Hera is a collection of great ecommerce plug-ins to add catalog, cart and sales functionality to your WordPress site. They range from basic to complex, from free to commercial, but each provides tools that allow you to easily sell your wares on a WordPress-powered website.

WP e-Commerce

WP e-Commerce is one of the most popular ecommerce plug-ins for WordPress. For a free plug-in, WP e-Commerce doesn’t skimp on features. It supports multiple payment gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net and Google Checkout. The plug-in comes with a variety of ready-made themes, but still fully supports the creation of your own custom themes. You can also customize your order forms, share products via social networking integration, organize products into multiple categories, provide product variations (e.g. size, color) and much more.

Cart66 Lite

Cart66 lite is an e-commerce plugin for your WordPress blog. Unlike other e-commerce plugins, it is quite light yet powerful. You can easily sell digital as well as physical products with it. With multiple shipping and currency options, it can also help you can give your business an international edge. You can easily place ads in any page and also use affiliate marketing for more profit.

Jigoshop 

Jigoshop provides many features which are essential to host an e-commerce website. It will take only minutes to create your full-fledged online shop with various Jigoshop products and services. You can group your products and provide various attributes for your products, (like S, M, L sizes for clothing) to help your visitors easily refine the items as per their needs.

ShopperPress

ShopperPress is meant to act as a one-stop solution for ecommerce in WordPress. With over 20 ready-made themes, you simply install the plug-in, select your desired look, add products and start selling. ShopperPress supports both physical and digital goods, custom order forms, multiple languages and over 20 payment gateways. You can also easily integrate Google Analytics, as well as your own advertising.

eShop

Free plug-in eShop is another economical solution for rapid ecommerce integration into your WordPress site. eShop supports both physical and digital product sales, integrates Authorize.net and PayPal gateways (as well as a few others) and is compatible with the WP affiliate plug-in. Some basic features include stock management, configurable email templates, a variety of shipping methods, basic statistics, downloadable sales data, and much more. Like Cart66, eShop uses WordPress pages and posts, so you can easily integrate your products into any section of the site.

Shopp

Shopp is an SEO-friendly, powerful and popular ecommerce plug-in. Shopp claims to work out of the box with any WordPress theme, so integration into an existing site should be simple. Other WordPress-centric features include dashboard widgets to easily view sales and product history, short codes and theme widgets to allow you to quickly drop Shopp elements and products into your pages.

Shopp also has a host over other standard ecommerce features: multi-category inventory management, payment history, multiple product images and variations, email notifications and a shipping calculator. The software also includes a number of promotional tools and supports a large variety of payment gateways, either natively or via plug-ins (PayPal, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, First Data, Authorize.net and more).

Have you tried any of these WordPress Ecommerce Plugins? If so – leave a comment.

10 ways offline businesses can use social media.

1.Maintain Positive Online Reputation: Don’t just prepare social media profiles and sit on it: reply to comments, post interesting content, pursue friends and update your status regularly.

2. Social tools: Create tools that is related to your product. Use YouTube videos to promote your tools and have people compete using their skills at your place of business.

3. Promote your social presence: Ask people to follow your business on Twitter or to “like” it on Facebook. Put it on your receipts, invoices, and signs to get your current customer base on board to build momentum.

4. Put your whole company to work: If your business employs people besides you, give them all time during the day to post social networking updates. This gets your whole team involved in the marketing effort while increasing the exposure of your business in the social world.

5. Find out what your competitors are doing: The amount of involvement your company has in social media may vary depending on the nature of your business. Don’t ever fall behind what others in your sector are doing, so keep tabs on them and then compete for online prominence.

6. Follow the lifecycle: Don’t let your Facebook campaign get in a rut: social marketing has a lifecycle that you should follow. Listen to what customers are saying about your market and products, engage those customers with appealing content and promotions, and then analyze your results. Focus on your most successful efforts. Identify the promotions and content that are most successful and build on them. When you can prove that an initiative isn’t working, stop it and try something else.

7. Build a sense of community: Both online and offline you can work to make your customers feel like a special family or a close network of friends. Do this by hosting community events at your physical store and online. Help promote your city or community together with your business to help people feel like they belong at your store.

