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Case Study- Free E-commerce site w/cart- step by step
 

Hey all,

It's been a while since I last posted. I have been busy on Ebay and Amazon selling. I just got a bit of time to set up a new e-commerce enabled website.

The interesting thing about this, was I did it for free. ( ex the cost of hosting and Domain name reg).

here is the site I made - Music and Concert Posters » Concert Posters.Biz

Note - you could do it all for free if you went with a free host. But since this is a site I will probably be promoting, I want to own the domain and control the hosting.

Okay, brass tacks - I used wordpress for the site build-cms and mercantec.com for their free cart.
-Wordpress because of the seo advantages, all the great free software plugins and because it's free.

- mercantec.com because they are very easy to use, they integrate Amazon payments, Google checkout and Paypal, plus they are free.

Step 1 --- Installing WordPress--
-assuming that you have a hosting account, there are 2 ways to install WordPress.

A - If you host on Godaddy, dreamhost, Host gator etc.. Just go to the free applications section on their site and those hosts will install Wordpress for you easily from there.

B - For hosts that do not have autmatic WP integration, go to wordpress.com and download the wordpress file to you computer. Then go into you hosting account, look for the database section and set up a database (easier than it sounds). You will need to take note of these things
-DB_NAME--- the name the host gives your database
-DB_USER--- your username
-DB_ Password ---
-DB_Host -- the url of the database, something like 222mysql.host.net
after you have the database up go into the Wordpress file, find the wp-config file and add in the above info.

-- Then just upload the entire WP file. You can upload to the main directory or a lower directory. I recommend using the main site directory. from there just type in your url -you will get an email with your password, put that in and then change it.

Setting up Wordpress

-- For the main page you have 2 options-

#1 - you can display your last few posts or

#2 - you can display a set page.

- I recommend using a set page, if you are using the site as a store.



NEXT -- Choosing a Theme.

Go here and choose one you like.

WordPress › WordPress Themes

-- I chose this theme --- WordPress › Default Enhanced « WordPress Themes I picked it because it was solid and light (a version of the default) plus, this is easy to customize with your own graphics. The main graphic is 980 x 176 pixels. To change it to your own logo, go into your image program and put your logo or graphic you want into a 980 x 176 jpg, then rename that graphic - banner.jpg. Then go into to host file system > wp>theme>images> and change out banner.jpg- poof you have a custom logo

example --- http://concertposters.biz/wp-content...ges/banner.jpg

That should give you a few ideas on an easy customization.

Plugins
One of the great things about Wordpress is the free software you can get for it.

I recommend these plugins


Google Analyticator - sets up googleanalytics for your site
Google XML Sitemaps -- gives you an xml sitemap automatically
HeadSpace2 -- gives complete control oftags titles and keywords
Redirection -- easy redirection- no more struggling with 301s
Robots Meta -- adds easy index and follow tags conserve your link juice
seo friendly images - Google images can give good traffic too
sociable -- make easy for people to bookmark and submit your stuff

On seo you also peruse this article for ideas

WordPress SEO - Yoast - Tweaking Websites -- excellent source

After you have the plug ins setup, you can now think about the cart.

I use these guys Free Shopping Cart Software for Google Checkout and PayPal - Mercantec.com

They integrate Amazon Payments, Google Checkout and Paypal.

see it in action, set quantity at 1 and click the buy button on this page

AC/DC Posters » Concert Posters.Biz »

The beauty thing is that you just move right through to checkout, input your email and ID on paypal etc.. and you are done.

It doesn't require you to fill out a long form, just a couple clicks and you are done.

IMO requiring a customer to fill out a long form before buying, just KILLS your conversion ratio. I know for myself, if I kind of ... want something, I may click the buy, then see I have to spend 5 minutes filling out a form, that kills it for me, and I just end up moving away. Whereas if it was one click, I would have bought.

Plus, why make someone fill out a form on your website ? You get all that info from paypal etc.. anyway. If you want to harvest emails, there are tons better ways to do that than killing off your conversion ratio with a form before buying. IMO

I should also mention that Word Press has several FREE shopping cart plug-ins. I checked them out and This one was the best and easiest to implement.

WordPress › eShop « WordPress Plugins

I chose the mercantec over this one, because with the e shop plug-in you are are limited to using Paypal only. UGHHH!!

Not bad for a wordpress site... but why not use a full free shopping cart?

The mercantec can be configured to a full shopping cart, I just took the easy option to load a few things and get up and running quick.

