?" If that is the case, then this blog post has the answer for you (or, at least, one of many possible answers). You're probably not going to want to rent a
What You Can Sell Online
The internet is a wonderful tool which has been extremely useful to many people. It provides a way for people to be 'noticed' which was not available in previous generations. Therefore, it only makes sense that you'd want to make use of it and get started with your own eCommerce website. Sellr can be used for free and it helps you to get your own online shop set up in a simple and easy way, some people have seen such big success with their Sellr eCommerce website that it is now
Choose a Logo Generator
One hurdle you may face when setting up your eCommerce website is trying to design a logo. With the easy to use templates and the ability to use your own photographs for stock, you can get your business started without much trouble. However, logos need to be completely unique and you need to have a reasonable level of graphic design skills if you are going to have your own, eye-catching logo. You could go for the minimalist approach and simply write the logo in Times New Roman and use that;
Set Up Your Domain Through Namecheap
If you've got a solid business idea and you want to start up your own eCommerce website, it's very possible that you might like to buy your own domain. Having your own domain is a great way to make your site look professional and to have people take it just a little bit more seriously as a business. One popular choice for webhosting is Namecheap and in this blog post I'm going to talk about choosing your domain name and using it for your Sellr store. Choosing the name
Google Trends for Business Plans
If you'd like to set up an eCommerce website to get a business going, a good thing to do is to mind-map all of the products which you believe you could happily sell. Think about what is practical for you, what you can obtain for a cheap price, what you know about, what fits well with your skill set. Every idea you get should be written down. Try to think of at least ten ideas. Once you've got all your ideas mind-mapped, you should head over to Google Trends, which
Use Instagram to Promote Your eCommerce Website
When people think of using social media to promote their eCommerce, the first things they probably think of are Facebook and Twitter. I've written about both of those before. However, while those are both very useful outlets, something which is becoming more and more useful as a marketing tool is Instagram. Instagram has the capacity to be just as useful as Facebook and Twitter and, depending on how much time you want to dedicate to social media
How to Create a PayPal Account
PayPal is a payment gateway service which can be used to both pay and receive payments from a large number of sources. It is probably the most popular of all payment gateways and therefore, if you have an eCommerce website, it may be well worth your time to open up a PayPal account. You always want to accommodate your customers and this is just one of many ways that you can do so. Opening a PayPal account is such a good idea because then you set it as a way to receive payments
Set Up Your Domain Through HostGator
Having your own domain is a way to make your business stand out from the rest. Of course, if your business is in its early stages you may not need one, but once you've started the ball rolling, buying a domain could be a good investment and a good way to give your eCommerce website that added air of professionalism. One web hosting service which you might decide to use is HostGator and this blog post will be a simple guide about how to use your HostGator domain for your Sellr
Keeping a Blog on Your eCommerce Site
If you've got a website, one thing you want to do is keep people coming back to it as often as possible. This can be tricky when you've got an eCommerce website because people mainly only visit websites like that if they're planning on making a purchase (which won't be every day). The reason it's good to get people returning to your site is that that means they won't forget you and also, the more often they visit your website the more likely they are to favour
What to Write in a Newsletter
If you've got your 'Sellr Pro' or 'Sellr Business' eCommerce website up and running, you're probably going to start thinking in more detail about your long term plans. One thing you might want to do, in order to keep your customers up to date, is send out a newsletter at the end of every month. Writing up a whole newsletter every month might seem daunting, but actually, it may well be a lot easier than you'd think. In this post I'm going to talk about some of the
Use Twitter to Promote Your eCommerce Website
I''ve written before about using Facebook to promote your eCommerce website and it's something that every person with an online business should be trying to do. But Facebook isn't the only useful online networking tool and today I'm going to explain how Twitter can be used to promote your eCommerce website. You may think that Facebook and Twitter are both very similar, but actually the strategies you need to use for them are both quite
Set Up Your Domain Through 1and1.com
If you're hoping to get your own eCommerce website started, you're likely to want your own domain. 1and1.com is a useful and popular service which you can use to get your own domain. In this post I'm going to talk a bit about choosing your domain and then how to get one with 1and1.com and use it for a Sellr store. If you aren't sure what a domain actually is, allow me to explain; the domain is essentially the name of the URL you use for your website.