8. Don’t spread yourself too thin: If you have limited resources, you may have trouble maintaining an exciting presence on every single social media platform. Choose the number and types of sites you can manage well rather than risk leaving stale or poor quality content everywhere.

9. Manage your reputation: Do you know what customers or potential customers are saying about your business, your products, your brand, and your employees online? Pay attention to the comments you receive on Facebook, keep a Twitter search running for key names, products, and service that relate to your business. Set up Google Alerts, and handle problems and complaints head on. What a great opportunity to show the world your willingness to engage people to resolve their problems and address their concerns!

10. Be patient: As social media starts to mature, instant success will become rarer. Don’t let that bother you. Keep up a fresh, dynamic, and engaging social presence and you will reap rewards.

These 10 ways offline businesses can use social media will help brick and mortar businesses build a strong social and physical presence in both their online and offline communities. Start working on yours today.

Today’s consumers have also changed to adapt to a technological world. E-mail, mobile phones, instant messaging, and the Internet are all changing how consumers behave while purchasing and using products and services. With all of this input, consumers are forced to make “snap decisions” on what gets their time and attention—and they will say “no” to products faster then ever before.

Myth 1: Consumers behave the same in all markets

The whole process of creating and introducing a new technology product is littered with guesswork that leaves the product designers in a revolutionary frame of mind—even after the product starts shipping and the information starts to flow. Designers believe that consumers will flock to their new technology product, service, or web site because it provides a similar value or copies a concept provided in an established market. In the end, consumers don’t understand the offering and don’t use it.

Myth 2: The more consumers see it, the more successful it will be

Many companies believe in their product so much that they can’t understand why it isn’t successful. They assume that the problem is that others don’t know about the product, so they increase their marketing budget. However, they soon spend themselves out of business because consumers attracted to the product don’t stay to become long-term, loyal users.

Myth 3: If I’ll use it, my users will

It is often hard for designers of a new technology product or service to differentiate themselves from their users. They think that new users will fall in love with the product just as they have. They find it very difficult to understand why users reject their offerings.

Myth 4: Consumers will find a product’s value

Most companies feel that it is best to have lots of features so that users can navigate to and use whichever features fit their needs. These companies are usually disappointed, as users don’t look for the features they want. Instead, users struggle to find value and give up.

Myth 5: Consumers want more features

As an idea turns into a product and starts shipping, its designers and engineers seem to have an unlimited number of new ideas for new features to include in the next version, each feature designed to make the product “more complete.” However, in the eyes of the consumer, the exact opposite is happening. The early users are wondering why the key feature is so hard to use, buggy, or incomplete.

Myth 1: Social media will soon become an indispensable retail channel Social media isn’t likely to become an important retail channel anytime soon and currently is a driver for more shopping across all channels, not just online stores.

Myth 2: Stores will become mainly showrooms in the future For most companies, the physical store remains the centerpiece of the purchase journey. However, companies need to determine how to best drive purchase activity across all of their channels both physical and online. There still is a place for the store to be a showroom-as a supplement for online pure players, rather than a new model for brick-and-mortar retailers.

Myth 3: The tablet will overtake the PC as the preferred online shopping device Tablets and smart phones won’t catch up any time soon as these devices are used at the end of the purchase journey, particularly in-store, while shopping.

Myth 4: As the world gets smaller, global consumers are becoming more similar A wide range of local differences in consumer behavior exists, and retailers still need to cater to local trends.

Myth 5: China is the future model for online retail China is at the forefront of some key trends, but its multichannel and online model is unique to the culture, as shopping habits are dramatically different in China.

Myth 6: Domestic retailers will always enjoy a ‘home field’ advantage over global retailers Foreign retailers are making inroads into consumers’ lists of favorite multichannel retailers. However, retailers need to keep in mind that it’s not just the local base of domestic retailers they compete with, but with global players as well.

Myth 7: Global online pure players will always enjoy a scale advantage over domestic online pure players Many domestic online pure players are holding their own as they have better access to local market knowledge.

Myth 8: Retailers are inherently better positioned than brands, as they are closest to the customer Consumers are shopping directly from manufacturers and many no longer distinguish between retailers and their favorite brands. Retailers need to utilize core strengths including warranty programs and email promotions that drive traffic in-store.