- I almost used the e shop plug-in, that is a full shopping cart too, very easy to implement and has a google base file option. The problem was that they only allowed paypal and I wanted to see if the Amazon payments would help with conversions.

I see, is this just a test site for you, or are you trying to make money with this?

If you're serious about it, take a look at CS-Cart.. it's one of the best carts I've seen.

Not a test site. I just added the full cart. see it here it here.

AC/DC Posters » Concert Posters.Biz »

I looked at CS Cart but the price $265, put me off a bit. I also looked at OS cart which is open source and free, but I kinda felt like CS-Cart and OS-cart were more of full site cms solutions built around carts.

They seem to be hard to customize in the way I wanted, plus they can't touch wordpress for seo value (linking). Because of that, for my cart, I needed either an add on like Mercantec or a plug-in like e shop for wordpress.

Plus wordpress spoiled me on how easy it is to add post and pages, I have very little desire to mess around learning a new cms system like cs or os cart.

Also, I recently I had a post of mine on another blog make the front page of dig. With the sociable plug in and comments enabled you could write blog posts and promote them and maybe hit something. Forget about that with os or cs cart. WP is much more flexible and easy, I'm not going back.

Aspkin, do you think cs-cart is better than os-cart?

Okay, the next step is now to set up a google base file.

The first step to that is register for Google base. Google Base

You really need a Google base account because it will drive extremely targeted traffic to your site for free. I know this for a fact because on my ebay listings I use the google base store connector.

You can go into Google base and see just how many clicks they sent to your listings. Last month Google base sent my ebay listings 2500+ visitors for free. If I had to pay for that traffic via PPC it would have cost me at least $600. If you just throw away free traffic you are a fool. That is why you MUST have a Google Base feed. Plus, it's not that hard and it's free.

Google allows you submit your items in one of 2 formats - XML or or a tab delimited text file. When you use the Google base Ebay store connector they use an XML feed. For me, however, I find it easier to just convert a spreadsheet to a text delimited file and just upload that. I operate off of a master spreadsheet list anyway.

Now to set up a spreadsheet you do NOT need to buy MS EXCEL, there is a perfectly good free program out there . Open Office Calc.

Calc download it get started.

--- To start, on the first row, you type in the attributes. Google requires at least 5 attributes -- ID, Title, Price, Description and Link

However you add can a bunch more attributes. I recommend you add at least --

-Image Link
-product_type
-condition
-and upc/isbn if your product has one

a few other attributes to consider--

impn weight quantity shipping tax

Google even made a video to show you how to do this. simple.

Open Office video

After your spreadsheet is converted to a .txt you then have to register the feed

and the just upload it.

I think CS-Cart is the best cart out there.. I've done a ton of research on this, and it has everything a person would need and it's very search engine friendly.

It cost money, but it's worth it.

There are free carts out there too, some are good, some aren't. I haven't done a lot of research into them.

I just think your cart is limited in what it can do. Can you setup an affiliate program, send newsletters, setup autoresponders, have an inventory, etc etc?

Here are just a few features that CS-cart has:

• Single-page checkout to avoid customer confusion
• Smarty template driven, completely customizable
• Unlimited products, and nested categories
• Unlimited product options (i.e. color, size) with optional surcharges
• SEO: Custom meta tags per product and category
• SEO: Static html catalog generation
• SEO: Sitemap generation
• Inventory tracking
• Promotions, coupons, gift certificates and gift registry
• Return management
• Listmania addon lets you create bestseller lists, featured products, etc.
• Over 50 support payment gateways
• Real-time shipping rates from FedEx, UPS, USPS, Australia Post, DHL and Intershipper
• Highly configurable tax system
• Built-in affiliate/referral system
• Extensive statistical reports

View a comprehensive feature list at the CS-Cart website.

Thanks for that reply, I took a second look at CS-cart. The price still puts me off a bit, but I can see why you like it. I have no doubt that it is a great system.

I especially like the idea of the affiliate/referral system. And the seo capability seems good.

I agree it is a very good overall choice and in comparison the mercantec probably seems a bit barren.

However, they don't allow Amazon Payments, I did not see any Google base integration, I already have an inventory system, I am thinking of using aweber for email, and the idea of this post is to set up a e-commerce site w/cart for free.

Something else I forgot to add. There is another free site solution I tried recently which I really liked. • Create a Free Website - Jimdo I checked it out and set up a very site nice in minutes. The seo looks good on it too. The point, Jimdo is a VERY easy Free solution for anyone who wants a site. Plus jimdo just added a feature to allow you to "Steal" the template of any site you like.

