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

[aspkin]

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.

[The_Cynic]

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.

[The_Cynic]

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.

[bigpoppa911]

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.

[The_Cynic]

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.

[aspkin]

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?

[The_Cynic]

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.

[bigpoppa911]

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

[The_Cynic]

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?

[Sandy D]

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.

[aspkin]

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.

[The_Cynic]

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?

[aspkin]

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.

[aspkin]

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

[The_Cynic]

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!

[aspkin]

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!

[The_Cynic]

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)

[The_Cynic]

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>

[The_Cynic]

sorry, the forum is converting g: tags to smiley faces, and I bump into a image filter, so I will have to post the code in pieces

<item>
<title>Bloc Party Poster -Rare Concert Poster</title>
<link>http://concertposter.org/bloc-party-posters</link>
<description>Bloc Party Poster. Rare concert poster for a Bloc Party Concert in Portland, oregon.</description>

[The_Cynic]

<ghipping>
<g:country>US</g:country>
<gervice>1st Class</gervice>
<grice>4.85</grice> --means---g-then: then Price---
</ghipping>
<g:tax>
<g:country>US</g:country>
<g:rate>0</g:rate>
</g:tax>

[The_Cynic]

<g:image_link>http://concertposter.org/-concert-posters-march09/Blocpartycrystal.jpg</g:image_link>
<grice>9.99</grice> -- means-g-then:-Then- Price
<g:id>BlocPartyCrystalwindow</g:id>
<g:condition>new</g:condition>

[The_Cynic]

<gickup>true</gickup> means g then: then pickup
<g:quantity>1</g:quantity>
<groduct_type>Entertainment Memorabilia &gt; Music Memorabilia</groduct_type> means g then : then product
</item>
</channel>
</rss>