“It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.” – Vince Lombardi

How does ecommerce differ from entrepreneurialism? Well, the former is dependent on the latter. What this means is that for every ecommerce business there is an entrepreneur that had to balance risk and reward and determine to move forward with a business plan, proposal and ecommerce site.

Entrepreneurialism is bolstered by the ability to develop a business that can reach around the world and back.

Entrepreneurialism is the mindset and soul of a business; ecommerce is how an entrepreneur can realize a very personal dream.

Entrepreneurialism is a patchwork quilt of ideas that seeks out likeminded consumers through ecommerce.

These two roles are uniquely different, but also distinctly compatible in the development of an online business. In all phases of development the entrepreneur should express positive emotion as the very thing only dreamed about comes closer to becoming a reality.

There are many wannabe entrepreneurs who have dreams, but they gather dust in the back of minds because of fear, poor choices or other limitations that make it difficult for these individuals to consider developing their own business.

Did you know that President Abraham Lincoln, one of the most revered Presidents in history, had a track record that indicated he was less than an ideal candidate for success? He had little formal education coupled with personal, political and business loss. He often seemed to side with the minority political opinion and he even went through bankruptcy.

Yet it was this President that brought about the end of slavery in America. It was his belief in justice and freedom that caused him to rebound from failure after failure. He learned what he could from the mistakes and discouragements he encountered. In the end he prevailed in the radical alteration in how America treated it’s citizens.

You may have tried using your entrepreneurial ambitions in an ecommerce setting and failed. In that knowledge you may be gun shy about giving ecommerce a second try.

If there is anything to learn from the life of President Lincoln it is that no matter how difficult things get it does not have to signal the end of a dream. Difficult circumstances can simply be the mechanism needed to come at the problem from a new perspective of perseverance.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison

In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Poynter Institute, Eyetools and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has a lot to say about more than where to put an AdSense block.
Designing an eCommerce site is more than making it pretty. You have certain desired actions you’re looking for from your visitors. You have specific things you want to be sure they see and hopefully act on. Now, there’s some research that can guide your design. Certainly you want your site to look professional, but you want it to do its job as effectively as possible too.
People are surprisingly alike in some of their basic visual behavior. It’s been argued that our evolution as hunter-gatherers has shaped much of our ingrained visual patterns. Whether you buy that particular argument or not there are still important commonalities.
Typical behavior on initially viewing a site is to do a fast scan of the entire visible screen with short focusing periods around the areas that attract attention. First pass tends to include headlines, the page logo, photo captions, subheads, links and menu items. And the big hot spot is the upper left corner of the screen. I haven’t seen any definitive research on whether these patterns also hold for users with native languages that read any way except left to right, but I’m assuming most of you are building sites for left-to-right readers.
The clear message is that your most important real estate is in that upper left area and that the lower right (particularly if it’s below the fold) is the least likely to receive much attention.
How you use your words in a headline, paragraph or link can make a huge difference in your success at capturing a visitor’s attention. The concept is called frontloading. Wherever you can make sure your critical terms appear at the very beginning of headlines, links and other text. It’s still got to make sense, but the first few words are far more likely to be at least scanned then the middle or end of a headline or link or the inside of a paragraph.
The exact same words can have drastically different capture rates depending on their order. You want to maximize the probability that the visitor will read a whole headline or link and then act on it. So put the most significant, enticing words first – the ones that are the best grabbers and convey the subject immediately.
You don’t have a lot of time to mess about. It’s been reported that a typical surfer may be off your page in well under 14 seconds unless something grabs his or her attention fast. Remember the upper-left? You want to do an especially good job with headlines, link and text in that area.
Dropcaps (where the first capitalized letter in a line is in a different, often unusual, font and extends below the normal text base-line), bolding, font changes and color changes can also serve as strong eye-attractors. If you try these techniques you need to be careful that you don’t overuse them (your page will look like a mess), and it’s extremely important that you test whether or not they’re actually doing what you want. Annoying as it may be, running tests is the only way to make sure it’s an improvement.
Do you use lists? Have you made sure that they’re in-line and as close to the left margin as possible? Don’t ever use an outline format with multiple indents. People scan down, not across and they tend to scan close to the left margin. Indent too much and it might as well be invisible.
An interesting testing result that I read somewhere said that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of site visitors don’t even see centered headlines. Sure they look nice and a lot of sites use them, but if they’re totally missed by even 3 percent of your visitors, you’re paying a major price to look good. Suggestion? Put those headlines up against your left margin.
This also applies to links. Put those links up against the left margin, not inside a paragraph, centered or off to the right. And if you want any clicks on a link, never put it in that nearly unseen lower right area. Might as well just leave it off your page.
How about indented paragraphs? Now there’s a great way to start an argument. Some argue that it attracts the eye, it’s different, few sites use it so you stand out. Others insist that you’re far better off staying left justified and frontloading each paragraph. There’s only one way to resolve it for yourself, yeah, run some tests and see what works with your visitors on your site.
The bottom line is that once you get beyond the basics of placement, frontloading, and left-justified links and headlines, you need to test if you want to fully maximize the effectiveness of your website design. I wish there were a simpler answer too, but in the end only testing will tell you what works best for your site.

