June 2007

As a long time web designer I’ve dealt with any number of eCommerce options over the years. In general you’ve always had two major options:

1) You build and code from scratch. This required a great deal of knowledge in various coding languages in addition to the ability to design an attractive interface which will work within the construct of the website’s structure. 2) You pay a company with pre-built systems. This was not only extremely expensive but rarely allowed you freedom to create any sort of pleasing design as it would have to conform to their limited header/footer customization.

Well, I’ve seen the light now! The future is here and (unfortunately for people in “the business” like me) it’s unbelievably easy to do.

These free solutions are Open Source based online shop e-commerce solutions that are available under the GNU General Public License. They all contain a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionalities that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved. Most of these Open Source solutions provide an e-commerce platform, which include the powerful PHP web scripting language and the fast MySQL database server. With no special requirements, they are able to run on any PHP 4.1+ enabled web server running on Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows environments.

Unbelievable right? Well,, it’s true and I’m loving it.

In addition to the obvious advantages of these open source stores, there are many less obvious benefits such as - Active user forums where you can get answers to most any question without dealing with charges or “canned responses” from a profit company. - The ability to change the design of your store nearly instantly by simply selecting a new “template” from within your administration panel - Countless free “add-ons” and “modules” which add all types of additional features to your store. - As the projects continue to grow and the stores improve you can upgrade, and of course the upgrades are free also.

In my opinion once of the greatest of the above features is the ability to change the design and/or appearance of your site with the ease of a few uploads and button clicks (ONCE YOU HAVE A DESIGN DEVELOPED). The most common complaint I found from OS users was the same one I’ve heard about other e-commerce packages. People weren’t aware of how much work would be involved in getting an original design put together. They would get to a certain point, hit an unexpected bottleneck, and be unable to keep going. The majority of the work involved in getting your store up and running was getting a design to function within the limits and restrictions of the store’s code. Every implementation will run into these problems, and everything takes longer and costs more than you plan for it, whether it’s proprietary or open source. There are now; however, easy solutions for this issue which will prevent you from getting overwhelmed. Many businesses on the web (example: http://www.bg-website-templates.com & http://www.bluegelmedia.com ) who focus on web template development have entered a whole new era in template design. They have begun development of stunning designs for Open Source eCommerce solutions such as OScommerce, ZenCart, and CRE Loaded (the most popular of these Open Source eCommerce solutions). This allows you to easily implement a perfect store design within minutes. While these design templates are not free like the eCommerce solution, they are worth the mere $50 average price, saving you weeks of frustrating design.

You can find more information on these Open Source eCommerce Solutions at their hub sites. Just type in the OS solution name you wish to research into your search engine and their home pages will show up. The most popular solutions are ZenCart, OScommerce & CRE Loaded. But there are many other ones out there to choose from; however these three have proven themselves over time and have such large user bases and support groups that I would recommend trying one of them first before attempting to delve into lesser known solutions.

To sum this all up. While large companies will always need a custom built solution for their online stores, the average small business no longer needs to spend five or ten thousand dollars to have a quality store developed. The use of a free OS solution along with an inexpensive design template will have you selling online for pennies on the dollar compared with a custom built store. Even if you don’t feel you have the skill set to work with the OS solutions, you can hire any competent developer to implement it for you. Sure you’ll be charged, but the price will be a small percentage of what you would have paid.

About the Author
Written by Gene Torrey Webmaster/Lead Designer.
I have spent nearly seven years in the pursuit of how to make high end websites using small business resources. This article may be reproduced if all content, links and byline remain intact.
Ecommerce Web Templates can be found using this link.

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In the business world, time is a valuable asset and A great way to start saving time in developing your business is to use ready-made templates. Templates can be used to quickly develop websites, ad campaigns, business cards and more. In most cases these templates can be purchased from large wholesalers online for penny’s on the dollar. The quality and type of templates available will vary greatly, but below are descriptions of the most often used types of templates and those that can often save you the most money.

Website Design Templates:
A web design template is a pre-built website where the design work and coding has been completed, but the content still must be integrated into the pages. A simple web template may cost under $20 dollars, but a well-designed professional e-commerce website may cost upward of $200. These prices are based on high volume template warehouses. A custom developed template solely for your business alone may cost in the thousands. Webmasters, either novice or expert, can easily save thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours by using website templates. In addition when purchasing your template from A professional template website reseller you will often be purchasing designs of a much higher quality than your are capable of creating on your own.

“I want an original design” - Often this is what people think when considering the purchase a website template. They feel that having a design that might be used by others is not a viable option for their business; however, most professional template distributors offer a “unique bid“. This special price is offered to those who wish to purchase the design for their use only. If the special price is paid (which is often as much as 20X more than the normal purchase price) then the template will be removed from the sellers database and from any and all affiliate websites which might also sell their products. In this way you have purchased the design you wanted for much cheaper and faster than had you hired someone to develop a custom design.

Business Card and Logo Templates:
For most small agencies, using business card templates is a wonderful tool to easily make custom business cards. Templates usually come in two main categories. Program source files (Photoshop or Illustrator files ready to accept your personal information) and “online development programs ” which allow you to choose images and layouts online and simply input your personal information through an interface on the seller’s website. Either way works well and can often give you a high quality, professional looking business card in a matter of minutes. The design can then be used to purchase cards directly through the template seller’s website or you can take the files to your local printer.

