Trying to find the right shopping cart solution for your website?

On the surface, the task might seem like it will be fairly easy—after all, just about everyone on the web offers a shopping cart solution these days.  GoDaddy has a shopping cart system you can purchase; same goes for 1&1, Yahoo!, and so many other web service providers.  Factor in the concept that many of these kinds of shopping cart services and instant storefronts can be had for about $20 a month, and it can sometimes look like an obvious choice.

But nothing is really ever that easy is it?

Here’s a more typical scenario that fits with what so many customers have expressed to us over the years as they decide to pursue a better solution:

Step One: Find a discount “one size fits all” shopping cart service that can be added on to or integrated with an existing website for just $19.99 a month.

Step Two: Sign up for said service, wait several months before finding the time to learn how to use and setup the new shopping cart system.

Step Three: Begin to set everything up, only to find out that it’s not going to integrate with the website quite as expected (but that’s okay, with some modification and tweaking, it just might work after all).

Step Four: Tweak, adjust.  Tweak, adjust.  After several weeks’ worth of making changes to and playing with all of the options, it looks like the discount shopping cart system is all set to go.  It finally works with the site.  Well, mostly, anyway.

Step Five: Begin uploading products to the shopping cart software.  This could be simpler, but after a couple more weeks’ worth of effort, it’s just about done.  Oh, and the E-commerce system is only going to allow a portion of the pictures you’d like to use for each product.  But at this point, it will just have to do.

Step Six: Launching the system live on the website is finally scheduled to take place in just a few days.  But now, there’s a pesky security certificate issue that just won’t seem to resolve itself.  Tech support for the shopping cart service keeps referring to an online help article that is totally unrelated to the problem that’s being experienced.  Very dissatisfied and frustrated right now…

Step Seven: After what has now been about seven months, the shopping cart system is still not working correctly.  The launch of the new website has been drastically postponed.  Let’s just scrap the whole thing and start over fresh from the beginning.

Step Eight: Call Sleepless Media.  Problem solved.  Should have done this about 7 months ago!

As you can see, subscribing to a one size fits all shopping cart system usually ends up being way more trouble than it’s really worth.  It’s never as quick or easy as promised.

Those who do find initial good results with pre-packaged E-commerce software almost always eventually discover that it just doesn’t offer the flexibility and scalability that they demand.  And then, there’s the whole customer/technical support issue (or lack thereof, to be more specific).

Do yourself a favor and give us a call here at Sleepless Media before being forced to experience the scenario expressed here first hand.  We can help with a true professional custom solution that perfectly fits your needs and can grow effortlessly in the future too (and, you might actually be surprised to find out that utilizing our expert knowledge isn’t quite as expensive as you might have thought either).

Now this is as tough question.  Facebook vs. Twitter…which one is best to use as a social media promotional tool for your organization’s website (if you could only choose one)?

Let’s preface the rest of this post quickly now by saying that there are, of course, major differences in using social networking as a way to keep up to date with your family and friends and using social media as an online marketing tool to promote your business or website.  So, depending on how you’ll actually use social media, one option might be significantly better for you in general personal use, and the other might be best to use for more focused marketing.

But this still doesn’t exactly answer our question—if you had to choose either Facebook or Twitter, which would it be?

The Benefits Of Facebook

• Facebook has a huge user base. By far the most popular social media option around the entire world right now, the chances are pretty good that even grandma uses Facebook.

• This popular social networking platform attracts a huge spectrum of users. Again, these days it’s not at all uncommon for everyone from grade-schoolers all the way up to their great grandparents to have a Facebook account.

• Facebook has lots of media options. Beyond text-only blurbs, using Facebook makes it a breeze to share multimedia like photos and videos.

The Benefits Of Twitter

• Twitter’s user base seems to be more professionally-oriented. This is most likely due to the age group of its users—which happens to be mostly the post-college crowd.

• There are fewer privacy concerns. The Twitter crowd seems to clearly grasp that their “tweets” are intended to be public by default.  It’s a more open public platform because of this.

• Twitter seems to be a social environment that’s open to the little guy. In other words, when implemented with some creativity and ingenuity, even a micro-business owner can attract the same global attention from their tweets as major world-wide corporations can.

There Are A Few Drawbacks To Each Service As Well

With Facebook, there are ever-increasing privacy concerns that have been causing a little bit of a backlash among once-loyal users.  Also, some people find it kind of amateurish when businesses and organizations use Facebook (this is an unfair stereotype that probably derives from the fact that Facebook began as a way to stay in touch with friends).  And at the same time, people who use Facebook strictly as a tool to keep up with family and friends sometimes resent and turn away from any other derived use of the service—including marketing & promotional uses.

The drawbacks to Twitter are kind of similar in some ways, but totally different in others.  First things first, it’s important to realize that Twitter’s base of users isn’t anywhere near that of Facebook.  And those who do use Twitter regularly tend to be a little bit more technically or professionally inclined (which can also be a positive if this is your demographic target).  The other important thing to know about Twitter that could potentially cause issues is the fact that no one is exactly certain as to what direction the social networking service is going to grow—it could be drastically different in just a year or two from now.

