One of the best ways to improve your site and the way customers will interact with it is to create a sense of trust. The best place to do that is in the most visible section of your homepage: the header section and the space immediately below it. This is the first place people look when they visit your site, so it's here that you should make the all-important first impression.   Casual visitors can be turned into serious customers when they trust a site. Here are some suggestions that will boost the trust factor of your site and put visitors at ease and more eager to buy.   Images go a long way to providing visitors with a reason to stay and look around. To create a personal touch that customers identify with, think about including a small image of the site owner and their name somewhere obvious, without impacing your professional design.   If the store owner actually uses the products they sell, add a line that tells customers. A store owner who uses their own products adds more trust and personalisation while giving the customer a good feeling about the store.   Include one or two icons in addition to the "shopping cart" such as a link to a "Shipping and Ordering Information" page and/or a "Questions and Comments" or "FAQ" page for example.    Do you provide offers like "Free Shipping", "Same Day Shipping" "Courier Delivery" etc? Then make sure your customers know about them by include banners with your offers clearly labelled right up there where they can see them.   If you have a free phone number available for taking orders, make it highly visible along with the hours you can take phone orders, right beneath the store name.  There are a lot of ways to increase sales by making small improvements to your site. Creating a trusting first impression is one of the more effective of them.

The term ‘success in business’ is an ambiguous one. Jack might be happy by simply making a profit, but Jill might only be satisfied with a few million in her pocket. Whatever your understanding is of success and however long it takes you to get there, you all start from the same place. As a beginner of selling online, you have a steep learning curve ahead. Follow these Seven tips as a base to future work and you’ll be well on your way to ecommerce success. Define a Marketing Budget, e.g. SEO, payperclick ads, magazine ads. Too many merchants only include set up costs and can’t afford to market their store once it’s ready to trade. Marketing is one of the highest expenses to a business; as a beginner, watch your conversion rate so you don’t blow all your money in the first month. Good Product Photography Sells Buying a product online can be impulsive for customers. Don’t waste a conversion opportunity with a poor quality, dark photo with a busy background. Your photos should showcase your product. Set them on a white background, well lit without shadows. Let them convey quality in every way. Cheapest Doesn’t Equal More Sales There are strategies to achieve selling without losing profit margins. If you’re in a highly competitive market, find something you can do better than anyone else. Service, speed of delivery and loyalty programs are all examples of what can set you apart from competitors. Push this difference to your customers and your prices won’t matter as much anymore. Unique and Detailed Product Descriptions Don’t feed your visitors generic, boring information. Wow them with helpful and fun to read content that also serves to inform them about your product. It’s good for sales and good for SEO. Avoid using exact data provided by manufacturers or you’ll end up being identical to your competitors, just ranked lower. Create a Customer Service Plan There are many service and sales tools out there that help to present your business as a caring, lively, service oriented one. Use a live chat and support ticketing software to connect with your visitors and respond to customers promptly and professionally. Make sure you extend any service procedures to your staff for continuity and branding. List your privacy policy and terms clearly on your site. Include Review Tools on your Products Real customer reviews are what sell your products. It’s human nature to believe a solid referral over what a sales person promises. If you list both positive and negative comments on your product pages, this will serve better than any product description can. Professional Design Equals Professional Store Professional looking sites that have obviously put some investment into it, build trust and branding. It’s memorable too, so customers are more likely to return in future. If your site appears to look old, tired or set up overnight, it’s more likely to have a high bounce rate. Selling online is competitive and sometimes cut-throat. Keep on learning and stay ahead of your competition using the latest strategies and focussing on niche markets.

In case you missed it, Ashop recently ran a video competition where the major prize was a new Ipad 3. Below is the winners announcement!   We'll try to get a pic up soon with the winner sporting his new toy.   

We all know how important it is to track and analyse your site traffic, but it's not always so easy to set it up.   This is where Ashop Commerce Google Analytics integration comes in. It's a few very simple steps to enable tracking from both your Ashop admin panel directly as well as more detail from your Analytics account login.    You can now draw data from your Google Analytics account to your Ashop admin in basic form, essentially it's to monitor your traffic flow at a glance. Follow the instructions here to set up your integration.  This will automatically replace the more basic data provided by Ashop.   The same setup will also allow Google to gather more information from your online store including site referrals, cross domain tracking, goal tracking/funneling and conversion reports. Now that the core integration is complete, Ashop will be allowing more data to be passed which will open up more detailed analysis through Google such as Ecommerce Conversion Tracking.     This is the Google Analytics settings page:        

