Delegate your Domain to BigCommerce

July 23, 2012 By

When you have completed your domain registration you will need to ‘point’ it to the BigCommerce servers. This will allow customers to find your store on BigCommerce’s platform, but using your own custom Domain Name.

‘Pointing’ your customers in the right direction means logging into your own domain Registrar and changing a minimum of 2 nameservers – the primary and secondary – so that BigCommerce is established as the delegated destination.

In this article, we have provided two sets of instructions – one for GoDaddy and one for Webcity. If you would like instructions created for your particular registrar, please email us, and we’ll include it in the next version, and provide you with a copy.

 

How to delegate your domain name from GoDaddy to BigCommerce

 

Step 1: Assuming that you have registered your domain name with GoDaddy go to www.godaddy.com

Step 2: Login using the details sent to you in the Welcome email from GoDaddy.

Step 3: Next to Domains, click LAUNCH.

Step 4: Select the Domain Name you want to modify.

Step 5: From Namesavers, select SET NAMESAVERS.

Step 6: You’re given 4 choices, but select ‘I HAVE SPECIFIC NAMESERVERS FOR MY DOMAINS’. Enter 2 namesavers in the format, ns1.bigcommerce.com and ns2.bigcommerce.com.

Step 7: Now you’re set, so just click OK.

 

How to delegate your domain name from Webcity to BigCommerce

This tutorial applies if you have registered a domain name with Webcity.com.au. When you registered your domain name you would have received an email Welcome letter. It will have contained your domain login information.

Step 1. Go to https://www.webcity.com.au/secure/domains/man.cgi

Step 2. Login using the details sent to you in the Welcome email from Webcity.

Step 3. On the page that loads, click the Nameservers tab:

 

Step 4. This will load the Nameservers management page. After you purchase your domain, it will be pointed to Webicty’s own nameservers; you will have to remove them. To do that, tick every check box to the left of each nameserver listed and then click the Remove selected nameservers button:

 

Step 5. The page will reload and confirm that nameservers have been updated. Now, you have to enter BigCommerce nameservers – ns1.bigcommerce.com and ns2.bigcommerce.com and click the Add Nameservers button:

Step 6. Once complete, you will see a confirmation page with BigCommerce nameservers listed. In a few minutes (in some rare cases – hours), your domain will be ready to load your BigCommerce store

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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How to Communicate Cost-Effectively with Designers

July 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

At a minimum your online store should have a professionally designed logo and a store template that matches. But how do you communicate what you want to a designer?

The quickest way to blow your store design budget is to miscommunicate with a graphic designer. A designer will typically charge by the hour for their time, and might even charge in minimum half hour increments. Every time you change your mind, they will charge for their time. If they are charging $50/hour for their time and you want to tweak one little thing, you can end up paying $25. Make 20 ‘tweaks’ and you will end up with a result that is not necessarily reflected in the money spend.

Considering the above point it is tempting to pay a graphic designer on a fixed rate for the project. This could save money, but it might not save it for you you!

Freelancers like to be paid for their time. When a client gets close to the maximum time that the freelancer has allowed, they will naturally start to cut corners so they don’t lose out. If the designer expected the job to take 10 hours, and they are being a fixed rate for those 10 hours, and you want to make numerous tweaks you’ll find that as you get closer to the designer’s quoted budget they will get less happy about making more changes. You are eating into their profit margin. You can’t expect a designer to keep working on your logo until you are 100% satisfied, if this means going over their budget by 20 hours.

You need to communicate very clearly and succinctly with freelance professionals to ensure that your budget stays in check. Pay freelancers their hourly rate, and make sure you take responsibility for ensuring that your instructions have been correctly communicated, and the designer understands your requirements. If you segment your requirements into smaller tasks then you can head off any problems earlier on.

Manage Your Communications Closely

It would seem good logic to conclude that graphic designers are, by their nature, visual communicators and learners. Communicating with a graphic designer in a visual way can be easy for you, and even easier on them.

In addition, documenting your instructions, rather than communicating verbally, gives you a history of requests and changes. If you verbally communicate your instructions, and the graphic designer mistinterprets what you wanted, it is not necessarily their fault. You can then become embroiled in a “He said. She said.” tit for tat game, back and forth. But a distinct, documented path of requests and responses provides you with clues as to where the communication process may have failed and whose fault an issue lie with.

You may also find it easier and faster to visually communicate. Some designers will ask you to fill in a project brief. This means lots of writing, and trying to find the right words to express a look and feel that only exists as an abstract in your head. The best way to get a visual idea out of your head is to either draw it, or to find similar examples. We’ll focus on the latter solution.

Create a Visual Logo Guide for your Graphic Designer

You want an online store with a particular look and feel. How to communicate this to a graphic designer? It can be difficult at the best of times to communicate your aesthetic preferences, but can be made even more difficult if you are working with an overseas freelancer, not in your timezone and not in their native language. This leads to complications, and this in turn can increase costs.

A great way of communicating what you do and don’t like is to use visual examples and write your reasons next to each example. In this tutorial we’ll work through how to gather examples of logos that you do and don’t like, and how to add them to a document. The graphic designer you choose to work with will use this as a reference guide when they create your logo.

Step 1.

Go to google.com/images and search for “logo”. Make sure you are in the IMAGES search, and not the default Google search. The results page will look something like the below screenshot.

 

Step 2.

Scroll down the page, and keep looking at images. Pick out images that you like, keeping in mind your own store and its customers. If you are running a store that sells fishing gear you would want to steer clear of funky, modern, flashy logos and instead choose more conservative, down-to-earth sporty styles. However, there are styles that you can borrow from some logos to create a whole new look for your store.

Click on an image that you like or dislike, anything that you feel quite strongly toward. This will open a new window with the option to view the a larger image.

Click on the link in the right side column “Full-size image”. This will remove the website underneath and allow you to view just the logo you were interested in.

Right-click on the image and save it to a folder on your computer.

Keep repeating this process – saving logos that you like and dislike – until you have at least 20 to 30 different examples. This will give your graphic designer plenty of fodder to get a good feeling for what you want in your own logo design.

 

Step 3.

Google Images is easy and convenient, but it does tend to feature corporate and well-known logos. You can use www.logopond.com to find more logos that are a little different. If there is a particular style that you really love, you can sometimes even engage that designer to work on your project. Keep in mind however that Logo Pond is a design showcase, and not all the designers are available for hire.

 

Step 4.

After you have a good collection of generic logos, you can now search for logo that are more appropriate to your industry. For example, if we were creating a camping supplies store then we would search in Google Images for “camping logos”. This will then provide you with ideas from your nearest competitors, and provide more fodder for the graphic designer to understand your specific industry.

Go through the same process and save a bunch of logos that you have strong feelings towards, negative and positive, into a folder on your computer.

 

Step 5.

When you have a good number of logos that touch on elements that you do and don’t like stop searching. Assemble the logos you have gathered into a simple document, and add your thoughts and opinions on each logo. Be descriptive and verbose rather than obtuse and succinct.

You can use any Word processing software you like to create the document. The point is to provide good size images that a graphic designer can easily view, and to provide detailed commentary.

“I like this.” is next to useless. Add your reasoning as to why you like it. This will help your graphic designer to create a logo more closely connected to your preferences.

Below is a short example document which will give you some ideas.

Download PDF Example (You will need to create your own document, not a PDF.)

 

Pro Tip: If your graphic designer’s first language is not English he/she may often use an online translator to convert your communication into their own language, to try to get a better understanding for what you want. This is why it’s important to provide detailed commentary for each logo. More detail means there are more instances of nuanced words being interpreted correctly by the translator.

Create a Visual Store Guide for your Graphic Designer

While you’re in the mood for thinking about your store branding you can also work out your store design templates. We will follow a similar process – finding examples that you like and dislike, saving the image to your computer, and then creating a guide for a designer to work from.

