1. Set up an email address like “ssladmin@yourdomain.com”
During the purchase process, GeoTrust will give you a bunch of email choices and you’ll need to have this set up in advance.

2. Obtain your CSR
CSR stands for “Certificate Signing Request“. It’s a big string of code that your web hosting company generates using a “key”. It’s available inside DreamHost’s control panel. They’ve moved things around a bit so I’m reluctant to detail the steps, but it’s under Domains -> Secure Hosting. It will look something like this:

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
huge bunch of letters,numbers, characters, etc
—–END CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–

3. Purchase your SSL certificate from GeoTrust.
I usually get the Quick SSL Premium. As part of the purchase process, you’ll be asked to paste in the CSR from step #2, so have it handy. You’ll also be asked to select an email address that GeoTrust will send an approval to – so make sure you’ve completed step #1 first. Once you’re done paying, you’ll get an email asking for your approval. Once you approve it, you’ll get an email with the certificate code.

4. Give certificate code to DreamHost.
Add the certificate code to the appropriate location inside DreamHost’s control panel. It will be in the same place that you found the CSR code. Follow the steps to complete the SSL process. If you have issues, submit a support ticket to DreamHost and they’ll help you fix whatever’s broken. They’re quite helpful.

5. Check the SSL installation.
I usually do several things to check the installation. First, I go to the website but add “s” onto http, so you go to “https://yourwebsite.com”. Look for any error messages and make sure you see a padlock somewhere in your browser indicating a secure certificate has been found. If all looks good, then I contact GeoTrust and ask them to check the installation for me as well. I’ve used both their online chat service and their email service to do this. Once they give me the OK, I’m done! I’ve also recently gotten a link to the GeoTrust Certificate Checker Tool.

We called the number here:

10800 NE 8th St, Suite 600
Bellevue, WA 98004
Tel: 425-586-6000

But the recording said they were closed for the holiday.

UPDATE: 7/3/09 8:24am

We’ve tried unsuccessfully to contact Wells Fargo and whenever they transfer us to Authorize.net, the line is busy. We did manage to reach a Wells Fargo person who said they have been in contact with Authorize.net this morning and that there was some kind of power outage. The representative said she didn’t know when they could be back up.

UPDATE: 7/3/09 8:27am

From http://twitter.com/authorizenet

We apologize for this disruption and ask for your patience as we work with the team at our datacenter to restore service.

We are down due to a fire at our primary data center in Seattle. We are working to restore services, but no ETA at this time.

UPDATE: 7/3/09 11:13am

My client tells me that her Authorize.net is back up and her online store is working again.

From http://twitter.com/authorizenet

Transactions are up except for Global processing and Concord. No ETA on those, but we are working on in.

The first red flag I found, was when I tried to check out, and got to the page where you enter your name and billing information. My browser (Firefox) gave me this warning:

Security Warning

Your have requested an encrypted page that contains some unencrypted information. Information that you see or enter on this page could easily be read by a third party.

Now, since I work with online stores, I know that sometimes these warnings are triggered by very benign issues, so I went ahead to the next step in the process since it hadn’t asked me for my credit card info yet.

The second red flag, was that the online store was charging me $9.95 for shipping. Now, I was purchasing carbon offsets – meaning that there was literally nothing that was being shipped to me. Not wanting to get charged for shipping when there was nothing being shipped, I stopped the checkout process and started looking for a phone number to call.

The third red flag, was that the phone number I found didn’t work.

So I emailed the company telling them about all of these issues. This was a Saturday.

On Monday, I got a phone call (from a wireless number, according to my caller id) from the company. Even though I had detailed all of the above issues in an email, they wanted to know what my problems were.

I told them about the security issue, and they assured me their store was secure. I politely informed them that, no, it wasn’t. Until my browser warning goes away, the store is not secure. They said they would relay this to their “technical staff”.

They also told me that since my purchase was under $50, I was being charged shipping – even though nothing was being shipped – they said, sorry, that’s the way the online store is set up. They offered to give me a refund after I made the purchase. They were not the least concerned about charging other people for shipping when nothing was being shipped.

Then they said that their website was being completely redesigned and that it would be done “next week” and all these issues would be fixed.

Lastly, I told them about their non-working phone number, and they said, yes, it was fixed now. (I called to verify this, and while it was working, it was a voicemail for a person – it didn’t mention the company name at all).

I asked the company if they would email me when their online store was secure, and they said they would, and then simply hung up.

Since I develop online stores for my clients and do quite a bit of online shopping, I am always on the lookout for online stores ways of conveying trust – telling their prospective customers through all kinds of ways that they can trust their online store. But trust must be earned, and when you encounter a security warning, unwarranted shipping charges, and a disconnected phone number, you’re inclined to take your business elsewhere. With online stores, details matter!

I ended up purchasing my carbon offsets from a different company, whose website was secure, who didn’t attempt to charge me shipping, and who had a real live person at the other end of the phone.

Adding an online store to your small business website is a big endeavor – and you want to be sure you’re getting the most out of your online investment. Here are a few tips and examples that will hopefully help you either make a wise online store application purchase, or fully optimize your existing store.

1. Make sure each product page has it’s own unique, specific title tag.

The page title is what’s seen in your browser window at the very top edge. Here’s an example: https://ahimsadogtraining.com/store/manners-minder–treat-and-train.php. This page’s title is “Manner Minders Sale / Treat and Train…” Page titles are important to search engines, and what comes first matters most. Therefore you want an online store to have the product name come first in the page title.

2. Use keywords in the product description.

Search engines can’t see images of your product, so be sure to use many different keywords in your product description to help that product page rank well. In the example above, note how many times “Manners Minder” is used in the product description. Don’t be afraid of being repetitive.

3. Make sure each product page has it’s own unique, specific description tag.

The description tag (like the title tag) is viewable either by looking at the source code of a page, or by looking at a search snippet. In the online store I work with, the description tag is automatically set to be equal to the short text description, but your store may be different.

4. Enable reviews/product comments.

Remember search engines love content that’s relevant to your product. If your online store supports reviews, you may want to enable them to let folks add their own content about particular products.

