Particularly, many state governments have begun looking for ways to enforce sales tax laws on e-commerce websites. Recently, North Carolina, New York and other states have cracked down on Amazon.com to collect what they claimed are unpaid back sales taxes. Amazon.com has fought back by cutting ties with affiliates based in those states, together with other legal legal maneuvering as well.

Ignorance About Sales Tax

Aside from high-profile situations like Amazon, most online retailers either don't know or don't care about sales tax for out-of-state sales. This ignorance can lead to potential legal consequences. Ignorance of the law is no excuse in court. Businesses which reside in a state are responsible for collecting and paying sales taxes in that state. For non-resident businesses, customers are responsible for calculating and paying their own sales taxes.

This is a dangerous situation because most retailers and consumers are not aware of the consequences. Failing to pay taxes is a jailable offense. Businesses and customers can face severe penalties for not paying their assessed tax liabilities.

Why Such Fuss?

Aside from the dangers like inflation, which are brought on by increased costs for consumers and businesses, collecting sales tax means more paperwork and administrative costs for businesses, and of course, collecting and paying sales tax creates hassles that most companies obviously would like to avoid!

The e-commerce or shopping cart software used by online retailers should always provide the best means for customers to make purchases with a simple, user-friendly interface and a secure connection. Besides the customer's experience, the administration of the online store has got to be easy, intuitive and time-efficient.  There are many choices in e-commerce technology and some software goes above and beyond the call of duty. Despite all of the bells and whistles, its surprising to see that a lot of e-commerce systems, including many enterprise e-commerce solutions do not offer flexible systems for properly calculating and collecting sales taxes and other government fees.

Store Machine's Tax System

The Store Machine e-commerce engine includes a flexible and dynamic tax and fee collection and reporting system. Each checkout can be programmed to charge a flat fee, or a percentage of the total based on many factors, including city, state, zip code and country, and can be limited to specific products. With this kind of flexibility, collection and tracking of single or multiple taxes and fees can be applied to any order for things like:

• Sales Tax
• Luxury Tax
• Disposal fees
• Recycling fees
• - any other percent-based or flat-rate taxes or fees

As far as we know Store Machine is the first e-commerce system (enterprise level or otherwise) with such a robust tax system. Store Machine customers can rest assured that their sales taxes are being handled correctly, can you?

Aside from proactive security and server maintenance and monitoring, a proper backup system – one that includes your e-commerce software, databases and other server content,  and is available at all times – is critical. With this type of preparation, even the most serious damage to your site can be neutralized within minutes.

If you aren’t running your own servers, your hosting company might periodically make a backup copy of your site – but you don't always have access to it and it, too, can be damaged if the issue that caused your site to go down has to do with the hosting company. Therefore, the first rule of backup is that it is crucial to have a recent backup of your mission critical data stored securely offsite, and easily accessible.

It is unlikely that you or any employee is disciplined enough to perform manual daily backups, no matter how small or new your site is, therefore we always recommend an automated solution.
So, when it comes time for you to select a backup solution, we suggest you don’t take any shortcuts. For our own Store Machine E-Commerce Marketing and Maintenance Plan customers, we have developed a robust backup solution that meets all of these requirements, and we wouldn’t recommend anything less:

• Automated
• Full Status Reports to Sent Administrators
• Daily or Hourly File Backups
• Full Restore Possible Without Proprietary Software
• Secure and Offsite Storage

For experienced server jockeys, we recommend a recipe that involves storage in a remote and secure datacenter, rsync and cron jobs. If that sounds like gibberish, you may want to have a professional develop and implement your e-commerce backup plan.

So, whether your web store earns $100 per day or $100,000, a small investment in backup is simply the best insurance policy for your investment in e-commerce (and your bread and butter).
If you would like to talk to us about how we can help your e-commerce site more reliable, secure and safe, we are always ready to help.
 

• Consumer Spending Increases: Online sales were up a healthy 15.9 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value (AOV) up from $170.19 to $190.80  for an increase of 12.1 percent.
• Luxury Goods Make a Comeback: Jewelry retailers reported a 17.6 percent increase in sales. These affluent shoppers appear very willing to open their wallets.
• Surgical Shopping: Consumers know what they want and where to get it. People are viewing 18.0 percent fewer products on sites than they did last year, suggesting that they are shopping with a specific item in mind and quickly moving on.
• Social Shopping: Consumers appear increasingly savvy about their favorite brands’ social presence, and are turning to their networks on social sites for information about deals and inventory levels. While the percentage of visitors arriving from social network sites is fairly small relative to all online visitors—nearly 1 percent—it is gaining momentum, with Facebook dominating the space.
• Mobile Shopping: Consumers are also embracing mobile as a shopping tool. On Black Friday, 5.6 percent of people logged onto a retailer’s site using a mobile device, a jump of 26.7 percent compared to the prior Friday.

Furthermore, total U.S. mobile commerce sales, excluding travel, grew 253% from $396.3 million in 2008 to $1.4 billion in 2009, emerging technologies research and consulting firm ABI Research finds. And by the end of this month, it will have grown 143% from $1.4 billion in 2009 to $3.4 billion in 2010. Travel-related mobile purchases will add another $1.5 billion this year.

