AfterSkoolKids Ecommerce News

Pinnacle Cart

It’s crazy enough having to look through so many different ecommerce solution providers just to pick one that you hope will be able to meet the needs and demands of your online business – if you’re starting one that is. If you don’t really have the time to get everything together (like who does these days?) unless you have loads of time to spend doing plenty of research, then it’s highly recommended that you pick a hosted shopping cart software that comes with all the tools and features which you will need.

Looking at a Pinnacle Cart review recently, I think there were a few more stuff that the reviewer could have added when it comes to this particular ecommerce software. There were a few advantages that could be clearly seen when it comes to using Pinnacle Cart.

One would be that the shopping cart software is easy enough for anyone without technical knowledge to set up. Lots of people out there will own a desktop, laptop or tablet so it should be easy enough to set up an online store without the need to go for a crash course. Hence, new users don’t need any programming knowledge.

Secondly, this shopping cart software is available as a hosted solution (most folks will choose this option) as well as a stand alone option (you’ll have to get your own hosting plan if you pick this option). So for businesses that require customization and special requirements, they have the option to pick the latter while still being able to enjoy the same powerful features that comes with the software.

Pinnacle Cart Partners

Completely integrated with major shopping companies such as Amazon, eBay, Yahoo Stores, GoShopping and NextTag. And since everyone is on Facebook, the software is also integrated with Facebook allowing merchants to sell on the popular social network.

Merchants and sellers will also be able to reach more smart phone and tablet users as the ecommerce solution offers their clients a feature to have a mobile store. While the company offers sellers unlimited products to sell on their stores, there is a limitation on the disk space and traffic.

The only thing that took me by surprise was the $49 setup fee (if you’re planning on taking the cheaper plans). Other than that, if you’re really serious about doing business online, then a one time setup fee shouldn’t be much to think about. To know more about the review, click here http://www.thinkecommerce.net/pinnacle-cart-review

Yahoo Small Business

There’s a constant flood of people who are using hosted shopping cart software to set up their online store. Since this is more convenient, faster and easier compared to buying your own shopping cart software and using a separate hosting company, there are plenty of really good ecommerce shopping carts out there that offer an all-in-one package.

Anyway, who wants to waste time doing more research these days? People want to quickly get things done. Some who have plenty of cash will just literally pay people to get things done for them – setting up their online store, populating it, getting all the settings tweaked and voila! New store ready for business. While most of these popular ecommerce solutions have free trial periods for new users to try out, Yahoo Small Business does not offer that.

Those who are planning to use Yahoo Small Business to set up their first online store will have to sign up and pay before they could use the solution. Based on a Yahoo Small Business review that I looked up, it seems that the solution has plenty of basic features for merchants to use. However, it did not look as stylish or modern like the other shopping carts which I’ve tried out like Shopify, Volusion, Pinnacle Cart, etc.

Also, it seems to charge higher compared to the other carts even though it offers unlimited data transfer, disk space and email storage not to mention up to 50,000 products for all their plans. Come to think of it, how many new start ups have 50,000 products to sell? Have a look at the review here http://www.thinkecommerce.net/yahoo-small-business-review

Another point to note which a friend brought up would be the fact that upgrading will cost you more money (like every other plan out there!) but it’s stated clearly that the following year will cost you more in subscription fees. And looking at the review, the solution takes a percentage of transaction fee from every purchase. Now bear in mind that you as a merchant will still need to pay transaction fees to whichever payment processor that you’re using as well. Remember to factor in these cost when you’re preparing your business budget.

Yahoo Small Business Online Store Start Up

While setting up a store is easy, it’s the cost factor that merchants need to take into account. Don’t forget, after setting up your entire store, you’ll need to consider spending money on getting traffic to your site and hope that conversion goes up.

Setting up your own online store could take ages for some people who do not have the motivation to get it done quickly. or those who already know what they want to sell and how they want their store to look like, it could take less than 14 days to get an online store up and running. So if you have plenty of cash to spare and would not like to waste your time setting up your own store, you could check out popular ecommerce shopping cart provider AmeriCommerce.

AmeriCommerce.com

Based on an AmeriCommerce review that I went through, it seems that this is quite a convenient shopping cart software provider. They offer hosting and a whole range of ecommerce solution features and services that will help both new and seasoned merchants to get their online store up and running as soon as possible.

Whether you need a custom designed template for your new online store created from scratch or you need to have an existing store moved to their ecommerce platform, you will be able to find a host of services offered at reasonable prices. Those who know the headache of moving from a different ecommerce platform will find the services offered by AmeriCommerce helpful.