There is one key point of difference between the store templates and the logo design however. With the logo design you can create whatever you like. It will rarely cost significantly more if you want a more complex logo design compared with a simpler design. The sky is the limit for your logo.

However, your store design template is a far more complex piece and if you want an elaborate design with many custom touches this will increase your costs considerably. In this next process we will walk through how to provide suggestions to your designer that won’t blow your budget.

 

Step 6.

The first step is to look through the BigCommerce template showcase to find a basic structure that you like.

Login to your Administration panel and click on the “Design” link in the top of the screen. You’ll now be looking at all the free BigCommerce templates available to you.

Each template installs at the click of the button, and will also overwrite any other design changes you have made. Choosing a template will not overwrite content changes.

 

Step 7.

Look through the templates. Click on the thumbnail images to magnify the view. This will open a screen overlay with a much larger image.

You’ll soon notice that they all follow roughly the same layout.

Each template has a banner at the top, with a logo on the left, and an illustrative image on the right.

Many of the templates will have the core product categories running down the left side of the screen. In the top centre area will usually be a promotional image, or simply images and descriptions of products.

Each template not only has a similar structure, but the layout of all the components is close to an ideal online store. We could also refer to this as each template having “good bones.” The BigCommerce templates follow a similar pattern because over the years online stores have become more formulaic in their content and layout. BigCommerce is providing a good set of bones to which you can add your own branding.

 

 

Step 8.

After you’ve looked through all the dazzling options choose around 3 to 5 templates that you prefer most. Remember, they don’t have to be perfect. The graphic designer will alter the designs slightly so you will have something relatively unique looking.

Click on the thumbnail image. This opens a larger view. Then right-click on the image and save the file to your computer.

Step 9.

You may want to add some more ideas from other online stores you have seen in the past. If you stick with BigCommerce websites as your examples these sites will be technically (HTML/CSS structure) closer to what you will also end up with. If you particularly love a layout or idea you’ve seen elsewhere and it ends up being a significant departure from BigCommerce’s core template structure, then be prepared to shoulder the additional costs and time.

Have a look through the BigCommerce showcase of Live Stores. These provide some good quality examples of stores that have been built with BigCommerce software.

Click on a thumbnail image to reveal the larger view. Right-click on the image to save it to your computer. You can then add it to your Visual Store Template guide.

Step 10.

Keen to see what else is out there? Go to www.google.com and search for “Powered by BigCommerce”. You’ll be presented with a number of websites which still have the default message “Powered by BigCommerce” in their templates. These templates are more likely to have had only minor alterations made to them. When designing from scratch a designer will tend not to include brand links from BigCommerce.

For example, here are a few stores that still have their “powered by” text included in their footer area:

Step 11.

Again, we need to create a visual reference guide for a graphic designer to follow. Create a new document and insert each of the screenshots into the document. Provide as much detailed commentary as you can to really give the graphic designer a flavour of what you want.

It is more useful for the graphic designer if you focus on website designs that you like. This provides them with a better starting point.

Below is a short example document which will give you some ideas.

Download PDF Example (You will need to create your own document, not a PDF.)

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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How to Do a DIY Photo Shoot

July 11, 2012 By 1 Comment

Set up a DIY Studio Background

When you are first building your store you need to focus on getting it up and running so you can start making sales. Initially, until you have proven that you’ll be selling successfully, you don’t need brilliant product photography. It just needs to be good enough for customers to understand, in detail, what they are buying.

It’s important that your photos have a professional look about them, but that doesn’t mean you have to go to the expense of hiring a professional photographer – you can set up a studio in you own kitchen, if you like.  What is essential is that you create a consistent background for your products, as it is this feature that ensures you achieve that professional look.

Of course, if you have the budget to employ a professional photographer and studio to take high quality photographs then this is the best option, but not everyone starting out does.

Setting up your own DIY studio at home is pretty easy, with most of the materials available around the home, and most of the rest easily sourced at your local office supplies store.

We’ve put together this simple step-by-step guide (below) to help up set things up. Once completed, then you can start taking good grade product photos at home.

In this article:

 

Time to complete:

  • 15-30 minutes
  • time to obtain the necessary items for your chosen setup

 

What you will need:

  • 1 Kitchen Desk
  • 1 Kitchen Chair
  • 1-3 Sheets of Craft Paper
  • 2-5 Bulldog Clips
  • 1 Roll of Masking Tape
  • 1 Length of Stick*

*The length of the stick should be about the same as the width of the craft paper. It should be thick enough to support the weight of the paper, but thin enough to be securely grasped by the bulldog clips.

Optional (for photographing clothes):

  • A large piece of heavy cardboard, or a large flat board of Styrofoam
  • Pins or needles

Optional:

  • A tripod (if your images are turning out blurry)
  • Full spectrum lightbulbs (if you are forced to shoot under artificial lighting and aren’t happy with the results)
  • Scissors, hobby knives, glue pads, blu-tack can all be useful in making a more customized setup

 

Building a general purpose studio background

 

Step 1:

Place the kitchen table close to the window, but leave enough room for you to move around the table.

 

Step 2:

Use masking tape (blu-tack can help too) to mount the length of stick to the back of the kitchen chair. A good height at which to secure the stick to the chair is about half way, so that your craft paper sheets still have enough length to flow down onto the table below.

 

Step 3:

Good light is important so place the chair on the far side of the table, with the back facing the window. Place the sheet of white paper on the table between the window and the chair.

 

Step 4:

Fix the paper to the wooden stick with bulldog clips. To make sure it won’t slip, it’s best to clasp them together with three clips.

 

Step 5:

Let the paper fall onto the kitchen table. The bottom edge will likely be curved after being rolled up for a time, so use masking tape to fix the bottom edge to the table.

 

Step 6:

Now, your general purpose DIY studio background is ready. Place your product on the craft paper and start snapping. Of course, your camera settings are important too. You will find useful photography tips and sound practices further on in this section.

 

Building a studio background for photographing clothes

 

Photographing clothes for online sale calls for a somewhat more specific setup. So, here are some steps we would recommend you follow to build an inexpensive DIY background for photographing clothing.

Step 1:

Use masking tape to fix the sheet of craft paper to the cardboard or styrophoam board. We are using an unassembled five-layer cardboard box.

 

Step 2:

Place the board, with the paper attached, flat on the table and lay out the piece of clothing you will be photographing. Arrange the clothing the way you want it to be laid out in the shot.

 

Step 3:

Use needles to pin the piece of clothing to the background. You can hide the pins behind folds, being careful to attach only the back of the clothing to the board. Also, insert the needles at an upward angle so the clothing cannot slip off.

 

Step 4:

Once the clothing is secured to the background, place the chair on the table – again with the back facing the window – and let the background rest against it. A tablecloth will prevent the cardboard from sliding across the smooth surface of the table. Alternatively, use a strip of masking tape.

 

Step 5:

Now, your DIY studio background is ready to host any clothing you want to photograph.

 

 

Shooting Tips

 

Lighting

To get the best possible results when using this setup, you should use indirect sunlight in the couple of hours before and after noon. This will ensure several key elements check out:

  • You will have plenty of light to work with, which will allow you to shoot from hand and capture images that are both sharp and free of digital noise.
  • By avoiding artificial lighting, you will avoid color casts and noise created by non-full spectrum lighting.
  • You will achieve soft, unobtrusive shadows.

 

If you absolutely have to shoot with artificial lighting, then there are some guidelines you should follow:

  • Try to avoid mixing different light sources, such as combining incandescent and fluorescent lighting.
  • Using ordinary incandescent lightbulbs will produce mediocre results. Swapping ordinary bulbs with full-spectrum replacements will help you achieve more natural colors.
  • Unless you are working with a large number of artificial light sources, you will likely need a tripod to help keep the camera steady and the images sharp.