Steal Our Site Template With Jimdo

I haven't tried that yet but it looks interesting. and it's FREE

I see, I do believe there is a Google Base feed, and other shopping comparison feeds for cs-cart, I haven't mesed with it in awhile I'll have to check.

Here are some other free carts you might want to checkout then:

·Presta Shop
·Open Cart
·Magento
·Cube Cart
·Agora Cart
·Zen Cart
·OSCommerce
·Store Sprite

Thanks for the list.

That's a nice resource.

I have heard good things about zen cart. I will give that a look.

Cheers!

Above I mentioned that one reason I went the mercantec was to try Amazon payments.

The logic of it seems very strong to me. 80 million Amazon customers, the most trusted e-commerce name in the world - a good portion of the people who see your store will be Amazon customers- offer those Amazon customers a way to check out from your site by paying Amazon instead you.

Benefits

Instant Trust
+
Vast pool of customers

=

something Google checkout never had, It could be the paypal killer. Plus it should help your conversion ratio.

Anybody actually using amazon paymernts on their cart? If you are, what has your experience been like. I am dying to know.

If no one answers I will let you know on my site. But I have high hopes.

I just recently heard about Amazon payments, no research done it, let me know what you find when you use it. I'm interested as well.

A bit of a rant here, but something I wanted to say.

I think that before you spend dime one on ppc, you should have a google base feed set up and you should do everything humanly possible to increase your conversion ratio.

I can't tell you how many times I was looking to buy something and I will click on the top google adwords ad, then click through to buy the thing, only to run smack dab into a huge form I have to fill out sometimes Twice- billing and shipping info-. man when that happens I go back to google or I just go to ebay or amazon to get where I know I can check out fast.

That's me though. I am sure that I am lazier than other people. But hey, the purpose of this thread is for me to be a shameless blowhard and kinda document my the process I am going through setting this up.

Cheers! thanks for listening.

I agree, that's a good way of doing things... hmmm.. makes me think about the way I have my new eBook setup.. with option one of Going Live.. marketing a ecommerce website with PPC... a whole 40 pages of solid ppc information.

Maybe better do a little ppc to get you started... then keep tweaking your sales page until sales do better.. and of course continue the SEO.. and other marketing efforts..

Google Base.. Is that what you mostly do?

Do you do article marketing, blogging, even auto blogging, social sites, or other marketing techniques?

Mostly I have just been selling on ebay and Amazon. I am active on some of the social Media sites.


I have about 5 websites, (a couple local sites, a blog about posters and this) plus a few domains I could develop.

With these websites my main goal is how to make money from them

-- So yeah, all those things interest me, but for now since I have my own products to sell I just want to get up and running on that. Basics first.

Cynic,

Do you need to purchase any of these when you set up with Go DADDY

Economy Hosting - Linux
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Go Daddy Photo Album
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Economy Quick Shopping Cart
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I don't recommend GoDaddy hosting... they're bad..

HostGator is much better.. and the uptime is very high

Thanks, I'll check them out!

Yes GoDaddy sucks, they dont upload templates correctly (had to add a redirect to my site) && their customer service reps are just as educated as i am when it came to building the site :p

I am going to go with hostgator as per recommendations. Thanks for keeping me from making a mistake with GO DADDY.

I have to agree on Godaddy hosting sucking bad. I hosted with them a while back and they were awful. Plus they nickel and dime you for stuff that should be free. .htaccess does not work on their servers, so forget about 301s.

I came across another free site that will give a free site-cms with free cart.

buyitsellit - Free Online eCommerce Store Builder

They look okay, they offer Google, Paypal and amazon and they are free. The only problem I see is customization if you are a newbie.

Ah yeah, those free shopping cart sites..

I don't think they're the best way to go because they really aren’t free, and are actually more expensive and unprofessional then hosting your own shopping cart. Then if your site explodes with sales.. and you're on a hosted free solution with no domain... that's a bad idea..

Free carts or paid carts with your own domain all the way.

I have to agree with you on that. If you are going to be in business you need to use your own domain and your own hosting.

Which is relatively cheap, yearly domain fees and hostiong fees can be well under $100 per year.

IMO the thing about this is to keep your costs down until you see if your store will actually sell.

No reason to drop big cash on fancy carts and site systems if your stuff won't sell. Sadly most stores don't have sales enough to justify the costs. Therefore it's smart to keep your costs down when setting up. Then if you store is a success, hell yes, spend up for a good cart and cms site system.