These statistics have powerful implications for any web based retailer. Its glaringly obvious that the baseline of e-commerce is changing and stores will need to adjust in order to maximize web store profits in 2011.

1. Make The Store Mobile Friendly – With the increase in sales of smart phones and tablets, we can expect 2011 to set many new records for mobile transactions. Web retailers need to make sure their websites are ready.  The immediate thing to do is to make sure your site works on mobile platforms the way it is. In the very near future, creating an alternate mobile version of your store is critical, so mobile users can maximize their experience and interaction with your store. Unless you are a Fortune 500 retailer, we don't recommend the expense of developing custom apps and all of the additional management and infrastructure they require. Instead leverage your exiting infrastructure and focus on creating an alternate template that is only displayed to mobile devices, one with simpler navigation and that delivers an exciting, secure user experience even on a small screen.
2. Integrate With Social Networks – A significant part of 2010's e-commerce growth was directly related to social marketing.  Many companies on Twitter regularly tweet their specials, and Facebook fan pages create stronger brand identity and direct to consumer communication opportunities, and social bookmarkers spread news like wildfire. It looks like the social web is much more than a fad, its an increasingly integral part of many people's Internet experience. Ignoring it is like building a storefront without windows. People love to shared information, and its getting easier to do that on the web every day. Integrating your e-commerce website with the most popular social networks is must have for 2011.
3. Provide The Details That Shoppers Are Looking For – Most web shoppers research their purchases thoroughly before clicking that final Checkout button. If shoppers aren't 100% sure about the item they are purchasing, its likely that they will spend their time shopping elsewhere. Would you shop at a supermarket where all of the products were in generic boxes with a three word description for every single item? Clear product names and comprehensive descriptions reassure shoppers, and can increase their trust in your store.
4. Raise Your Prices! (Instead, Provide Value) – Today, most companies are cutting every corner they can think of, especially in the service departments. This often leaves consumers frustrated and looking for a new source. This is a great opportunity to stand out by providing outstanding service. This doesn't mean a dedicated staff of 24/7 tech support gurus, or even an 800 number. Sometimes, its as simple as providing detailed installation instructions (or videos), and a personal note with each order. Your reputation will precede you, and a reputation of providing high quality goods and services never hurts.
5. Product Videos – Broadband is now the connection of choice for almost 100% of US Internet users; even mobile companies are offering 4G speeds. Great videos are engaging, and provide a captive audience for you to deliver your message, and stand out from your competition. Quality camcorders and editing software are now relatively inexpensive, and with a little effort you can make it even harder for your competitors to catch up to you, and increase your site's stickiness simultaneously.
6. Live Support – If customers are ready to buy, they don't have time to write emails and wait for your response. Your competitors offer chat support, so shoppers will likely go where they will be helped. Having a live support system ensures that qualified sales reps can close the deal or provide proper customer service during the sales process, probably preventing future problems or delays.
7. Data Feeds – If more people find you, more people will buy from you. This is one of the easiest ways to get into a search engine. Your shopping cart software should be generating and submitting your feeds to at least Google products. It's an easy and powerful way to attract organic search results.

Hopefully, your e-commerce engine does most if this already. If not, you are behind the times! Better give Store Machine a call. We can help you make the most of the world's most powerful sales tool – the Internet.

Making sure that your webstore is ready for Black Friday is something you should be worried about weeks or months before. Here are some of my ideas on what you can do to maximize your e-commerce profits for this coming Black Friday.

1. SEO  - I can't stress the fact of how important Search Engine Optimization is for any website, and particularly E-Commerce web stores! Leveraging the power of search will always bring you a steady stream of qualified leads. Follow up on the trends, and get those researchers in! Keep up to date on what's hot – and make sure you know what your competitors are offering. Google's Think Holiday is a great place to see what 's hot this year! Of course, generally optimizing your Meta information and page text for search engines, assuring that your store has usable title tags, search friendly descriptions and properly tagged images will help bring in traffic when customers are searching for that hot deal!

2. Early Sales – Nobody wants to wait a week when money is burning a hole in their pocket! Having some pre-Black Friday specials will not only create buzz for your site, you also help get an early start on shoppers that are ready to spend their holiday cash.

3. Let Your Customers Know - Facebook and Twitter are great ways to bring in the traffic to your site.  Tweeting about up coming sales and hot deals will have people sharing these links with friends for weeks before the sale. Of course, you should also send email newsletters with specials going directly to your customers' inboxes.

4. Dont forget Cyber Monday - Your Black Friday deals and banner ads should also promote Cyber Monday for repeat business.

5. Promote On-Site – Don't forget to spruce up your site's banners and graphics to emphasize the upcoming (and any current) sale! Your customers need to know that the sale is happening NOW and that its only for a limited time!! Call them into action!

6. Instill Confidence – All of your buyers (not only the black friday shoppers) need to feel that they are getting a great price, and great service, while their data is secure. How many shoppers will you lose if customers don't trust you when that little credit card number box appears? Is your site secures? Make sure your visitor's know it!