PowerPoint Templates:
The third most popular category of business templates are PowerPoint designs. These templates allow you to quickly put together a good looking presentation as fast as you can copy and paste your content into them. These are great for unexpected meetings and spontaneous presentations. You can make it look like you had all week to prepare when actually you threw it together on the plane.

Summary:
The real story behind using templates to start your business off right is the cost savings combined with the huge time savings. Together they allow small start up companies to have the same opportunities as the big boys who have designers on staff. I cannot think of a more accessible way to level the playing field so keep them in mind the next time someone quotes you a ridiculous price for design services. This author has built his own business on the backs of template designers I’ve never met.

About the Author

Written by Gene Torrey Lead developer for BGM design
To learn more about saving money with website design templates follow this link. Copyright © 2005 Blue Gel Media This article may be reproduced if all content, links and byline remain intact.
Blue Gel Meida is a webmaster software and desig

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Introduction.
Before you even think about opening Dreamweaver or your favourite html editor and start designing your site there are a few things I believe you need to do first. I am going to describe how to increase your work flow and give you some general tips and tricks that will speed up the design of your website project and help to get it showing up in search engines quicker .In future articles I will be going into greater detail of some of the topics I describe here. Now let’s get started.

Purchasing and optimising your domain name.
The first thing you need to consider is your domain name. I suggest that you don’t just use your company name, i.e. if your company makes tartan paint and your company name is “Hamish Paints” don’t go for the obvious choice of hamishpaints.com. I would try and come up with a keyword rich domain name. Some search engine optimisers (SEO) would say that having keywords in your domain name doesn’t make any difference to your listings but I disagree. Google will highlight your keywords in the search engine results page (SERPS), which leads me to believe that keywords do hold some weight, and besides it will make it clearer to the searcher what your site is all about.

What are keywords?
Keywords from a search engine optimisation (SEO) stand point are the key -words that are used to optimise your website for better listings on search engines. These are the words or phrases people are typing into the search bar of Google etc to find websites relating to what information or products they may be looking for.
Go to www.bruceclay.com/ and www.highrankings.com/ - two great websites where you can learn more about keywords and SEO.

How do I find and choose my keywords?
To find keywords that people may be using in search terms the first port of call should be the overture keyword selector tool and you can access this tool at http://inventory.overture.com/ or http://inventory.uk.overture.com/. If you want the UK results, here you will find an excellent tool for discovering keywords. All you need to do is type in words or phrases that are going to be related to your website and overture will show you related searches that include your term and how many times that term was searched on the last month. Now you can get an idea of what keywords you should be including in your domain name.

Please note that search engines don’t like long main names so try to keep it as short as possible. Other great resources for keywords are: www.wordtracker.com/
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
www.keyworddiscovery.com/

As we all know all the good domain names have been taken and it’s almost impossible to get one-word domain names these days, so be inventive if you get stuck. I always find it helpful to visit www.dictionary.com and use the thesaurus to come up with names maybe I hadn’t thought of. Now that you are armed with a killer domain name you can go to http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/order/whois/ and check its availability.

Try and get the domain name extension of the country your company resides in as it makes it clear where you’re from. I know most people want to get a .com but if you are in the UK I believe a better extension would be .co.uk as it shows where your from. This will also help in the SERPS when people are searching for websites in the UK you don’t want to be competing with websites outside of your country if you can help it.

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There are lots of things that you have to consider when you are starting a home business and one of the most important things that you have to think about is how to best build an online presence for your business. No matter what you are doing, it is important that you are online and that people can find you. This is something that you have to be concerned with, no matter what your business is. You might be under the impression that an online presence is not important for your business and you could not be more wrong.

Even if you have a localized business, you are going to need to have a website. The fact is that no matter what you are doing, most of your customers are at least going to want to look online and see some information about you. All around the world people have started taking care of things in their lives during non traditional business hours. If you have a product or a service and you want to compete in the world today, you have to be available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and the only way that you can do this successfully is if you have an online presence.

Be on the alert! We are kicking off our annual Summer Solstice Sale early this year… The first day of summer Sale is here and along with it Great Savings. You can celebrate Summer Solstice with two ways to save From June, 9 until September, 30 Order any one of our Customization Packages and Get any template Absolutely Free!ƒ (see detail) OR Purchase any one of our website templates within the time period and automatically GET 10% DISCOUNT!!!

So, the first thing that you need is a website. Your website should be clear, concise and interesting. It has to catch the attention of the people who are looking at it and therefore it should be something that you yourself have found very interesting. Your site has to be one that people will visit and one that is easy to use, because if someone can ont use your site and can not get what they want from it, they will simply find another companies site to be on.

After you have a site that is well put together and easy to use, you need an email address. This is the way of getting a hold of you for the people who find you online and look you up on the internet. Therefore the email address should be easy to remember, easy to type and checked often. After you have these two things, it is time to get your name out there and begin to reap the benefits. This is something that is going to require a little bit of time and a little bit of hard work.

You have to take the time to go to various sites and plug your website and it might require a little bit of cash to get some advertising space online. The important part is that you research who you hope will be your customer base and then you target the websites that these people frequent. Hopefully you will get them to come to your site and pay you for the products or services that you can provide.

About the Author
Obinna Heche. Los Angeles - California Delivering the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home successfully.. http://www.homeincomeportal.com/obhmy365

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