Friday 30 March 2007

Online Payments - Are they safe?

Of course its safe! Do you think major international banks would be willing to allow websites to interface with their customers money if it wasn't? Highly doubt it. I believe the question, "Are they safe", reflects more on Store than the payments itself.

New research has uncovered that 70% of Adults are willing to make purchases over the Internet and will spend over $228 billion. For retail businesses this is great news! So what factors change a users perception of what is 'safe'?

I believe it is an increase of awareness and public/media approval of large online stores such as Amazon, eBay and Dell has helped this margin. Users don't necessarily look for an SSL Certificates, Policies and Terms; don't get me wrong these are important but I feel to get more of the public interested in Online Payments we need to look at it from a different perspective.

I believe retail stores need to focus on these fundamentals first:

  • The Products Marketing - Do you sell it to them?
    Can you imagine a Online Shopper finding a product they need so bad they have an anxiety attack not being about to find their credit card? Security, policies, terms ain't being considered.
  • Shopping Cart - Ease of use
    Does your Shopping Cart have clear instructions? Are the buttons clearly labelled or positioned? Does it collect too much information about a customer? Do you use the bouncing ball approach to progress?
    What are the potentials that stop someone continuing, you need to remove all of these to ensure your product is actually sold.
  • Word of Mouth - Buyers selling
    "I went to x inc. Online Store yesterday, it was so easy! I found what I needed, put my details in, paid and it arrived next day. I also got all these e-mails about its progress. You gotta check it out!" This is your best form of marketing. Friends to friends. Your customers selling for you. Do a good service and you will reap the benefits.
  • Deliver what they expect
    A user will only have a expected experience if they are satisfied. How are they satisfied? You meet their expectation. Do this by using normal web techniques of shopping carts, processes, e-mails and service.
    You will only be successful if you deliver.

We at Digerati Solutions have developed a product that meet all commerce needs and more. myCommerce is a product that we deploy into websites that require any transaction or ordering process for their customers.

Chat to us today about building your online store to what it should be because we build online potensial.





Wednesday 14 March 2007

The product set launch

Digerati Solutions are about to release all our products into one myCMS.com.au package. This Content Management Tool, is a lot more comprehensive, a whole lot easier to use and its the one stop complete website tool for Marketing, Tracking Customers, Selling Online and Updating your website.

This myCMS package includes:
  • The base myCMS - Website building tool.
  • myCommerce - Sell Online
  • myCustomers - Customer Relations Management
  • myCampaign - Market to your clients online via email, measurably!

This launch is occurring in the next month or two. Please contact us for more information. In the meantime if you need the straight myCMS product with Web Design, Application Development or Hosting, also contact us.





Thursday 8 March 2007

CSS based SEO Improvements - does it work?

Of course it does, have you ever thought of the fact that your logo is an image? And google doesn't read the text of an image to determine your company name. I understand there is also the title, the domain, the text which has your business name but what about the all important h1 to h6 tags.

At Digerati Solutions we deliver HTML Cutup Solutions that don't just have images as buttons but actually as text. And when the page is loaded, CSS imports the image.

We haven't seen any CSS problems with browsers, only that a:hover tags may get mixed up and the button/image flickers on global hover attributes.

Chat to us about how we can SEO optimise your website to be true HTML in the eyes of google.



Monday 5 March 2007

eMail Campaigns aka. "Spam/Junk Mail"

I've been hyping up our new product, myCampaign to all our customers on our existing myCMS product. And every single person commented on the use of a marketing terms for what they know as spam. I find it interesting... with all the laws, all the filters and all the misconceptions people aren't willing to sell their products to their clients via email (anybody out there, come chat to me, we have a great product!)

I want to take this short opportunity to explain the pro's/con's of email marketing and hopefully get you to reconsider your conceptions of this means. Let's begin with the pro's:

  • It's direct - target a very specific market and your guaranteed to hit it.
  • It's measurable - you can track openings, bounces (hard/soft), link clicks and unopened.
  • It's attractive - HTML & CSS are great tools to build an ascetical appearance.
  • You can unsubscribe to the spam, whenever!

Now for the con's:

  • Misconceptions of spam (email campaigns complying with law requires two step sign up).
  • It's annoying.

Let me know if you think of more con's, I'm stuck for now.

Hopefully this pro/con explanation of email Campaigns might help change your thoughts. If you would like to chat to someone about this great medium to market with, contact us at Digerati Solutions.