Myth 9: Online retail is cannibalizing sales in other channels Consumers are actually spending more with their favorite multichannel retailers, not just shifting some purchases to a different channel.

Myth 10: Low price is the main driver of customer spend at favorite retailers Customers value quality, innovative brands over price when shopping at their favorite multichannel retailers.

“A multichannel retail strategy can be extremely advantageous. The more minutely retailers can identify how consumers are utilizing the different channels, the more success they will have”. Companies need a strategy that will create value by connecting with consumers and engaging with them directly online, while providing a meaningful, seamless shopping experience across all channels.”

Source: PwC

Global e-commerce sales reached $1.08875 trillion in 2012, up 21.9% from $893.33 billion in 2011, according to digital marketing research firm eMarketer. While North America continued to claim most of those sales, this year Asia-Pacific will take the lead.

The firm forecasts that in 2013, total e-commerce sales worldwide will grow 19.3% year over year to reach $1.29844 trillion. In its definition of e-commerce sales, eMarketer includes retail, travel and digital download sales and online marketplace transactions. Here is a regional breakdown of worldwide online sales share in 2012 and 2013, according to eMarketer:

• North America, 33.5%, 31.5%;
• Asia-Pacific, 30.5%, 33.4%;
• Western Europe, 26.9%, 25.7%;
• Eastern Europe, 3.8%, 3.9%;
• Latin America, 3.4%, 3.5%;
• Middle East and Africa, 1.9%, 2.1%.

The reality is that starting and running an e-commerce business is no easy task. Read this post and learn what it takes to succeed in this lucrative yet complex market.

5 things you need to know about starting a successful e-commerce business 

Address cultural concerns: Be sure to collaborate with native speakers to help navigate the technical, political and governmental concerns unique to the country. It’s important to note that interpersonal relationships set the groundwork for successful collaboration.

Be mindful of compliance: Country’s legal system retains tight control over many aspects of daily life, including business. Obtain in-country counsel to guide you through the multi-layered bureaucracy and to get expert advice on developing your online sales terms and conditions, as well as any other legal policies.

Tailor your technology: A successful e-commerce platform for the market is flexible, compatible with the country’s browser of choice and can be easily integrated with a content delivery network. Understanding local caching rules is crucial, as is taking into account limited Internet throughput.

Customize your content. Focus on smooth integration with social-media platforms, and modify your site configuration and system integration according to local specifications to ensure an optimized customer experience.

Consider your partners and platforms. Choose a partner that has a solid relationship with local vendors and a keen understanding of local and cultural concerns.

Within eCommerce, one of the segments which is gaining traction and investment favor is jewellery.  Global Jewellery industry has the potential to grow to USD 280 billion by 2015 States a report released by the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council and KPMG. The VC funding activity in jewellery is supported by research from Forrester, which includes jewellery as one of the fastest growing eCommerce segments through 2014. As a product category which initially started slow online (when compared with books for computer equipment), jewellery is now enjoying strong growth for several reasons.

A big benefit for online jewelry retailers versus local jewelers is the ability to create customized jewelry based on shopper requests. For an online jeweler, customization can be a point of differentiation around which the company was developed. And in the same way that local jewelers historically built their business by knowing the tastes of their local clientele, online jewelers have established their businesses based on the ability to source jewelry from a broad range of international suppliers to improve cost efficiencies and create product differentiation.

Here are 4 most innovative online jewellery sites:

Blue Nile: Blue Nile has grown to become the largest online retailer of certified diamonds and fine jewellery  The company is built on a unique idea of customization. You can create your own jewellery — choose the right diamond and they will set it in your favorite earring, pendant, or ring design. Every order is shipped free, guaranteed and returnable within 30 days, so you can be sure you made the right decision.

Gemvara: Gemvara is the revolutionary leader of custom-made, fine jewellery shopping online. In 3 easy steps you can create your custom-made, eye catching jewellery personalized for any occasion.  Explore Gemvera’s hundreds of styles to find the design. Customize the gemstones and type of metal to create a one-of-a kind piece. Once your heirloom-quality jewelry is perfected it will be shipped for free via FedEx right to your doorstep.