The other thing is that the free things I have outlined here ( Wordpress and Mercantec) are plenty easy enough and professional enough to get you in the game to at least see if your stuff sells.

If you then have a winner, pay up for a professional customized site and cart.

Since most of these stores go nowhere, it's smart to keep your cost down.

A little update on the store.

I found out that another domain I have Posters » ConcertPoster.ORG performs much better seo wise than concertposters.biz so I started to build on that domain instead. I think google may penalize .biz domains?

So far I have gotten 5 orders ( 2 were paid by Amazon Payments and 3 by Paypal, 0 paid by Google checkout).

So I think having Amazon payments is doing good for my conversion ratio.

So far all my traffic is by seo and I have not loaded my googlebase txt for the site yet. So all is going well so far.

Cynic your site looks like it's progressing well. I'm still in the beginning stages of getting mine up. I must say that your post have been helpful.

Another update.

I have been lazy about promoting my site Concert Posters » ConcertPoster.ORG I still need to set up the Google base feed, and I have done zero - zero link building, social promotion or article writing.

However, one of the pics on the site was picked up on Google Images and is on the front page of the google images for a popular musician. So most of my traffic came from that and from that, the site logged 4 more orders in the last 12 days. (2 paypal, 1 Amazon payments and 1 Google checkout). So I think adding the Amazon payments has been of great value in conversions.

So far,

Google PR = 1,

alexa rank 837,000 --

yahoo shows 92 backlinks, mostly from my poster blog.

Not a bad start but really need to get off my butt and get my Google Base file in.

Nice domain name..

If I were you though, I would upgrade to a more professional shopping cart if you truly want your sales to increase.

The longer you stay with your current cart, the more time you waste with SEO.. if that's the route you're going.

You need to build a cart and stick with it.. then build on SEO with article marketing, link building, etc

I don't like how the posts are dated.. it's not good for business having stuff dated.. trust me.

March 26th, 2009 by admin

On second thought simple just might work out for you..

And what you have is pretty simple.

It's good SEO on site.. good internal linking, backlinking so far, I'm not too sure about the duplicate content. It's probably helping you more then hurting you the way you have it. Google loves content.. and you have a lot of it which is good. Simple two to three sentences doesn't compare to 2000 words even if it's duplicate.

Maybe use the All in one SEO pack, or whatever it's called for a little more SEO..

How is Amazon Carousel working out?

On the seo it is strange.

The site is nowhere in Google for the keyword "concert poster" but I am #2 in Yahoo and top ten in Live.

On the dup content internally, I got a great plug in from Yoast, I have all my tags, categories, admin and search pages no indexed, and all the links to those pages are no followed. The site is set to preserve link juice on the important pages.

You are right, I have to fix the dating thing, I may just edit that php function out of the template.

On the shopping cart, my rule was keep it cheap at first because I didn't know if the site would work. But now that I know it will work out I need to upgrade.
-- Especially because my continuity option is a "poster of the month" subscription, I also need upsell capability.
- I just came around to believing in the Continuity/Monthly payment model


- Even if I only convert 10% of my buyers to the monthly plan, it will make
a HUGE difference

Another reason for using the blog
You can register at places like technorati, blogcatalog etc. and get your feed out there too.

( free links and traffic that are not available to regular site)

The amazon carousel was a bust, you need mass traffic to make amazon affiliates work. But since I sell on amazon I will be just linking to my Amazon item pages. Throw a few links at an Amazon item page and it will kill in the serps.

I agree a different shopping cart should be used. I'm currently learning and configuring a site using zencart(free opensource cart) that you can mod to a professional looking site. There is a learning curve but in the end I think it will be worth it.
I think zencart would work for you and best of all it's free. Just my thoughts

Anyone have anything to add about getting some kind of monthly subscription/continuity thing going?

Like what effect it has on your business? and how much more profitable it is?

I have learned more from reading this thread then I have reading on a webmasters forum for weeks on end.
Guess the others do not want to show anyone how to do anything.
Great post and thank you for sharing the info.

Hehe, people that do have a lot more to offer then those who just talk about it.

The Cynic, if you do it RIGHT, it can create years of passive income. It's worth it if you can offer such a service.

You can easily set something like that up with most shopping cart these days. Let us know how it goes.

Just a little update on the site.

So far about 25 orders 10-paypal, 9-Amazon payments, 6 Google checkout.
- So the takeaway from that is, Amazon - definitely a good competitor to paypal and adding them will help conversions.