Think about this. You are planning to engage in “eCommerce”, to take your business online. So, you need to learn a new set of business rules, a new way of doing things, because online business is “different”, right?

Well, actually, no, not really. You still have a product or service to sell. You still have a store with a shop “window” (your website) and you still need the customers to visit your store, in order to buy whatever it is that you are selling.

The only major difference is that (continuing the analogy) your local store window can only be seen by a small group of people, whereas your online business can be seen by the whole world. By engaging in eCommerce, you can take your business “global”.
For many businesses, this is truly an advantage, representing a wonderful opportunity.

But that is not the case for everyone, particularly for companies who sell a physical , tangible product. When planning to go online, therefore, you should spend some time thinking about your product and exactly who your target market is, because this will be a crucial factor in determining whether your venture is a success or a failure.

What it is that you plan to market on your eCommerce enabled website, and who will want to buy it? Some products will, by their very nature, not be totally suited to a world wide market. Pork based food products for example, will not be popular in Muslim countries, nor will wine, whisky or beer. Sales of open toed sandals may be disappointing in Iceland, Greenland and the frozen polar North.

Secondly, give very careful thought about how you will get your product to the customer. For example, if you were to make laser toner cartridges in Asia (as one of my client companies does) there is absolutely no sense in trying to sell one or two cartridges at a time to a customer in the USA, because of the cost of delivery.

So, if your product is bulky or heavy, selling outside your locale may not be practical.

Furthermore, you need to consider that, whilst most countries use the same Standard International Trade Classification (S.I.T.C) codes for deciding on how much import duty to levy on a particular product, the actual duty to be paid varies from country to country, and such variations can (and will) lead to disputes. Again, using my client as an example, they sold a consignment of toner cartridges to a customer in Finland, which got held up in Customs for several weeks on arrival in Helsinki, because of a dispute over the Import Duties to be paid.

Whilst this was not the fault of my client or his customer, nevertheless, the result was an unhappy customer, who obviously did not become a regular customer.

Likewise, if you plan on selling a service online, can that service be provided outside your local area in such a way that you still make money? Do you need to have one of your own staff actually work with the customer (in which case, you need to stay local) or can the work be easily subcontracted on a global basis? Would it be easy to find such a local subcontractor capable of supplying your advertised service in such a way that both you and the customer are happy? How much would such a subcontractor cost?

Unless you can get positive answers to all of these questions, then, again, it may pay you to keep your services local, rather than overreaching, in order to become a global player.

The simple truth is that, whilst the global nature of the internet allows you so sell to the whole world, it is the nature of your product or service that will ultimately decide whether this is practical for your potential customers, and profitable for you, or not. To read more, http://webbiz99.com/ecommerce/

Wholesale directories are listings that have products in bulk at up to 80% off the retail price. Learn how to search for ones without being ripped off.

