eBay 2010 Fall Seller Update; three steps to social media win; the iPad and the future of retailing. In order to always be up to date in the rapidly changing E-Commerce-Business we do look in to interesting articles and blog postings on a daily basis. Find the most interesting ones we came across in our series “E-Commerce-Literature: recommended by ePages.” Have fun exploring.

eBay has announced his 2010 Fall Seller update with lots of intersting informations for professional sellers on eBay. Read everything you need to know about new features, guidelines and opportunities on the world largest auction platform.

Setting up a Facebook-Account is easy. But developing a successfull social media strategy isn´t. The Article "Three steps to social media win" explains, what you should keep in min, when going to the web 2.0.

The iPad has finally arrived. But is it really going to be the game changer – especially for online retailing – like a lot of people are saying?

Granted, the Tour de France has seen better and cleaner times. Nevertheless, from a deep attachment to the cycling sport, the motto for the latest edition of the series “3 x Shop” is this time "Tour de France". The ePages blog presents three ePages shops about the most beautiful way of moving.

Bobbin Bicycles

Vintage bikes with a special flavor can be found at Bobbin Bicycles from Britain. The fact that everything is a little different at this bike dealer is reminiscent at the first glance at the website and its special Monty Python's Flying Circus style. The shop is clearly not about highly bred racing bikes but about highest individuality on two wheels. Certainly, not a shop for everyone. But an interesting concept to fill a market niche.
 

PG-Bikes

PG Bikes is one of the leading manufacturers of so-called cruiser bikes, a type of Harley Davidson bikes with riding pedals. At PG-Bikes bicycles are more than tools to quickly get from A to B. These are bikes that express a special summer feeling, a feeling for the casual joy of cruising through the city.

With the new blacktrail model PG Bikes clearly shows, that they are also one of the technology leaders on the market. The blacktrail model travels at 100 kilometers per hour, bringing a new dimension to biking. But be warned, if you think of buying one of these limited special bikes: The cost point is 60.000 Euros.
 

Kokua

You can’t start early enough to ride a bike. Not only that it's fun and healthy, but everyone who is eventually going to ride the 21 hairpin bends of Alp d´Huez is going to need every hour of extra training.

Thank God there is Kokau, a shop for children's wooden wheels. Shining in a reduced design the shop presents all the joy of two-wheeled riding, not least through a gallery section, where customers can show pictures of their little ones on their wheels.
 

Today the ePages blog had the opportunity to talk with Dejan Krunic, one of the official ePages project partners of Norway, about his experiences with the ePages shopping cart system and its impact on SEO measures.

Hi, Dejan, before we start: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your business?

Dejan Krunic: Hi, I am working as C.D.O. & C.I.O. in a company called Midway Europe AS in Norway. Midway owns several other companies and one of those is Econgroup AS which is an official partner of ePages.

We have been involved with internet sales since 1999 and all of our focus in on the internet and technology around it, when it comes to sales, SEO, marketing, etc.

You are an official ePages project partner. Can you give us a few examples of projects you built using ePages ?

Dejan Krunic: Beside the main project right now with Midway and its European branches, we have started ePages projects with several smaller companies in our surroundings. In these projects we have gained support from the local authorities after the presentation of ePages and its possibilities.

Most of those are starting as web portals, since our customers would like to learn more about the system and how to utilize it. We have knowledge that more than 30% of those are planning to have a web sales at some point of time. Currently we are talking about 20 – 25 companies, but the word is spreading quickly and we are having some more inquiries.

You told me, that you also built your own company website using ePages. Why did you choose to do this?

Dejan Krunic: Yes, we have used Econ's web site as a first reference and it is located at www.econgroup.no.

We have chosen ePages after more than 3 years of research where we were looking for a web system which can serve our needs for ecommerce, data exchange, flexibility, possibilities to add functionality, just to mention a few.

Just to give you an example, today Midway has over 12 500 categories, 130 000 products and 14 offices in Europe, with different languages, currencies, price lists, etc. Our ePages system, which is currently under development, will exchange the data through web services with our stock/warehouse system in the US,where all the products will be shipped from.

This is where we find ePages to excel, along with the SEO.

With all respect to other companies and their web systems, after 3 years of research we couldn't find anything else that could match ePages or even come closer to it, when it came to our (very complicated) needs.