Still haven't set my google feed. (I know, it is on my list at #1)

-Edited out the date from the template, pages and posts.

Alexa rank 657,000

Yahoo backlinks - 110

Google PR 1
__________________

VIDEO

--- I added video to a sales page for the first time.
check it here
Dave Matthews Band Poster Gorge 2008 Concert » ConcertPoster.ORG »

-- It was relatively easy, my digital camera has video capture feature so I didn't to have buy anything new and I edited it on the standard windows moviemaker. Easy Peasy.
-- they say video adds about 20% to conversions
-- I will keep you posted.

On the adding a continuity option, I am still working how to do that. I like wordpress and if I moved to a new cart, I would have to give all that up for a crappy cms, so I am looking for a more comprehensive plug in cart. But that is not going well. Right now my best option may to just set subscription buttons with paypal, etc. and run them separate from the cart.

Anybody had any experience with adding video?

Seems good, I like your video, you should probably add that to the front end of your blog for an overall effect on conversions.

I never really messed with video myself.. but it's pretty easy to add, especially YouTube videos.

You site is funny, I'm surprised how well it's doing.

Are you doing any PPC advertising? Or is it all just SEO?

Still I think cs-cart.com would be worth it to you.

If you're just going SEO only, try these WP plugins..

• Platinum SEO plugin
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
• Wordpress Tweaks Plugin

This is a good stats plugin also: StatPress

Thanks for the tips on those plug ins, the tweaks and stat press look good.
______________

My site traffic is classic 80/20.
The vast majority of my traffic comes from having one of my poster images rank highly in google images for a popular musician. From that, 80% of my sales have been of that poster. If not for that, I would be struggling.

-- I have 15 items on the site and just one of the items has accounted for 19 of the 25 sales. Classic 80/20 distribution.

Also I am okay with my current cart setup. Implementation was very simple and easy, No headaches or frustration. Plus, it allows Google checkout, Amazon and Paypal for payments, something which none of the other cart systems I looked at do. I can find a workaround to offer continuity.
-simple and easy = better IMO

__________________

Since doing this, I have developed my opinions on a couple of things based on the experience:

#1 There should be no registration page (or at least a way to buy without registering). I think it kills conversions. Simple and easy = better.

#2 Amazon payments helps conversions

#3 It is much easier to get links to a blog site cms than any other type of cms-cart system.

#4 Google Base is critical. ( I know this from from my ebay and bonanzle listings where I have a google base feed)
-- In fact, well over 90% of the sales I made on Bonanzle came directly from the google base feed, take away the google base feed from my Bonanzle account and I would not be able to sell anything there.

Yet to test these assumptions, but from others I think this is true---
________________

#5 If at all possible you should have some kind of upsell and continuity option

#6 Adding video is an easy way to increase conversions.



I will keep you updated.

Cheers!

Hehe, I made over a million dollars in sales in 2007 with my own website. And the shopping cart I was using wasn't half as good as the shopping cart I recommend. If I was using CS-Cart back then, I could of had many more sales.

I do agree a simple checkout is best, I like to setup shopping sites that direct buyers what to do, giving them instructions to click here, go there, etc, leading them to checkout. A checkout shouldn't be more then a few steps.

CS-Cart can do both PayPal and Google Checkout payments and dozens of other payment options with no problem. They don't offer amazon payments from what I see..

I think you're cutting yourself short sticking with a WP based shopping cart.

Sure it's SEO friendly, but most shopping carts these days are just as SEO. I'm a SEO type of guy, if I can get free traffic I'll go for it, so trust me I know about SEO and shopping carts.

I wouldn't recommend replacing what you have on your current domain, but maybe setting up a new site..

Anyway I won't mention it anymore, you seem pretty fixed with the idea of learning the hard way. At least you made a few sales, you know the potiential if you start work with a real shopping site. Good luck!

I finally got my google base feed in. It was a hassle because I could not get the .txt file to work. There would always be some space I missed or something else wrong, I keep getting error messages everytime I uploaded it.

So I was forced to do a .XML data feed. Bingo, it uploaded correctly the firts time. So in the interest of helping those who need to upload their google base feed I am supply the code that worked for me.

1st -- Copy this code into simple old Notepad or wordpad.
(If you have never used them before, on a PC just click the Microsoft Icon in the bottom corner>then click All Programs>then click>Accessories> Then click Notepad)

here is the code to copy (1 Item)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>ConcertPoster.org</title>
<language>en-us</language>