Tips for Creating an Online Store

You can now easily track your store’s web stats with Google Analytics.

Follow these instructions to integrate Google Analytics into your your store.

Enjoy!

A sitemap lets search engines find all your products and URLs better and faster.

Step 1: Login to your Flying Cart Store

Step 2: Navigate to the “Marketing” Tab and click on the “Advanced Tools” sub tab

Step 3: Click on the button “Generate Sitemap Now”

Step 4: You are all set, your sitemap has been submitted and the Search Engines Google, Yahoo, and Ask know about it.

Funny blog to learn about Good URL’s and Bad URL’s: http://www.goodurlbadurl.com/

Here a few tips on advertising your domain name

1. Don’t use ALL CAPS. For example COOLESTANDBESTDOMAINEVER.COM hurts the eyes

2. Don’t adverstise a super long link in a newspaper or magazine. For example MyStore.com/shoes/boots/laces/blue.html chances are people are less likely to remember and type in the entire URL. Posting a long link on the web is a different story.

3. The Domain lets you know what the entire store is about is HUGE. For example BagsRUs tells you exactly what their store is about in their domain.

4. If you use multiple words in your domain upper case the first letter in each word like: TimelessFavors.com

1. Choose a niche or product genre that you are in love with. Your passion and enthusiasm for a particular topic will give you a competitive advantage over larger sellers that are forced to be more broad in their product coverage. By choosing a category that you are excited about, you will have a better chance of enjoying the adventure of creating and managing an online store, which will require patience and the ability to overcome adversity. In a way, opening an online store around one of your hobbies or interests allows you to be productive and spend time on your hobby.
2. Select a service to provide the online infrastructure for your web store. Don’t waste time and money on hiring 3rd party developers in figuring out the logistics in creating an online store. Pick a solution that can get you in minutes and doesn’t require programming knowledge. FlyingCart allows you to start an online store and carry and fulfill your own physical inventory.
3. Build-out your product inventory by adding products to your web store. Try to be thoughtful about your product categories. Studies have shown that consumers are drawn to products featured at the top of the page, so be careful to put the most likely sellers at the top. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes with a relentless passion. Remember, people can buy from anyone; why should they buy from you? You need to make their life easier or provide some other kind of value.
4. Promote your store, as this is a critical step. Do you remember Field of Dreams? “if you build it they will come” will not apply to your new store! You must drive interest in your own site; no one cares about your online store except you. The first way to promote your store is to get relevant; use a sitemap generator to create a roadmap for top search engines like Google and Yahoo to index your page. Put your products on Google Product Search. Network with other online stores and leverage their customer base to gain traction to your store. Also adding more products will increase your probability of becoming relevant on the web. Get the word out by e-mailing all your friends about it, so they can mention it to other friends and family.

We just added a new tab called Getting Started. This will walk you through getting your eCommerce store up and running quickly.

Online sales on “Cyber Monday,” November 26th, hit a new record, of $733 million, according to numbers released by ComScore. However, despite marking the first day in which total ecommerce sales broke $700 million, Cyber Monday’s record isn’t likely to last for long. As it did last year, that number is expected to be eclipsed shortly by even higher one-day figures. “We expect that a number of individual shopping days during the coming weeks will surpass the Cyber Monday total, with some days potentially surpassing $800 million,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

Steven Finch posted a great post on us on his blog: Crenk

“Once you have built a store on FlyingCart you can befriend other stores that you like and think are worth promoting. It has to be a mutual decision between both store owners if the promotion happens or not. Basically, you send a request to befriend a store and then once and if accepted then you both will promote each others stores on your profiles. It is really just showing Link Love, just like I do on Crenk. If you need and online store, make sure you head over and set one up!”