So, please tell us about your experiences with ePages and the effect on search engine optimization. What do you think, which features work and where is room left for improvement?

Dejan Krunic: As I mentioned before SEO is excellent within the ePages. Just a small example:

Before ePages I have used several web systems to achieve my goals and it took me several months and even years to get to my goal. I think it is worth mentioning that I have been beta testing many of Google's products e.g. Analytics from day one.

So, with the ePages version 6, patch 8 it took me 30 days, yes, thirty days, to get the ranking nr. 1 at www.google.no

If you search for ePages dealer in norwegian (ePages forhandler) we are ranked number one with the connected result as nr. 2, and it is out of 36900 results. As for other results we have nr. 2 and 3 within the SAP B1 dealer search just behind SAP itself. This is quite an impressive result in such a short period of time. Just to make things clear, ePages is the one to blame for this!

There's always room for improvements, but since you are following trends very well and listen to your partners and customers I think that there is not that much to add, since upgrades are coming at an incredible pace, bringing something new each time.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Dejan Krunic: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my findings regarding the ePages software.
 

Make short work of slow sellers. Clear out your storeroom intelligently and use reduced prices to promote individual products. The “Reference price” function allows you to show your customers how much they can save. The ePages Blog will show you which settings you must specify.

First, decide which text should appear before the old prices. Simply switch to the “Products / Product settings” menu.

You will see available settings on the tab which subsequently appears (beneath the “Texts” tab). Depending on whether gross prices or net prices are displayed in your shop, you can edit texts which refer to, for example, value-added tax (VAT) or shipping. Enter a “Text before the reference price” here – such as “Old price”, “Regular price” or “Suggested retail price”.

Here, you can also decide whether or not the old price should appear crossed out in the storefront.

Simply use the “Products/Products” menu to access settings for the article which you would like to discount. Via the “General/Prices” tab, you can change the list price. Enter the new, reduced price and then click on the small, blue plus sign (“Display reference price”) underneath the input field. In the second field which now appears, enter the product’s old price; then save.

The old price and the new price of this product will now be displayed in the storefront. The old price’s font size depends on your shop’s default font size, which you can set via the “Design” menu. By the way, you can emphasize the new, reduced price by selecting a font size different from that of the old price. To do so, access the "Design / Advanced design” menu.

Click in the centre of your online shop’s content area so that it appears within a red rectangle. The toolbar above the page will now show you the settings available regarding this area. To modify the presentation of prices, select “Prices and product images” in the toolbar’s “Preview” drop-down menu. The toolbar will refresh anew and show you additional possible settings.

You can now adjust the default font size – and thus the size of the old price, too – as well as the font size of new prices. You can adjust the default font size in the “Text” input field. The font size concerning product prices can be specified individually for the “Detail page”, “List view”, and “Home page”, respectively.

Done! Please double-check your shop’s storefront to ensure that reference prices appear in accordance with your wishes.

ePages is attending HostingCon 2010, the premier conference and trade show for the hosted services industry. Over 1.500 Internet professionals from over 30 countries are meeting this year in Austin, Texas from 19.-21.of July discussing new trends in the hosting business and searching for new business opportunities.

If you want to speak with an ePages representative feel free to contact Lee Orchison via his email address lorchison@epages.com to make an appointment.

How to be successful with my E-Commerce-Project? And how to use the ePages-Software-Feature for that? Our blog gives you the answers for that. In order to always be up to date in the rapidly changing E-Commerce-Business we do look in to interesting articles and blog postings on a daily basis. Find the most interesting ones we came across in our series “E-Commerce-Literature: recommended by ePages.” Have fun exploring.

Giving your customers a chance to tell you and other customers their opinion about your products and your service can have a massive positive impact on your business. The best example for that: Amazon. So open your shop for customer feedback and start using social media to get in contact with your target group. The following two articles give you a good starting point in doing so.

Due to the ongoing financial crisis, VAT in Great Britain is going to rise to 20%. Find all relevant information in Chloe Rigby´s article on internetretailing.net.

But is the financial crisis slowing down the growth of e-commerce? Apparently not, as internetretailing.net is stating in the following article by Chloe Rigby.

Choose the product for which you want to provide the instruction manual via the menu "Products/Products" or create a new product via the menu "Products/New". On the “General” tab that now appears go to the submenu "Attributes." Click "Browse" to choose the instruction manual – e.g. a PDF file. By clicking on the "Save"-Button the document is uploaded to the server.

