I took a tour of the city yesterday to see if we can access our office. The city centre is in a pretty bad way. It is currently on lock down with army barricades and there is no access allowed due to danger of many buildings collapsing from the many frequent aftershocks.

Information to date is that our office building (Kenton Chambers) has been red-stickered due to possible imminent collapse of the neighboring Manchester Courts building - an historic building site.

Despite having no-go access to our offices, we will strive to continue operating as a business. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we can work from our homes.

We ask you to please bare with us for the next few days while we try and get everything back to normal. There may be some slight delays in us responding to questions and support requests. Please accept our apologies in advanced.

Thank you to everyone that has sent messages of support, it has been much appreciated.

The Internet and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have provided a platform for latest information and discussion – not to mention moral support. (http://twitter.com/#search?q=christchurch%20earthquake).

Some useful links for news and updates include:

Christchurch City Council: www.ccc.govt.nz/thecouncil/newsmedia/mediareleases/index.aspx
Geonet’s Recent Earthquake Map: www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.html
Civil Defence: www.civildefence.govt.nz/memwebsite.nsf
The Herald’s Timeline of Events: www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10671050
Stuff’s News Coverage: www.stuff.co.nz/national/4094986/State-of-emergency-after-7-1-quake-hits-Christchurch

This is a very, very sizeable earthquake in a very populated part of New Zealand. Up to 20% of the homes in the city may be rendered uninhabitable. Damage is at least $2 billion in a city of 340,000 people.

We and our families are all safe and well which is a huge relief. Our thoughts go out to everyone who has lost their homes and businesses. This is truly a tough time for all caught in the midst of this disaster.

This morning, my tribute is to my love of coffee – real coffee – it can’t be instant – and absolutely not decaf!

This mornings brew is a large takeaway Soy Latte from The Coffee Smiths www.thecoffeesmiths.co.nz – and I give this a 5 out of 5! Great friendly service too.

NewZealandStories.com is the official website for the iconic New Zealand book Whitebaiters Never Lie by photographers Anita Peters and Murray Hedwig.

The book Whitebaiters Never Lie documents and celebrates the characters who catch that most-prized Kiwi food – the whitebait. Whitebaiters are a breed apart, and photographers Anita Peters and Murray Hedwig spent over three years travelling the country talking to and photographing New Zealanders about their passion, and documenting the uniquely Kiwi lifestyle that surround it.

We were privileged to be invited by Murray and Anita to develop an eCommerce store where people can buy iconic New Zealand photos and prints from the book Whitebaiters Never Lie.

Built using the powerful Magento eCommerce platform, NewZealandStories.com is an online New Zealand Photo Library which currently features over 2,000 individual whitebaiting photos and images from many of New Zealand’s major whitebaiting rivers. Photos have been categorised by region and river name and can be purchased via a secure payment gateway.

The website offers a number of purchasing options with photographic prints up to 760mm x 480mm. Larger panoramic canvass are also available.

NewZealandStories.com is intended to become a library of New Zealand photos and images featuring classic Kiwi pastimes including whitebaiting, hunting, living in the wild, Kiwi characters and other images that capture our unique New Zealand culture.

Client: Whitebaiters Never Lie (Anita Peters and Murray Hedwig)
Website: NewZealandStories.com

Let’s look at a couple of your options for secure payments.

The PayPal Option

You can interface your eCommerce store with PayPal (however this is really not recommended for serious online stores). Consider this option only if your are on a low budget.

The primary reason is the way PayPal directs your customers to their secure payments screen. By default PayPal sends your customers to a login screen with the option to sign up to PayPal which has often resulted in ‘cart abandonment’ where a customer doesn’t complete the sale.

You actually don’t need a PayPal Account. You can just click ‘Continue’ in the section:

Don’t have a PayPal account?
Use your credit card or bank account (where available). Continue

The advantage of PayPal is no setup or monthly fees with a nominal % per transaction. However the abandoned carts show this is not the most effective payment gateway in our opinion.

A More Professional Option – Setup a Merchant Account and Payment Gateway.

This is the most professional setup and will promote confidence in your store.

If you already have an existing Merchant Account, setup a secure Payment Gateway (DPS, Paystation, authorize.net etc.) that will interface with your Merchant Account through your cart.

This means you never see the actual credit card details of your customers and payment transactions are completed in real time.

There are setup and monthly fees plus additional handling fees with 3rd party payment gateways (generally somewhere between 2% – 4%).

Many banks now require a 3rd party payment provider to be in place before issuing a Merchant ID for your ecommerce store..

Merchant Account Requirements

Merchant Account providers typically want to review an ecommerce website to make sure it is a safe and secure shopping experience for your customers. By doing so they are protecting themselves as well as your business by reducing you potential for chargebacks.

So what are Merchant Account providers looking for when you apply?