5. Make sure your online store product pages are crawlable by Google et al.

In the past, some folks would say that dynamically generated pages, like online stores, wouldn’t get crawled and indexed by search engines. In general this is not the case, but it’s always good to double check to make sure the product pages of your online store are getting crawled and indexed. Here’s how to check to see which pages of your website have been indexed.

Many of the general rules of SEO apply to online stores, the tricky part is that online stores are dynamically generated content, and so it is important that your online store lets you manipulate the title tag, the description tag, and that your store’s product pages are easily crawled and indexed. When shopping for an online store, ask your web developer to show you examples of existing stores, and then check to see for yourself whether the stores’ product pages have been indexed.

This is topic covers one of the things that annoys me the most when I’m shopping online. I recently had a particularly frustrating purchasing experience with Ticketmaster that I wanted to share. This example will help explain why I’m so against forcing online shoppers to create a login account before they can purchase something from your online store.

I was simply trying to purchase tickets for a Seattle Storm game using Ticketmaster online. When you purchase tickets using Ticketmaster, they have this system that automatically tracks how much time you are taking to make your purchase. If you take longer than 2 or 3 minutes, you will lose the tickets you’ve selected and get bumped out of the system. I presume this is to prevent folks from taking tickets and then sitting on them, preventing someone else from buying them. But I offer up my own experience as evidence that giving folks 2 or 3 minutes to complete a purchase is not long enough – especially when you force them to make a customer login account.

So here’s what happened. I selected my tickets and started the check out process. But Ticketmaster forces you to make a customer login account before you complete your purchase, and so, annoyed, I attempted to make an account. Here’s what I got:

Click on the image to make it bigger. It says “Please complete this page within 15 seconds”. And the following warning to tell me that the email address was already registered and I can request the password be sent to me. Now, I timed myself, and it took me 15 seconds just to read the message on this page. And remember, I didn’t want to have to create a login in the first place. I just wanted to buy tickets. I wanted to give them my money. But since they forced me to login, and the clock was ticking, I plain ran out of time:

“You exceeded the time limit and the tickets have been released”

Like this was my fault? I was just trying to give them money, but because they forced me to create a customer login that I didn’t want to create in the first place, and apparently they had my email address on file already, I ran out of time. Needless to say, I was pretty angry. And that they were blaming this on me, the customer – when in fact, it was their own system that is causing the issue, by forcing me to create a login account.

So don’t do this to your customers. If you’re shopping for an online store, I highly recommend one that lets you set customer login accounts as OPTIONAL. The ecommerce store I work with has this setting and all the online stores I develop have this set to optional, not forced. Not all online stores let you make this setting, so be sure and check this out before you buy an online store application.

Don’t force customers to log in to make a purchase – let them make that decision – and if they just want to give you their money and be done with it, let them do it. Let your customers have the fastest possible checkout time and the least amount of frustration and they’ll reward you with completing the purchase.

Understanding How Websites Work: Servers and Browsers

I’ll start with an explanation of how websites work. Website files live on a machine called a server. If you own a website, you’re paying someone to “host” your website files, and this means you’re paying them for a teeny bit of space on a server (if it’s shared hosting). Somewhere out there, there’s a computer that has your website’s files on them and that computer is your website’s server.

When you get on the internet, and you call up your website, you are viewing it using an application called a browser. Maybe it’s Firefox or Safari or Internet Explorer or another kind of browser. Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes. Your computer’s browser goes and fetches the files from your server and displays them for you. Browsers only read HTML (HyperText Markup Language). So the files need to be in HTML in order for your browser to understand them and display them to you.

So, your website files live on a server. And your computer’s browser fetches the files and displays them for you, depending on which URL you type in.

Databases and Servers

Now, here’s a little twist. Remember I said browsers can only understand HTML? Well, there are a bunch of other languages that only servers can understand. One of these languages is PHP. This is why PHP is known as a “server-side” language. PHP is a cool language because it does much more than HTML can do.

PHP can do logic, solve problems, and put things into and get things out of databases. It can also build HTML code. Now remember, browsers can’t read PHP code, only HTML code. If you are looking at a page in your browser that ends in .php, you’re looking at HTML code, the actual PHP code won’t be visible to you.

Static Web Pages

Static web pages are simply files, typically ending in .html, that contain all the content necessary for a browser to display a web page. This might be text or images. Like the files contained in your own home computer, static web pages are actual files…you can open them, edit them, save them, delete them. What you see is exactly what you get. The static web page can “stand alone” because it contains 100% of the information you see – no other files or information are needed.

Dynamic Web Pages

Dynamic web pages are different animals. They don’t actually exist as complete files on your website’s server. They are created, in the split second that someone calls up a page – and their content is often based on what’s in a database. Often they need variable values that guide them to select particular things from a database.

You know how you can be sitting in a room and look out a window and see a tree in your back yard? The tree isn’t really in the room. If you close the window blinds, the tree disappears from view, but it’s still in the back yard. Think of the back yard as a database that holds the tree, and the view from the room as your browser. You can see the tree in the view, but it’s really in the back yard.

In the same way, you can be looking at an item on the page of a shopping cart, say you’re looking at a image of shoes. Now, your browser is showing you the image, but the image of the shoes isn’t really part of the web page file. If you were to open the web page file and look at it, you wouldn’t see code for that particular image. What you would see is code with instructions to fetch an image from a database based on certain criteria. The picture of shoes is really stored in a database – and it being shown to you because you asked for this item. But just like the tree, it’s just a view of what’s in the database, it’s not really part of the web page file.

These pages are called “dynamic” because they appear to change. They change because one time you might want to shop for shoes and another time a book. The actual code on the page stays the same, but because you asked for books versus shoes, the code on the page ran over to the database and got the appropriate information and then constructed a HTML page for you to see in your browser. The PHP on the page remains constant, but the HTML, what you actually see in your browser, changes depending on what variables you send.

An Example:

Let’s look at an example. I realize you might not know any computer code at all, so this will be super simple.

Static:

<img src=”shoes.jpg” />

This code will display an image that is called “shoes.jpg”. This is all it can display.