So, if you’re going to focus your time and energy on just one social platform, which one will you choose and why?

Fact:  At first glance, design looks easier than it really is.

It’s true.  Think about the last time you saw a picture of something in a magazine—maybe it was a gourmet recipe or something similar.  You might have said, “Hey, that doesn’t look so hard…I can make that!”  And then you did, and well…it didn’t exactly turn out quite as great as you had planned.  Maybe it’s not just a science of following the steps…maybe there is an art to this after all.

Sound all too familiar?  Well, maybe you are a great cook and that’s your forte, so the recipe turned out even better than the magazine picture promised.  And of course, we know that there lots of incredible graphic designers and web designers out there…who naturally create truly awesome designs.  Everyone is good at something, but sometimes it’s best to really be honest with ourselves and admit we might not be the best person for the job if that is indeed the case.

Unfortunately, for those out there who are not designers, then one thing is certain—those good folks are definitely not web designers either.  Best to leave it up to the pros for expert quality results.

It’s no secret that web designers (and for that matter, designers of all kinds) tend to be a little bit finicky.  And when you think about it, it’s hard to blame them really.  After all, they spend countless hours each and every day looking at designs and figuring out what really looks great and works well at the same time.  Just another day in the life of a professional designer…

Advice:  When it comes to designing your website, trust your designer.

You’ve spent a good amount of time and due diligence making sure you are working with just the right web designer to best achieve your unique goals.  Now it’s time to step back and put some confidence in your well-vetted decision.  Trust your web designer’s advice by all means.

• Ethical, professional designers will never borrow, copy, or otherwise steal someone else’s work to use on a site design they’re working on (even if their client asks them to).
• Expert web designers know what works, especially for the niches they specialize in.
• They are well versed on the latest technologies and upcoming web design trends.
• Good web designers work with your goals to ensure your site’s design will achieve its intended results.
• Continuous scope changes or other diversions from an agreed upon path to design completion will inevitably lead to spiraling project expenses—however, pro designers always prefer to avoid this scenario even if they ultimately won’t charge as much.

Web designers want to create the site to perform and function correctly—each new site is their next potential masterpiece.  Their professional reputation is at stake here and the last thing an expert web designer wants to do is violate the principles of good design.

Bottom Line:  Once you’ve selected a designer you trust, it’s best to just sit back and let them work their creative magic!

Do you need a mobile version of your website…or is it overkill?  Good question, and hopefully we can help you with the decision making process a little bit.  But first, a few quick facts:

• The iPhone retains a significant portion of the overall mobile device market share—and it doesn’t display any of the Flash-based components that traditional web browsers display.

• According to AdMob, one of the leading mobile advertising networks, nearly 40 million unique Android and iPhone mobile devices were in use worldwide during the month of April 2010.  And this is just 2 of the major mobile players—it doesn’t even include Blackberry or other popular devices.

• In Q1 2010, shipments of smart phones numbered 54.7 million units; this is a 56% increase over the previous year (see ZDNet article here).

The bottom line is this—more and more people are relying on their mobile devices to access your website.  While there is expansion and growth of the overall web market (in addition to traditional standard web browser use), there is also a trending shift away from traditional computer-based web browsers to mobile devices.

What Does This Mean For My Site?

Well, if you’re utilizing a Flash-based design, chances are, you’re already experiencing some trouble if you don’t have a mobile version of your site.  Your mobile visitors are simply not seeing all of your site (if any at all).  This is something to remedy one way or another as promptly as possible.

If your site is graphically heavy, or utilizes robust multimedia or programming functionality, its performance on mobile devices will be significantly impacted in a negative way.  Remember, not all mobile device users are on the latest high-speed data networks; also, mobile device processing power isn’t exactly as robust as your home or office PC.

Simpler, clean sites without all of the extra gimmicks should do well on most mobile devices without any additional modifications.  It is always important to test and verify this though.  Lightweight, standards-compliant sites will naturally do better on mobile device browsers than other, more resource-heavy websites.

What Does It Take To Go Mobile?

Creating a mobile version of your site is not always as difficult as it sounds.  With a modern, quality CSS-coded site, usually displaying the content in a mobile version of the site can be accomplished by simply creating an alternate stripped-down version of the CSS style—and then using automated code to direct mobile users to this version.  Some CMS sites have ready-to-plug-in mobile templates available to take even more of the hassle out of the process.  Of course, in other more complex cases, it can be quite a bit more challenging to accomplish.

Some site owners are choosing to just give the major areas of their sites a mobile-friendly makeover.  In the end, it’s really up to you to decide.  If at all possible though, it’s probably wise to just bite the bullet and go for it.  Your mobile visitors will definitely appreciate the fact that your site has considered their unique situation and tried to make life better for them!