• Merchant’s Name Appears Prominently On The Web Site
• Customer Service Phone Number Is Clearly Posted
• Return/Refund Policy Is Clearly Posted
• Delivery Methods And Timing Are Clearly Posted
• Privacy Statement Is Outlined
• Product Offered Is Clearly Described
• Page Where Credit Card Info Is Entered Is Secure

Being organised before you begin not only simplifies the entire project, but can ultimately save you time and money – and your ecommerce website developer will love you for it!

Right.. Let’s get organised..

Product Categories

Determine how many product categories you are going to need and which categories your products will appear in.

You will need to name your product categories, prepare a description of 160 – 200 words to introduce the products in for each category and create an image to visually describe the category. Finally, choose 10 to 50 keyword phrases which relate to your product category.

Checklist for each Product Category:

• Category Name
• Category Description
• Category Image
• Keywords associated with Product Category

Product Details

Product Attributes & Variations

Product Attributes are the configurable characteristics of your product or its components. For example, you sell a product in three colors. As part of creating this product, you would define an attribute called ‘Color’ and assign it the three colors. Other common products attributes or variations include ‘size’, ‘colour’, ‘gem type’, ‘materials’, ‘weight’ and so on..

What attributes, variations or options are relevant to your products?

Product Descriptions

For each product, you will need a Short description (one sentence) and a Long description (paragraph or more).

You want to attract and intrigue potential shoppers so be sure to use interesting copy that is full of adjectives and possibly a bullet list of features in the long description.

Product Images

You will need product images to sell you products. Ideally we recommend a professional photographer. It is essential that your photos be of high quality. In some cases you may be able to get them from the manufacturer. Poor quality photos can look unprofessional and may create a barrier to selling your products.

(Ideally product images should be no less than 640 pixels at the longest edge).

Checklist for Product Details:

• Product Name
• Short Description
• Long Description
• SKU or product #
• Shipping Weight
• Price
• Product Image(s)
• Keywords associated with product
• Attributes / Options: (colour / size etc.)
• Category(s)
• (optional) Related Products

This article serves as a very simple introductory guide to help you determine are you ready to build a secure and customer-friendly ecommerce website. This is essential to providing your future customers with an informative, easy-to-shop, and safe online web store.

Considerations for Selling Online

Before you start there are many questions to be realistically and honestly answered. Failing to do any of the following can have serious implications in the future success of your online store.

1. Do you have experience of selling products through mail order?
2. Have you the skills and capacity to fulfil sales orders?
3. How will you manage sales orders? You? An office assistant? Or outsourced via 3PL services (such as Online Distribution)?
4. How easy is it for you to deliver products to your customers?
   - Have you considered the weight and cost of shipping?
   - Can you ship using standard sized packaging?
   - Are your products perishable?
5. Are your goods available worldwide and have you considered;
   - Currency conversion?
   - Import /export regulations?
   - Additional shipping costs or complex shipping rules?
6. Do your products have variations or options, such as size or colour etc?
7. How easy is it for customers to make a buying decision based on only text and images where they can’t touch, taste or smell your products?
8. Will customers really buy your product online? (I’m serious – you must realistically consider the implications of trying to sell an item which people will only buy if they can touch it).
9. Can you handle customer complaints and returns?
10. Do you have staff to answer customer questions in real time?
11. To what extent do you expect repeat customers? Will you your shopping cart require an “Account” feature for your customers?

If you can answer all of the about questions and feel you can meet the challenge of running an effective online store then congratulations! The effort of establishing and managing your online store is not to be underestimated – but the reward (and pay-off) can be well worth it.

Budget Considerations

You must determine what you are willing to spend for the options and functionality you need from your shopping cart. What about professional photography and content creation (copy-writing) who will supply this?

Have you considered how you will promote your online store? How will customers find out about you? If you are serious about building an online store which is effective and is an investment you will need to market and promote it.

You will need to budget for search engine optimisation, link building and Google AdWords.

Blogging is a proven effective method to build organic ranking in Google. If you are not a writer have you considered contracting a copywriter for professional blogging?

Don’t overlook the importance of ‘off-line’ advertising channels such as magazine, newspapers, television and radio etc.

A rule of thumb is you will need to budget at least 30% of your investment to build your eCommerce store for ongoing marketing.

There are three types of product relations in Magento: Related Products, Up-sell and Cross-sell Products.

When viewing a product, Related products appear in the product info page as well, in the right column. Related products are meant to be purchased in addition to the item the customer is viewing.

For example if you are viewing the mocka ‘Aspiring Cot’ a related product is the ‘Inner-sprung cot mattress’ as the two products are ideally purchased together.

Upsells for this product are items that your customers would ideally buy instead of the product they’re viewing. They might be better quality, produce a higher profit margin, be more popular, etc. These appear on the product info page.

