Magento has three versions of their e-commerce software available. All are open source allowing developers to customize the software to better fit the needs of their business. Though Magento does has a free version of their shopping cart, Magento doesn’t provide a great deal of information on the features available and does not provide any support for the software aside from forums and IRC channels. Licensing for Magento Professional starts at $2995 annually. Enhanced features include support for strong data encryption, gift cards (virtual and physical), store credits and refunds, and a reward points system. Magento Enterprise starts at $12990 annually, and includes all of the features found in both Community and Professional editions, plus support for many other features to increase customer conversion like automated email marketing reminders, which send customers custom emails to follow up on abandoned shopping cart orders and wish lists. With Enterprise edition, administrators can also create private sales pages viewable only by targeted users. The suite of features available on Magento Enterprise is truly amazing, but the high price tag will keep the software exclusive to those businesses that can afford such a hefty annual fee. Software support is included with both paid versions of Magento.

osCommerce, while still in its development stages, is proving to be a powerful competitor for products like Magento that have little appeal to small business because of the hefty price tag businesses pay to use their software. osCommerce is free to download but support is limited to forums only. The list of features osCommerce has to offer is pretty basic and fails to impress after viewing the features available on the Magento platforms.

Zen Cart is a donation driven e-commerce software solution that seems to lie somewhere in the middle between Magento and osCommerce in terms of the features available. In addition to the standard features one would expect a shopping cart software to come equipped with, Zen Cart also offers bonuses like a newsletter manager, the ability to use discount coupons and gift certificates, as well as support for wholesale (bulk) ordering and featured products. Support also seems to be by forum only, as is the case with osCommerce and the free Magento Community.

Of the three most popular shopping cart solutions available, Zen Cart really seems to be the best bargain unless an online store has the resources to invest in the vastly more expensive products from Magento. Zen Cart seems to be a great balance between features and price, and since its open source software it can be customized to better meet the needs of the online store that chooses to implement it. Zen Cart also has many free software addons and user contributed modules that can be incorporated into a stock installation of Zen Cart. With a little bit of elbow grease, even small business owners can have an amazing online store up and running in very little time with Zen Cart.

The tip of this week will be focusing on those of you that are still a home-based business. Many small businesses start out in your very own home, simply based on costs. You either do not have the capital to rent or lease out space immediately or cannot qualify for a small business loan; and with the present situation with the economy, small business loans are increasingly harder to come by.

Other reasons are there aren’t any real need for you to have an office space right now since your business revolves around being “on location” or visiting customers. This is especially true for those with delivering a service – many successful photographers, plumbers, videographers, electricians, maids, etc. never feel the need to rent out office space until they begin hiring employees.

Right off the bat, you’ll need to consider how you will be contacted and what information you want readily available about your business on the internet. Do you want your potential customers to know where you live? If not, then the tip of this week revolves around leasing a personal mailbox.

I will start by letting you know that you do not want to lease a post office box through the USPS. A USPS mailbox address would look something like “PO Box 123 Any Town, Any State 88888″. The primary reason that I’m advising you to not have a po box is simple: if you have any hopes of being found for your business name or service on Google Local, then you will need to have a valid address that the major search engine, Google, will allow.

As it stands now currently, Google does not count PO boxes as physical locations but will allow addresses listed with suites. As such, my solution for you is to lease a personal mailbox with a UPS or FedEx office. This will allow you to list your address on the internet as “123 Any Road Suite 456 Any Town, Any State 88888″ and take advantage of the suite address without actually having a physical office. That “suite” in your address is what we are aiming to have with your new business address.

By having a private mailbox for your business, it will enable several things to happen:

1) Search Engine Rankings – You can now get listed in Google Local (as explained above) and reap the benefits of potential search engine rankings and therefore generating leads.

