In the Marketing Economics 101 articles, I covered the user experience that you created with your store marketing, logos, brand identification and collection of eMail addresses that now allow for an easy start to eCommerce and a fully loaded marketing gun.

 

What a great way to start the marketing transition from the basics to the Internet by announcing the recent achievement of becoming an Authorized CRE Loaded Reseller. CRE Loaded is a leading OSCommerce open source shopping cart package supercharged with plug-ins that shortens development time and allows for lower development costs.

 

Many people are scared of the complexity involved in eCommerce but here is a quick primer. eCommerce requires a SSL Certificate so shoppers can pay with a secure, encrypted connection between their computer and the web site. CRE Loaded uses this security to transfer the payment through a payment gateway like Authorize.net. CRE Loaded then tells you about the sale and you begin the fulfillment process. The payment gateway will transfer the funds into your merchant account (bank account) once approved by you - the proud store owner. There are plug ins for Quickbooks to really streamline your inventor and accounting systems.

 

With CRE Loaded, Products and Categories are easy to create and sales reports are configureable. CRE Loaded will show you what are the most popular viewed or most poplular sold products. Choices can be added to products just like most popular web sites offer with color selections, sizes, upgrades, etc. The template function for the site allows for templating your graphics, logos and pictures into different category themes/skins for different areas.

 

OK, you've got products, a look, a cash register and a storefront. What's next? Take a list of all of your data such as first name, last name, and eMails and populate your store data for users. Already having a user ID eases the purchasing process for customers. Send out your first newsletter with Constant Contact, or the stores built in newsletter service, and send people to product pages. See which ones get the most action by viewing your visitor data.

 

Next month, how to work the Search Engine Optimization into your site and use the reports to show you trends. Until then, try out a demo of a store at creloaded.com. Call me if you want to know more about how I can make this work for your business.