Dynamic:

<img src=”<PHP echo $itemnumber ?>.jpg” />

Now, which image will this display? It can’t, unless it gets more information. If this page of code receives the value of the variable $itemnumber, it will display the correct image. But without this additional information, it displays nothing. (The PHP part of the code is in red.)

So in order for the page to display correctly, you need to send it the value of the variable $itemnumber. This can be done in many different ways, but suffice to say you tell it you want itemnumber 123 and it will display the image named “123.jpg”. If you send it “234″ , it will display image “234.jpg”.

Here’s a diagram:

Why Does This Matter?

It matters because if you are writing a blog or running an online store or hosting a forum, you’re probably using dynamic pages for much of your content. And it’s important to understand how these pieces work together to create the web pages you see in your browser. You may on occasion have to tinker directly with your database or back up/restore your database. You may also want to make changes to your pages and understanding which content is generated dynamically and which is static, can help you make good decisions and help keep your web designer’s sanity

But how often do you notice whether the little padlock in the upper right hand corner of your browser is actually there? This article serves as a reminder to always, always, always check.

I went to a website recently that asked me some personal information, namely, my social security number. This request surprised me, especially given the nature of what I was trying to accomplish. So I looked at the website, and here’s a screenshot of what I saw (note, I’ve tried to hide the identity of the actual website, that’s why some parts are blurry):

Notice the nice “Welcome to our secure online loan application” and the Verisign secure seal? But look again. There’s no padlock icon in the upper right hand corner of the browser. And the website is not secure at all, because the URL is “http” and not “https”. If it’s not “https”, it’s NOT secure.

Needless to say, I wasn’t going to put in my social security number.

But I did some investigation, because I’m curious and quality minded. I thought, well, maybe the web designer just forgot to put the “s” in the URL. So I typed it in. Here’s what I got:

This is a warning from my browser telling me that the SSL certificate belongs to “secure1.valueweb.com” and that it doesn’t match the website that I’m on. Not looking good.

I try another tactic. I click on the Verisign seal. Here’s what I get:

When you click on these security seals, you are checking back with the company that issued the seal to see if indeed it matches the website that you’re on. In this case, I was on a mortgage site in Washington, and the seal belonged to a software company in California.

I clicked on the “Report Seal Misuse”, emailed the webmaster, and emailed the mortgage company. While I never heard back from Verisign or the webmaster, the mortgage company did contact me. Hopefully they’ll get it fixed soon.

So there’s a big lesson here. If you hire someone to build a website and you need a SSL installed, verify for yourself that it’s working. If it’s done correctly you should see a little padlock in the upper right hand corner of your browser. The URL should be “https”. You should get no browser warnings. And if you click on the SSL seal, it should match the website perfectly.

Without these things, consumer confidence will disappear, like mine did, and your customers will leave, just like I did.

Be careful out there!

I wanted to write this article to provide help for other online retailers who may be asking the same question, because the answer was a bit hard to find.

If you’re in Washington State, here’s the link to the law: WAC 458-20-110. Shipping is considered a “Delivery Charge”.

It states:

Gross proceeds of sales and selling price include all consideration paid by the buyer, without any deduction for costs of doing business such as material, labor, and transportation costs, including delivery charges. Thus, delivery charges by the seller are a component of these tax measures.

And also:

Delivery charges by the seller making a retail sale are a component of the selling price. If the sale of the tangible personal property or service is exempt from retail sales tax, such as certain “food and food ingredients,” retail sales tax does not apply to the selling price, including delivery charges, associated with that sale. Similarly, if the product is sold at wholesale, retail sales tax does not apply to the delivery charges of that sale.

Now, again, this law only applies to the State of Washington. And you only charge Sales Tax if you are a business in Washington and selling to a customer in Washington and if the item you’re selling is subject to Sales Tax. If you’re in a different state, you should look up the appropriate law or consult with a local tax person.

Note: This article is not a substitute for professional tax advice. Please consult with a local tax expert to get the right answer for your online business.

Many of my website clients, after watching their website traffic statistics, are dismayed to see many people coming to their website leaving after only visiting one page (this is called the “bounce rate“).

They also often see visitors who may look around at several pages and then decide to leave without purchasing anything.

They even see people who were very close to a purchase. Visitors who after adding items to a shopping cart and starting the check out process, left before completing the purchase ( this is called “shopping cart abandonment“). While all of these visitor activities are normal and expected, what’s often surprising to my client is how often they happen.

This begs the question: how much traffic does it take to make a sale, or have a prospective client fill out a contact form? This metric is known as “conversion rate“. It can be used to measure any desired behavior of your website visitors. If 100 people visit your site and 1 fills our your contact form, your conversion rate is 1% (1 contact form / 100 visitors). Since most new website owners have no experience with website statistics, I’ll share some of the data from my own website and from what I’ve seen on some of my client’s websites.

Conversion Rate:
How do you measure conversion rate? Some website traffic tracking tools have built in ways of tracking this for you. All that is needed is to label the appropriate target page. The website tracking software tracks how many total visitors you have and what percentage of them hit the target page. Each time they hit the target page, they are considered to have “converted”.

Different Examples of Target Pages for Conversion Tracking:

• Shopping Cart “Thanks” Pages (last page after sale is completed)
• Contact Forms
• Newsletter Subscription Pages

On my website, I have two target pages, my contact form and my online ecommerce demo store.

Let’s look at my conversion statistics for my contact page:

Google	1,244	45	3.6 %
Direct Access (no referrer)	287	17	5.9 %
Google-Intl	227	6	2.6 %
MyClients	29	3	10.3 %

This data indicates that visitors who come from Google in the US, convert at a rate of 3.6%, while visitors who come from the websites of my clients, convert at a higher rate of 10.3%. (This data was collected using the Web-Stat.com traffic tracking tool.)

This makes sense doesn’t it? That the people who are following a link from one of my clients’ websites are more likely to convert than a complete stranger who found me on Google?

Measuring Quality of Website Traffic

Conversion rate tells us something about the quality of the website traffic source. If you are paying for traffic by utilizing pay-per-click online advertising measure the quality of the traffic that you’re paying for is super duper important to determine your return on investment. It’s easy to label your paid traffic sources and categorize them in Web-Stat so that you see if one ad has a higher conversion rate than another. This is one of the really neat things about the web and online advertising.

