We recently added the search box to all Flying Cart stores, but are you curious what your customers are searching for?  Wouldn’t it be nice to target your marketing efforts by being able to focus on products that you know they want? Now you can do that.

Our latest feature is a Search Statistics page where you can see a log of the last 200 searches done in your store.  Click on Marketing > Search Statistics in your Headquarters. For each search you will see the date and time of the search, the search term, and the user’s IP address.  This last field is the unique internet address of the user’s computer and you can use this to identify if the same user is doing a lot of different searches.

Note that the search logging begins today, July 2, 2009 so the data will be collected from this date forward.

You can now add custom content to the top of your department pages.  Add an image or write some descriptive text to give your pages some personality.

Here’s an example using Hana Bay Coffee (hanabaycoffee.flyingcart.com). I added an image to illustrate the “Hawaii” concept on this page and I wrote a few sentences about the Hawaiian beans.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Log in to your heaquarters and go to the Products > Departments page.

2. Click on the word “Description” next to the department name and an HTML editor will appear.

3. Enter your content into the editor. If you want to insert an image, you can use one of the images you uploaded on your custom CSS page or you can link to an image that you have hosted elsewhere (try <a href=”http://www.flickr.com” target=”new”>Flickr</a>).

4. When you are done, click the blue disk icon next to the department to save your changes.

5. Go to your store and check out the department page. How does it look?

Flying Cart is looking for a talented programmer to add to our small team. We need an expert PHP coder who knows how to think outside the box. We are looking for someone who is passionate about ecommerce and small business, and is filled with creative ideas about how to help business owners. Design skills would be a bonus. You must be located in San Francisco or willing to move there. (We are not there yet but will be soon.)

You should:

• have a minimum of 10 years of programming experience with at least 5 of those in the web startup world

• have expert-level knowledge of PHP, MySQL, Javascript/AJAX, OOP, MVC architecture and PHP frameworks, web-app scalability, SVN, HTML, CSS. You should have a good working knowledge of Photoshop and SEO/SEM.

• be able to get things done independently

• consider yourself an entrepreneur at heart

• be passionate about ecommerce and small business

• have good writing and communcation skills

• have a good sense of humor

If you are interested in this position, we want to hear from you. Write us an email (info@flyingcart.com) telling us where you think ecommerce will be in two years and how you can make it better. Please include links to the last three projects you worked on (no resumes please) and the name of the last book you read.

Rounded corners are everywhere on the web, but they can be a little tricky to make. I was excited to find the free tool called RoundPic (http://www.roundpic.com/) that makes it really easy to round the corners of any image without using Photoshop. All you have to do is go to the site, browse for your image file, and a new rounded image is created. Then you can download it to your computer.

Consider using rounded corners on product images in your Flying Cart store to give it a clean and modern look.  If you want to do it, I’d recommend you do all or none so your design is consistent. Here’s an example of an image I created with RoundPic:

Original Image

Image with Rounded Corners

I get this question a lot. The answer is that store owners can’t delete fans. If you are a fan, you can choose to remove yourself from being a fan of a store or you can delete your account.  Here’s how to do it:

1. First log in to a Flying Cart store with your fan login.

2. Click on Profile to view your fan profile.

3. To remove yourself from a store fan club, click “Edit my Profile”.  Then scroll to the bottom where all your favorite stores are listed and click on the red X button next to the store that you want to remove.

4. To delete your whole fan account, click “Delete my account” at the bottom of the page.

Did you know…? Everyone with a Flying Cart store can use their account login to log in to the fan club of any other Flying Cart store. There is no need to create a separate fan account if you already have a store account.

Robeco Clarete of Pinoy Culture (www.pinoyculture.ca) came up with a way to use his own website to sell the products from his Flying Cart store.  That’s right - his own site hosted on his own server! He gets the flexibility of using his own site design, but also has all the benefits of using Flying Cart to manage his sales and market his products.

PinoyCulture.ca PreSchool department

PinoyCulture.ca Shopping Cart

Really?

The design at the top and the sidebar are Robert’s own. The middle section of the screen contains the content of his Flying Cart store.

How does this work?

Robert’s solution is very clever and requires some technical knowledge to implement.  In a nutshell, he used the Flying Cart custom CSS feature to hide all the page elements other than the products. Then, he made a department navigation menu on his own site and linked to each department page in his Flying Cart store using the javascript “loadintoiFrame()” command. These links are targeted into an iframe in the center section of his site. This creates a seamless interface and most customers won’t have a clue that the ecommerce comes from a hosted solution.

The Flying Cart team is entirely impressed with this creative way to use the software.

You can now change the order that departments are listed in your store.  Log in and go to the Products > Departments page.  Each department has a “Move Down” and “Move Up” button next to it. Use these buttons to organize the list in the exact order that you want it to be displayed in your store.

It’s been in the works for a long time and we’re happy to announce that our newest addition is a search box in each Flying Cart store. This should help your customers find exactly what they are looking for. You can find the search box above the list of department names on the left side of the screen in your store. Search results come from the following fields (in order): product name, product description, department name, brand name, item number.  You may want to tweak the content of these fields to improve your store search results.

In the following example, I searched for “Albert” at Retro Beer Items (retrobeeritems.flyingcart.com) and it brought back seven related products. Cool!

This has been one of our most requested features ever.

Last week we launched a shiny new Flying Cart website. A site needs to reflect a company’s personality like the clothes we wear. The old site had us stuck in the clothes that our mother dressed us in and we wanted something new. It took some hard self-reflection but we came out with a new look that we really like. The new site is lighter, more colorful, and more playful.

Besides the new colors and layout, some of the major changes to the site include: more featured stores, new testimonials, an updated pricing structure, and a new sign-up page. The Headquarters pages and the blog also match the new site design, for a seamless Flying Cart experience.

If you are interested in getting a custom design for your Flying Cart store, take a look at the new “Find A Designer” page. We have partnered with several freelance designers and companies who will create custom designs for Flying Cart stores at a good price.

Go explore the site and see what else is new.

There are lots of people that have this problem. Wouldn’t it be great to have your own business, work from home, and have the freedom to set your own hours? Of course it would.  But what will you sell?

You need to sell something that you are passionate about. You will be looking at your products day in and day out, convincing other people why they should buy them, and being a spokesperson for your product. If you don’t love what you sell, you will not enjoy running your own business.

You can either sell something that already exists or you can invent something new. If you make art or crafts, that would probably be your obvious choice. If you would like to invent a new product, think about a problem that you have that your new product could solve. If you have a certain problem, so do lots of other people and they will want your product.

If you want to sell products that already exist, you need to narrow it down. Think about your hobbies and interests. Make a list of five things you do for fun on the weekend.  You are probably already somewhat of an “expert” at these things, which automatically puts you in a good position for starting a business. Next, make a list of two or three products that are related to each of those activities.  Are there any products in that list that it would be realistic for you to sell? Choosing a very specific set of products is better than choosing a broad set.

Here’s an example. I’m a long-distance triathlete and I place high physical demands on my body each day. Compression socks are a new trend with endurance athletes… basically, they are athletic knee socks that you wear after or during a workout to improve muscle recovery so you can be ready for the next workout. They are effective for me and I recommend them to others.  My business could be an online store selling every type of compression sock that exists. It’s a very specific market, but there is no store like that currently in existence. I could establish myself as the internet resource for these socks. I enjoy talking with and helping other athletes so this seems like a good match for me.

Do some brainstorming and talk to your friends to figure out what would be good for you. It will take some work to get your business going, but if you like what you do it won’t feel like work at all.