2) Image – Potential customers will have the impression that you have an office. You will find out that some customers feel that they can take advantage of you when they learn that you work from home and attempt to negotiate your costs. It is best to streamline your impression to the world that you are professional, are very serious about doing business, and will be providing an excellent service for a very long time. Many customers fear doing business with home based ones simply because they are unsure if they will be scammed out of their money. You cannot avoid your customers from directly asking you if you work from home, however, having your business address listed with a suite will lead them to assume that you have an office space and may quell any questions that they may have had previously with whether or not to do business with you.

3) Low Cost – Most personal mailboxes can be leased out for as little as $10 per month for a small box.

4) Privacy – This new address will serve as a “virtual firewall” from unwanted visits from customers and a way for them to send payment via snail mail. Other things down the line to consider will be that your eventual website that you will want to launch with a domain name www.xxxxxx.com (that is not registered privately, an added cost) will need to have an address listed on the domain registration. Another thing to consider with privacy, is that you’ll also be able to prevent mail pilfering and identity theft, which is a growing concern in our changing world.

*One more tip* – You’ll want to rent out your private mailbox within a town that you are targeting to promote your business in. So if you are hoping to generate potential leads from your hometown, that’s great! However, there are many businesses that would like to gain leads from a larger town that is near them, so in that case, you’ll want to then rent a mailbox in that town. Having proximity to the center of town is one of the factors that will be determining your search engine ranking when you get your business listed in Google Local. In either case, you’ll want to base your decision upon what is best for your business and your customers.

The best way to find a personal mailbox near you is to call your local UPS or FedEx store and inquire if they rent out mailboxes. Or Google search “mailboxes + your town + your state”. There are many other private businesses that rent out mailboxes that are not affiliated with UPS or FedEx, but offer those services with shipping out, etc. The advantages with private businesses is that their service hours are much more flexible, allowing you to check your box after 5pm and some even offer mail check via telephone, saving you the extra trip.

Hope to see you next week and please feel free to share your thoughts or questions below.

With the advent of the World Wide Web, all manner of possibility opened up to everyone. The environment may have changed, but also, much has remained the same. The Main Street addresses have given way to the easy-to-remember and short domain names. The Flea Market tables are now Ebay or Etsy stores. The difference is in the potential – there is now the opportunity to reach far more people with your product offerings than ever before.

Therefore, it is crucial that you take these 5 things into consideration – whether you already have an e-commerce web site, or are looking to start one.

5. Keep Your Image Consistent

Your image, often referred to as your “brand”, needs to remain consistent across all of your interactions with potential and current customers. It starts with your logo, which should be professional in its appearance, and simple to reproduce in both black and white and color. Your logo is then used on your business cards, in your e-mail signature, in your advertising, and of course, on your web site.

In the same way that your logo should remain consistent, your e-commerce web site should as well. A color scheme should be chosen and used throughout the site. The color scheme and design of the web site should be compatible with the products that you are selling. The store should have an easy-to-understand structure that remains consistent and is easy to navigate. Don’t project one image on the home page of your store only to redirect the customer to another “shopping cart” web site that does not look anything like your home page, this serves only to confuse your potential customer.

4. Provide Offline Communication Options

While e-commerce stores offer many options for contacting the store owner, such as e-mail addresses, contact forms, and support tickets, you should never underestimate the value of being able to speak one-on-one with your customers. Providing a toll-free number for Customer Service on your web site shows your commitment to customer satisfaction, while providing a local number as well has its own benefits, which we will discuss in a later blog post. The ability to speak directly over the phone to a “live person” helps build trust and rapport which will only help your e-commerce store.

3. Use The Technology To The Benefit Of Your Customer

When creating a new e-commerce store, it is easy to get lost in the vast possibilities that the technology offers. You can be dazzled by many of the slick, fancy options that are available, but you should always ask yourself when considering what to include in your store – “How will this benefit my customer?”.