Shooting

You should aim to shoot the product at a slightly downward angle, and try to make the photo appear as if the subject was just below eye level. Take a look at these examples of good and bad practices:

Bad Practice Sample 1

This photo was shot using direct sunlight. Ample light makes sharp images possible even when shooting from hand, but creates hard, uncomplimentary shadows. Here, the camera is positioned too high up and is shooting down on the product at too steep an angle.

 

 

Bad Practice Sample 2

This photo was taken using only the camera flash while shooting from hand. The shadows created in this way are even harder and the image loses a sense of depth. This is because the highly reflective parts of the product bounce the flash light hard, producing over-exposed parts of the image.

 

 

Bad Practice Sample 3

This photo was lit using only a single 200W incandescent lightbulb and shot from hand. The relative lack of light produces images that are blurry and moderately affected by digital noise. The camera is positioned too low and is only effectively showcasing the side of the product.

 

 

Bad Practice Sample 4

This photo used a combination of a 200W incandescent lightbulb and the camera flash for lighting. The combination of two different light sources produces strange color casts of the entire image, most visible on what should be a white background. The image sharpness is variable, the shadows hard and the color shifted, and the image over-exposed where the flash reflects off shiny surfaces. The camera is also positioned too low.

 

 

Bad Practice Sample 5

This photo was lit with a single 200W incandescent lightbulb but was shot from a tripod. The results are better than the other bad practice samples since the image is sharp and evenly lit, but the shadows remain hard and the image suffers from some degree of digital noise.

 

 

Good Practice Sample — General Products

This would serve as a great main photo for the product. The camera is positioned in a way that showcases the side, front and top of the product very well in one image. It is sharp, free of digital noise and features soft shadows that do not affect the perception of the product. Indirect daylight around noon provides ample light, allowing shooting from hand with no worries about the sharpness of the resulting images.

 

Good Practice Sample — Clothing

This is the kind of result you can expect when adhering to our guide for shooting clothes. Use the couple of hours before and after noon to get that indirect sunlight which will very effectively bring out the texture of the fabric.

Shooting Details

 

If you want to provide closeup photos of buttons, seams, or any other small detail of your product, start by locating the Macro switch on your camera. Most point and click consumer cameras produced in the last few years will have this option, and almost all semi-professional SLR cameras should. The Macro switch is usually marked by a flower icon.

 

Once you have activated the Macro mode you will need to approach the part of the product you want to photograph up close – the camera lens should be no more than a couple of centimeters away from the detail you are shooting. Try to approach the detail from a slight angle to the background rather than directly in front. That only puts you between the product and the light source, thereby creating a shadow. Here are the kinds of results you can achieve in this way:


Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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How to install a BigCommerce Template & Upload Your Logo

July 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

Each eCommerce store requires a template. A template, in this case, can be defined as a set of files that make your store look the way it does. It is the template controls where the logo sits on the screen, what colour the background is, what font is used for the headings, where the products are placed on the screen and more. Quite simply, a template governs the aesthetic layout of the store.

BigCommerce provides 101 templates as part of your account purchase, so finding one that matches your ‘vision’ of your store is not a problem. But there are more advantages to them than that. Having access to pre-built templates from BigCommerce means that you can be confident the template, when installed, will ‘just work’. Also, BigCommerce are good at making templates for their own software, and this represents a considerable saving in time and money.

The fact is that sticking to a pre-designed template is the safe and reliable option, and is ideal for novices. BigCommerce will keep maintaining these templates, ensuring they are always compatible with the main BigCommerce engine. As soon as you deviate from the default template, some problems can occur. Layouts break up. Functionality breaks down. Buy Buttons stop working. But, by using the default templates, you’re almost guaranteed to have a trouble-free store, from a technical perspective at least.

A disadvantage of using a BigCommerce template is the quality of the design. The templates are simple and functional, at best. None of them could be recommended as the ultimate example of eCommerce design, and perhaps none of the templates on offer truly represent the branding in your own business.

Either way, some simple customisation of the templates is required in order for you to integrate your logo, and possibly even branding colours. But, as a starting point for your own BigCommerce store, just choose one of the available templates that you feel best fits your store.

How to install a BigCommerce template

Step 1: Login to your BigCommerce account.

Step 2: Click on the Design navigation in the top of the screen.

Step 3: You’ll now be looking at the Store Design page.

Step 4: You’ll notice the Default Blue store design set as ‘Current Store Design’. Beside it are four buttons – ignore them.

Step 5: Scroll down through the ‘Choose a Store Design’ section to find the design template you like. Click ‘Apply This Template’.

Step 6: A box will pop up clarifying the technical consequences of changing template. Just the boxes and press the large ‘Apply’ button.

Step 7: When this is done, click ‘View Your Store’ button at the top of the page to see your store up close.

Step 8:  All that is needed next it customize it – like choosing your own Logo.

How To Upload Your Own Logo

Step 1: Click ‘Upload Logo’ in the ‘Logo Settings’ section.

Step 2: At the bottom of the screen, click ‘Choose file’ and browse for the file you want to use.

Step 3: When you’ve selected your file, click ‘Upload Logo Image’.

Step 4: Your logo will  appear in the ‘Current Site Logo’ section.

Step 5: Click on ‘View Store’ at the top bar of the page, and your own logo heads your store.

Small Revolution

Aleksandar is a photo retouching, editing and color correction specialist. He has twelve years of experience processing photographs for both web and print. Follow the link below to visit his contractor profile at oDesk.

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How to improve your DIY product photographs

July 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Good quality photos of your products are incredibly important for the viability of your online store. If your customer can’t see what they are buying, they are obviously less likely to buy. But not everyone can afford a professional photo shoot for their products so here are some tips for making the most of what you can do with a DIY setup.

Stage 1: Setup

Background

If you decide you want your products to be displayed on clear background (and not in what you might call a real life setting) it is a good idea to photograph them against a uniform background. A large clean sheet of paper bought at your local art supplies store can serve this purpose very well for homemade product photos. Prop up the top side of the paper against something that will hold it (tape it to a cereal box or a stereo speaker, or something else that corresponds to the size of the sheet of paper you are using; or ask a friend or coworker to hold up the back side of the paper) and let the bottom side fall on the table. Do not bend it, fold it, or otherwise create creases in it – let gravity work for you and create a smooth curve in the paper.

Useful link: How to Make an Inexpensive DIY Light Tent
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent

Lighting

Good lighting makes for at least 50% of a good photograph. In the absence of a professional photo studio, you should try to use indirect sunlight to shoot your photos. Place your improvised background close to a window (north window if you are in the northern hemisphere, south if you are in the southern) and photograph your products in the couple of hours before and after noon. This will ensure several key elements check out:

  • Your photographs will have plenty of light which will help you make sharp images free of digital noise
  • By using daylight as the light source instead of artificial lighting you will avoid color casts and noise created by non-full spectrum lighting
  • The shadows in your photos will be soft as a result of using indirect, diffuse lighting
  • By doing the work around midday you will stay close to the ideal color temperature

If you have to shoot with artificial lighting, try to avoid mixing different light sources. The difference in spectral characteristics and color hues of many different lighting sources will not help your product photos.

If you are using a flash to light your photos, try to point it upwards against a white ceiling to diffuse the light and avoid hard shadows. If your camera does not have a movable flash, take a look at these guides to making your own DIY flash diffusers:

http://www.diyphotography.net/the-party-bouncer-is-back-in-business

http://www.adidap.com/2007/12/20/diy-poors-man-ring-flash/

Camera Settings

Most digital cameras will allow you to control the following settings and increase your chances of making a quality product photograph.