Visually Appealing Websites
When you're putting together your eCommerce website, there are several important things to consider. Of course, you need a unique selling point, a quality product, good deals and so on, but something which is quite often overlooked is the need for things to be aesthetically pleasing. I don't want to suggest that you should go for style over substance, but getting people to find your website is only one half of the battle; once a potential customer has found you there's no guarantee
Set Up Your Domain Through 123-reg
123-reg is one of the more popular website hosting services and so there's a good chance that you may have used it to acquire the domain name for your business. If you have purchased a domain name through 123-reg then this blog post will be a guide on how you can use that domain for your Sellr eCommerce website. Just in case you aren't sure what a domain is, allow me to give a concise explanation; your domain is basically what the URL of the website will be (e.g.
PayPal Payments on Your eCommerce Site
If PayPal is your preferred means of handling money over the internet, it's only natural that you would also use it as the main mode of payment on your eCommerce website. One misconception is that you need to have PayPal to pay PayPal (if you know what I mean) and, if you're not careful you may actually have it set so that PayPal can only receive PayPal payments. Here's a quick guide to change that. When you log in to PayPal, go to your 'Profile' and then go to
Use Facebook to Promote Your eCommerce Website
When networking, or even socialising, one of the most commonly asked questions is "Are you on Facebook?" More and more, Facebook is becoming the internet networking tool and this presents a good opportunity for business people and self-starters. If you've got an eCommerce website, it would be a really good idea to make a Facebook page for it. One mistake that some people make, when creating a Facebook page for their business, is not creating a business page,
Abandonment Emails with Sellr Business
To speak of abandonment, when talking about eCommerce websites, might seem strange. The word 'abandonment' has such strong negative connotations, but when used in this context we're actually just referring to customers who took the first steps towards making an order but then stopped and did not complete the transaction. While it is odd, there are many reasons a customer might do this. Maybe the customer was about to finish the transaction, but then their internet
Getting Customer Phone Numbers With PayPal Payments
When running a business, it can be quite useful to have a customer's telephone number, that way if you need to urgently contact them about something to do with their order, you can do so. Having a customer's phone number may also come in handy for telemarketing purposes at some point, depending on whether or not telemarketing is a part of your marketing strategy. Regardless, there are many reasons you might want a customer's phone number. It may be a problem to some,
You Don't Need to Use a Slogan Generator
Coming up with a slogan can be hard. What short phrase can you use to summarise your business without it sounding really forced? It's a tricky one and, even though it's a small thing, you might spend quite some time trying to think of something. Of course, you don't have to have a slogan, but it's certainly a good idea; if you can come up with a phrase which will stick in the customers' heads, you've found a way to keep your business in their
What is eCommerce?
Some readers of this blog will already have their own Sellr accounts and be pros with their own eCommerce websites, but everybody has different levels of knowledge about different things and this post is more of an introduction to the idea of eCommerce and what it is that Sellr can do for you. I'm going to talk about what, specifically, eCommerce is (as it's mentioned a lot on this website!) and how it is a great way to help get new businesses to their feet. Ecommerce, put
Free Website Templates for Your eCommerce Website
I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who have an idea for an online business. A lot of people, that is, who never do it. And why don't they do it? For some, the idea of putting together a website must seem like an insurmountable task. "Putting together everything from scratch, surely you'd have to be an expert web-designer with hundreds of free hours on his or her hands," I hear you say, but the truth is, it's actually incredibly simple! Sellr
Naming Your eCommerce Business
What's the first thing people will notice about your business? What's the thing that's going to give them a first impression? The high quality goods or the low prices? No. The fact is, that no matter how odd it may seem, the first thing people are likely to notice about your business is its name. Either your business will pop up from a Google search and people will see the name written there, or somebody will tell someone else about your business. Whatever happens, they hear the
Listing Items on Your Sellr Site and eBay Simultaneously
Today, if somebody is thinking of buying something online, they'll almost certainly check eBay first. The fact is, that when people think online shopping, they think eBay. Does that mean we should all give up and go home? Of course not! There is very much still a place for the independent businesses in the current world of the internet and Sellr can help you to use eBay to get more customers on your own site. If you've got an eBay account, you should have a link back to
Set Up Your Domain Through GoDaddy
If you want to start up your own eCommerce website, you're going to need your own domain. GoDaddy is one of the most popular and well-known websites to use if you want to register a domain. If you're not too sure what that is, your domain is basically the name of your website. To give a concise explanation: www.yourdomain.com and GoDaddy is a service with which to purchase domains. To set up your Go Daddy Domain name to work with Sellr. Login to your GoDaddy account
Using the Google Translate Widget
If you're reading this, I'd wager there's at least a small chance that you're thinking of starting up your own website, or more specifically, an eCommerce website. You may even already have one. As we move forward into the technological age, the internet is becoming more and more predominant and as English is, generally speaking, the language of the internet, learning other languages may seem to be less and less important. But, consider, if your website were to have its text
Basic SEO Factors To Ignore At Your Peril