E-Commerce stores offer a wonderful tool – automation – which should be used to its fullest extent. At the very least, your store should e-mail a copy of the order to the customer, which contains a tracking number for their order and a link to the shipping company web site where their order can be tracked. However, this same automation can be used to send your customer a follow-up message to ask about their satisfaction in the product and the store, and provide them with a link and a phone number to contact someone if they are not satisfied. This feature will work on its own, with no time necessary on your part, and creates a lasting impression with your customer by showing that you care for them after the sale.

2. The Web Site Is Your Store Front, Make Sure It Looks Great

Many start-up e-commerce businesses worry about their costs, and rightly so. In the attempt to lower their costs, they make the mistake of using “free” shopping cart solutions, or web stores based on templates with a very low price tag. The old saying about being “penny wise and dollar foolish” certainly applies here.

Do not forget that in addition to having a great product, you need to have a great atmosphere in which to sell it. A shoddy web site is like the man on the street selling watches out of his overcoat – it doesn’t really matter if the watches are real or not, the transaction is suspect due to the presentation. Your e-commerce store will be asking visitors to give you their hard-earned money and personal information, and you need to project a professional image in order to win their business, or run the risk of being viewed as unworthy of their money.

1. Have a Simple and Secure Checkout Process

The focal point of any e-commerce store is the checkout process. This is where the critical exchange occurs – your customer’s money for your product. The checkout procedure needs to be as simple and straightforward as possible, or you run the risk of losing the customer. It is very, very easy for a customer to leave your web site so you need to make it equally easy for them to complete the checkout process.

While a one-page checkout solution is best, if your web site has a multiple-page checkout process, it is important to communicate to the customer how many steps there are and what step they are on currently. This will make the checkout process less daunting to the customer if they are aware of how long it is going to take. Do not ask the customer for more information than is absolutely necessary to complete the checkout process, which is typically payment information, billing address and shipping address.

Hopefully these 5 Crucial Things have helped you to understand some of the considerations when starting an e-commerce store, and will help you to be a success in your new online venture.

In speaking with Alice Baeten from the Acxiom Privacy Team earlier today, she relayed some good news that they will be debuting a new program within the next month or so called “web business registration portal” which will enable changes to be directly submitted to Acxiom. Although I’m excited by this news, I have one big question that I look forward to sorting out.

If it is impossible to have our telephone provider list the correct town and Acxiom gathers both their 411 information once a month and their printed telephone directory information once a year from the telephone provider, will updating with Acxiom directly be in vain as it will eventually be overwritten on the next update from the telephone company?

One such activity is to redirect any “non-WWW” requests to the server to the proper “www.domain.com” structure, just to keep everything neat and tidy. Since it is not a URL redirection service, the overall length of the domain name shouldn’t matter.

The complaint from McAfee is as follows:

“When we make a request to the root directory (/) of the web server the server responds with a 301 or 302 redirect to another domain.”

I may just be a bit “old school”, but I certainly don’t consider “www.domain.com” to be a different domain from “domain.com”, but apparently McAfee has to, or at least they believe that they have to now since we haven’t had this problem in the past.

So now, it seems that we have to remove this redirection in order to pass the security scan and retain the “McAfee Secure” rating for the web site.

One of these days we may be able to get back to designing web sites for the users, and not for search engines and security scanners, but that day still seems to be far off.

One service that MicroSoft offers intends to help consumers avoid “phishing” scams, or online scams in which a web site attempts to appear to be another web site in an attempt to steal personal information such as passwords, account numbers, etc. A common version of a “phishing” scam is one in which an e-mail is sent to a potential victim that explains that their account information at some web site needs to be updated. The links in the e-mail send the person to a site that looks an awful lot like the site that the e-mail mentioned, but it is not, and unless the user is savvy enough to glance in the “address” bar of their browser, they may not know that they are not on the correct web site.

To correct this from happening, MicroSoft introduced the “Phishing Filter” to MSIE with the intention of notifying a user that the web site that they are on is not what it actually claims to be. In other words, it alerts you to when one web site is pretending to be another.