Zales: Zales has grown from a single store selling jewellery alongside appliances and cameras to a major international jewelry corporation.

Zales Jewelers’ focus has always been on providing a wide range of choices for mainstream jewelry customers who seek excellent value in fine jewellery  For this reason, Zales designs and provides much of its jewellery to meet its customers’ tastes and expectations for quality and style. Zales also carries brand-name jewellery  including watches, allowing the jeweller to offer its customers a wide variety of merchandise at a range of price points. As the best-known name in retail jewellery  Zales Jewelers has a broad selection of classic and contemporary styles.

James Allen: Another store for shopping custom made jewellery online. James Allen is unique in a way that it provides exclusive Diamond Display Technology allowing you to interact with diamonds in 360 deg, all from the comfort of your home with the largest selection of  fancy coloured diamonds, a rare and precious stone to personalize jewelry for yourself or a loved one in a beautiful way.

My Babylonia: Offers greek hand-made jewellery. These designs utilize special nautical knot work with the finest quality 950 silver and come in a variety of colors. They are resistant to salt water and sun and last for many years.

• Get the customer on the hook

Some people think that hundreds of customers are going to rush into their stores once they’re open but it’s not so, unless you have done your best to make your ecommerce website a real attention grabber on the search results page. Of course, top Google positions make all the difference but this is not all there is to it. Building a catchy home page featuring relevant images and original content is among top ecommerce website development tactics as it may help pull in significant numbers of customers.Keep in mind that even if you are selling high quality products, it’s difficult to get the client on the hook without a professionally built website.

• Make your site user-friendly and safe

Even if your ecommerce site looks extraordinary, it’s essential to make it functional, navigable and convenient to use. A clear layout and user-friendly main menu may save the visitor valuable time and effort so try not to confuse potential clients with unnecessary features, pop-up windows, scrolling text and numerous internal links. A secure shopping cart and payment getaway are probably the most important aspects of ecommerce website development so make sure that all the transactions are performed properly and the client’s credit card information is safe.

• Manage your site well

The ability to easily manage the site is also a significant aspect of ecommerce website development; that’s why reliable content management systems are irreplaceable when it comes to ecommerce. A quality content management system gives you the possibility to manage products, orders, prices, categories, shipping and delivery options, customers, promotions, discounts, etc. You can activate and deactivate certain products and customers as well as add private comments to orders and send emails to clients. Managing the site is an ongoing process with certain products and special offers replacing others. Without using a proper CMS, managing your ecommerce site becomes quite an issue which, in its turn, influences your online business in general.If you have decided to do your best to succeed in online business, go for professional ecommerce website development as your site has to be search engine optimised and managed properly to be able to pull in customers. If the site is managed well, conducting ecommerce business can be a blessing.

1. Multichannel Merchant

Based on industry research, personal experience, and observations of the writers, Multichannel Merchant is full of good insight for online retailers. Just plug “competitive pricing” into the search box and you’ll find article after article on pricing intelligence and latest technology regarding competitive pricing intelligence tools.

2. PROS Pricing Leadership

A treasure trove of articles on the subject of pricing, comparison shopping engines, competitive pricing intelligence tools, and everything in between — by respected leaders, pros and bloggers in the industry. Very informative; a lot of valuable information and insight.

3. Knowledge Is Power 

Knowledge Is Power is an apt name for this self-proclaimed “Forum For The Competitive Intelligence Community.” Well-organized, easy-to-find topics and blogs. If you seek answers to questions about competitive intelligence methods, tools, and happenings, this source recognizes and touts the need for savvy online retailers to utilize competitive pricing intelligence tools to the utmost.

4. Six Sigma Pricing Blog

Everything you ever wanted to know about pricing: Price Execution, Price Planning, Pricing Strategy, and Pricing Operations. Blogs include titles like: Pragmatic Competitive Intelligence for Pricing Precision; Fewer Products: Is Less More? Plan Pricing Promotions For Survival and Profit.

5. PricingWire 

PricingWire focuses on the critical role that pricing plays within any business. Lots of valuable information to help your business remain in the best position to make smarter pricing decisions, improve value propositions, and create and grow paying (and profitable) customers.

