What happens when you go to a store product page that has been deleted or hasn’t been made yet?  On most sites you would get an ugly error message… but not on your store!

Now you will get a friendly message telling your customer to get back to your store.

Here is an example of what your customer will see:

If you don’t have a PayPal account installed on your store.  We will simply put a link to your contact us page to allow customers to directly email you right away.

Only want to ship your product to your country?  No problem.  We just added a new feature that allows you to do just that!

Under the “Shipping” section in your store headquarters.  If you check this box only the countries you specify will appear during checkout.

I was looking for some tips on writing Meta Tags this morning and I came across a great article on eHow: How to Write Description Meta Tags.  Check it out and spice up your Meta Tags.

Now customers can shop across all our stores at Shop @ Flying Cart.  Your products will be promoted automatically in the “Featured” and “What’s New” section.  My favorite feature of all is the Daily Top 40!  Compete with your fellow stores to see if your product gets to the top of the list.  Rankings are based on views and sales.

As you may notice, Shop @ Flying Cart is still in beta - we have some really big plans for it.

Two questions you might have:
Q: Why aren’t my products showing up in the search results of Shop@Flying Cart?
A: It will take one day for your products to be processed in our system and added to the search. We catalog all the products once per day.

Q: How can I improve the placement of my products in the results ordering?
A: Give your products descriptive titles and write carefully worded descriptions. Our search looks at these two items, plus brand name, department name, and the name of your store. The more specific you are, the more likely it will be for people to find your products.

We just added a feature for all you bloggers out there (something we highly recommend to do).  Easily add your blog to your store navigation menu.

Here is how you can do it:

1. Login to your store Headquarters

2. Click on the “Store” tab

3. Click on the “Homepage sub tab

4. Enter in the link text (i.e. Blog, MySpace Page, Main Site, More Info, etc.)

5. And your link.  Make sure you include the “http://:” in the URL

Here are some sites you can use for this new feature

Blogging Sites:

1. Wordpress (What we use)

2. Google’s Blogger

Social Network sites:

1. MySpace

2. Create a Facebook Page for your store

3. Ning

We wanted to add a little culture to Flying Cart.  Now, every time you login to your store headquarters you will see a greeting in another language in the upper right hand corner.  Scroll over it to see what that greeting means and where it is from.

We will be down for a few hours for a security update this Sunday.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but trust me you want this update.

Check out your store. We just changed the way we make thumbnail images. Less pixelated and sharper. Enjoy!

Customizing the colors on your store site is one of the easiest ways to make it your own. In the past we have offered pre-defined color schemes, as well as custom CSS, but these were still limiting. Our new color tool allows you to set your own colors for any region of your store design, as well as set your own text colors and font styles, with the ease of point-and-click color selection. You can choose your colors and preview how they will look all within the same page.

Those of you who don’t know CSS or don’t want to mess with it now have an easy way to customize the look of your site. We dare you to make something really crazy looking. Seriously, if you want to, now it’s possible. Look for the new color tool in your store Headquarters on the Store > Colors page.

What people are saying:
“I am totally in love!!!” - Baby Town USA

“Just wanted to say THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! for the new color tool…makes it sooooo much easier for those of us who don’t have time to mess with learning the ins and outs of CSS but want more a more customized look…. we love you too! THANKS AGAIN!” Erin Breland, The Blue Daisy & Co.