Today, I noticed that a web site that I am developing was triggering this phishing filter for some reason. There was no obvious problem that should lead the filter to believe that the web site was pretending to be another, so I filled out the form and decided to check the FAQ on MicroSoft’s Phishing Filter. However, when I tried to access their FAQ, I received the following warning:

In other words, the web site “phishingfilter.microsoft.com” is pretending to be “smartscreen.microsoft.com” by using its security certificate.

This service that is supposed to protect me from one web site pretending to be another is itself attempting to use the certificate of another web site.

This does not instill trust! Do not do the exact thing that your service is supposed to be preventing – seems like common sense.

(As an aside, MS responded promptly to my inquiry and resolved the issue with the site that I am developing, the SSL cert issue remains.)

Another example comes from a web site which offers analytics services. The site touts how great their analytics software is, how you can’t be without it, and generally provides all of the marketing pitch that you would expect from such a web site. However, after I checked the source code of the web site I noticed a curious thing:

The web site that is touting their analytics software uses Google Analytics for its own analytics. I supppose that this is to track their PPC advertising campaigns, if their own analytics is unable to track this information, but it does seem strange.

This does not instill trust! Don’t use a competitor’s product in your own sales pitch – don’t let a customer see you driving a Toyota to your job at the Chevy dealer as a sales representative.

In and of themselves, these two examples are really no big deal and do not represent any major problems or flaws, however, they are enough to cause me (the potential customer/user) to doubt the services that both of the companies in these examples were offering.

Dear [customer],

we are a professional domain name registration center in asia, mainly dealing with the domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection, We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “[domain]” as their domain name and Internet keyword on April 09 2009. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you consider these domain names and internet keyword

Kind Regards,

Robin.Yang

Tel:+ 852 31757930 (ext):8019
Fax: +852 31757932
Email: robin.yang@hk-net.org.cn
Hong Kong Network Service Company Limited
Website: www.hknsc.hk

We had received a similar letter:

Dear Manager,

We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.

On 2009-02-12, we received an application formally, one person named “Jacques Tits” wanted to applied for the Internet brand “studiokraft” and some domain names through our body.

During our preliminary investigation,we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned “Jacques Tits” to register these domain names through us or not? Or is “Jacques Tits” your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP.

In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn’t resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorized the application of ” Jacques Tits”.

Thank you for your cooperate.

Best Regards,

Heather Lau
Mail:heather@worldwidenetwork.asia
Web:www.worldwidenetwork.asia

The name of the supposed registrant “Jacques Tits” was sort of a tip-off that this mail was not legitimate.

The “companies” who send these mailings will register the domain in question at an inflated price if you respond positively to these mails.

These companies are attempting to scam people into purchasing domain registrations at ridiculous prices by pretending that there is some third party interested in registering the domain.

These mailings prey on small business owners who know the importance of protecting their brand, even if they do not do business worldwide. Businesses who are not internet-savvy or who do not have an IT consultant on staff may fall for these scams.

StudioKraft warns their clients of these and other internet scams, and asks anyone to ignore any e-mail received that resembles the examples above (the exact wording changes often), particularly if they are sent from any of the following domains:

