Web Design

Posted by earthskater

How to Setup an Online Clothing Store

E-commerce, Marketing, Web Design

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The most frequent question we receive from new online merchants is… how do I setup my online store?  The answer to that question is typically the same whether you are selling clothing, electronics, supplements, or any other retail product.  It is important to note a few exceptions to the typical online store setup.  More complex online store setups include sites that sell recurring subscriptions, digital downloadable products, or some other custom calculation that involves the customers input.

OK, so you are ready to start your online clothing store.  Here are our top 6 things to consider when it comes to setting up an online clothes store.

  1. Brandable Domain Name
  2. Online Store Platform
  3. Product Photos
  4. Social Media
  5. Blogging
  6. Newsletter

Brandable Domain Name

A short and memorable domain name is ideal.  Premium domain names, domain names that are for sale at a premium price,  may be the best way to get the exact brand name you desire.  Sites like Oro.Domains specialize in the sale of premium domain names.  The more basic and identifiable your domain name is, the more likely it will be ranked higher in the search results.  For a clothing store, choosing a name that represents the brand or one that represents the specific niche in the clothing market may work well.  Your business plan should help guide you in this process.  Earth Skater offers a complimentary domain name branding service during our setup process to help choose the perfect name for your business.

Online Store Platform

Setting up your online clothing store can be difficult and time consuming to say the least, not to mention costly.   Clothing store merchants do better with an online store platform that can help them set up the website.  Questions to consider when choosing your online store platform for your clothing store are:

  1. Will I be able to design the site to match my brands image
  2. Will I have help in uploading the products, content, and photos
  3. Does the online store support all of the product options needed to sell my product line effectively and efficiently

Product Photos

Product photos are extremely important and just as important as having an awesome looking web design.  So your product photos must be top notch in order for your brand clothing store to shine online.  Taking time to optimize, resize, crop, and re-create product photos so that they are as near perfect as possible can be an easy way to differentiate your clothing store from your competitors. Photos should be consistent in terms of size, lighting, background, to give the most professional appearance.  Photo watermarks can be added and most online stores allow for a watermark to be added when inserting products into the online store.

Social Media

Setting up your social media accounts is vital to building your online clothing store brand.  It is not that difficult or time consuming, just go over to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media sites and create an account with your business name and information.  After you create your accounts you will add the links and plugins to your website to connect your website with the social platforms.  Finally, the vital part is to stay active on your social media accounts.  This means regular posting to each account.  Vary the content posted to each social media platform accordingly based on the audiences you are reaching respectively.  Clothing stores can post about things customers are thinking about and looking for.  Use keywords in your posts that customers are searching for and focus on the customer always.

Blogging

Setting up your Blog is the other vital part of marketing your online clothes store.  Blogging and social media go hand in hand.  The blogs you write will also be posted to your social media accounts to create life cycle of marketing content.  Blogging is vital to building your online clothing store brand because of the content that you create as the business owner.  As a clothing store owner you will post about topics of interest to your customers and include the keywords they are searching for.  Also, your customers will see that your website is alive with content through the regular posting being done.

Newsletter

A very important piece of the puzzle in marketing an online clothing store is setting up a newsletter.   Adding a JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER feature to your website allows you to build a list of targeted people to market to.  You can offer an incentive to join your newsletter like a 5 or 10% discount on their next clothing purchase.   The bigger your list grows the more valuable it becomes as a go to source for increasing sales.   Your newsletter is a vital way to keep in contact with your followers and increase sales.

Earth Skater specializes in eCommerce with complimentary website setup and transfer.  We’ve helped hundreds of merchants make an easy transition into the world of websites and selling online with our online store platform.

Posted by earthskater

5 Tips If You’re Serious About Starting an Online Store

Advertising, E-commerce, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Web Design

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If you are serious about starting an online store, then these 5 tips will help you, think of them as a checklist you should be able to pass easily and know the reason why you will succeed.  If you can’t pass this checklist easily, then you have to rethink your business plan and if you are truly ready to start an online store yet.