Remember, The “Real” Conversion Rate May Be Lower

If your conversion target is a contact form, then your “real” conversion rate will be lower than the conversion rate measured by the contact form conversion rate. Why? Because not everyone who contacts you will be converted into a customer.

Tiny Numbers

Now you’re thinking, hey, these conversion rates are getting to be pretty small numbers. Let’s say out of the people who contact you, 25% are converted to clients/customers. This means your real conversion rate is 25% of 3.6%, which is 0.9%. This means, to get a new customer, you need to have 100 people visit your website from Google, for example. Think about that. If your contact form to client conversion rate is 1 in 10, then you will need 277 visitors to get 1 client. Tiny numbers.

Setting Expectations for Conversion Rates

So don’t expect to have every visitor turn into a customer – it’s just not the way the web works. It’s a percentage game, and you will need a certain level of good quality traffic to turn enough of those visitors into clients.

Here are the official links from the WA Dept of Revenue:

The Washington State Department of Revenue “Destination-bases sales tax” page.

Another Washington State DOR “Destination-based sales tax” page.

A nice video on Destination-based sales tax.

And the DOR email contact form if you have questions.

But look at this…an ONLINE RETAILERS SURVEY…if you have an online store..please take this (I took it and submitted my own opinion)

And some unofficial online discussions:

Online Merchant Network Thread

Volution Forums Thread

Lots of folks are worried about how to implement this way of calculating taxes in their online stores. Currently most of the online stores I’m familiar with do not support this kind of tax calculation. I founds lots of speculation, nothing that came directly from the WA DOR.

So I decided to contact the Washington State Department of Revenue and ask for myself.

Here’s what I sent:

I do website design, and have several clients who operate online stores. Currently, all the online store applications I’m familiar with calculate tax based on settings inside the online store application that determine the customer’s state.

For online stores in WA, this is typically set to 9%. In order to comply with the June requirement (and just to clarify, this is not voluntary, right?) all online stores in WA that ship to WA, now need to determine which location code the customer is in, to properly charge the right amount for sales tax.

I’ve seen nothing on your website regarding online store database integration – meaning, that DOR would maintain a database that, in real time, my online store would connect to to determine, again, in real time, what the appropriate tax rate to charge a particular customer.

This would be similar to how online stores calculate shipping costs, on the fly, by connecting to USPS, or FedEx or UPS. I would assume that DOR would be the same way – because it’s not possible to have an online store with someone sitting around manually looking up these codes.

I received this on April 04, 2008 from “DOR Streamlined Sales Tax”:

Ms. Olkoski,
The Department is considering providing a web service that would allow online sellers to connect to in order to determine the appropriate tax rate for their buyer’s address. However, we have run into concerns with that approach.

In the meantime, we ask that sellers do what they can to collect the Washington sales tax.

If they have no control over the settings and they can only use the one rate, then we ask that they adjust, after the fact, for purchasers that request a refund of overpaid sales tax.

Of course, they would also adjust their reporting to reflect actual collections and refunds or credits.
Please write again if you have any questions.
TAXPAYER SERVICES

So the Washington State Department of Revenue gave me a nice speedy response to my question, and I recommend that if you have questions, you email them as well.

UPDATE: 5/16/08

I received a voicemail from the Washington State Department of Revenue – and you simply have to be really impressed with their customer service – telling me that the response they emailed to me should be considered a work in progress. They said that they would be sending me a more complete response in a few weeks, and I’ll post it here as soon as I get it. They are actively working on a more formal solution for us online business owners, and we need to just sit tight and see what they come up with.

Since part of my profession is installalling, customizing and configuring online stores for my small business clients, I did some research into what causes shopping cart abandonment and what can be done to prevent it from reoccurring – even what you should do when it happens. Wherever possible, I tracked down the original research article, so you can read the data for yourself.

Global Millennia Marketing did a survey in 2002 that is widely cited in shopping cart abandonment articles. In their survey they asked their clients why they abandoned shopping carts. They state that:

Market researchers say the rate at which Web consumers abandon their online shopping carts before making purchases online runs between 25 percent (Andersen Consulting) on the low end and 78 percent (Bizrate.com) on the high end.

Here’s what they reported were the reason for shopping cart abandonment:

1. Cost of Shipping too high and not shown until checkout (69%)
2. Changed mind and discarded cart contents (61%)
3. Comparison shopping or browsing (57%)
4. Total cost of items is too high (49%)
5. Saving items for later purchase (47%)
6. Checkout process is too long (44%)
7. Out of stock products at checkout time (39%)
8. Checkout requires too much personal information (35%)
9. Poor site navigation and long download times (31%)
10. Lack of sufficient product or contact information (31%)
11. Checkout process is confusing (27%)
12. Site requires registration before purchase (23%)
13. Site unclear on delivery times (17%)
14. No order tracking options (16%)
15. No gift certificates (11%)

Remember, this data is from 2002, but it’s probably still fairly relevant.

The Software Usability Research Laboratory of the Department of Psychology Wichita State University published a study in 2007 entitled “Top Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design Revisited: A Survey of 500 Top E-Commerce Websites“. They studied the top 500 internet retailers (which accounted for 61% of internet sales). Here’s a summary of what they found:

1. Calling a shopping cart anything but a “shopping cart”: They found that 62% of the stores used “shopping cart” as term used to denote, well, the online store’s shopping cart. Don’t call yours anything else – it will only confuse shoppers. And confusion leads to shopping cart abandonment.

2. Requiring users to click a “BUY” button to add an item to the shopping cart: Since “buy” indicates a big commitment and some folks are shopping, they recommend using “Add To Cart” or something less commital and scary. They like “Add To Wish List” as well.

3. Giving little to no visual feedback that an item has been added to the cart: They found 65% of the online stores take people right into the shopping cart where they can see their newly added item.

4. Forcing the user to view the shopping cart every time an item is placed there: While they liked stores that gave you feedback as to what’s in the cart, they really liked stores that continuously showed you what was inside the cart, without having to directly view the cart. The liked it best when the store had a constant display of what was in your cart at all times.