http://www.anwins.com

http://www.asiaao.cn

http://www.asiadm.org

http://www.asiadnr.hk.cn

http://www.asiadnr.net

http://www.asiadnr.org

http://www.asiaip.org

http://www.asianetwork.ws

http://www.asianetworkonline.com

http://www.asiaregistrar.org

http://www.beijing-anwins.com.cn

http://www.bj-hk.asia

http://www.bj-hkzc.com.cn

http://www.bjhknet.cn

http://www.china-domainsolution.org.cn

http://www.china-net.hk.cn

http://www.china-net.hk

http://www.chinasps.net.cn

http://www.chinasps.org.cn

http://www.chooke.com.cn

http://www.chuk.com.cn

http://www.cnbcgov.org.cn

http://www.cntl.hk.cn

http://www.dnrnic.net

http://www.domainaudit.org.cn

http://www.domaininasia.com

http://www.domaininasia.org

http://www.erimut.com

http://www.europaregistry.net.cn

http://www.europaregistry.org

http://www.europatech.com.cn

http://www.europetech.com.cn

http://www.fexon.hk

http://www.firetrust.org.cn

http://www.govisp.cn

http://www.ha-zd.com.cn

http://www.ha-zd.com

http://www.ha-zd.org

http://www.hkstareast.com

http://www.hkstareast.net

http://www.idci.org.cn

http://www.inveis.com.cn

http://www.inveis.com

http://www.inwis.cn

http://www.netinasia.com

http://www.netinchina.hk

http://www.shanghainic.org.cn

http://www.shnetnic.cn

http://www.shundajishu.com.cn

http://www.shundajishu.net.cn

http://www.shundakeji.net

http://www.star-east.hk

http://www.ujane.cn

http://www.ujanegroup.cn

http://www.westtechnology.asia

http://www.worldregistry.com.cn

http://www.ytym.org

The FBI offers the following tips for Internet users:

·If you encounter an unsolicited e-mail that asks you, either directly, or through a web site, for personal financial or identity information, such as Social Security number, passwords, or other identifiers, exercise extreme caution.

·If you need to update your information online, use the normal process you’ve used before, or open a new browser window and type in the website address of the legitimate company’s account maintenance page.

·If a website address is unfamiliar, it’s probably not real. Only use the address that you have used before, or start at your normal homepage.

·Always report fraudulent or suspicious e-mail to your ISP. Reporting instances of spoof web sites will help get these bogus web sites shut down before they can do any more harm.

·Most companies require you to log in to a secure site. Look for the lock at the bottom of your browser and “https” in front of the website address.

·Take note of the header address on the web site. Most legitimate sites will have a relatively short internet address that usually depicts the business name followed by “.com,” or possibly “.org.” Spoof sites are more likely to have an excessively long string of characters in the header, with the legitimate business name somewhere in the string, or possibly not at all.

·If you have any doubts about an e-mail or website, contact the legitimate company directly. Make a copy of the questionable web site’s URL address, send it to the legitimate business and ask if the request is legitimate.

·If you’ve been victimized by a spoofed e-mail or web site, you should contact your local police or sheriff’s department, and file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Fraud Complaint Center at www.IFCCFBI.gov.

How to protect yourself against scams:

You can reduce your chances of being swindled by knowing whom it is you are dealing with. This will help to protect you against getting involved with scam operators who set up companies, rack up debts then close up shop leaving their debts behind.

Keep these points in mind:

·Ask for the name of the person you are speaking to and whom they represent.

·Take notes of conversations, including dates, times, names and important points.

·Ask for an explanation of anything you don’t understand.

·Read letters carefully and seek professional help (e.g. an accountant or a solicitor) if significant money, time or responsibilities are involved.

·If you want to check out the bona fides of a company, contact [Companies House or the Financial Services Authority].

·Find out whom you are dealing with. Independently verify any claims made by a sales person, investment adviser or advertisement.

·Make sure that any company you deal with complies with the applicable legislation. (In the UK, all companies must be registered with Companies House).

·Only do business with companies you know and trust.

·Make sure you fully understand all the terms and conditions of any offer made to you.

·Take your time before you make any decision.

·Don’t provide any financial or other personal information before you establish whether the company is legitimate.

·Understand and monitor your investments and ask frequent questions and map out your financial goals before you meet with a financial planner.

·Don’t judge the credibility of a company or sales person by how ‘professional’ they or their promotional material or web site seems.

·Don’t fall for high-pressure sales tactics.

·Don’t let embarrassment or fear keep you from reporting fraud or abuse to the appropriate authorities.

·Don’t ever be afraid to ask questions. In fact, the more questions you ask, the better.
In all situations, the old maxim applies,
“If it sounds too good to be true – it probably is”!