6. Retail Ecommerce 

Search for “pricing” and “competitive pricing” on this site and you’ll find some interesting articles, such as, What is your pricing for the internet — Pricing a product is a tricky job for an online retailer; Hidden truths about comparison shopping engines (CSE); and other interesting info on online retail.

7. Knowledgepoint

Take a look at a series of articles on using business intelligence for competitive advantage. What is the market doing? What are your competitors up to? What is happening to the demand for certain products and services? What capacity is there to service those needs? The answers to those questions are found in business intelligence — and business intelligence is all about having a competitive edge.

8. KM World

KM stands for “Knowledge Management” and sub-name for this site is: Gaining Insight to Enhance Decision-Making. Competitive intelligence has great influence over competitive pricing. Respected industry publication with lots from which to choose, including ways to handle price objections. Detailed, long explanations, not for quick answers to particular problems.

Here are some of the best free tools to check the website speed :

• Pingdom Tools: The website tests the individual WebPages and lets the user know which ones are slow and influencing the overall performance of the website.

• Free Speed test: This website and its speed-checking tool allow you to monitor and track your website performance and speed across various locations on the globe.

• Load Impact: Load Impact allows the user to check their website speed result but once you are registered others won’t be able to check your website’s performance. Simple analysis results are free on the website, as is with most professionals; expensive and high level analysis is paid.

• Aptimize: This is perhaps a great tool to enhance your website speed, since it helps businesses speed up their website speed online. Log in and register to make your website faster.

• Web page test: Allows the business to check speed at a specific location and helps in analyzing multi-step transactions, uploading of photos, videos and content blocking.

• iWeb Tool: It is a simple tool to check the speed of your website or multiple pages at once and is free. This means saving time since you don’t have to check each link independently.

• Web Site Load Testing: This website from the business house of Neustar allows you to check your website’s performance during peak hours. They help remove bottlenecks and troubleshoot other speed issues.

• GTMetrix: With its user interactive interface, it allows you to test the speed, save your data, monitor your URLs across various locations on a regular basis.

• Show Slow: This is an open source server application. It allows the website owner to monitor a URL and can be used to perform checks publicly as well as privately. It captures results from 3 other websites. This requires registration as it’s not a free tool.

• Octagate: The website allows you to analyze how much time it takes to download content from your website. This allows you to see, analyze and check through a meaningful graph which content is impacting website speed and performance.

• Page Speed Online: This page allows you to test the web page and gives you an insight of how you can make your web page faster and ensure page load times.

• Browser Mob: You can use the tool introduced by the company to test the speed of your website for free. It offers an analysis of various kinds of important speeds and aspects of your websites.

These are some basic and free tools that allow one to check the website speed and improve on the various aspects that are keeping your website from performing at par and making it to the top.

We could spend all day talking about how to market your ecommerce website but we don’t really touch on much is competitive pricing strategies. If you think about the internet and why many shop online, reason is better price than what they saw it at a store. While you may have the upper hand on physical retail locations selling the same item you do, you may be priced too high compared to other online competitors. If you are priced to high, you might lose in the ecommerce game.

So, what can you do to try and get the most conversions possible and have a competitive pricing strategy?

1. Analyze Competitior Pricing: Take your top 3-5 competitors and look at their pricing for the best selling products. If you sell different brands or in niche that’s a different story. Try to compete against their best sellers.

2. Guarantee Price Match: You may be seeing a lot of price matching. While it may be a strategy that will most likely mean more customer service work, it’s a strategy that works very well for internet retailers to really compete against top competitors.

3. Offer Free Shipping : Free shipping is always a great enticement to the consumer – even if the same product elsewhere is cheaper but doesn’t offer free shipping. Make sure you really promote your free shipping offer well!

4. Search Amazon and Ebay: As an internet retailer you have to understand that the Amazon and eBays of the world are almost too hard to beat at times because of the extreme discounting and low margins, it’s a very good marketplace for internet retailers to do research on product pricing. Look at your best selling products, search for them and see how you are competing against an Amazon or eBay.

The internet is becoming increasingly competitive and if you aren’t competing against the top players in pricing, chances are you’ll have a hard time competing in the marketplace. Competitive pricing strategies are a critical aspect of your ecommerce success.