  • ISO setting: the ISO value describes the sensitivity of the CCD sensor in your camera – the higher the ISO setting the more sensitive your camera is to light. Higher ISO values allow you to make shots in low light conditions at the cost of introducing a lot of grain and noise. Lower ISO settings produce smoother and sharper photos – provided you have lighting of sufficient intensity. Many cameras set on “Auto” mode will adjust the ISO setting in addition to shutter speed and aperture. Consult your camera manual to determine if you can set your ISO speed manually. If you can, always try to keep it as low as possible. ISO 100 should be the default value you use when making your photos, and you should not go beyond ISO 200 under any circumstances.
  • White balance: Many cameras will allow you manually set the white balance and thereby ensure the photos you take have the correct color values. Consult your camera manual to determine whether or not you can manually adjust white balance. Use the clear sheet of white paper which is your improvised background to set the manual white balance. If your camera does not allow manual white balance, you will most probably have to choose between presets, the most common of which are “Daylight”, “Incandescent”, “Fluorescent”, “Cloudy” and “Auto”. If you are stuck with presets, avoid using the “Auto” option – it makes your camera make an educated guess (which is inaccurate more often than not) with each new shot. If you are following our advice on using indirect midday sunlight choose the “Daylight” preset. If you are shooting with artificial lighting go for the “Incandescent” or “Fluorescent” settings, depending on the kind of light source you are working with. The following video is specific to Canon cameras, but should help you get a better understanding of the process regardless of your camera make and model: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq3yzTPb1Ng

Stage 2: The photo shoot

Keeping it sharp

If you followed our advice on lighting, you should be able to get enough light on your products to be able to shoot from hand. If your photos are still turning out blurry the most likely reason is the lack of light, which prompts your camera to adjust shutter speed to a thirtieth of a second or slower. One solution for this problem is to try boosting the light level by using your camera’s flash coupled with one of the DIY diffusers mentioned above. A better solution is to turn to tripods. While most professional photographers would not settle for anything less than a full size ball-bearing tripod, there are small tabletop tripods out there (some as cheap as $5) that will do the job just as well. Yet another alternative exists in the form of this homemade camera stabilizer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLlJl7TbXTA

Picking your spots

One of the crudest mistakes, and one of the easiest to avoid is choosing the best position and angle from which to take your product photos.

Horizontal position: you want your camera to be centered along the width of the background and facing it head-on. If you want to display side views or back views of your product, or anything in between, rotate the product instead of moving the camera. By keeping the camera in place you ensure the least amount of interference from light that may be coming from the sides of the setup, as well as improve consistency across photos of different products.

Height and vertical angle: choosing the right height and vertical angle for your shots can make all the difference. You don’t want the camera shooting up at the product, and you definitely do not want it to be shooting too steeply down. The best practice is to try to make photos look like they are just below the eye level, so look for a height that lets the customer see a little of the top side of the product.

Stage 3: Retouching

To Photoshop or not to Photoshop, that is the question.

The scope of adjustments a professional photo retoucher can make to a photograph in Photoshop is staggering. So is the difference in the amount of work hours they will take and the price tag attached to it. The very basic adjustments include: elementary color correction (removing color casts from photos), cropping the photos to a uniform size, optimizing them for web (in order to improve load times and minimize bandwidth usage) and watermarking them with your logo. Since only around 30% of this work is done manually while the rest is automated with Photoshop actions you can expect this process to be inexpensive and completed very quickly. Assuming you have followed our DIY product photo advice and provided decent quality photos, a professional who knows what he is doing can easily process around 50 photos per hour in this manner.

Beyond this, the adjustments you are most likely to be interested in are: removing dust and scratch marks, cutting out the product to produce either a clear white background or transparency, adding reflections at the bottom of the product image etc. The best way to make an estimate of how much this would increase the work time and the cost is to speak to the retoucher directly, providing them with samples of your product photos.

This guide is intended for store owners with very little to no experience with professional photography. For more advanced guides you may want to take a look at these:

Intermediate: http://www.discoverdigitalphotography.com/2011/product-photography-tips/

Advanced: http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/lighting/the-simple-guide-to-shooting-a-perfectly-lit-product-photo/

Small Revolution

Aleksandar is a photo retouching, editing and color correction specialist. He has twelve years of experience processing photographs for both web and print. Follow the link below to visit his contractor profile at oDesk.

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How to Register Your Store’s Domain Name

July 6, 2012 By 1 Comment

A domain name is the online version of your address used by customers to find your store location on the Internet. For example, CampingCentral.com.au and GazebosAustralia.com.au are both domain names. You buy domain names from companies called Registrars.

A domain name is a powerful asset. You need to be aware of other similar domains that can confuse your customers, whether your choice is sufficiently descriptive or memorable, and how easy is it for people to share.

Domain name registration fees can vary immensely between providers. It is important to compare domain name prices and know what you actually get for your money. The main difference in fees appears to be the extra services provided by the Registrar. You can choose whether you need these extra services or not.

To complete this activity you will need:

  • Preferred contact details such as business address, email address, phone number.
  • Credit Card
  • In some countries you will need additional business license information to register your domain name. For example, to register a .com.au< (Australian) domain name you will need your Australian Business Number (ABN).

 

Registering a business-appropriate domain name

Ideally your domain name should be the same as your real-world business name, or as close to it as possible.

Registering a domain name that is the same as your business name can be difficult sometimes, depending on how generic your business name is and the actual availability of the name itself.

If you aren’t able to register a domain that exactly matches your business name then try adding a few variations such as ‘store’, ‘online’ or ‘shop’. For example, UrbanFlowers.com might become UrbanFlowersOnline.com. This slight variation allows you to keep your business name within your domain.

An alternative to registering a domain name the same as your business name is to register a domain name that describes what you sell. For example, if you sold camping equipment you could try to register campingsupplies.com or ilovecamping.com. These would both be reasonably memorable domain names for your store.

 

Registering a country-appropriate domain name

Ideally, you will also register a domain name in each territory that you operate within. For example, if you sell within Australia only you would register a .com.au domain and perhaps a .com domain to reserve access to a future potential market.

Different Registrars provide access to domain names appropriate to different world regions. Below are our suggestions for which Registrar to use according to the part of the world that you live in. If we haven’t included an option for your country then email us, and we’ll research it for you.

 

How to Register a .com domain name with GoDaddy

GoDaddy, despite its odd-sounding business name, is the best domain registrar for businesses operating world-wide - or at least in the USA, UK, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, India and New Zealand.

A drawback of using the GoDaddy service is the amount of additional junk they will try to sell you throughout the purchase process, and the cluttered purchase screens that you’ll be subjected to. As a result, working your way through their purchase process becomes a fairly taxing chore because you will need to ignore all the extra clutter to find the “next” buttons. Still, GoDaddy are a good registrar – they are cheap, reliable and too-big-to-fail.

Step 1: Go to www.godaddy.com

 

 

Step 2: Typing your business name in the space provided gets the process started

Step 2: Type in the name of your business, without spaces or punctuation, and click GO. GoDaddy will attempt to find a .com domain for you, as default. If your first choice is not available, choose another version of the domain until you can find something that suits you and your business.

Step 3: Click the CONTINUE TO REGISTRATION button, ignoring all other offers and enticements from GoDaddy. You only need one domain name – you don’t need anything extra.

 

Step 3: Click on ‘continue to registration’, then ignore the offers window and click ‘no thanks’

 

Step 4: Complete your registration details, using correct information.

Step 5: Leave the rest of the GoDaddy settings at their default. That way, you register your domain for a minimum of 5 years but get none of the additional products in your basket that you don’t need.

 

Step 4: Complete your registration before confirming your registration length (Step 5, below)

 

Step 6: Again, GoDaddy will show you your final order and try to up-sell you on various additional products. Find the CONTINUE TO CHECKOUT button and hit it.

Step 7: GoDaddy will now ask you to set up an account. Choose a password, hint and PIN, and then opt-out of GoDaddy’s promotional marketing (bottom of screen) if you don’t want to receive more junk mail. Use a generic email address belonging to your company or the owner. Hit the CONTINUE TO CHECKOUT button again.

 

Step 7: Establish your own account by filling in ‘log in info’, then advance to payment

Step 8: Now is the time to cough up some cash. Enter your credit card details, click the Terms and Conditions agreement (once you’ve read them!), and then hit the PLACE ORDER NOW button.