This blog often focusses on the bigger picture when it comes to running an ecommerce business and for that I make no apologies. After all, in order to be successful online there can be no substitute for a solid marketing strategy. If however, you believe that you have a strong business model yet you are still finding the performance of your website underwhelming, this post will hopefully first highlight, and then serve as a checklist to ensure that neglecting these basic SEO factors does not
How To Start A Profitable Ecommerce Business
Whilst there are a good number of ecommerce websites that are set up either as a necessary extension of a bricks and mortar business or as a way of generating income from a hobby, this post is for you if you are looking to get into ecommerce solely as a profit making exercise. I plan to cover some timeless fundamentals, as well as some of the most up to date ecommerce marketing techniques that will hopefully guide you in establishing a successful online business. Product
Ecommerce Promotions
In previous posts I have discussed a range of popular marketing methods used by ecommerce merchants. Some of the techniques mentioned concern optimization and direct marketing efforts, whilst others are more abstract (but no less important) such as branding and strategy. I am however yet to fully discuss the range of built in promotional tools available to Sellr merchants that can be used to increase the overall volume of sales, as well as the value of each order. In this post I am going
Email Marketing Guide
As an ecommerce business owner it is highly likely that you view email marketing as a key tool for generating inquiries and sales. This is of course correct, however in reality most merchants do not maximise the potential of this channel, so in this post I want to discuss some email marketing best practices that WILL improve the success of your campaigns. Building up an email list Before any email marketing campaign can commence we are first going to need a list of contacts. For
Marketing My Website
Whilst digital marketing when done correctly, can be a highly efficient way of generating business, the high cost of advertising with AdWords and Facebook and the relatively long payback period for SEO efforts can tempt some merchants to undertake traditional offline marketing methods as a way of gaining exposure for their business and boosting sales. I have discussed the details of various online marketing methods in previous posts, so this post is for merchants who have found their digital
Grow Your Ecommerce Business
Following on from last week's post, (which I hope provided a useful overview of the potential routes to market when starting out in ecommerce), some readers may have noticed one key consideration missing. That is of course, the question of "how will I compete in my market?" The reason for this is that such a fundamental and potentially open ended question deserves its own in depth analysis. I will start by stating that you will find it hugely beneficial if you decide on how
Ecommerce Business Model
This post is aimed at those with a complete blank slate as far as their ecommerce venture is concerned. At this stage your opportunities are essentially limitless, although it is likely that you will have a certain amount of preconceived ideas based on your interests and experience. Because the choices made here will be crucial in determining the success of your business, the aim of this post is essentially to cover the range of potential business models, some which you may not
Interpreting Google Analytics
In this post I will assume that you have already set up Google Analytics and added at least one goal to your website, (read this post if you haven't). Realistically you will need to wait a little while in order to collect enough data to be able to make meaningful interpretations. Once you feel like you have reached this stage, the aim of this post is to show you how to get the most out of your analytics account by effectively interpreting this data to guide decisions regarding
Google Analytics
The key to growing your ecommerce business is to be continually optimizing your website and marketing; however it is surprising how many merchants still don't make use of the free tools that are available to help you achieve this. Google Analytics is one of these tools that you should definitely be using to gain insight into how prospects interact with your website. In this post I am going to run through the steps to getting started with Google Analytics. In my next post I
Mobile Website
Mobile Website Design Tips (Please note that for this article I am using the term "mobile" as a proxy for Smartphone. Tablets should be considered a distinct category, however in terms of both user behaviours and conversion rates they have far more in common with desktop / laptop. As a result, Sellr is designed to always show tablet users the primary website optimized for the screen size of the viewer's device). A key finding from Smart Insights
Importing Products Into Sellr
When I speak with merchants who are interested in opening a new website with Sellr, one of the biggest concerns that I regularly hear regards the perceived level of time and effort involved in re-listing their products on our platform. Some businesses have spent such a long time adding products to their existing website that owners I've spoken to feel that they are essentially tied in, unable to feasibly dedicate the time to do it all again. This is a very understandable concern and
How To Launch An Ecommerce Business
One of the biggest myths when it comes to launching an ecommerce business is the assumption that, if you have a quality in-demand product and a well-designed website, that customers will come in their droves. Whilst these points are both crucial, a low quality product will always damage success in the long run and an unimpressive website will have prospects looking elsewhere, the most important factor in getting your ecommerce venture off to a bright start is ensuring that you are showcasing
Shipping Ecommerce Orders
Order fulfilment is rarely the first thing merchants consider when starting a new ecommerce venture, but arguably it should be as it's something that can have a significant impact on your profit margins and your customers' experience. This post is intended to highlight what you should consider when developing of a cost effective shipping strategy that works for your business. Marketing & Order Fulfilment Developing a great ecommerce shipping strategy is about
Should I Use Voucher Websites To Promote My Business?