7. Server Resources and Bandwidth – Remember when Amazon.com went down? Make your sure server and network is properly maintained and has adequate resources to handle the surge when shoppers come running!

8. Partner Up - The power of affiliate programs and deal sites will help publicize your deals.

The possibilities are endless, but its time to capitalize on the biggest shopping days of the year. Make sure that your web store is ready, and that it will maximize your return. If your e-commerce company isn't helping you leverage your investment, it's time to call me at Store Machine. Our solutions maximize your returns and minimize you efforts.

E-commerce 101, Lesson 1: An E-commerce website is designed to display products that are for sale and allow customers to easily checkout using their credit card or other payment method. It sounds pretty straight forward but the truth is that there is much more to it than that. We all enjoy shopping at a traditional bricks-and-mortar store that offers a great service and flexibility as well as accurate and easy to find product information. Shopping online is no different. 

Successful online stores are the ones that offer customers a great experience. The website's features and functionalities are really important and often that's something I see people overlook.  I have been working in online marketing and E-commerce since 1998 – over 12 years – and the most surprising thing to me is how most customers don't know what kind of e-commerce website they need, yet they know exactly how much they want to spend.

On my sales calls, I sit down with my clients and typically spend 3 hours (or more!) explaining all of the features and functionalities an e-commerce website can have. I call it an "E-Commerce 101 Meeting."  Aside from the basics of e-commerce, we go through a checklist that highlights key features of a successful e-commerce website. Some of the basic functions that most customers are looking for include:

1. Easy Search Engine Optimization
2. Cross-Selling of Products to Improve Sales
3. Flexible and Beautiful Content to Increase Conversions
4. Robust Merchant Analytics
5. Live Support – the ability to chat with potential clients
6. Social Networking Integration
7. Comprehensive Search System, and the Ability For Finding Correct Parts
8. Most importantly: Making all of the features work for the customer!
9. …And lots more!  

The problem is that the majority of e-commerce solutions, especially the free ones, are cookie cutter solutions without the experience, support and flexibility that a proper, professional e-commerce solution can provide . Sure, you can download free software and slap together a site, but thats like eating a TV dinner and calling it "Fine Dining." Or perhaps its like trying to build a house yourself when you don't know the first thing about construction.

When customers are serious about transitioning to online sales, and want a web store that delivers results, they don't just consider the cost an expense, they consider it an investment in a long-term solution for their needs.

The worst thing to see is the failure of an excellent web store, selling excellent products with excellent service because the managers didn’t take the time to understand search engine marketing.

Some of these things are very obvious and basic, but I think we would all be surprised to see how many sites aren’t following these principles:

Understand What Information Is Most Valuable for SEO
Think about what your customers might type into search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Do your buyers shop by manufacturer’s model number? ISBN or UPC code? Perhaps by year, make and model of automobile? By ensuring that the most searched information is prominent and visible to search engines, is the first step to success. Without content, there is no point to continue!

Use HTML Header (H1 and H2) Tags to Emphasize Important Information
Search engines like HTML code that is correctly implemented. The Header tags indicate the information that is important, and should always be used to emphasize the most important keywords. In e-commerce, this usually means the product or category name, and manufacturer names and model numbers.

Create Unique Content
Search engines are really smart! They know who wrote that product description first. Chances are that you copy-pasted that product name and description from the manufacturer or a competitor website. Now the search engine knows that you aren’t too serious about your products, because you aren’t spending the time to make your site interesting and different.

Create Lots of Relevant Content
The more helpful and relevant information you have on your site, the more opportunities you give searchers to find your web store. Every page is an opportunity to emphasize particular keywords and draw in links and visitors. The more pages that properly emphasize keywords, the more authoritative and trustworthy your site becomes. Many sites offer buyers guides, glossaries and other references for this reason.

Use Smart URLs
If your page URLs look like something out of a CIA codebook, then you are in trouble! Page keyword content is reinforced by the URL. If you wrote a book about E-Commerce Software and SEO, would you call it page=#$%#$RT&id=42?

Link To Your Own Pages
By linking to your own pages, using the proper href attributes and anchor text, you reinforce and add authority to the page content. The search engines will trust your site more if it’s easy to navigate.

Create and Submit Feeds
Many product feeds sites are free. Many people search them for products. Why aren’t your products there?

Study SEO Techniques and Developments
The only way to do things right is to do them yourself, but you have to know how.

These are the first (and simplest) things that every store owner should be doing, from the day the product catalog is visible to the web! While the majority of the blood and sweat of SEO comes from developing trusted links and a good reputation outside of one’s own site, these techniques place the e-commerce site in the best possible position. It like a blind date -  it might flop or become the best night ever, but before you find out, you still have to get dressed up!

Of course, at Store Machine  we do our best to make sure the SEO process is as flexible and time efficient as possible for our customers. We have pioneered advanced techniques to automate the generation of keyword rich content, we design all HTML for maximum content exposure to search engines and of course, we make the process as automated or as flexible as the store operator requires.