5. Asking the user to buy other related items before adding an item to the cart: They didn’t like it when stores asked them whether they wanted to purchase a recommended additional item before they got to add their original item to the cart. Suggest other products AFTER the customer’s product is in the cart.

6. Requiring a user to REGISTER before adding an item to the cart: My personal most hated part of an online store – don’t force me to register if I don’t want to.

7. Requiring a user to change the quantity to zero to remove an item from the cart: They prefer it if a cart simply has a “remove” or “delete” button next to the items. “Remove” is the more commonly used term (68%).

8. Including written instructions to update the items in the cart: People ignore instructions, so if you have to have written instructions in order for folks to understand how to update the cart, it’s probably not intuitive enough in the first place.

9. Requiring a user to scroll to find an Update cart button: If people have many items in their cart, don’t make them scroll down to be able to get to your “update” button – they might miss it. Note that 68% of shopping cart had it at the very bottom.

10. Requiring a user to enter shipping, billing, and all personal information before knowing the final costs including shipping and tax: They believe today’s online shoppers are looking for free shipping and that shipping costs are still one of the major reasons customers-to-be abandon their shopping carts. A large percentage of online stores still require this (44%).

In addition to the top ten above, they also noted two other areas worthy of mention:

11. Security, security, security: People are concerned about theft, both of their credit card information and their identities. Make sure the online store is secure (uses an SSL certificate and properly uses “https”). Display your security certificates/logos prominently. Make sure your privacy policy is easy to find. Don’t use CAPTCHA to detect humans (errors may scare away customers).

12. Out of Stock Items: Tell folks you don’t have stock BEFORE they reach the checkout stage.

Marketing Sherpa did a study of shopping cart abandonment in 2006 and wrote an article entitled “1,120 Online Shoppers Say Why They Abandon Ecommerce Sites“. Here are their findings:

We asked shoppers: “Which factors keep you from doing more online shopping?”

Site/cart too complicated: 14%
Return/exchange policy: 41%
Fraud/Identity theft: 49% (heavy online shoppers: 21%)
Sharing personal info: 53% (heavy online shoppers: 39%)

…We have plenty of anecdotal evidence from multiple Case Studies that adding various security icons to your site, even if you’re a very famous brand name, makes a significant difference in conversion rates.

So be sure to think about the trust factor of your online store – keep privacy policies very visible and make sure your store appears and is secure – show off those security icons/logos! These themes are also stressed in this Marketing Sherpa article “Absolutely Pitiful Ecommerce Shopping Cart Abandonment Stats — 4 Ways to Improve Yours. They found typical shopping cart abandonment rates of 60%.

So you’ve optimized your online store, followed all the wonderful advice, and someone still abandons your cart – what should you do?

Run after them and ask them why they left!

Seriously. I’m totally serious.

Here’s a wonderful article from Marketing Experiments Journal entitled “Shopping Cart Recovery Tested“. They created an automated email process that went after folks who had abandoned their carts – remember, customers typically enter their email addresses as part of the check out process – so they emailed them. This article is really worth reading because at the end, they list the best practices for recovering abandoned shopping carts including: collecting email addresses, focusing on what went wrong with your store’s service, respond immediately to abandoned carts, automate it if you can and test different messages, considering offering an incentive to return, and adding a link to take them right back to their cart.

One of my clients faithfully does this, and very quickly learned there was an issue with her payment provider settings, which she fixed. Once that was fixed, the abandonments dropped to a trickle, and she is pretty much able to recover a high percented of them as well by simply sending one email to the customer. (Some shopping cart programs even come with shopping cart abandonment prevention features – ask your web designer about it.)
Summary:

If you’ve made it this far, you’re learned a whole lot about shopping cart abandonment, what causes it, and what you can do to prevent it, and what you can do when it happens to you. I’ve tried to pull together the most current and relevant sources of info to help folks who are running online stores.

You’re thinking of launching an online store to sell your products or services. You’re wondering if you’ve got what it takes to be successful in this rapidly changing online arena. You’re wondering how much time it will take and what it will cost. You’re wondering if you’re smart enough. This article hopes to help you answer some of these questions before you invest in an online store.

Developing and managing an online store is not a simple task, and one that small business owners should consider thoughtfully. Here are some of the questions you should ask yourself:

1. How Good Am I At Working With Computers and Navigating the Internet?
Online stores do not run themselves. They can save you and your staff a lot of time, but someone still needs to manage it. The more computer savvy you are, the easier it will be for you to understand and manage your online store. If the internet bewilders you, and you often find yourself unable to navigate around to where you want to go, or find yourself yelling at your computer often because you don’t understand what it’s doing, running an online store might be out of your reach.

2. How Often Do I Shop Online?
You should be very familiar with online ecommerce and shop frequently online. If you never or very rarely shop online because you are afraid to put your credit card at risk, or you are unwilling to do online banking for similar reasons, then running an online store is not for you. Why should your customers trust you if you don’t trust your own bank’s website? You should also be familiar with “good” and “bad” online shopping experiences – so you are able to put yourself in the shoes of your customers.

3. How Much Time Do I Have To Dedicate To My Online Store?
Developing an online store requires the active participation of store owners. They must have adequate time to spend learning how their store works, including how to add categories, products, product options, set appropriate shipping fees, taxes, discounts, and many other store-related features.

They must also have enough time to manage the store once it’s finished – they must respond quickly to new orders, ship items in a timely manner, uphold good return policies, just to name a few.

I had a prospective client phone me one day, looking to set up an online store for his girlfriend who was a flight attendant. When I asked why she wasn’t calling herself, he said it was because she was too busy and was often out of town. I asked him how she was going to manage running an online store if she was often out of town. Silence. I declined to accept him and his girlfriend as clients.

4. If Your Small Business Is Failing, An Online Store Probably Won’t Save You.
If you have a small business that is not currently doing well, launching an online store might not be able to save it. If your products are overpriced, if you aren’t good at managing your money, if your product quality is poor – these are all things that an online store can’t fix. It is not easy to get people to a) find your store and b) convert them to paying customers. If you’re thinking that launching an online store will save your small business – think again, there are no magic bullets here.