  1. Do you absolutely know the product(s) you are going to sell?  You have to know the product and related products you are going to sell in your niche market, know your competitors, know the CEO’s of those companies, and decide now if you plan to become a market leader or not, and what it may take to get there.  This is where you must think as big as you can, regionally, nationally, globally!
  2. Is it your own product or not?  If it’s your own product or you have a good  vendor that is great.  If you are an affiliate or drop shipping that is not as good typically.
  3. No mall websites!   If you are a beginner entrepreneur and want to start a mall type of website like Walmart or Amazon or eBay, with tons of categories and products, we advise you to stop now; this concept is difficult even with a huge budget behind it.
  4. Can you afford to do it yourself?  Yes, the question is can you afford to, because doing it yourself while it may seem free, actually may cost you the precious time you need to get started right away by going forward with a weak website with poor design and content.   Can you afford to have a designer do it at the cost of a few thousand dollars?  If so, then do it as that what it takes to be a market leader.  Otherwise, choose Earth Skater as the budget solution where we handle the online store setup for you at no charge as part of our complimentary setup service.
  5. Can you afford to market it or can you learn to market it?  If you can afford to market it and advertise with a budget that makes sense for your business, then you must start experimenting with your propaganda/message immediately, don’t make any long term commitments, and find the best team to work with.  Either way, or if budget is a concern, you must to learn to market and advertise your business because you are the business owner, you know your business the best.  Social media and blogging are the avenues you must follow in today’s market.

Follow us on Facebook to stay in touch: https://www.facebook.com/earthskater/

Earth Skater specializes in setting up online stores for small business owners with our amazing and complimentary website setup and transfer.  We’ve helped hundreds of merchants make an easy transition to a flexible and full featured website and online store platform.

Posted by earthskater

Top 5 Website Transfer Tips

E-commerce, Web Design

website transfer

As small business owners grow their business online, at some point they eventually may need to transfer their website.  Changing anything can be difficult and that’s especially true when it comes to transferring your website.  Whatever type of website you have, online store, or custom web web development, transferring to a new website solution can be difficult.

Here are the top 5 challenges to consider when it comes to transferring your website.

  1. Website content and products transfer
  2. Maintaining SEO rankings
  3. Domain Name  Settings
  4. Email settings
  5. SSL Security

Transferring Content

Transferring your website content can be a big ordeal, a huge headache and come with big costs to get it done correctly by hand. First off, the complexity of transferring your website content is in the question… how much content is there to transfer?  At the easier end of the spectrum is transferring a simple website or blog and at the harder end is transferring an ecommerce or online store website with a lot of products and pages.

Some important questions to consider about your new website solution and how to transfer your content:

  1. Will your new website solution help you transfer the content or do it all for you
  2. Can you export your content from your old solution and import it into the new solution
  3. Will your new website offer FTP access so you can possibly transfer content more easily
  4. Do you want to set all your content up from scratch yourself by copying and pasting and fixing the issues on your own

Maintaining SEO Rankings

Not many web site solutions speak about this, but you can maintain your old website rankings when transferring to a new website solution.  This can be a big deal because your high ranked search engine pages may come up with a 404 not found or just point point back to your home page after your transfer your website.

Maintaining your SEO rankings can be achieved a few different ways, here are a few questions to consider:

  1. Will your new website solution provide some way to maintain important website rankings
  2. Can you maintain the old URLS through the transfer to the new website solution without any major changes
  3. Can you implement clever 301 redirecting of the old URLS to new URLS

Domain Name Settings

Updating your domain name settings is easy but there are a few snafus that we’ve seen our merchants run into.  Here are some things to consider when it comes time to transfer your website and update your domain name settings.

  1. Do you have the login information for your account with your domain name registrar
  2. Will your new website solution migrate any important domain name record settings for you
  3. You should know how to update your domain name DNS information if your new website solution will not do that for you

Email Settings

Again, this will depend on how many email accounts you have existing on your website.  If you have a bunch of email accounts that you use with your old website then it will be important to maintain them during the website transfer.  If you only have one or a handful of accounts then it is just less tedious.  There are also a few other considerations when it comes to transferring emails settings such as:

  1. Do you use a 3rd party email service like gmail or other email provider with your website and not the website’s own email account?
  2. If you use a 3rd party email service, then your MX records and other important email records must be maintained during the transfer typically by the new website solution.
  3. If you use your website’s own email accounts then they must be created in the new website email system

SSL Security

For merchants with eCommerce websites and online stores, you must consider whether your website SSL security certificate can be transferred or if you will need a new one.  Here are some things to consider about transferring your website SSL security certificate.

  1. Will your new website solution transfer your existing SSL security certificate for you and do you have access to do it yourself if needed
  2. If you have a higher end SSL security certificate such as Extended Validation (EV SSL) then you will definitely want to transfer it instead of purchasing a new one
  3. Does your new website solution offer low cost name brand SSL security certificate or no cost certificates or your first year SSL security for free or other promotion that may help offset related SSL security costs

Earth Skater specializes in eCommerce with complimentary website setup and transfer.  We’ve helped hundreds of merchants make an easy transition to a flexible and full featured website and online store platform.