For example, if you are browsing the Dean Hawkins ‘Sterling Silver and Paua Tree Pendant’ an upsell product would be the ‘Sterling Silver Paua Hoop Earrings’ which have a higher value.

Finally, Cross-sell items appear in the shopping cart. When a customer navigates to the shopping cart, the cross-sells block displays a selection of items marked as cross-sells to the items already in the cart. They’re a bit like impulse buys – like displaying magazines and lollies at the checkout in supermarkets.

As a store owner we encourage you to explore your product range to see if there are cases where you could use this fantastic feature of Magento eCommerce to ensure the best opportunity to offer the right product to your customers.

If you are not already using Magento eCommerce to manage your online store speak to us about our packaged Enterprise eCommerce Solution using Magento to get your shop online.

For some time now we have been working with the world’s most popular Content Management System to deliver custom website solutions.

We decided it was time for us to put together a pre-configured, professionally designed website package – designed to meet the needs of many small businesses looking for an affordable online marketing solution.

Want a CMS powered website where you can update your content add new pages? If you are looking for a professional and affordable small business website, then our Premium Economy small business CMS solution could be the one saving you time and money.

And pre-designed doesn’t mean any compromise in quality – just look at some of the sites who have already discovered the benefits of a website they can updates themselves;

www.graffitiman.co.nz, www.cycloneoz.com, www.declinedsurgery.co.nz, www.vacationsnewzealand.co.nz

A good content managed website will provide your business with the tools you need to build and expand your website presence. Additional features can be added as your budget allows including new publishing, blog, photo galleries, event calendar, shopping cart etc.

Our Premium Economy website solution is the perfect choice for a content rich website that needs frequent updating and/or additions. With its user-friendliness it is a great asset for a busy small business.

With turn around times of less than 3 weeks, get in touch with us to find out more about an affordable CMS for your business..

Dave Sewell provides expert sales training and support for retail and small businesses. We really enjoyed meeting Dave and after only a brief conversation, we got an insight to the quality of knowledge and information Dave had which could be used to build his online visibility.

This is a website development story I have been really looking forward to sharing. In many ways this typifies just what it is that makes working with Meta Solutions different.

We were first contacted by Dave Sewell by an email from our website. Dave’s request was simple – “I am looking for someone to design a website for me. It’s not a large web site and I think it will be fairly simple to create. Can someone give me a call to discuss this further. Kindest Regards Dave”…

So of course I picked up the phone to have a chat with Dave and get a feel for what he was looking for. The conversation was easy and we arranged a time to meet where he could tell me more about his requirements for a website.

Dave was looking for an online resume where he could feature his industry experience and qualifications to top-tier employers – somewhat like LinkedIn (of course I suggested he should be using this anyway).

As a long-time Sales Team Manager, Dave had a wealth of real-world experience and knowledge just waiting to be shared with the world. Dave is a gifted speaker and just listening to him was an insight. I immediately suggested he should seriously consider starting his own Sales Coaching Consultancy aimed towards small to medium businesses. All he needed was a platform to voice his ideas and insights and in doing so would attract businesses searching for answers online.

..And this is where the magic happened… Dave told me that every other web company he had seen had just sold him ‘the standard package’ – nobody took time to really listen to his requirements or even consider the potential for a new business opportunity here.

Dave went away and thought about our suggestion and came back the next day with a newfound vigor to get this thing started. Dave was in business!

A fresh new logo design and Dave Sewell – Sales Training is born!

This was one of those magic customers where the values and expectations lined up and the whole process was easy. Not only that – Dave gave us loads of creative freedom to really drive the project, and come up with his branding.

Now as we often have discussed, a key web marketing strategy is to have a Content Management System (CMS) where you can create new pages, posts, articles and case studies. In the world of search engines, “Content is King”, and the more pages and posts you can publish increases your chances to be found in search engines for related searches.

Dave Sewell is truly a natural blogger! Before we had even designed his custom wordpress theme, he had a dozen blog posts ready for us to load into the cms! It can really be an advantage if you are able communicate on the same level as your audience – build a relationship with them, write in everyday language and become someone they can identify with by discussing challenges which they may relate to (Dave certainly has this covered). This not only helps you to be found online, it also keeps you relevant, and builds a relationship with your regular followers.

We continued building on Daves’ web marketing strategy by introducing him to Twitter (ideal for micro-blogging and status updates) and creating an opportunity to grow his online Social Networks by integrating his LinkedIn and displaying his latest ‘Tweets’ from Twitter.

At Meta Solutions our expertise goes beyond simply building a website – we can help you to clarify your business goals – or even help you with that first step to starting a new business!

Client: Dave Sewell – Training and support for Retail and Small Business
Website: www.davesewell.co.nz