It is now downloadable for the clients in the storefront on the appropriate product detail page.

If you want to delete the instructions again, you can do so on the same tab on which you have also uploaded it.

Hafengeburtstag24

For over 20 years the Hamburg based agency “BUTENSCHÖN Highlights” arranges sailing trips on training and traditional ships as customer incentives or company events. For that they use an ePages Onlineshop which is designed to give a special maritime flair. Plenty of pictures are used, to give customers a good impression of the offered ships and the accompanying events like the “Kieler Woche”, that set the scenery for the trips.

See Time

If you want make a good impression on board you need the right equipment and clothing. The latter can be found at See Time, an ePages based onlineshop for maritime clothing and accessories.

MFM-Surfshop

Sailing isn´t your cup of tea? Then how about surfboarding? You can find everything you need for that at MFM-Surfshop. Also this onlineshop is a good example how to use Youtube videos to promote your products the effective way: Sometimes a video is worth a 1000 words.
 

ePages blog: Mario, tell us a little bit about yourself and your online business?

Mario Izquierdo:  I am one of the managers of "Salesman S.L.", a Spanish company. We have two business lines:

• skin4everything, where we sell customize products with logo and corporate designs (merchandising and marketing services). Our principal customers are big companies and telecom companies.
• skin4fun began operating three months ago. In our online shop by ePages (www.tienda.skin4fun.es), we sell accessories for Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc…) such as screen protectors, skins (decorative vinyl stickers), emergency batteries, speakers, etc. We also sell these products to distributors, but don’t use an online store in this case.

ePages blog: In your online shop you are using different social media platforms and services. Tell us a little bit about it.

Mario Izquierdo: At the moment, we mostly use two social media platforms:

• Facebook, where we talk to our followers and customers. We also publish apple news as well as videos and pictures of our products, and of course, links to our online shop
• Youtube. We make two types of videos, tutorials for apple products and demonstrations for our other products – we also introduce the newest ones in our store next to the product.

ePages blog: What customer reactions and feedback do you get?

Mario Izquierdo: People in Spain usually use Facebook; this platform is our principal communication channel where we receive a lot of feedback – quite common questions about our products and information requests about tutorials and Apple products.

The Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/user/skin4everything) is very important, too. We received a lot of positive feedback: especially comments that it is convenient to get a better feeling of how a product really is. In a short time, we had nearly 5,000 views of our videos meaning that people who come in the store to buy a product also watch the video.

ePages blog: Can you tell us a little bit about the marketing effects that you generate?

Mario Izquierdo:

• We have many visitors in our online store coming from Youtube.
• Facebook has allowed us to create a meeting place where people can see Apple news and tutorials and at the same time learn about our products. For us, this is a great way to publish information at low cost.
• We have a "company image" in line with the products we sell and with new profile of internet users in social media platforms. In this way, we are different than our competitors
• Finally, when we need to show new products to our distribution channel, we only have to provide a web link to ePages or a social platform that contains all necessary information. This implies a very good, modern brand image and last but not least it saves us a lot of money.

ePages blog: Do you have any practical advice for other merchants how to use social media?

Mario Izquierdo: A company and its managers must believe in social media – making it part of the long-term term strategy of the company. But you need to be aware that if you are going to use social media, you will have to be ready to maintain the social media platforms. Basically, you will have to put one person in order to aggregate content and to talk to your customers every single day.
The content must be of value for your followers. For example, in our business it’s very important to publish demonstration videos of the products that we sell so that the customer gets a good impression of it. This makes it much easier for us to sell.

We think that it is enough to you use Youtube and Facebook as social media platforms, but it is very important to integrate the social media platforms into your online store. ePages is a perfect tool to do this because it is open and flexible and it is very easy to include HTML code. Just have a look at these examples:

1) On the main web page: you can insert social media icons and links for social media platforms:

2) On product pages, you can insert social media icons, a link for other pages for more detail products and a "Youtube link" in order to see the product video:

3) You can add a special page for product details where you can insert demonstration videos. This way, it is not necessary to go to Youtube, because you can see the video in the online shop:

We really think you can improve your online store and your business with these three easy examples. Good luck, we hope that these tips are useful!