Wholesale directories also double up as goldmines on the Internet. With a light bulk or drop ship directory, users have access to products at discount prices that could earn them steady profit at EBay auctions. However, there is the misconception that wholesale directories are easy to come by. Novices proclaim Google as God’s gift to man when it comes to free wholesale directory, believing two clicks of the mouse will lead them to Ipod wholesalers. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

For starters, legit drop ship directories cost money. This information is simply too valuable to pass along for free and EBay auctioneers may spend months looking for a reputable dealer. In Spain’s version of EBay, there are only one or two retailers who sell authentic Armani watches. This has allowed them to “corner” the Armani watch market in Spain. You can bet a free wholesale or drop ship directory didn’t lead them to that! Plus, many directories of wholesale distributors are scams with plenty of middlemen and suppliers that want a piece of the action. It is a very impractical way to start a new business.

One of the best ways to find a light bulk wholesale directory is to buy a directory from a reputable company. Legit wholesale directories have staff that ensure that companies behind the product are real and not scams. Plus, these wholesale directories come with a guarantee that states that all suppliers in the directory are real. In the past, scams have arisen from companies posing as drop shipping agents which give them the unfortunate title of middleman. With outrageously monthly fees and a cut into profits from the suppliers, all you will get in return is a lower margin.

Another folly of many wholesale directories and drop shipping directories are the numerous scammers that want to redirect people to one wholesale person. 3884 buying the same Balenciaga handbags from the same wholesale person and flipping them on EBay would generate too much competition and leave the scammer ahead. A real wholesale product directory has many suppliers that pay their own overhead and rent warehouses to ship products out. This might mean a customer service staff is not far behind. Drop ship agents should be avoided if you see them on a Google search engine results page outright. Beware of EBay auctions that list supplier lists with the “best suppliers” as well. To conclude, true wholesale directories take some time to locate, which makes you pull ahead of the competition in the end when you finally find a legit one.

You might think that the best ecommerce marketing strategy is advertising. Banner ads, one line text links and larger graphic ads on websites and in newsletters are one way to advertise. It’s usually a fairly expensive way, though. Especially if you have the graphics made to be eye-catching, like animations that are sure to get people to notice them. But just because someone notices the person doing cartwheels on your graphic ad, that doesn’t mean they’re going to click it. And many people are so annoyed by ads, particularly moving, flashy ones, that they run software that automatically blocks them from ever having to see such things. How are you going to reach them?

And even of those who see your ad, what percentage of them is likely interested in whatever you’re selling? Like a billboard on a highway with everyone passing, not many are actually going to be looking for what’s in the advertisement. So if you base your ecommerce marketing strategy on those kinds of ads, it’s kind of like throwing rocks into a crowd and hoping you accidentally hit someone.

There are techniques you can implement in your ecommerce marketing strategy, though, that are very focused and take much of the randomness and guesswork out of your plan. Search engine optimization is an important part of your strategy. This will help you design your content and web pages to get noticed by the search engines. You’ll focus each page on certain keywords surrounding your business, and when someone’s searching on that phrase, your company comes up high in the search engine results.

At least that’s it in theory. In reality, it’s not nearly so simple. Just optimizing the content you already have will definitely help. But the key to this type of ecommerce marketing strategy is to show new content on a regular basis. This shows the search engines that the website is active and updated regularly with keyword rich content. As far as the search engines are concerned this makes one site more valuable and vital than another site with similar content that’s not updated as often. So an important part of your ecommerce marketing strategy should always be new content that’s also search engine optimized.

Four- to five-hundred words on each keyword is a good plan, at least to start with. And care must be taken to make sure this content isn’t just attractive to search engines, but important to people, too. Gone are the days when site could list keywords or be filled with gibberish full of keywords just to get good rankings. Now it’s important that the content is there for more than just your ranking. So your ecommerce marketing strategy has to address the quality of the content not just how many times a keyword might appear within it.

Where at one time a simply repetition of the keyword many times in a row might have attracted a good ranking, you should avoid this in your ecommerce marketing strategy because search engines recognize most of these tricks.