5. Can You Afford To Develop An Online Store?
Online stores are often large complex applications. Good online stores are not free. It also costs money to pay someone (like me) to install and configure an online store. Then there are fees for credit card processing and fees for SSL certificates, etc.

Unless you already have a pre-established website with lots of traffic, you will need to figure out how to get traffic to your store. You may have to invest in Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click advertising. You may have to purchase advertisements in magazines and other media formats.

If you aren’t able to spend at least $1000, then you might be better of trying out eBay as a medium to sell your products.

6. Can You Take or Obtain Professional Grade Images Of Your Products?
I added this to my list because this really trips up some folks. You will need images of what you’re trying to sell. High quality professional looking images. You will need to be able to manipulate these images yourself – adjusting quality, resizing, etc. If you can’t do this, you should learn how to do it before attempting to launch an online store.

7. Can You or Have You Run An eBay Store? Before you spend thousands of dollars developing an online store – perhaps you should try selling your products on eBay. It’s free, and will  give you a bunch of experience regarding online commerce and what kinds of skills are required to sell your wares on the internet. If you don’t have the amount of computer skills necessary to run an eBay store, then a “real” online store isn’t going to be a possibility.

Nervous?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to talk you out of developing an online store. I really enjoy helping my clients find ecommerce solutions for their small businesses. But I want folks to be satisfied with their online store experience – and am writing this article in the hopes that it will help some of you get a better understanding of what it takes to develop and manage a successful online store.

Want a Demo?
Watch a video tutorial of my own online demo store, from the viewpoint of the customer and the viewpoint of the store owner.

Enjoy!

If you’d like a “live” tour, please contact me and I’ll be happy to schedule a time to go through this in detail with you. Selecting an online store that suits your small business is critical to your store’s success, and getting first hand experience with the store’s administrative area is vital.

This is a short video tour of the ECT online store from the customer’s perspective. It covers the basic hierarchy of the store, how the stores’s categories and products are organized, and takes you through the entire checkout process.

ECT (ECommerceTemplates) just came out with a new version of their online store and they’ve included a great image uploader function. This type of function used to be available only as an after-market modification. As of now, the 5.5 manual doesn’t include instructions on how to use this new 5.5 image uploader function, and so I’ve made a video tutorial to help folks understand and use this new feature. Enjoy!

Note that I have several windows open at one time: the admin area to my ECT online store, and the “normal” customer view of my store.

Also note, that when you get ready to upload you need to know what size you want your small and large images to be. Typically my clients have small images that range from 100px – 200px, and large images that are 200px – 400px. Giant images, the ones you start with, should not be bigger than 800px wide by 1000 px high. Generally, you want to keep your image sizes consistent throughout your online store.

The video shows how to use the “giant image” uploader to create large and small images automatically. You start with a “giant image” you have saved on your computer, and the image uploader will create small and large images to sizes you specify. You can also start with either the small or large uploader, but I think starting with the giant is the fastest way to get consistently sized images to your store.

A side note for those of you that are saying, “hey, how come the giant image isn’t much bigger than the large image?”. Good question. My original image, that I used for the “Giant” image was just under 400 pixel wide. I set the size of the “Large” image as 400 wide, which is why the Giant image and the Large image look the same size. I picked this width because all the other large images in my store are 400, and I wanted it to match. Maybe I should have started with a much bigger image of grapes for the demo, but I do the best I can with what I find.

And do keep in mind how the image resizing works:
Aspect Ratio Is Maintained: It will NOT change the aspect ratio of your images. If you start with a square, you will end up with a square. If you start with a rectangle, you will end up with a rectangle. If you start with a 400 wide by 300 high image and resize to 200 wide (equaling a 50% reduction because 200/400 = 0.5) this means the height will be reduced by 50% also, to 300. It keeps the ratio of width to height constant. If your original images all have different aspect ratios, so will your resulting resized images, and they won’t match, just like they didn’t match BEFORE you did the resizing.

It will resize ONE DIMENSION (height or width, not both) and it will do this only if the original image dimension is larger than what you’re resizing to. This means it won’t enlarge images and make them fuzzy. So if your original image is 150 px wide, and you try to resize it to 200 px wide, nothing will happen.

If you have additional questions, please post them here so that others can benefit and my tutorials improve.

The ECT (ECommerceTemplates) online store has a nice administration area that allows store owners to manage every aspect of their stores. Here’s just one quick tutorial on how to view orders in your ECT online store.

Once you’ve logged into your admin area, click on “View Orders” on the left hand side, or the middle top area, both lead to the same page.

Follow the steps outlined below:
1. Select a “from” date (clicking on “DP” will display a calendar you can click on to select a date)
2. Select a “till” date
3. Optional: Enter search text. (Order ID, Name, etc. This has built in wildcard features, so you can enter “Suz” to find “Suzanne” or “Suzi”)
4. Optional: Select search Text Field – If you’ve selected to search for text, you’ll need to select which field the search text will apply to.
5. Click the “Search” button.
6. Optional: Order Details – click on the Order ID you’re interested in to view the order details.

(Note: This screenshot was taken from a store that has been modified, so not all the fields and columns shown here may be visible in your store, but the process for reviewing orders is the same).

My favorite shopping cart to install for my website clients is eCommerce Templates, or “ECT”. ECT has a long list of features already built in, but what happens if my ecommerce customer wants a feature that the ECT shopping cart doesn’t have? Sometimes there are after-market modifications or “mods” that web developers sell. But which actually work? Here’s my review based on my own experience installing various modifications, mods or add ons for the ECT shopping cart.

1. Image Upload Mod by ECT Modifications: The ECT online store doesn’t provide a way for folks who don’t know how to use FTP a simple way to upload product or category images. This mod solves that problem. I’ve had good results with this image uploader mod, but ran into a problem with the fancier version, so for the time being, I’m only recommending this one.

UPDATE: The new 5.5 version of ECT has a built-in image uploader function, so I’d recommend checkout this tutorial video I made of how it works before you purchase any image uploader mods for your ECT store. It might be more advantageous to simply upgrade your store, versus buying a mod for your current version.