Groupon Goods and a number of similar discount voucher websites that cater to online merchants have proved to be a massive hit with consumers over the past few years. With Groupon itself boasting over 70 million subscribers worldwide, it's no surprise that the level of exposure on offer attracts many businesses. If you are looking for rapid sales growth then these websites certainly have the potential to deliver, however before jumping in there are various factors
Blogging For Businesses
Everywhere you read on the subject of ecommerce, experts are constantly extolling the benefits of blogging. It is quite likely that if you have not started blogging already it is something you are at least considering. For many merchants however, producing and curating the content for a blog may be something unfamiliar, or perhaps you just don't see where blogging fits in with the product you are selling. To celebrate Sellr's new blog feature (available on all packages), I thought
5 Cost Free Steps To Grow Your Profits
When customers ring us asking for advice on increasing their online revenue, I will normally begin by discussing the methods of our most successful merchants. Whilst it would be easy to suggest increasing their ad words spend, or (in the case of many of our rivals) trying to upsell SEO services, there are some simple, free methods of marketing which can have a far greater effect on sales. The key point I make is that the merchants who enjoy the most success are those who
Best Ecommerce Website For Start-Ups
Why, As a Start-Up, You Should Choose SaaS Over Installable Ecommerce Software If you decide to incorporate ecommerce into your new business's website, you will have to decide between using SaaS or Installable Ecommerce Software. SaaS stands for "software as a service". This is a model whereby software is licensed on a subscription basis and is hosted centrally. In the context of ecommerce this is commonly referred to as a hosted ecommerce platform
Increase Your Websites Sales By Optimizing Conversions
Once your website has been up and running for a few months, you have probably started to consider ways of optimizing conversions on your website. If you are currently running or considering a Pay Per Click campaign then you won't need me to emphasise how important this is to the success of your ecommerce venture. In this post I plan to go over some conversion optimization best practices with an introduction to Google Analytics. So to begin with, what is it exactly that we are
Grow Your Business On Facebook
In a previous post I went over the main principles for creating a brand online. I am now going to go into more actionable detail over how you can make the most of social media to drive sales for your business. A point I made in my previous post but want to reiterate here is about the level of research and planning required for a successful social media marketing campaign. Despite the fact that you are probably very familiar with Facebook from a personal perspective, becoming a successful
Getting A Website
Bringing A Business Online This post is aimed as a guide for the handful of merchants yet to bring their bricks and mortar business online in any capacity, and for a somewhat larger group I imagine who rushed to get their business online a while back without giving the process full consideration. 1. – Establish your aims Before embarking on any business activity it is common practice to establish a set of aims. Clearly this is a necessary process in order that we
Best Ecommerce Software
Choosing The Best Ecommerce Software With a large number of hosted ecommerce software platforms to choose from, and often not much to distinguish between them at face value, a decision may end up being made based on vague familiarity with a providers name, or a bold claim made on their website that appears significant but turns out not to be. This post aims to summarise the main considerations you should prioritise and to highlight why they are important in you making the right
Branding Online
How To Build A Brand Online Every business has a brand whether it's something that you have taken the time to develop or not. Branding can be defined as the sub-total of every experience and association that a customer has with your business. Whilst a strong brand is essential to attract and retain customers, fortunately achieving this online doesn't require a significant financial investment as you might expect. In this post I am going to run through the fundamentals of a
Good Website Design
What Are The Attributes Of Good Website Design? When we speak to new merchants who opt for our custom design service, our standard practice to ask our client to show us a couple of websites they would like theirs to emulate in terms of design and structure. Many clients already have a clear idea of what they want but for those who aren't quite sure I thought it would be a worthwhile idea to list what we feel are the hallmarks of good website