 

Step 8: Once you’ve entered your payment details, just press ‘place order now’

Step 9: When your payment is processed, you’ll automatically receive an email from GoDaddy with your domain registration access details. You need to store these details separate from your email, in a safe place. You will need them again in 5 years time, and it will be less frustrating if you can find them quickly.

 

How to Register a .com.au domain name with Webcity

As we’ve mentioned, GoDaddy doesn’t cover every jurisdiction, but there are alternatives. Webcity is a cheap and reliable domain registrar with offices in Australia. We have been using Webcity since 2008 and, so far, we’ve had no problems.

Step 1: Go to www.webcity.com.au

 

 

Step 2: The domain Name Quick Search box is in the bottom right corner

Step 2: Find the Domain Name search box in the far right hand side of the page.

Step 3: Type in your preferred business domain name and hit the SEARCH/REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN button.

Step 4: You’ll be presented with a list of possible domains, or a message saying that your match couldn’t be found. Choose only the .com.au domain or, if you intend to service international customers as well, both the .com.au and .com domains.

 

Step 4: Select the domain names that you want, or unclick what you don’t

Step 5: Complete your business registration details. You will need to supply either an ABN or ACN to complete registration of an Australian (.com.au) domain. Webcity will check your entry against the ASIC.gov.au register.

 

Step 5: You’ll need to provide your business details, including the ACN or BRN, before choosing a hosting plan (below), and supplying your contact and payment details

 

Step 6: Proceed with supplying your contact and payment details. Your domain name will be registered for 2 years. You do not need any of the additional services offered by Webcity.

Step 7: When your purchase has been authorised you will receive an email from Webcity. It will contain access to your domain registration details. You need to store these details in a safe place as you will need them again in 2 years time.

 

Additional resources

The Beginners Guide to Domain Names by NetRegistry
An overview of domain name registration by one of Australia’s largest Registrars. It has a few good points on additional issues you may want to consider when deciding on a domain name.

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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Setting up Your Email Account in BigCommerce

July 5, 2012 By

Like every other form of business, your online store has to provide customers with a way of direct contact. So, it’s essential you set up an e-mail account with your store’s domain name in it. BigCommerce makes the whole process pretty straightforward and easy, so there is little you need to worry about if your are not the most technically minded.

Why Include the Domain Name?

It is tempting to simply go straight to one of the establish email service providers, like Gmail and Hotmail, but this not the wisest option, for two main reasons.

Firstly, many business emails that end in generic email providers are linked with scams. The last thing you want is for your store to be greeted with suspicion or associated with any illegal activity.

Secondly, an email address that includes the company domain name projects a professional image. People feel more confident in dealing with a company established enough to have their domain names in their email addresses.

The username at the front of the email address is also important, and it’s worth being imaginative with your choice. The generic contact address, for example, reads as ‘admin@randomizedstore.com’, but people tend to associate ‘admin’ with busy administration departments, where their queries might get lost in the system.

Projecting a different image is more beneficial, so consider some more direct, pro-active and even caring usernames, like ‘help’, ‘helpme’ or ‘myquery’ etc.

Create Your E-Mail Account

As part of your store, you can create email accounts at your store’s domain using the BigCommerce email service. You can then setup these accounts in Outlook, Thunderbird, or your mobile device.

Step 1: Login to BigCommerce, and to your store’s control panel

Step 2: Click on the ‘Tools’ button at the top of the page, and select ‘Email Accounts’ from the menu

Step 3: Choose ‘Create an Email Account…’ button

Step 4: Fill in the requested Email Account Details

      • Username – fill in your preferred choice. BigCommerce will confirm if it is unique. If it isn’t just try again.
      • Email Type – choose between a Regular Email Address or to Forward Email Address, where emails will be forwarded to another (perhaps a personal) account. Identify which address you want your store email to be forwarded to.
      • Password/Confirm Password – choose a password and confirm it, but don’t make it too easy

Step 5: Fill in the Advanced Options

      • Spam Checking – No need to change this. Disabling the built-in spam checking program is asking for trouble.
      • Set Storage Quota – Limiting the storage quota saves a lot of space on the disk. But be realistic as emails received after the limit is reached will be bounced back to the sender. Regular mailbox clean-ups will be necessary when quotas are small.

Step 6: Press on the ‘Save & Exit’ button, or the ‘Save & Add Another’ button if you want to add a second email address, but this shouldn’t be necessary for now.

Google Apps and Third Party Email Services

It’s important to note that BigCommerce does not provide a mail interface, so it is necessary to open an account with a third-party email provider.

BigCommerce lists several options, including Gmail, AppleMac, Windows Mail and iPhone, and provide step-by-step details on how to set up a BigCommerce email address with each of them.

But there is an alternative – Google Apps. The chief advantage with choosing Google to manage your email activities is that the mailbox takes up no room on your store’s disk space on BigCommerce. So, there is practically no email limit.

To send your BigCommerce emails to a Google Apps inbox, it’s necessary to configure your domain. This means creating and adding MX records (7), a CNAME record and a TXT record.

An MX (Mail Exchange) record essentially identifies the server that will handle your email messages. MX records are listed with a priority value to ensure that if there is a problem with the first, then messages will be sent to the second etc.

As technical as it might seem, the process for setting up Google Apps as your email service provider is quite simple.

 

Setting Up Google Apps

Step 1: Login to your store’s control panel

Step 2: Click on the ‘Tools’ button at the top of the page, and select ‘DNS Records’ from the menu

Step 3: Add the new MX records with the format:  ‘mail.randomizedstore.com  -  MX  – ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM’. The follow with ‘ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM’, ‘ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM’, then ‘ASPMX2.L.GOOGLEMAIL.COM’ etc (see below)

Step 4: Set the Priority Rating for each in the space to the far left

Step 5: Add CNAME record in the format: ‘mail.randonizedstore.com   -  CNAME  -  ghs.google.com’

Step 6: Add a TXT record (or SPF record) in the format: ‘randomizedstore.com  -  TXT  -  v=spf1 +a +mx include:_spf.bigcommerce.com include:_spf.google.com ~all’

Step 7: Delete 2 of the original MX records to avoid malfunctions due to conflicting addresses. Click the red minus icon on the far right.

 

Change SMTP Server

If you are going to switch from BigCommerce to Google as your email service provider, the SMTP mail server should also be changed to Google. The SMTP server handles vital outgoing messages like order confirmations and order status updates.

 

Making the Switch:

Step 1:  Choose the ‘Store Setting’ button on your store’s control panel

Step 2:  Choose ‘Miscellaneous’ at the end of the options bar

Step 3:  At ‘Use SMTP Server’, click the ‘Let Me Specify My Own SMTP Server Details’ option

Step 4: Fill in the ‘SMTP Hostname’ box with ‘ssl://smtp.googlemail.com’

Step 5: Enter ‘SMTP Username’ – it’s your full email address on Google Apps

Step 6: Enter ‘SMTP Password’ – it’s the same as your Google Apps account password

Step 7: Set ‘SMPT Port’ to 465

Step 8: Click on ‘Save’ at the top of the page.

 

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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Getting Started Building Your First Online Store

June 1, 2012 By

Sometimes the biggest struggle for a project is just getting started. Where to start, when you’re building an eCommerce site for the first time?

First you need to make a choice as to whether you are going to truly go solo and build an online store completely by yourself, commando DIY style, or whether you’d like to get a bit of help along the way from professional service providers. I would suggest the latter course of action. You wouldn’t expect to build your own physical retail store from start to finish; I’m sure you’d be happy to pay a professional electrician to wire up your lights, a plumber to install the kitchenette and a carpenter for specialist joinery. A little bit of help will make your online journey easier.

It is technically possible now, more than ever before, for a novice to build their own online store. Fantastic DIY eCommerce software and freelance eCommerce expertise are now readily available and at a cost effective price.

So with the above in mind I’ll lay out a course of action which involves some professional help along the way.