Posted by earthskater

Stress Free Online Store Set up

E-commerce, Marketing, Web Design

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Whether you are starting a side business or working for yourself full time, setting up your online store could be a very difficult hurdle to get over.

Here are the top 3 things we think new merchants should consider when choosing their online store builder and the company to work with.

Setup Service

The question to ask yourself are:

  1. What is your experience level in web design and development?
  2. How do you feel about setting up your own online store, is that something you desire to give a try?
  3. Do you want to set up your online store yourself or do you want to have it done for you?

Today most online store builders focus on providing you the tools and education so that you can set up your online store yourself.  But wait, you may be saying, hey, I don’t want to set up my own online store but how can I get it done affordably?  That’s where there is a big gap between online store builders and the expert service many merchants need to properly set up and grow their business online.  That is where Earth Skater comes in to fill the gap, you guide the design and Earth Skater sets it up affordably.

2) Customization / Flexibility

Most online store builders are what you see is what you get when it comes to features.  It’s extremely important to make sure your online store has the features you need.  The number of features is not as important as the key features you need so don’t get distracted.   Think of questions like:

  1. Will your website need customization that is beyond any of the features the store provides?
  2. Does the online store support customization like custom programming?
  3. Will the online store provider add new features to support your business

These are all questions to consider when it comes to customization and flexibility for your website.  This is again where Earth Skater fills the gap with affordable custom programming and complete customization for your online store.

3) On-going Support

Once your website is online, it’s your time to shine, now you can take full advantage of the online store builder to add and update products, write blog posts, update your slideshow and more.  On-going support is vital to the reputation of your business.  When you need help to make a change to your website, these questions are the important ones to consider:

  1. Does your online store provider have staff on call to provide on demand, hands on, support for your business?
  2. Will your online store provider go the extra mile to provide after hours service to support you in a critical time of need?
  3. Does your online store provider care about your business enough to provide suggestions that you may have overlooked that could be hindering your business

Earth Skater is unique when it comes to eCommerce.  Earth Skater is the online store builder with the expert service merchants need to succeed online with less stress and less wasted time and money.

Posted by earthskater

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Web Design

SEO, Web Design

Let’s start with the basics.  What do people look for when they visit a website? If your website is too bland and filled with details which will take too much time to read, your visitor may quickly close the browser tab and move on to the next website.  This may be the case when the website design is not attractive, doesn’t look like a market leading website, enough to keep your visitors interest. This is a mistake that we at Earth Skater always aim to avoid.

Designing a business website or online store is not such an easy task. When creating an online store website, a good e-commerce webhost helps the website owner understand the available services and gathers information to get the best results for the website.  A company’s website is often the first and only place clients will see and be presented with all the information they need about the business.   You cannot show your customers a webpage that their they will not be interested in. Here, we are going to note down just some of the common mistakes you should avoid if you want to enjoy a successful web design.

·        Incorrect Use of Color

Color is important. Color schemes are generated for a reason and with so many online tools helping you choose the right match for your business, choosing the wrong color can create a very distracting image for the visitors. Not only does the wrong color make your website look unappealing, but it also makes the text unreadable.

·        Content Layout

Haphazardly placing the content on your website prevents the visitors from quickly zeroing in on what they need from your website. Disorganized and messy layouts not only make the visitor believe that you have not put in sufficient time in the designing stage, but it also makes your business look unprofessional, and thus unreliable.

·        Inaccessibility on All Devices

We live in the age of technology, so creating a website which cannot be accessed by all devices, can really hinder the flow of online traffic to your business. When creating a website for a business, you have to think about mobile friendly responsive web design and all the aspects, including a diverse audience, different operating systems and even screen sizes so that the website is properly displayed.

·        Too Long to Load

Too much animation, video, outdated Flash animation, and large image files can add an element of excitement to the site but using them excessively can make the website load slower.  Also, not everyone has Flash or the bandwidth to support it, and that can create a very irritating experience for a customer as the website would take too long to open up, and if it finally does, the customer will not be able to see what the graphics are, because their system does not support flash.

·        Installing Separate Software

No one wants to install a software program just to be able to can use content from your site. Most internet users also block software installations from websites for many reasons, chiefly among them being that they simply do not want to install software from unknown sources. Although many people already have programs such as Acrobat and Flash, asking potential customers to install additional software will only make them open a tab to a different website.

Ask any of the best website design companies in the business and they will give you long lists of even more mistakes which are still being made in web design. With the help of these pointers, you now know that when it comes to creating the best online store software for your business, it is better to know what NOT to do, so that you have an even better chance of creating a successful website.