Robert Cialdini's Laws of Persuasion in Action. Every business owner wants to know what their customers are thinking when looking at their store or products. Cialdini provides a nice summary of how customers think and what actions your business can take to react to these thoughts. Reciprocity Your giving to me makes me really want to give back to you - I feel indebted to you, and quite franklu it creates a little discomfort. I owe you now and I want to even things. Call it "closed-loop" karma if you wish. An unexpected "bonus" gift with your purchase. A free trial, a free whitepaper, free newsletter. Telling customers you've donated $15 to the charity of their choice before they've even completed the purchase. Scarecity People hate to miss out, sometimes even if it's something they don't like! We have an innate instinct to hoard - it's an evolution thing - and as a result we become extremely uncomfortable when we're made aware of opportunities that are limited in number or for a limited duration. The closing window: "last chance", only one week left!" "Act now while supplies last!" "Here today gone tomorrow - don't delay". "Limited edition" products; "collectors editions" - art prints, coins, stamps, Barbies, Star Wars figures. Likability We want to do nice things for people we like. We're also more likely to trust and listen to them. So whome do we tend to like? 1) People we have lots in common with. 2) Poeple who love to tell us how great and good looking we are! (We can't get enough Praise) Celebrity and athlete endoresments. "our product is for smart, attractive people, just like YOU!" Why car salespeople try to learn early on what you both have in common. The closer you feel to her, the more you like her and liable to trust her. Authority People wearing nice suits, Police officers, firefighters, Doctors. We become Zombies in the presence of such authority figures in their domains of expertise. "I'll do whatever you say..." Power of "Opinion Leaders" - featuring consumer reports, positive review of your product, including and endorsement from Seth Godin on the back of your book. Getting H&R Block to endorse your new tax software or Suze Orman to endorse your new no-load mutual fund. Social Proof They seem to nlike it, there must be something good about it. AKA, "The bandwagon effect", "Wisdom of the crowds". Testimonials (especially from people like yourself) Power of word-of-mouth, customer reviews Long lines outside a night club (even though the club is often half empty) Consistency / Commitment My current actions must align with my prior actions and commitments. Contradictory behaviour makes me very uneasy. "Foot-in-the-door" technique - getting someone to make small commitments to lead up to a much bigger commitment. Getting user to register for free newsletter or become a "fan" on Facebook before offering user fee-based offerings. Contrast We always evaluate our situation using some type type of reference point - whether we're evaluating the "goodness" of our incomes, spouses, children, education, etc. Marketers and salespeople often engineer reference points for you within certain purchase settings. E.g. when you're buying a new car, the salesperson wants you to think bout the $1k "option" to install heated tush warmers relative to the $40k you're already spending on the car and not the 3% inerest you'd earn by instead putting the $1k into your savings account. For only $19 you can get 6 more inches of legroom for your flight. The flight's already $450 - what's another $19 for 5 hours of comfort? "How about this nice $200 tie to go with your new $2k suit? You're already spending $2k, why not spend a mere 10% more and make the suit perfect!"

Only a week ago, Google finally announced Google+ Pages for your business, which will allow businesses to connect with people from their personal profiles... which is essentially the same in how your Facebook Fan page has been helping you connect with other Facebook users through "likes".   Google has created a snazzy introductory video on YouTube.    Functionality, in many ways, is similar between Google + and Facebook, such as photo, video and link sharing between business fans. Above this, there will be a new range of new innovations in networking.  Spend time face-to-face time with your fans on a Google+ Hang Out Fans can add your business page to their circles Get recommendations from your fans with +1 Unlike personal +1 accounts. When a business is +1'd, it is a recommendation, however will not automatically add ot a circle. When a user manually adds your page to their circle, they will be subscribing to your updates.   This is the Google+ Pages information & sign-up page:     This is the Google + Your Business own Google + page:     Whilst this release is only relatively new, Google +1 business pages are already appearing in search results. This can give your brand an additional placement in search results. Businesses should seriously consider building a +1 page if not purely for SEO performance reasons. Additional brand recognition and enhanced social media visibility and interaction nowadays make a significant impact in search results.   The final reason to adopt this is to secure the potential competitive advantage, as many businesses found they had fallen behind their competitors who had created Facebook Pages before them.