The company won a few awards for the past few years and has quite an impressive range of clients. But what most merchants are looking for is speed. People want to start selling straight away. So some won’t mind paying the fees to have professionals set up their online store quickly while they focus on other tasks. This is because getting entangled in a migration process could end up wasting precious time for some seasoned sellers.

AmeriCommerce Store Setup Packages

This service offered by AmeriCommerce is not only for new merchants but for existing merchants who wish to set up a new store with the company. If they already have other online stores which are hosted by other ecommerce solution platforms and are busy managing their other stores, they could just pay to get some simple task done. For those who find setting up shipping to be a complicated process, just drop them a mail and let them know what exactly you want done and let them configure the shipping method for your store. Saves you a headache.

If you want to find out more about what AmeriCommerce could offer and what to avoid, check out their review at http://www.thinkecommerce.net/americommerce-review

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter, founded in 2009, is the largest platform for crowd funding for creative projects. Kickstarter has had quite a few success stories. The Pebble smart watch project being one of them.

The range of projects or endeavors is wide and includes films, music, games and so on. Now, here’s the thing. Investors cannot invest for monetary returns. They can only back a project in return for a tangible reward or a unique experience like a personal ‘Thank You’ note or something to that affect.

Sourcing Products

Not all the projects on Kickstarter will be end up taking the world by storm, even the ones which have maxed out their funding requests. Just like any business decision, one has to do a little research first. There are a few Kickstarter scams which were well documented but both ‘Kickstarter and project creators have cancelled projects that appeared to have been fraudulent.’

Still, there are many projects which look destined to be a hit.

Take the Pebble watch for instance. There are already smart watched available but none comes close to what the Pebble watch has to offer. However, looking forward, it is rumored that Apple is planning a similar device. Apple is a brand that does not need to include everything except the kitchen sink to sell a product. So that could be a threat to the Pebble watch. However, an Apple smart watch is still a rumor.

Once you’ve done your research and you are pretty sure a particular product will sell, you could contact the creators to see if you can get on their list of distributors.

Prep Your Online Store

Of course, you’ll need an online store to sell your products. There are many dependable software to choose from. Be sure to look at a few reviews of top ecommerce software before trying them out. One place to source best ecommerce software reviews is at http://www.thinkecommerce.net/.

Once your store is all ready, you’ll need to drive traffic to it. You can use both paid (PPC, affiliate programs, market places), SEO, social sites, forums and blogs to get traffic to your store. Remember to optimize all your online real estate with keywords you want to rank for and link them back to your money site or store.

It should be easier to rank for new items but it is more important that the keywords used have search traffic. There is no point ranking for keywords no one is searching for.

Amazon Studios – Creative Galaxy

These days, parents need to be on guard more especially with the type and genre of shows and series that are being shown on television. And with so many parents getting hold of tablets and smartphones not only for themselves but giving them to their children at such a young age, it is absolutely important to make sure that the healthy boundaries are properly set up when it comes to watching any shows or programs.

If you’re looking for an alternate channel to get some healthy, clean shows for your children to watch, you might want to consider Amazon Studios. Recently, Amazon Studios just launched a few programs that are free which had been created specifically for preschoolers. Latest news is that there are 6 new pilot episodes which are available for free streaming which young kids will enjoy. All you need to do is to download them to your tablet and watch them with your children.

The creators of these series have combined both education and entertaining elements into the series so children will be happy learning new things while being entertained at the same time. Remember those times when we used to enjoy watching Walt Disney shows? And one of the main reasons why parents encourage their children to watch them was because of the good values that their kids could learn along the way that these shows were able to portray and teach. So the same goes for these series that are being streamed on Amazon Studios.

The main theme is to make the shows fun, entertaining and simple while offering healthy educational series to parents. However, they are only available on Amazon Studios and not on any other television channels. Another plus point is that parents get to feedback to the creators of these series which will help them improve while they are in the midst of creating new programs for children.

Will it take off well? Check them out and decide for yourself.

InstanteStore Monthly Price Plan

One of the things that really get on my nerves is when you think you know what you’re paying for until the bill arrives. Well when it comes to picking hosted shopping cart service providers, I’d advise sellers to be extra careful as there could be setup fees thrown in or even nasty transaction fees charged for every sale that you make. As it is already, merchants are having a hard time competing against retailers and the last thing they need is to get a bill on transaction fees for every sale that they make.

Looking at an InstanteStore review, I was quite surprised that this ecommerce solution did not charge any setup or transaction fees but instead was giving free credit for merchants to use for any design work with their design partner. Also depending on what type of package that you pick, they also throw in credit for SEO services which merchants could use.