Top Five Signs That a Message is a Hoax

The next time that you receive an alarming e-mail calling you to action, look for any one of these five telltale characteristics before even thinking about sending it along to anybody else.

Urgent
The e-mail will have a great sense of urgency! You’ll usually see a lot of exclamation points and capitalization. The subject line will typically be something like:

URGENT!!!!!!
WARNING!!!!!!
IMPORTANT!!!!!!
VIRUS ALERT!!!!!!

Tell all of your friends
There will always be a request that you share this “important” warning by forwarding the message to everybody in your e-mail address book or to as many people as you possibly can. This is a surefire sign that the message is a hoax.

This isn’t a hoax
The body of the e-mail will contain some form of corroboration, such as a pseudoquote from an executive of a major corporation or from a government agency official.

Sometimes the message will include a sincere-sounding premise. For example:

My neighbor, who works for Microsoft, just received this warning so I know it’s true. He asked me to pass this along to as many people as I can.

It’s all a bunch of baloney. Don’t believe it for a second.

Watch for e-mails containing a subtle form of self-corroboration. Statements such as “This is serious!” or “This is not a hoax!” can be deceiving. Just because somebody says it’s not a hoax doesn’t make it so.

Dire Consequences
The e-mail text will predict dire consequence if you don’t act immediately. The message may inform you that the virus will destroy your hard drive, kill your houseplants, or cause green fuzzy things to grow in your refrigerator.

History
Look for a lot of >>>> marks in the left margin. These marks indicate that people suckered by the hoax have forwarded the message countless times before it has reached you.

Even more great information can be found here.

Nobody likes to receive unwanted e-mails. The advertising, scams, ‘phishing’ plots and other garbage that arrives in our Inboxes is an inconvenience, even if all that we have to do is press the Delete button when we receive them. Many e-mail users cannot be bothered with configuring ‘white’ and ‘black’ lists and rely on their e-mail service provider or web host to tackle these issues for them.

In addition to the anti-spam measures that your provider may take, there is another step that can be done to reduce the amount of rubbish that arrives in your Inbox. It is simple and easy to accomplish, if your host allows the relatively common feature of e-mail forwarding. (Contact your e-mail service provider if you are not sure whether or not you have this feature).

In a nutshell, the quick and free anti-spam measure involves forwarding your e-mail through Google’s GMail service. The details of this procedure will follow. The reason for doing this is simple – although GMail has come under fire from some concerned citizens, the fact remains that their anti-spam filters (some borrowed from other companies) are among the best, and their service is free. Their filters are constantly being improved and updated, so it seems to be a no-brainer to take advantage of this. The issue then is how to use GMail’s filters while retaining your e-mail address of you@yourcompany.com.

Since Google announced that GMail can be accessed via POP3 (the standard method of e-mail programs to connect to e-mail servers), it is no longer necessary to go to the GMail web site to send and receive mail through the service. This opens up the possibility of using GMail for anti-spam and anti-virus protection while not having to change the e-mail address on your business cards.

The process is simple – first, register for a GMail account if you do not already have one. Second, follow the instructions provided by Google for setting up your GMail account in your mail program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.) Third, access the control panel for your e-mail (again, consult with your e-mail service provider on how to set up mail forwarding) and forward your mail to your GMail account.

Do not delete the information from your original e-mail account in your mail program – this will enable you to send e-mail ‘from:’ your original e-mail address and not from your GMail account. This provides the transparency to correspondents as all e-mail will appear as coming from your you@yourcompany.com address, and all incoming mail will be coming through GMail, and consequently, through GMail’s filters.

This method does have its drawbacks – there have been times when mail with certain attachments (html pages in particular) is blocked by GMail. Therefore, it is good to have an unadvertised ‘backup’ e-mail address on your primary domain that you can give to people who need to send you files via e-mail that are being blocked by GMail. The benefits of using GMail’s filters outweigh the inconveniences – we have noticed a significant drop in unwanted e-mail since implementing this simple redirection on our mail accounts.