Prosper Newsletter: April 2008 > Ecommerce

You understand that the following information is educational in nature and is not intended to be legal, accounting, or tax advice. You are responsible for your own financial decisions and should consult your own legal, accounting, and tax advisors before making your financial decisions.

Online Storefront

Getting it Right

Setting up an online storefront is a crucial part of creating a successful eCommerce website. Just as product displays in a brick and mortar store are crucial to create a positive shopping experience for walk-in customers, so too is the look and feel of your eCommerce store.

In order to attract customers, good online storefronts should have the following features and attributes:

User-friendly Navigation. This is without question the most important aspect of setting up an online store. Most online shoppers have little patience with eCommerce sites that are clumsily designed and difficult to navigate. Customers want to easily locate the products they desire. To that end, your directories should be well-organized and easy to navigate. Additionally, you should include a search feature if you offer an extensive inventory of products or services.
Professional Look and Feel. It is important to project a professional image on the Internet. Savvy online shoppers are used to high-quality online stores with big budgets. Make sure your online store employs good graphics, legible text, and a consistent design throughout the entire site.
Informative. Customers are more likely to buy if all of their questions are answered without having to ask them! Price, specifications, shipping costs, and all other relevant information should be presented with your products.
Related Items. Along with your products, suggest related items or present related items in groups. Grouping related items together makes such items easy to find and encourages targeted customers to buy additional items.
Simplify the Purchase Process. Make the purchasing process as simple as possible. Being able to quickly close the sale is an integral part of eCommerce success. Delaying the purchasing process with multiple pages or actions can frustrate online shoppers and may result in lost sales. The software you choose to create your online storefront typically dictates how long it takes to complete a purchase, so choose wisely.

There are many different types of eCommerce software, and they are available at a wide range of prices. The right one for your business will depend on what type of business you have, how extensive your eCommerce site is, the features you require, your budget, and your level of tech savviness, among other things. Good eCommerce software is easy to use, offers good customer support, and has an array of features to offer.

Take a spring-cleaning approach as you search for the best software for your site. Weed out the features you don't need, and stick with something that works well for you. Whatever you choose, be sure to investigate the software carefully to make sure it meets your needs. Proper research will help you find the service that meets your needs for a price you can afford. Spring is a time for cleaning, so make sure you choose a program that meets your needs without cluttering your business with add-ons and features you will not use.

My Favorite Thing About Prosper: The Coaches

My prosper experience has been a very good one. I started out not knowing anything about eCommerce, and now I have an eBay store. I've also made several sales on Craigslist. For me, however, my biggest achievement has been designing my website. With the help of my coach, I was able to research, design, and market my own web store, using techniques that he taught me. For example, I've learned SEO, Onsite SEO, SMM, PPC, Blogs, Articles, Press Releases, How to submit to search engines and directories, and much more. This information is invaluable to me and my business and has opened possibilities beyond what I knew were available.

My favorite things about Prosper have been the coaches and their willingness to help and interest in my success. I can tell that my success is important to them and that makes me know I'm with the right people and program. I also like the extensive library Prosper has. Everything from the archived conference calls, to the curriculum, to the blog articles. It's a very extensive network of resources available 24-7 which helps because I have a busy schedule as a full time student. Another thing I like is the coach's available hours. I'm in school most of the day and it's nice to have evenings and Saturdays open to call the resource line for guidance.

My life has changed greatly because of the doors that Prosper has opened for me. I now have multitudes of new possibilities around every corner. I look forward to walking the new paths Prosper has opened for me.

Darin H.

Article Submission

An article is any piece of information involving a topic of your website. An article can be a review of a product, information regarding a certain product, or general information surrounding some or any aspect of your site.

In real estate you may hear that the three most important aspects are location, location, location. Well, with an Internet business article it can be summed up by saying this—search engine optimization, search engine optimization, and, yes, search engine optimization. Something that helps your website get better traffic is content, and A LOT of it!

When you consistently write articles about your website (at least one a week), include them on your site, and submit them to publishers, then your content always looks fresh—and the search engines love that! The more content the better. How does an article help us with search engine optimization? You need more back links to your site than the competition. Sometimes the sites you are going up against have thousands of back links.

Each article submitted has the chance to be published by over 20,000 publishers. If you are submitting at least one a week to over 20,000 publishers, there is a good chance you will build up the much needed links to help you gain more link popularity—which helps your natural search engine rankings.

Spring is right around the corner, and you can use a spring cleaning approach in your article writing. Since you are writing articles solely for search engine optimization, there are several things you need to make sure to do with these articles.

Focus your articles on one main keyword, and anchor that keyword to your site several times inside the article. When the search engines crawl the article submission sites, they will start associating those keywords with your site and giving you better rankings and more popularity for those words and phrases.

