eCommerce Start to Finish. Liv Montgomery
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world, the consumer has the upper hand.
Your website should be appealing, but not overwhelming. The layout should make the website easy to navigate. Convincing your prospects to purchase from you can be a hard job. No matter how good you are at convincing them, they won’t buy if they find the process cumbersome.
The checkout process needs to be very simple. Customers don’t want to have to click many places to make a purchase. Make sure the eCommerce checkout process goes smoothly for your customer.
Building Your Website With HTML
One of the simplest ways to build a website and maintain total flexibility with the development is to download a free website template that corresponds to your site’s needs, and then edit the template with a WYSIWYG editor. The editor I use is called KompoZer. There are only a couple of things you need to understand in order to get started.
First of all, when you’re developing an HTML website, you typically have three types of files. There’s your standard HTML page, which is saved with the .HTML extension. Then you have your graphics, and these are commonly kept together in a folder called Images. Your web page will refer to them every time your page is loaded, so you place them onto your page, don’t move them around or change the names. Just leave them where they are. Finally, you have something called a style sheet that tell the HTML page what it should look like. If you want to get fancy, you can make changes to your style sheet directly. But it’s better to just make those changes using KompoZer.
You can get started with this type of web development right now. Do a web search on the term “free website templates.” Pick a site, and download a few of your favorite templates. Don’t go crazy - keep it simple to start out. Next, you’ll want to download KompoZer. KompoZer is available for free at Kompozer.net.
One you have your files, you’ll want to unzip them and install your KompoZer software. Launch the program, then open the index file of the template you just downloaded. Now you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Building web pages can be fun, even exciting. You can add or change graphics, write new content and create links to other pages on your site. When you’re satisfied with the look and feel, save the page once to keep your changes. Then save it again, but this time rename your file according to the links created.
Whatever type of site you’re developing, you’ll want to be sure to include an About page, Terms and Privacy Policy. After that, you can go crazy with content. Ideally, each page should have 350 to 700 words. When you’re ready to launch, all of your files will need to be uploaded to your web hosting account in the same file structure that you used to build your site. If you have questions about any of this, there’s all kinds of help available online, through your web host’s tech support, and on my website at eCommerceGal.com. Knowing these fundamentals will help you as you build and maintain other types of websites.
Building Your Website With WordPress
The next type of open source technology we want to look at is the WordPress platform. WordPress began life as a blogging platform. However, it’s so powerful that it quickly became a hit as a website development tool. What’s the difference? Well, for one thing, blogging has a certain look and feel. It’s part of Web 2.0 or interactive content management systems. A blog typicaly includes information such as an article’s date, time, author and comments - things not typically found on a website. There are loads of features on WordPress that make it completely customizable. Plus it’s just fun to work with.
While it’s possible to create a blog that’s hosted by WordPress, I do not recommend it for your business. WordPress places restrictions on what you can publish, and they will shut you down if you don’t comply, no matter how nice or well meaning you are. This is just not good for business. You want native hosting, and it’s easy enough to do. This means you want to install WordPress on your own hosting account and have your own URL pointing to your WordPress site.
To use the WordPress platform for your site, you’ll need to buy your own domain name and point it to the WordPress installation on your hosting account. There are a couple of ways to go about this, depending on your web host and whether or not they offer a tool called C|Panel.
If this option is available to you, it’s literally takes a matter of a few clicks to install WordPress. Click on the WordPress icon, choose a location and name for your site along with a user name and password, and hit the Go button. You’re done. The next thing you want to do is, using your web browser, navigate to your new site. Place your cursor in the address bar after your domain name, and type “/wp-admin”, then hit the return button. You should see your WordPress admin panel. Enter the user name and password that you chose during set up. If you goofed and didn’t pick one, check your email - WordPress sent this information to you. Log into your account, and start posting.
You should know these three things about using WordPress. First, you have a couple of different parts to your site. You have posts, which stack one on top of the other as you add fresh content. You also have static pages, such as your About page. These are pages that will always be there. If you have a topic that you want people to refer to again and again, creating a static page about it is the way to go.
The second thing you need to know is that you have the option to change the functionality of your WordPress site through something called plug-ins. These are little bits of code that allow you to do everything from block spam - always a popular option in my book - to automatically posting content from article directories.
The third thing you need to know about using WordPress is that your theme is completely customizable. You can change the look and feel of your site with the click of a button. There are literally thousands of themes available for free that you can install and enjoy immediately by navigating to the Appearance section of your WordPress site. Follow the onscreen instructions. Now, if you don’t find what you’re looking for in terms of WordPress themes through their directory, go to my website at eCommerceGal.com/WordPress and you’ll find a number of custom themes designed especially for small business. This will be more than enough to keep you busy.
Developing Your Website with Content Management Systems
The next stop on our Open Source Software tour is the Content Management System. Basically, this is a sophisticated idea that allows for the simplest possible means of managing information. It’s a way for non-technical people to manage large amounts of data. Joomla is great example of an open source content management system. Using Joomla, you can create an online directory for your local community and use it to sell advertising for area vendors. And that’s only one example.
One thing that you should be aware of is that, like WordPress, downloading and installing Joomla is completely free. A number of web hosts make this option available at the click of a button. Other content management systems include Drupal, PHPNuke, Mambo and TYPO3. These all provide power and flexibilty for managing your content.
There are dozens, even hundreds of open source applications for creating social network sites. In fact, we’re seeing a trend on the Internet that gravitates away from the uber networks like Facebook and toward the more intimate neighborhoods. This creates an opportunity for you as an online marketer to provide a place for your niche market to go and hang out. Available tools include Spree, iSocial, Mahara, Yogurt, the People Aggregator, GetBoo, and a whole host of other funny names.
Rounding out our open source tour are discussion forums, like other open source software, an Internet search will not only reveal a wide array of choices, but also a huge number of lists of choices. The forum software that I like is called Snitz Forum. It’s quick and easy and easy to install, and it really is a great feeling to provide a place for people to connect.
There are several other types of content management features you can add to your site - too many to list here by name. You can offer your visitors a classified advertising feature, a photo gallery, a user-managed knowledge base or a wiki. The list goes on and on, and it’s limited only by your imagination. In fact, if you were to build a quality website using each one of the systems that we’ve covered here, you’d probably be busy for the next year. Of course, you can always outsource, but even then, you’ll want to