Pay Per Click Advertising
How To Make Pay Per Click Advertising Work For Your Business Even if you have no experience of selling online, it is likely that you are at least vaguely familiar with Pay Per Click advertising. As a new merchant at the stage of planning how you are going to attract more visitors to your website, PPC, commonly referred to as AdWords in reference to Googles PPC platform, is probably a method you have considered. In this post I plan to cover the basics of PPC
How To Make Next Christmas Even Merrier For Your Ecommerce Business
With Christmas now only 2 weeks away, and little more than 1 week left for most retailers to fulfil orders in time for the 25th, you may be beginning to evaluate your sales this festive season and considering how they can be improved next year. Well consider this post as next years early, early, Christmas present, as I plan to run through some of the best methods for boosting conversions in the run up to the holiday season. Incentives As the most expensive time of year
Ecommerce Marketing Trends 2015
3 Ecommerce Marketing Trends You Should Know About In 2015 With the New Year fast approaching and merchants beginning to plan their strategy for the coming year, this post aims to highlight and summarise 3 key trends industry experts are predicting to take off in the next 12 months and why you should get involved. The Rise of Paid Social Advertising With the ability to easily target prospects based on their liking of a complimentary brands page and to
How To Sell More On Ebay
Why eBay Merchants Should Have Their Own Website At Sellr we regularly speak to eBay merchants who are considering starting their own website. Some are looking to increase their market presence and start developing a brand whilst maintaining the consistent business eBay brings them. Others are looking to leave eBay for good due to inhibitive seller fees and a perceived lack of seller protection. In this post I am going to run through some of the main reasons why as an eBay
Ecommerce Jargon Buster
I mentioned in a previous post titled Ecommerce for Dummies how the industry jargon can often be confusing, sometimes leading to prospective merchants permanently keeping one tab open in their browser solely for researching such terms before starting their website! To save this hassle, I've decided to compile a list of the most common abbreviations you are likely to encounter when setting up your web shop. The order of this list is as such so that no "jargon" is
Ecommerce In Africa
Offshore Ecommerce In Africa To celebrate Sellr's integration with Pesapal, a move which will give our merchants access to some of the most exciting developing markets for ecommerce, this blog post is going to focus on the opportunities and potential issues facing online merchants seeking to grow their business on the African continent. Opportunities: The ecommerce start up landscape in certain African countries is flourishing at the moment, with the most
Why Businesses Fail
Ecommerce Fails Whilst there are plenty of ecommerce success stories, to maximise the likelihood of becoming the next one it's important to know what not to do and the relevant fixes. Online sales in many markets are highly competitive due to the ease with which buyers can shop around, and there are a handful of common errors which can lead visitors to leave your website without placing an order. In this post I'm going to go through some of the most common errors
Welcome To Our Blog
Hello and welcome to our new ecommerce blog! We decided to develop our blogging software in response to suggestions from our merchants that this is something they would like to feature on their own website. This got us thinking that it would be great to start our own blog containing advice, guides and news relating to the ecommerce sector. We hope you find it useful and entertaining, and if so, do feel free to get in touch with any areas you wish for us to cover here. Happy reading
Ecommerce For Dummies
Ecommerce For Dummies Are you interested in launching an ecommerce website but don't know where to begin? If so then you've come to the right place. Many merchants, whilst experienced and successful business people are often unsure of the steps involved in opening up an online shop. Whilst it's easy to get confused by industry jargon, the good news is that opening an online store is now both easier and cheaper than ever. In this post I am
Best Products To Sell Online
Best Products To Sell Online As arguably the most important factor in the success of your ecommerce venture, choosing which product/s to sell requires the consideration of many variables. Whether you know that you want to get into ecommerce but have not yet decided on what to sell, or if you already have a product in mind but want to make sure that it is a good choice before investing, the purpose of this post is to highlight the factors you should be
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