And that’s not the only thing that they throw in for free. After browsing through their main website, I discovered that InstanteStore also gives out their Free Live Chat Software. This software is available for download by anyone and you could just install it on your website as a chat tool even if you are not an InstanteStore customer. So even if you have your own website or blog like WordPress or Blogger, you could easily copy and paste the live chat code on to your site and it’ll work just fine.

InstanteStore Free Live Chat

In case you’re wondering whether there are any hidden charges for using the live chat software, the answer is ‘no’. And if you’re worried about not knowing how to go about it, it’s actually pretty straight forward. Just download the software to your computer and follow the instructions. InstanteStore has also included short videos for those using WordPress or Blogger to show them how to copy and paste the code.

And even if you do run into any problems, their friendly customer support is available any time. Just email or send them a ticket and they’ll get back to you pretty quick. So there’s literally no hidden cost to spook sellers or merchants who are thinking of using their ecommerce platform to power their online business. To find out more about InstanteStore, check out a more detailed review here http://www.thinkecommerce.net/instantestore-review-2013

Of course if you’re going to ask them to get something customized for you which is not included in their shopping cart, they will then quote you a price depending on how much work they need to do. And paying for the payment processor of your choice is between you and your payment provider. Anyway, they offer 30 days free trial without any commitment so you could try them out and see what you think of the ecommerce software.

Kindle Fire by Amazon

Parents are realizing what a big help tablets are. And this is really good news for companies like Amazon which sells the Kindle along with Apple’s popular iPad. Other tablets makers like Samsung and even Google’s Nexus are proving very handy as well. The reason? Parents get to purchase e-books easily for their kids to read. Instead of going to a book shop to get a physical book, parents are finding it easy, convenient and fast to purchase e-books online.

Especially since everyone is always fighting for more time in this crazy hectic age. And if you happen to be staying in an apartment or small house, you won’t have much room to put all your books. Your kids will have their own collection of children books as well. So you might as well get them all in electronic form to save on some real estate.

However for parents who still want to buy books for their children, they may end up using the tablets to get some e-books for themselves instead. Because kids being kids will want to spend most of their time watching a show or playing games with the tablets or smart phones. Unless you’re planning on getting each kid a tablet, you might as well draw some healthy boundaries and enjoy using the tablet to catch up on some reading.

Other than that, if you have plenty of traveling to do and really don’t have the space to bring along any children books, any of these tablets will definitely come in handy to keep the kids occupied while you get some much needed time out.

Either way, they are a great help to teach your kids how to read with some useful apps or children will enjoy reading any book on these tablets.

Personalization is everywhere, from search personalization to product personalization when you shop online.

Now, why is personalization so important? Personalization requires the use of information in order to present accurate results to users. To search engines, this would mean providing accurate search results and more targeted online ads to users. To online stores, this would mean collecting data via their stores and social networks in order to provide truly targeted products to shoppers.

Stores have been carrying out splits tests for years in order to find out how shoppers would react to information and designs which we displayed. Personalization takes it a step further by targeting individuals. The more targeted the strategy, the better the conversion rate.

For example, if you know a shopper who lands on your store is looking for a certain type of shoe, in a certain color, in a particular size, from a particular brand within a certain price range, wouldn’t presenting that exact item, after fulfilling all the conditions, improve the user experience so much that he or she would be very inclined to make a purchase?

We read about the importance of social customer relationship management or social CRM all the time but many smaller companies regard it as a necessity only for bigger organizations who are able to afford a department to handle social CRM.

Some other company execs think that social CRM is just about getting a company page on Facebook and Twitter. Others think that by doing so, a company is just opening itself up to customers who just want to vent their frustrations which could put the company in bad light.

But CRM is more than that. It’s about brand building, it’s about listening to your customers, it’s about gathering information so you can improve your products, services, user experience and building a solid customer base. All that will never happen if a company is not brave enough to put itself out there.

No company is perfect. There will be frustrations aired for all the world to see. If it’s not on your company’s Facebook page, it’ll be on a forum or one of those fake consumer complaint sites which charge companies if they want any negative comments removed.

So look at social CRM as an opportunity to show people you want to improve and their views and recommendations are much appreciated. How you address public discontent is very important. Always be courteous and take the high road and accept the fact that there will be times when you just cannot please a person no matter what you do. Do not fret to much about it. People are not dumb. As long as they can see you have tried your best to reasonably solve an issue, most people will give credit where it’s due.