2. Advanced Newsletter by ECT Modifications: This is a wonderful enhancement to your ECT online store because it adds a newsletter manager right into the store’s admin area! It has a recursive feature so that you can avoid being labeled a spammer because it will send out X emails per Y minutes. If you’ve got a large database of clients, it might have to run overnight, but it’s better than paying $30 per month for a newsletter service. It also has a nifty auto “unsubscribe” feature, so folks can easily remove themselves from your mailing list.

3. USPS Click-N-Ship by DLSS: If you use USPS Click-N-Ship and are getting tired of copying and pasting your order data, this is the mod for you. You can print out your printing labels with postage right from the admin area of the ECT online store.

4. Digital Download Mod by ECT: This amazing mod from ECT gives your online store the ability to sell digital items, like photos or music files. It has an impressive array of features including the ability to set the number of days a download is available and to detect attempt to download without the proper authorization code.

5. Mini-Cart by ECT: Great little tool to show your customers what’s currently in their shopping cart.

6. I’ve just made my own mod, which allows you to search by product description when looking for a orders under “view orders” of the admin area. If you’d like to get this mod for your store, contact me.

Mods I Bought, But Would Avoid In The Future If Possible:
1. Dynamic to Static URL Product Pages by ECT Modules: I’d avoid this mod for two reason. First of all it’s unnecessary. In my experience, Google et al have no issue crawling and indexing the ECT cart pages. Secondly, this requires a .htaccess file to help out with the redirects, and this will cause a conflict with some hosting companies configurations.

2. Image Upload & Auto Resize by ECT Modules: This was the original mod I selected for image uploading, but it was only after I purchase it, did I realize it only uploaded product images, not category images. I had to pay for a custom modification to do category images – but then the developer didn’t offer free upgrades. So while this has a nice Ajax feature that lets you see the images you’ve picked, it doesn’t do category images. I recommend using the image uploader by ECT Modifications listed at the top of this article.

3. Navigation Enhancement Mod by ECT Modules: A website client of mine wanted to change her navigation to a lost vertical list of categories. When a customer clicked on a category, she wanted the sub-categories to be visible. This was the only ECT shopping cart modification I could find that would do this. The mod had several issues. First it had actually had some bad code in it, which prevented the style sheet from working correctly, which I was able to fix. Secondly, it is really slow, because it has to run to the database and fetch all the information. Thirdly, it didn’t work at all with static product pages. And lastly, if you clicked on a category in the content area, the menu collapsed! The developer says it’s working as it’s designed, so I presume no improvements are forthcoming.

You can see not all ECT mods are created equal.
Before you purchase any ECT mods, modification or add-on, be sure to check out the feedback from other folks who have purchased from the same developer. Go here to read all the ECT mod developer feedback.

Here are the major areas of difference between osCommerce and ECommerce Templates online stores / shopping cart application:

File Size and Structure: ECommerce Templates files are all so nice and neat, uniquely and logically named. Most installations of ECommerce Templates are around 150 files. By stark contrast, the standard installation of osCommerce is a whopping 714 files…and many have the same names! Talk about confusing. Think of it, osCommerce has nearly 5 times the files of ECommerce Templates. Remember that saying about being designed by committee?

Ease of Integration: ECommerce Templates was designed to be modular, meaning that the shopping cart engine can be installed on any pre-existing website design. You can have any kind of website you want…ECommerce Templates simply lives inside your existing website code. With osCommerce, the store IS the website. After spending several thousand dollars, her website looked like every other osCommerce site: a product catalog – these were my client’s exact words. osCommerce drives the look of the website, while ECommerce Templates lives under the hood, and lets me create exactly the look and feel that my ecommerce clients want. Complete freedom!

Price: osCommerce is free, while ECommerce Templates costs around $150. Online store web development is expensive, and while free is wonderful, paying $150 for a complete online store application that comes with 6 months of free support, is better.

Documentation: If you need help with ECommerce Templates, you have several options. You can look up your issue in the ECommerce Templates manual, which is in a .pdf format. This is wonderful, because you can use keyword searches and find what you need quickly. osCommerce has no manual, all they have is an online place, where there is no search functionality. You have to guess at the right category and look for your issue.

Forum: Both ECommerce Templates and osCommerce have online forums where you can go for help. The difference is that only paying customers can log issues in the ECommerce Templates forum, and the people who answer your questions are paid by ECommerce Templates. This means you will get a prompt answer and it will be answered by a professional. By contrast, the osCommerce forum is run by volunteers. You might, or might not get an answer, and there’s no guarantee the person answering your question will know any more than you will. Or worse, you could be bad advice, which sends you on a wild goose chase.

Finding Professional Help: My client told me I was the 6th person that had worked on her osCommerce store. Sixth! All the others had tried for a bit then quietly disappeared.  ECommerce Templates has a list of recommended website developers who work with ECommerce Templates – not as a hobby, but as their  profession, and client reviews are available on ECommerce Templates. Apparently trying to find a reliable person to work on an existing osCommerce store  is really difficult – but this may again be due to the fact that osCommerce is a volunteer project – and there’s no list of “certified” developers – and no way to hold those people who do work on osCommerce accountable.

Mods / Contributions: Both osCommerce and ECommerce Templates have “after market” add on modules that enhance the functionality of the shopping carts. ECommerce Templates has a list of mod developers on their website, and these are generally professional website designers/coders. ECommerce Templates has a system where by you can read reviews of these mod developers, so you can see how good they are before you purchase a mod or hire them. By contrast, mod or contribution developers for osCommerce are again, volunteers or people who make these for donations. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable installing a module that will handle my customer’s credit card info that’s written by a student living in Taiwan. I’m not kidding, this was my experience.

Summary: If you’re going to spend $1000 or more for an online store, don’t let the fact that osCommerce is free sway you. Select an online shopping cart application that is well designed and well supported – because if it saves your website designer time, it will end up saving you money. For me and my clients, ECommerce Templates is the clear winner over osCommerce for ease of configuration, professional and fast technical support, compact and modular clean code, and professionally created and maintained modifications.