There are several places to submit articles, such as:

www.articlecity.com
www.goarticles.com
www.isnare.com (isnare.com has a feature that lets you purchase over 100 article submissions for only $100.00, and each one you submit gets sent to over 20,000 publishers.)
www.mediamonkey.co.uk
financeresourcedirectory.info
www.articlefever.com
ezinearticles.com
www.ezineplug.com
www.ArticleAlley.com
www.ArticlesFactory.com
www.ArticleWorld.net
www.ContentDesk.com
www.EzineArticles.com
www.IdeaMarketers.com
www.InternetHomeBusinessArticles.com
www.Marketing-Seek.com
www.UltimateArticleDirectory.com

Paid article submissions often provide you the ability to submit HTML. This is nice as it allows you to anchor up your major words in these articles. In most cases it also guarantees your article will be submitted.

There is no better time than now to start submitting articles for your site. Take a spring cleaning approach to ensure that they contain all the right content and are submitted to the best directories.

*See the Elective Class Catalog in your Success Center for the latest dates, times, and class details.

April

Elective Class Schedule:

General Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

1^st

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Business Organizations
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

1^st

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Product Sourcing
General Elective Class Given by Paul Weaver

1^st

Time:
1:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Revitalize and Activate Your Goals
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Mat Siltala

1^st

Time:
1:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Offsite SEO and Link Building Strategies
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Mat Siltala

1^st

Time:
2:45 PM (MST)

Topic:
Grow your Business Using Social Media
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Richard Webb

1^st

Time:
4:30 PM (MST)

Topic:
PPC Search Engines
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

2^nd

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
eCommerce Legal Compliance
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

2^nd

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Shopping Networks and Joint Ventures
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Mat Siltala

2^nd

Time:
8:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Offsite SEO and Link Building Strategies
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Mat Siltala

2^nd

Time:
10:15 AM (MST)

Topic:
Grow your Business Using Social Media
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dan Patterson

2^nd

Time:
2:30 PM (MST)

Topic:
Get Started with an eCommerce Business
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Peter Nugent

2^nd

Time:
5:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
eBay Overview
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

3^rd

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Business Protections of Intellectual Property
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

3^rd

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Web Development and Branding
4th
5th
6th
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Peter Nugent

7^th

Time:
2:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
eBay Overview
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dan Patterson

8^th

Time:
10:00 AM (MST)

Topic:
Get Started with an eCommerce Business
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

8^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Shopping Networks and Joint Ventures
General Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

8^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Business Organizations
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

9^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Web Development and Branding
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

9^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
eCommerce Legal Compliance
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

10^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Business Protections of Intellectual Property
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

10^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Product Sourcing
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Richard Webb

10^th

Time:
11:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
PPC Search Engines
General Elective Class Given by Darren Hardy

11^th

Time:
6:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Small Business Accounting
General Elective Class Given by Paul Weaver

11^th

Time:
6:30 PM (MST)

Topic:
Revitalize and Activate Your Goals
12th
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Peter Nugent

13^th

Time:
10:00 AM (MST)

Topic:
eBay Overview
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dan Patterson

14^th

Time:
2:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Get Started with an eCommerce Business
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Richard Webb

14^th

Time:
4:15 PM (MST)

Topic:
PPC Search Engines
General Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

15^th

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Business Organizations
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

15^th

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Shopping Networks and Joint Ventures
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

16^th

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
eCommerce Legal Compliance
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

16^th

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Product Sourcing
General Elective Class Given by Paul Weaver

16^th

Time:
12:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Revitalize and Activate Your Goals
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

17^th

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Web Development and Branding
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

17^th

Time:
7:30 AM (MST)

Topic:
Business Protections of Intellectual Property
General Elective Class Given by Darren Hardy

18^th

Time:
6:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Small Business Accounting
19th
20th
General Elective Class Given by Paul Weaver

21^st

Time:
9:00 AM (MST)

Topic:
Revitalize and Activate Your Goals
General Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

22^nd

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Business Organizations
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

22^nd

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Product Sourcing
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

23^rd

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
eCommerce Legal Compliance
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

23^rd

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Shopping Networks and Joint Ventures
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Richard Webb

23^rd

Time:
11:30 PM (MST)

Topic:
PPC Search Engines
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Andy Melchior

24^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Web Development and Branding
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dave Mink

24^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Business Protections of Intellectual Property
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Peter Nugent

25^th

Time:
1:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
eBay Overview
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Dan Patterson

25^th

Time:
4:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
Get Started with an eCommerce Business
26th
27th
28th
eCommerce Elective Class Given by Peter Nugent

29^th

Time:
1:00 PM (MST)

Topic:
eBay Overview
General Elective Class Given by Paul Weaver

30^th

Time:
6:30 PM (MST)

Topic:
Revitalize and Activate Your Goals