The below list is by no means comprehensive. It is an overview of the steps you can take, as a novice, to get an online store started. Each step requires considerable time and investigation and learning. There are quite a few steps, but with anything worthwhile, if you work through each step you’ll end up at …. well, the end …. with a shiny new online store.

Step 1) Choose your eCommerce software

If you are a beginner I would suggest either BigCommerce or Shopify. Get along to their websites and spend some time reading through their Help sections and trying out the software. Both offer a free trial. BigCommerce has a more comprehensive feature list and has recently had considerable financial investment. They’re a good choice. Shopify however is also excellent, user-friendly software. They’ve been around for a while and their software is particularly easy to use.

Step 2) Design your Store Branding

Do you have a logo for your business? If not, head on over to 99Designs to run a logo competition. If you’re not feeling particularly confident in 99Design’s results then you can run a competition without guaranteeing payment. This is then, essentially, a risk-free experiment. However, once you guarantee payment you’ll find that more graphic designers enter the competition. This will give you more logos from which to choose.

A logo will then govern the main colours that you’ll use in your store design.

Step 3) Choose your Store Design Template

Because this is eCommerce for Beginners I’m not expecting that you, or someone you hire, will create a store design from scratch. You can certainly do this if the design of your store is integral to attracting a particular audience or creating a unique experience. Keep in mind that design and then the conversion of the design into customised HTML/CSS will add considerably to your setup costs. You should budget around 1/3 to 1/2 of your development costs to the creation of a customised design.

Instead of a customised design, BigCommerce and Shopify have plenty of high quality templates to choose from. You can then modify your chosen template to match the colours of your logo. I would suggest that you get help from a freelancer who is experienced with this software.

Depending on the complexity of your request I would expect a good quality web developer to take between 2 and 4 hours to customise a pre-built store template with colours that match your logo. Search for ‘Shopify’ or ‘BigCommerce’ on oDesk and you’ll find someone with previous experience who can assist you with this step.

Step 4) Create Store Categories

Choose your store category names wisely. The words that you choose will be used by search engines, somewhat, to decide on what type of product you sell. If you sell baby clothes and your category is for little girls, then label the category ‘girls-baby-clothes’, not ‘girls’. The few additional words give the search engines some context and allow them to position your site correctly.

Step 5) Add your products

Adding your products to your online store will be one of the most time consuming aspects of your entire build process. Ideally you would choose a product name with a few good keywords in the title, write a custom description and then bang on about the features. Upload lots of great photos, videos and anything else that will help your customer decide whether to buy that particular product from your right now.

Step 6) Create ancillary pages

Each store needs a set of good quality About, Store Policies, Returns and Refunds, Privacy and Contact pages. Your About page will be one of the most visited pages in your website so make sure it does a good job of selling your benefits to the customer.

Step 7) Customise email notification templates

Each online store generates generic email notifications to customers telling them that their order has been placed, or is on back-order, or just a simple welcome to the store. Depending on which eCommerce software you use will depend on whether you can customise these email notifications with not only your branding but also personalised messages.

Step 8) Setup shipping methods and costs

Various research (which I will need to cite later) has shown that customers prefer free shipping or single cost shipping (pre-calculated) over true cost of shipping. Some store owners build their ‘free’ shipping into the cost of the goods, if they know that they will usually be sending product to major metropolitan areas in their own country. Other online business owners will set a single price for shipping all goods. Again, the store owner absorbs some of the actual shipping cost. The point being that customers like to know upfront what their shipping cost will be. Consider this point when you come to setting up your shipping methods and costs.

Step 9) Setup your payment method

Paypal is a great way to get started with accepting credit card payments online. However, once you build your store to a substantial monthly revenue then you’ll need to look at other payment gateway options such as eWay or your bank.

Step 10) Install Google Analytics

Google Analytics is free software that allows you to see who is visiting your store, how long they stick around for, and what pages and products they visit. At a basic level this can tell you what are your most popular products that don’t get many purchases. Google Analytics can help you nail down which pages and products in your website need improving. You can get a free account by setting up a Gmail address and/or visiting www.google.com/analytics

Step 11) Test and Launch your Store

Launch your store online but then be your first customer. Run through the entire process and buy one of your own products, even adding it to your credit card and shipping it to your home address. This will show up any problems that your customers might encounter along the way. Better for you to fix them now than have them pointed out to you by a customer.

Step 12) Submit your URL to the Search Engines

If you already have a Google Analytics or Gmail account you can use the same login for adding your site to Google Webmaster Tools. This tool allows you to add a sitemap to Google’s directories. Don’t forget about Bing as well however. Go to Bing.com and register your site.

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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Improve your About page to inspire trust in your customers

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The About page on your eCommerce store is critical to your success. Have a look at your website metrics and you’ll often see that your About page is one of the most popular pages in your store. Prospective customers use the About page to get a sense of your company and its degree of professionalism. A well-constructed About page can assist you in achieving higher sales conversions.

Watch the full screencast

Raw Transcript

It’s coming up to Christmas and the festive season and the season of giving presents so what I thought I would do is just go through a standard search. I’ve typed in “buy headphones” into Google and all the various sites come up. Sometimes, a lot of the customers will type in the actual brand name, or the actual type of headphone or the actual correct description of what they’re looking to buy.

I’ve just typed in “buy headphones” because what I want to show you is how the About page of your website will impact your sales. If you go and have a look at your web traffic, you might be using Google Analytics, if you go and have a look at the web traffic you’ll see that your About page is usually up in the Top 5 or Top 10 most trafficked pages in your website. In my experience the About page is always right up there.

The About page allows the customer to understand who you are, where you’re coming from, why you’re selling and essentially to validate that they trust you. They will trust you with their purchase. They trust that they’ll give you money and you’ll send them the headphones. The About page is very important for telling the customers–this is who I am and you can rely on me and I am going to send you the goods.

Let’s just go through. I’ve literally just done a search and just chosen some random About pages. This is a very standard About page for an online store www.avaustralia.com.au. You can see here, there is one that says; this is who we are, we give good customer service, we’ve got manufacturer’s warranties, you can give us your feedback here, our business hours and our general contact numbers.

The one good things about what these guys have done is they have at least provided access to a Facebook page. That means that as a customer I might think that I maybe I’ll get a faster response by going to Facebook and asking a question there than I might through say the email.

Another good thing about this page is that they’ve got the business hours so if I have an enquiry, I can say that they’re open on a Saturday as well. That also indicates to me that they’ve got a retail store which could be useful if I wanted to go in and see them–depending where they are. It doesn’t actually say where they are.

The next random site that I’ve pulled up is www.addictedtoaudio.com.au. These guys look like they’re not aiming at the consumer market but they might be selling more to businesses. But, you know, they’ve got long standing relationships. They have got 25 years that they have been in business for a while. They’re committed to supplying premium products. They talk about their postage, you know, blah blah blah, all of this sort of stuff.

And here’s a photo of, I don’t know what, it could be their office? I would assume that it’s their office maybe and it looks a bit empty. It looks a bit, sort of I don’t know who I’m really dealing with.

They’ve said everything they need to. Here we are we’ve been in business for 25 years etcetera etcetera but that’s the base level for an About page. You always say what you do, that you give great customer service, how you’re going to ship and you’ve been in business since 2005 and that’s the absolute minimum standard and that’s what everyone else does.

You’ve got to get the edge of your competitors by giving your customers a little bit more. If your customers have got 3 stores open and they’re trying to figure out where to buy headphones from, what’s going to give you the edge to get that sale over your competitors and often it will be the About Us information.

This site looks quite good – www.clearbeats.com.au. I found them in Adwords, so they’re paying for advertising. They’re paying a fair bit of money for advertising but their About page is empty. It just says “Enter the About us information in here”. So, that’s not great. You obviously don’t want to leave unfinished pages on your site because it just brings down the quality of your whole site and also the inherent trust element.