We're very excited to release the new Partner Program to All Ashop Commerce customers and digital agencies. What is the Partner Program? The Partner Program offers a hefty 30% commission (Recently upped from 20%) on the monthly fees from any new Ashop Commerce customer referral.  Partners have the opportunity to market Ashop Commerce services to friends or randoms via a range of method such as Twiiter, email, Facebook, website banners, and more depending on your creativity. How can I join the program? You can join via two different methods. Ashop Commerce customers can join at the click of a buttom from your dashboard on the right column. Click the "activate now" link and your promotional options will appear with your console link.   Digital agencies such as designers can join via the Partner Page found here http://www.ashop.com.au/g/1060279/partner-program.html Agencies will be reviewed and approved manually within 2 days. Want to learn more about the finicky details? The FAQ's page can help you http://www.ashop.com.au/g/1060279/partner-program.html#3 Otherwise, feel free to email Partners@ashop.com.au for more. We look forward to working with you to spead the word and help more merchants get online easily, quickly and professionally. Thank you, The team at Ashop Commerce

We’re pleased to announce, on the 6th of October 2011, Ashop Commerce has completed an upgrade to V3. Major versions are updated based on the scale of work to the system. For example, this version comprises not only of a few additional features, general improvements and bug fixes, but also a complete system rewrite.   While most of the upgrade is "under the hood", I’ll take you through a list of more noticeable changes below. For now, here's an outline of the purpose for the upgrade as well as the outcome and moving forward. Purpose Nine months ago, V2 was released and as many of you know, there were headaches associated. The more general cause behind this was due to a completely new platform, built from scratch with the addition of transferring old to new when each platform was using a different language (ASP to .Net plus CSS for themes). Once V2 was fixed up, we could move on to improvements. V3 mainly comprised of a rewrite, the purpose being, to allow for a faster database setup and storefront speeds. In addition, we added updates to external scripts used in the admin and storefronts (not to get techie). Outcome As many of you noticed, stage 1 performance updates were released with considerable speed improvements, this will continue over the next few weeks. Over 50 bugs were fixed up, a range of new features were released and a new app based model came into play. Improvement list Here’s a quick list of some improvements we’ve made as a start for this new version. Performance increases. Numerous updates being release each week from now. App based model. We’re changing the setup so you only pay for what you use. It’s now possible to buy app bundles at a few different levels and only buy the extra apps you may require such as more products (250 pack) or the new Google Adwords integration. We’ll release more information on new features via Facebook. New features released or coming very soon. Google Adwords integration to manage your account directly from your admin, Ebay integration (soon) and Ashop footer link removal. We’ve now started work on mobile storefronts, zone based shipping options and more. Moving Forward We’re excited about the new performance and increasing stability of the system. Now, with major upgrades behind us, the future focus will be mainly on current feature improvements and new innovative features. There’s a list of over 80 filtered features that are currently being prioritised and you’ll all be notified close to the release of each one. We look forward to informing you of ongoing improvements each month and hope to hear your feedback via the forum, blog or Facebook

Images on custom pages   It’s surprising how the use of images on general custom informative pages can really satisfy different needs of visitors.    One of the most common examples is a contact us page. If you’re a retail store, try placing Google maps to display your location. At a glance, your visitors visually see where you are, rather than trying to picture it in their head. On your “about us” page, place a picture of you or your staff. Again, this will help connect and build trust for a potential loyal customer. Learn how to install a Google Map.     Lately there’s an emerging recognition for what’s called an “infographic”.  Information graphics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics (a chart or diagram) present complex information quickly and clearly. If you’re thinking about a long page of informative text. Try to think of a way that an image might summarise it clearly and fast. This not only helps reduce bounce rates of visitors, but also build inbound links from happy web traffic. An example might be to explain more about a product and link to its selling page.     Images play a very important part in your overall conversion rate. They can change a victors interpretation of your company, their emotions and speed of sale conversion. Take a look through your site today and see what changes you can make.

Product page images Your product page is your final chance for the big sell, so don’t let it slip away through carelessly placed product images.   A product image should; Cover all angles that matter Have clarity and quality Be sizable Be enhanced by real life situations   Cover all angles Too often do I see product images where you get the front-on photo and that’s all.  Let’s say you’re selling a dress. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and question if that single image is enough to persuade a sale. If you correctly answered no ?, then consider adding a photo from all applicable angles and even close ups of special features such as a pleat or hem line. You can even do an ultra-zoom to show quality and texture of fabric. Customers can’t try on clothing from an online store, so help them where ever possible.   Here's an example where they show the sole of the shoe, not just the top.   Clear, quality images It’s important not to turn off visitors with fuzzy or distorted images. Think, if you wanted to buy a unique Iphone case and the only images they uploaded were fuzzy on a black background. That’s a sale gone. Images should be crystal clear to show the fine details and be lifelike. A white background will let the product images speak for themselves.   Good size images Thumbnails don’t sell products. Upload a product image in the largest size you see fit for your product. Roughly 800 x 800 is good. It fills a good portion of most screens and prevents scrolling vertically and horizontally. In your Ashop store, this will automatically resize to the main product and listing page sizes.   Enhance using real-life  A dress on its own is hard to connect with. Place it on a suitable model and I guarantee your sales will increase. Put a show on a foot with matching clothing. Customers will connect with your products better when seen in a real-life situation.   See how they use a real model as well as the product on its own