Tips for Creating an Online Store

Archive for the ‘News’ Category

New Feature: Coupons are here!

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Buying things on your store just got a little sweeter.  Give your customers coupon codes to receive a discounts on their order.  You can give customers two types of coupons 1) Percentage based and/or 2) Free Shipping.

After creating a coupon code, customers will see a new field to enter a optional coupon code. When they enter a valid coupon code, they’ll see a discount in their total.

This feature is available to all Pro and Super customers.  To use this feature head over to Marketing -> Give Coupons and create a coupon code.

Bonus Feature: Make the coupon public and we will list it on our public store coupons page!

Your SEO Friend: The Website Title

Monday, August 10th, 2009

One of the best ways to get natural organic search results on Google/Yahoo/Bing is to put your main keywords in your website title.

Now you can modify the title tags of your store.  Go to Marketing -> Basic Tools and enter in your website title.

Website-Title-UnderBasicTools

What should your website title be?  It should be your store name and what you sell.

Ask yourself: “What do I want my potential customers typing into Google to find me?” – That is what your website title should be.

Feel free to ask me for suggestions on what your website title should be in the comments.

Custom CSS just got easier

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Our custom CSS now has helpful comments and is structured it to be easier to read.  We also added a nifty “Fullscreen” button so you can use your entire computer screen to work on your CSS.

fullscreen

New Feature: Add an Extra Page

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Add an extra page to your store! Use this page to add a customer testimonial section, more information on your products, pictures of your customers, or anything else you can think of.

extra-page

This page will be added to the main navigation in your store.  Enjoy!

New Feature: Embed Your Products!

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Allow bloggers/publishers/YOU to easily display your products on any website. 

Check out this video tutorial on what this feature is and how to use it:

This is what an embedded product looks like:

The embed button is right next to the share links located on all stores:

embed-button

Now Hiring: Senior PHP Programmer

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

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 ([email protected]) 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.

Microsoft’s Bing Local Listing Center

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I’m still on my local kick.  You can now enter in your local listing on Microsoft through the Local Listing Center on Bing.

Thank you to Lisa Barone of Small Biz Trends for the tip!

Google Base Update – ACTION REQUIRED

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Google Base now requires you to add in your location. This is an effort to make their search engine local friendly. In the next 30 days you need to login to your Google Base account and enter in your location and accept Google’s new terms of use or your account will go inactive.

Read more about the changes on the Google Base Blog.

Flying Cart Pricing Changes

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Next Tuesday, March 24 we will be rolling out some changes to our pricing plans. A fourth level plan, called “Super”, will be added and will allow up to 1000 products. Pro level stores will now be allowed up to 250 products. The Standard and Basic plans will allow 50 and 5 products respectively, as they do now. Customers on the Super plan will pay $59.99 per month, while the prices to the other plans will not change.

Curent Pro customers will be automatically upgraded to the Super plan and will continue paying just $29.99 per month. If you are a Standard or Basic store right now and are thinking about upgrading to Pro, now is the time to do it. Upgrade to Pro before Monday March 24, 2009 and get locked in to the Super plan for the price of Pro.

Why are we restructuring our prices, you ask? The main reason is so that we can focus on smaller stores and continue to offer you a good quality product and personalized customer service. Stores that sell thousands of products benefit from using a more customized solution, as they have more complex technical needs than we can provide at a low monthly cost.

Thanks to all our loyal customers!  Please email us if you have any questions about your account.

How Much Does Google Checkout Cost?

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Google Checkout has just changed their fee structure.  Yes it is going to be more expensive :(

You can still sign up for free and they have no monthly costs.  However they now take a larger cut on each sale (pretty much the same as PayPal).

Here is the new fee structure:

You can read more about the changes on the Google Checkout Seller Fees page.  Remember you always create a store on Flying Cart and use Google Checkout in seconds.