Here’s Zappos – www.about.zappos.com. They are obviously a market leader in E-commerce. You can always learn from the market leaders. You go and have a look at what the market leaders in your vertical segment are doing and you can borrow from their ideas.

These guys don’t have a lot of corporate information although they have got more here. This is just really a landing page here but they’ve got a video and we can see here all the people who will be processing your order and they look like they’re having fun. They look like they’re interesting people because they’ve got lots of stuff all over their walls. Video is a very quick way of communicating and you know, getting trust from your customers.

Rushfaster’s (www.rushfaster.com.au) About page says who they are, what they’re about. They’re quite a trendy retailer but what they’ve done is put their company history into the About page; how their company has progressed and then they’ve also mentioned all the other websites that they run.

So, perhaps they don’t have a 40,000 sq. ft warehouse like someone else, they don’t have a long eBay history or they have not been in business for 25 years. Instead they use other tactics to get some credibility and some trust.

Here’s Headphonic.com.au. These guys have added in an association logo which is really good however there will be a lot of other people who also have the association logo. Perhaps, not in your direct market but they have that same logo so it is not such a unique compelling selling point.

They’ve taken some photos of what looks like their shop. Maybe they’ve got a retail outlet but using an ALT tag of full cupboard seems a little simplistic. These guys would do better to put in photos of their staff. They could add a nice section here about how they’re going to help people but they don’t even have opening hours. They don’t have phone numbers there. They say where they are but it’s not in-depth information about their company.

Here’s another one – headphones.com.au. This is a really sort of typical page that you see from a lot of eCommerce sites where the punctuation is wrong. It’s a really junky looking page that’s filled with mistakes. It doesn’t inspire trust.
Here’s another store – www.gazebosaustralia.com.au. This company started out as an eBay store in 2005. They’re a titanium power seller looking after 29,000 customers. That tells me that they have a long history of building trust with customers on eBay. They now ship directly to their own online store and that’s why. They’re located in Hornsby, this is what they’ve been doing and there’s a nice photo of the guy who actually runs the store in the warehouse. You can see that’s where he is and that is what he does.

There’s a “why buy your product” from these people. You can pick up from the warehouse. There is a map showing you exactly where he is although he looks like he is in the middle of the forest. And then, a little bit about the company and what they do.

This section shows a screencast that talks about the order process. As soon as you order with this company, this shows a behind-the-scenes look at the ordering process and that makes the customers feel far more comfortable and then finally, a “need help email” to send when they pick and pack orders and a phone number.

There are many different ways to inspire trust with your customers so that they are more likely to purchase from you. If you haven’t looked at your website’s statistics page, you’ll see that your About page is your most highly trafficked page. If it’s not, there could be a problem but it’s an excellent conversion page.

You’ll often see that people go from an About Us page and subsequently go through with buying your products. It’s a very important page and these have been a few ideas for improving it.

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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Filed Under: Design & Branding Tagged With: , , ,

Surround your price with value

November 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Your price needn’t stand alone in the page. It can be surrounded with messages to trigger a customer to purchase your product. Get a few pro tips on how to improve the value of your price.

Watch the full screencast

Raw Transcript

Hello! Today, I’d like to talk to you very specifically about the price, so not how much you’re charging but how you display your price on your store. I’ll go through a few examples.

Pumpkin Patch – www.pumpkinpatch.com.au

Here’s Pumpkin Patch. Let me know if you can actually find their price without me having to point it out to you, but it’s this tiny pink writing down here on a pink background. One of the things that online shoppers do is that a lot of them are price-conscious, and so what they’re doing is they’re actually looking for price. By putting your price in a pink colour on a pink background, those two colours aren’t dissimilar. They blend in to each other and so the price doesn’t shout out to me “Buy me! Buy me! I’m on sale.”

You can see how they had a $59.99 and then this amount is now $29.99. It’s crammed in into this section of three. If this was my store, I would be pulling that price right out. I’d be making it this really deep pink colour up here of the eSale button, and I’d be making it a lot larger, and then I’d be really highlighting that there was a $30 saving. That’s just about 50 percent off, so it’s a massive saving and yet it’s tiny. So that’s one example.

Baby’s Got Style – www.babysgotstyle.com.au

Let’s go and have a look at this one. This is really typical online store that hasn’t had a huge amount of sales thought put into it. Again, here’s the price. It’s very small. It’s a passive colour. Green colours, cool colours, blue colours—they recede. Bright warm colours such as the reds and the yellows—they come out. They jump out at you.

They’ve put their price which is one of the most important things on the page in a passive colour. The designer has chosen to recede that colour and to really bring it back. Again, I’m not sure why they did that. If that was me, I’d be using a warm colour. I’d be putting it right out on the page, and I’d be making it big because it’s an important factor when a customer decides to buy.

Target – www.target.com.au

I just had to do this one because I thought it was so funny. The price is now $18, but it was $18. If you’re going to use this mechanism of displaying a price before and after, at least get it right. I think that’s typical of very large department stores and larger companies because they don’t really have that attention to detail. But if you look around here specifically around that price area, you can see that the only thing that’s within that area is that it’s only available at, and I assume that that’s their logo. So it’s only available at Target. If you happen to absolutely love that particular clothing item, you can only get it at Target which is a reason to buy. There’s no other real incentive around that price area here.

ClearBeats – www.clearbeats.com.au

This is another relative example of a smaller ecommerce store is where’s their price. Well, their price is actually at the bottom of the page. Again, if you’ll go and have a look at all the other top ecommerce stores, you’ll see that the price is usually in that first screen. It’s what’s called ‘above the fold’. This is the fold here where the screen cuts off. We’re going to scroll two and a half times. At least they’ve got the recommended price. They’ve got the savings amount, so that’s a really good savings amount and then there’s the price there. But again, if this was me, I’d have the price up the top of the page. I’d have it situated next to the product, and I’d have it in large writing. Again, black and white is the generic default style for that page. I’d have it red and large.

Zappos – www.zappos.com

Let’s have a look at what Zappos do. Here’s the price here. It’s a warm colour that comes out. It’s a larger font. It’s bold.

Immediately in the vicinity of that price is the word “sale” and the amount. I don’t know what that discount is, but it’s a complicated number so I can’t work it out so $285 down to $157.99. It’s obviously an amount that I can’t easily say, “Oh, that’s only 10 percent off” or “That’s 5 percent off” or “That’s 15 or 20.” It’s an unknown discount. It’s hard for me to compare.

Right next to the price is the logo over here. A little bit further away are some reviews, the SKU number, “Add to the shopping cart.” There’s the price and there’s the “Add to the shopping cart” button. A little bit further down “In stock and ready to ship.” In the immediate vicinity, see how there’s a lot of extra white space. See how these things are a bit more cluttered and there’s a lot of white space around there. That naturally pulls your eye in.

Again, to attract people to your price, put a bit of space around it, warm colours. They come out of the page.

RushFaster – www.rushfaster.com.au

Let’s go and have a look at RushFaster. I really like these guys. I really like what they’re doing with their site. Let’s have a look.

There’s their price. Wow! Red! Big writing. See how that’s the biggest writing on that page. It really comes out. Pushes forward. It was $119. Save 42 percent, so there’s two extra bits of information.

Your eye naturally goes to down to this green area because there’s no other green in this area. “In stock – ready to ship.” That’s a status of the products confirmed. You can have it tomorrow. It’ll ship tomorrow. Currencies are useful. But “Found it cheaper elsewhere? We’ll price beat it.” Again, in this immediate vicinity of the area, it’s “In stock – ready to ship.” They’ll price beat it. They’ve already given you a saving.

They have given their store credibility by adding a logo just above the price, so you can see that you’re buying a brand name item at a discount.

The other thing that’s interesting that no one else seems to do is that they put all their social credibility near the price. They’ve got their Google+, their Facebook like, and their Twitter tweets for this product next to the price. There’s not a lot of activity there but it’s a mechanism that allows you to get that social authentication that the product stays in.