Posted by earthskater

Consider These Points Before Starting your Website

E-commerce, SEO, Web Design

For your business to have the greatest chance of big success, your online store software should feature a top notch design as well as be super user-friendly.  Your online store website needs to be more than just a basic catalog of your products, it needs to compete with your markets leaders in terms of functionality and web design

Here, we are going to give you a few tips which you should consider while creating your online store website.

Domain and Host

A domain is your identity. You can either make it very simple or be creative with it; either way, it has to be something that sticks to memory but is also easily accessible. Take our domain name, Earth Skater. We chose a name which created intrigue for our customers similar to Web Surfer.  When choosing a domain name for your business, remember that it needs to click for your customer so they stay and explore your business.

Minimalist Design

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when creating your website is overcrowding it.  Messy websites can dilute the value of your call to action message (for example, your buy now button or lead generation form).  With a clean design which not only gives the proper information but also, does not overwhelm the senses, you can give customers a positive user experience and encourage their return.

Colors & Theme

Colors make all the difference in the world. There is a reason why many popular websites use specific shades of blue, and that is because blue has a calming and comforting influence for the user, and thus, the user of the website feels more attracted towards the site. Color schemes are influenced by many factors such as the target audience, brand logo, company’s message and chosen scheme. So if you want to create a successful website, then taking time out for some color based research can make a big difference in how visitors perceive your website.

Easy Access

If the customer finds the website difficult to navigate through, then they will leave. Along with keeping a minimalistic design, if you want to create a positive customer experience, then you need to make sure that your website visitors can access all public areas of the website at will. If the site is user friendly and has a mobile friendly responsive design, then your potential customers will be more likely to venture into the other tabs of your website, and even read the blogs you’ve written to help them out.

Appropriate Loading Time

This is a mistake many web designers make and flaw many online store software’s suffer from. Testing your website can give you a chance to look at some of the issues that may be prevalent on your website.  Page or slideshow slow loading time will only make customers frustrated, so by making sure that everything loads quickly to efficiently service customers.

SSL Security

Customers will not shop on your website if the site does not have security measures like SSL security and/or a name brand merchant account in place.  Customers want and need to be sure their transactions will be safe and secure.  A secure website is a trustworthy website to your customers.

The best online store software comes with real service behind it, Earth Skater uses all these tips and more to its advantage when servicing our clients websites.  We strive to provide customers with services that will ensure success for their businesses.

Posted by earthskater

The Art of Converting Visitors into Loyal Customers

Marketing, SEO, Web Design

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Have you ever walked into a shop and grabbed the first item on your list without even looking at it because you know that it’s your go-to item, no matter what? Your complete trust in that product is what makes you a loyal customer. As someone who works in the industry of providing customers with the products and services they need, the first thing you need to understand is the mentality of a basic customer. So why is it that your business hasn’t garnered loyal customer base? Why can’t the product or the business hold on to a visitor?

As we discuss the process of converting visitors into loyal customers, we shall learn some of the strategies which can be used to make sure that these customers stay long term, along with some of the mistakes that should be avoided so that the customers stay connected to the product.

Engaging Web Design

If you do not have a professional web design that boasts your product in a positive way then it won’t matter how good your product is. For example, as one of the best website design companies, we at Earth Skater try to create a versatile web design which is not only aesthetically pleasing but also clean and crisp enough to give the customers all the information they need at first glance.

Reason for Return

If you have an online store setup, then you might notice that many customers leave their shopping carts without purchasing anything. According to fairly recent research, it is found that 37% of customers leave their carts because the product is either too expensive, or they were just browsing. The best way to have a loyal customer base is to give them a reason to actually want to come back. Study the numbers you get from your own economic plan and try to give customers near to what they need so that they are more tempted to return.

Building a Connection

Studies show that only 32% of customers place more orders in their first year as a customer, and most do not even visit again. The reason behind this is because they do not maintain a connection with the company. If a customer signs on to a website, they supply their name, contact information, their likes and interests and what they’d like to see. Using this information to send them important news such as new arrivals or deals can give the customer a chance to come back and buy a product that sparks their interest, thus creating a connection between them and the company. Also, if a customer asks something, give prompt feedback so that they know that you value their opinions and questions.

Rewards

One strategy which cinches the deal is that of giving the customer something extra. Everyone likes gifts and rewards, and if you want a customer to have a long term relation with your company then you need to give them a reason to opt for the membership. Movie tickets, coupons, free samples or latest releases of products are just some of the deals that would surely cinch a loyal customer membership.

The whole package needs to be proper if you want to convert visitors into loyal customers, and by using these strategies, you will find that the customer will actually bring in more revenue and new customers with them if you value their importance in the first place.

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