Jill

First, it’s important to understand what an SSL certificate does. SSL certificates have two main purposes: 1. to encrypt the transmitted data flowing (128 bit encryption is recommend for ecommerce) between the customer’s browser and the server, and 2. to identify the online store. SSL certificates have varying levels of owner authentication (less expensive ones can be done online, others require a phone call, others require more formal business documentation). SSL certificates also vary in the warranty they provide you and your customers customers against loss. SSL certificates have a third non-techincal purpose, which is to convey a level of trust and security to increase shopper confidence in your online store. (Here’s an excellent article by VeriSign on SSL and buyer confidence.)

I’ll list just two of the SSL certificates that I’m familiar with and that my hosting company, who I do trust, is familiar with. (Read about what my hosting company, DreamHost, says about SSL certificates.) If you are not using DreamHost, then you may be able to purchase an SSL directly from your hosting company – but ask them who they are really using (for example, when I asked Aplus.net, they said their SSL certificates are actually Comodo).

GeoTrust and VeriSign SSL Certificates

GeoTrust and VeriSign are classified as “expensive” and “very expensive” by DreamHost. GeoTrust 256 bit SSL certificates run from $249 – $1499 per year (go here to see a comparison chart of GeoTrust SSL Certificates). VeriSign SSL 128 bit certificates run from $999 – $1499 per year (go here to use the VeriSign SSL Selection wizard or here to see a comparison chart for VeriSign SSL Certificates). Note the different methods of authentication, different warranties, and different website seals. Both GeoTrust and VeriSign are widely known and respected and GeoTrust is the “recommended” SSL certficate by DreamHost.

GoDaddy SSL Certificates

GoDaddy is classified as “very cheap” by DreamHost. GoDaddy SSL cerficates run from $19 – $499 per year (go here to see a comparision chart of GoDaddy SSL Certificates – click on “certificate features” tab at the bottom). Note the warranty, verification process, and site seals.

Which Is Best For My Online Store?

Let’s look at some of the differences between two extremes of cost: GeoTrust and GoDaddy SSL certificates.

That little padlock icon or “https”: Generally speaking, all SSL certificates will make your customer’s browser have that little padlock icon that tells them they’re on a secure site and change the URL to “https”. But not all SSL certificates are compatible with all browsers. Both GeoTrust and GoDaddy claim to be compatible with 99% of all modern browsers. Check your SSL’s claim to browser compatibility to make sure your customers get that little padlock icon.

SSL Warranty: GoDaddy’s current SSL warranty is $2000, while GeoTrust warranties run from $10,000 to $250,000. Obviously, the bigger warranty is better, because if someone manages to steal your customer’s credit card info, that could run up quite a big bill. Here’s a link to GeoTrust’s legal documents – the SSL warranty details are at the bottom under “Protection Plan”. However, if you’re using PayPal Website Payments Standard to process your payments, this means that you are only sending customer name/address info, and so your risk should be lower than if you were using PayPal Website Payments Pro and sending the credit card info. Assess your own risk and what you can afford, just like when you buy insurance.

SSL Site Seal: Site Seals are intended to inspire buyer confidence in your online store. Obviously a GeoTrust seal is going to inspire more confidence than an GoDaddy seal, but this is hard to quantify. Some seals actually show your store’s authenticated name, others give pop-up boxes with other authentication info. Many of my clients who purchase GeoTrust display their seals on every page of their online stores, while many of my clients who purchase GoDaddy SSL’s choose NOT to display the GoDaddy seals. Notice who and who doesn’t display a SSL seal as you do your online shopping. Even Charles Schwab displays their VeriSign SSL seal on their client login page.

Bottom line:

Since DreamHost is my hosting company, and I trust them, I’d feel ok using any of the SSL companies they have listed on their SSL page and if I had an online store, would use their recommendation and pick GeoTrust. If your hosting company offers SSL certificates, find out who the real SSL is issued by, and look into their reputation. Think about whether you’re going to be transmitting really sensitive data (credit card info) or less sensitive information (names, addresses) and buy the very best SSL your budget can afford to protect your business and your customers.

(GeoTrust, VeriSign, GoDaddy, DreamHost and PayPal are all registered trademarks of each of those companies, respectively.)

Follow these steps to set up PayPal Website Payments Standard to work with ECommerceTemplates (ECT) Online Store:

(Hint, you may find it helpful to print out these instructions so you can easily refer to them while you’re setting this up)

1. Log into your admin area and select “Payment Providers”

2. Select to modify the PayPal settings:

3. You should now see this window:

You’ll need to do the following:

- Select “enabled”

- Enter the email address that you use for your PayPal account.

- And notice the PDT Identity Token is blank…we’ll need to get this from PayPal and paste it in here, so open a new window on your browser so you can log into your PayPal account.

4. Log into your PayPal account.

5. Under “My Account” click on “Profile”

6. Click on “Website Payment Preferences”

7. Set “Auto Return” to “on”

8. Paste in your return URL:

http://yourwebsite.com/store/vsadmin/ppconfirm.php

(note: many stores I install in a “store” subdirectory…if your directory is different or your cart files are right in your main directory, adjust this URL as needed to match your particular path.)

9. Set “Payment Data Transfer” to “on”

10. Scroll to the bottom and hit “save”

11. Now, we need to retrieve the PDT Token from PayPal and paste it into that blank field in your store’s admin area. Go back to the PayPal “Website Payment Preferences” page, and you should see your new token just underneath the Payment Data Transfer Section. Copy this token (it will be a long string of letters and numbers) and paste it into the appropriate field in your store’s admin area.

12. Hit “submit” in your store’s PayPal settings window to save it.

13. Go back to PayPal “Website Payment Preferences”

14. Copy the URL you used for the return page (we’re going to need to paste it soon)

15. Go back to your “Profile” in PayPal.

16. Select “Instant Payment Notification” in PayPal.

17. Turn “Instant Payment Notification” to “on” and paste in the URL you copied from the previous step.

18. Save the Instant Payment Notification settings in PayPal.

19. Log out of your PayPal account.

20. Run a test order in your store to verify it’s working. You’ll need to use a credit cart that PayPal doesn’t “know” about (because PayPal doesn’t let you move money from yourself, to yourself).