Gazebos Australia – www.gazebosaustralia.com.au

Here’s another example. The old price: $189. Recommended retail so good saving there. Availability: “Leaves Mt. Kuring-gai warehouse in 24-48 hours”. It’s coming from a warehouse, so this implies I’m getting it cheaper. It leaves within 24-48 hours. It comes along really quickly, and there’s the green “Add to cart” button right below it. Again, it’s next to the product picture which is really good.

Appliances Online – www.appliancesonline.com.au

This is Appliances Online. I really like their store as well. Let’s have a look at what they do.

There’s the price. It’s not red but at least it’s really big writing. There’s a lot of white space around it, so your eye can go into that. “Best price guaranteed”. As I move my mouse around this page, that’s the only thing that’s got a roll-over on it. The activity on the page, something that will catch my eye, is this little slight animation, this slight roll-over.

Recommended retail, the savings amount, and in this area, this is their up-sell. Obviously because they’re selling appliances, they can add a warranty. An idea for you is if you’re selling phones, you might add a phone cover, and that would be a really easy up sell component there. Anyway, that’s a nice idea in there.

BigW – www.bigw.com.au

Let’s have a look at what’s surrounding their price. The black writing. At least you save $200 so that’s really good. See this “save” button. That’s red. Unfortunately, this product is also red so it’s competing with the red over here. But the red really comes out online. “In stock online.” If you notice that the people who are doing this in stock online, they’re using green which means go.

“Product only ships next business day” so again they give you an expectation. They’re giving customers an expectation, and this is a limited offer. That’s a really good idea as well. If you’re going to put something with a good savings, you can also give it a limited time offer to incentivise buyers, so a nice button there.

Milan Direct – www.milandirect.com.au

Let’s have a look at what Milan Direct does. Here’s the blue, the only blue spot on the page. $499, big writing, plus delivery which means that delivery is not included. But this text around it is what’s actually really important—“Best Value Eames Reproduction.” The fact that it’s the word “reproduction” and “best value” means that I’m probably already getting a good price. They’ve then put three bullet points. Australia wide delivery. So that’s their go aspect. Best value. Again, four stars so that’s saying what its rating was. A second ago, this first graphic here had a red sale button here. Again that implies that you’re buying a really good value item.

Just to recap. Terrible pink price on a pink background—can’t see it, not big enough. Really boring, cool colours recede. Bright, warm colours come out of the page at you. If you’re going to use the pre-buy, the recommended retail price, at least make sure there’s a difference. Put your price at the top of the page above the fold. Make sure it’s up there. Surround your price with other indicators of the fact that customers are getting a bargain. Also give that some social indications like these guys do. Give it some social indications under the logo. They give social indications that it’s good value. In stock – ready to ship. A few people use that. In stock availability, ready to go. Nice big price. These ones as well got some reviews there, five reviews of four stars. Around the price “Best Price Guaranteed.” The only animation on that page is this little blue hover and then they got an up sell there which is really clever. These guys got a little “save” button, and these guys also got a “sale” button there.

That’s a few thoughts around how to make the most of that price that appears on that page. Without a doubt, every customer who visits your web site looks at that price. Thank you. Bye!

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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How to ruin product photos, instantly.

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Unprocessed homemade photos.

While the photos on this website were shot by someone who took care to make them look consistent, no effort was made to improve the photos once they were shot. Elementary sharpening, color and lighting corrections would take these homemade images a long way, and probably for a price not exceeding the cost of one or two pens being sold. Without this work, the images are plagued by uneven lighting of the product and the background and the photos suffer from a color cast. Notice the shadows steer towards blue. Another tip: if you’re already shooting homemade photos that include shadows as intense as these – don’t crop parts of the shadow out.

Example: http://www.1001pens.com

 

Lazy photo retouching.

Notice the yellow outline of the two cutouts in the middle. This is what happens when you cannot be bothered to make a proper clipping path and resort to using the “Magic Wand” tool in Photoshop. It makes for an especially poor presentation when the photos are small as well.

Example: http://www.vacaway.com

 

Too much Photoshop.

Any proper retoucher will tell you that good Photoshop work should not be easily detected – it needs to be moderate and subtle. This holds true in product photography as well, as an image that has seen over-the-top retouching is likely to make your customers wonder whether or not the actual product lives up the photograph. While the website we provided as an example here won’t fill you with such doubts, it is a great example for both “Lazy photo retouching” and ”Too much Photoshop” – the former represented by the jagged edges of the metal bars, and the latter by an over-the-top “drop shadow” effect that seems to be trying to conceal the very same jagged edges.

Example: http://mama-la.com/

 

 

Not going all the way.

You hire a beautiful model and a professional photographer with a fully equipped studio. You dress the model in elegant outfits you’re trying to sell and make a great selection of outstanding photos. AND THEN, you can’t be bothered to hire a retoucher to remove those sloppy footprints on the studio backdrop. A sure way to ruin your own investment.

Example: http://www.axparis.co.uk/

 

Ridiculously small product photos.

This website sells sword replicas from fantasy movies and games. These are expensive products with no practical use, meaning you are selling them because the buyer finds them beautiful. How can you afford to present such a product with such a small, blurry photo? How do you not take the opportunity to shoot these from every possible angle in a high resolution, with all the minute artisan detail shouting “Buy me!” at the customer?

Example: http://www.cbswords.com

 

Drawing attention away from the photograph.

The photo in this example is actually not that bad – a bit on the small side, sure, but not poorly photographed. The problem here is all the multi colored, animated, bouncing-on-mouse-over content surrounding it. It makes your website look like a truck full of neon signs crashed into a a flea market.

Example: http://www.lingscars.com

 

Simply Awful.

Based on the home page we can safely assume “Arngren” is the Norwegian word for “headache”. If you do not suffer a seizure in the time it takes to load the home page on this website and actually manage to click you way to one of the product pages, be prepared for a parade of product photography at its worst. Specific things found in the screenshot provided that you should avoid: smaller photos pasted over the main product photo; overly bright photo that removes all sense of color and texture (lower left corner); photo background partially cut out (top right corner, notice the difference in background around the car and the part seen through the cabin); blurry main photo plagued by JPEG compression artifacts.

Example: http://www.arngren.net

Small Revolution

Aleksandar is a photo retouching, editing and color correction specialist. He has twelve years of experience processing photographs for both web and print. Follow the link below to visit his contractor profile at oDesk.

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Why you need a Logo Pack from your designer

October 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What files do you need supplied by the designer?

When your chosen designer has finished creating your logo you will need to get your hands on the final files. We usually ask for what we call a LOGO PACK. This contains the logo but in various file types and sizes. A logo pack contains several files; each of which can be used for a different printing, online or display purpose.

You should ALWAYS receive the following files within your logo pack as an absolute minimum:

  • EPS file with logo converted to curves
  • Font file, as used in the design
  • Black and white version
  • JPG version at small, medium and large sizes
  • PNG versions at small, medium and large sizes
  • GIF versions at small, medium and large sizes
[button link="http://smallrevolution.com/?attachment_id=301" style="download"]Logo Pack Example[/button]

Even if you don’t understand the terms in the list a well-trained designer will know exactly what all of the above means. And don’t let them argue with you about the complexity of the request. It will take no more than an hour to extract the different versions from the original file, and to collate the resources.

Having a logo pack, as I’ve described above, will mean you wholly own all possible versions of your logo and will have them to hand, on file, any time you need them.

You’ll often get a request from other designers, PR agencies, newspapers, bloggers and others for a copy of your file. You can send them the logo pack and they can find the best version to suit their purposes. You won’t ever need to go back to the original designer to ask for a change or a special logo for XYZ person. It’s all there in the logo pack!

Small Revolution

Katrina McKinnon is a Founder of SmallRevolution, and AusCommerce. Katrina is eCommerce Webmaster of Camping Central and Gazebos Australia. If you'd like to connect, head over to @smallrevolution

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