When it comes to developing a web site, it is helpful to at least have a basic understanding of HTML.  HTML helps to turn a simple, boring template into something much more appealing to the site visitor’s eyes.  By simply utilizing your word processor, you can spice up your web pages in no time.

HTML basically sits in the background of a web page, telling it what to do and when to do it.  HTML tags are encompassed by angle brackets.  For example “<p>” indicates a new paragraph, while “<b>” will ensure the text you are using is in bold letters.

Whenever you are using HTML, you must make sure that each set of directions you are writing both begins and ends with the tag you are using.  If you want a certain line to be in bold lettering, you would place the “<b>” before the sentence, as well as "</b>" after.  The HTML command you are giving will not be executed if you do not open and close the particular area with the tag.

When it comes to offering up products and services for sale online, you emphatically need shopping cart software.  Without it, all of your sales just become a jumbled mess that then requires somebody to unravel and clean up.  If you are new to selling online, you may not be aware of the benefits that shopping cart software provides.  Top Ten Review offers up a few of the capabilities that good shopping cart software can provide for your online business:

·         Payment processing

·         Webpage design

·         Storefront design

·         Inventory control

·         Shipping

·         Tax calculation

·         Customer management

·         Marketing

·         Security

The first step to marketing yourself on the internet is deciding what it is you want to offer to people.  This could be a variety of things: Are you a business minded person who wants to sell products online? Are you a writer who believes you have something to offer with your ability to create with your words?  Although some people may disagree, all people have talents.  Finding your talent or talents is the first step to succeeding online.

Once you have decided upon your niche, you must market yourself in a way that makes others want to utilize your products or services.  Many people despise talking themselves up, but this is the time you must do this.  Why are you the person for the job?  What makes your products and services different and better than the multitude of others out there?  For almost any idea, there are many others with the same or similar one, so you have to find methods of delivering your services in unique ways.  This allows your business to stand out amongst the many others.

Unless you live under a rock, you have likely heard about Search Engine Optimization or, as it is also known, SEO.  But, what is it?  According to Webopedia, it is “the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine.”  Although SEO marketing can become extremely in depth, in its most simplest explanation it deals with strategically placing keywords within your website so that when an individual types in a keyword, ideally your site is in one of top rankings of the search engine they are searching from.

Any entrepreneur knows that marketing is an important aspect of getting your business known.  Whether you’re a local business owner or you sell your products and services strictly online is irrelevant to this fact.  You simply must exert some amount of time, energy, and financial resources to the marketing portion of your business.  Here are a few ways that you can market your business and get visitors flowing to your site so that you can further entice them for potential sales.

Marketing Newsletters

You see options for newsletters on many web sites that you land on.  If the web site is interesting enough, one might automatically wish to subscribe to the business’s newsletter.  However, many site visitors require a bit more coaxing in order to create this desire.  So, why not offer something with the newsletter?  One possible option is to offer a free book, like a free e-book or something similar, if the individual opts to sign up for your newsletter.  Once they are signed up, you want your newsletter to provide informative, interesting information or subscribers are apt to unsubscribe as quickly as they subscribed.  Content of the newsletter varies depending on what you wish to include, but it can contain such things as company updates, product updates, and informative articles pertaining to your company or services.  It is important that you give the subscribers the option to opt in and out and that you do not, under any circumstances, add people to your mailing list without their consent.  This is a fast way to earn your company the negative reputation you surely do not want.

List Building

These days it seems like more and more businesses online are incorporating weblogs into their web site.  Blogging accomplishes a variety of things when it comes to your business.  It can be a method of communicating directly with your current or potential customers.  It can also be a way to provide information to site visitors about your products and services that you are attempting to sell. 

Imagine this: a member of your company or someone that you hire posts various topics to your business’s blog.  That writer adds a tag or two with keywords specific to the blog post’s topic.  An aimless internet browser happens to type in those same keywords that you tagged and your business web site appears on the search engine.  That individual clicks on the link, ends up on your blog, and learns a bit about some of the products your company offers.  This scenario may end with a sale right then and there, or it could at least mean further perusing of the web site and consideration of a future sale.

It is crucial that good content is provided within the blog.  If you do not have someone within the company who can expend the energy to contribute good, worthwhile substance into the weblog, a freelance writer may be the answer.  It is not necessary to always showcase your products within the weblog.  In fact, if you do go this route, readers may get a bit bored.  As long as you are writing about interesting topics pertaining in some way to your business, you can potentially gain quite the readership.  For example, say you own a business that sells flowers.  You would not want to always display information on the types you are selling.  Instead, you could create a blog posting that gives tips on growing flowers in a garden, with a link to your main web site’s flower selection.

In addition to providing good content, you will need to provide consistent posting.  Blogging once a month will not keep readers coming back for more.  At a minimum, someone should be posting to the weblog at least once a week.  Preferably, if you have the resources available to do so, a daily or several times a week contribution to the blog is best.

Syndicating your blog is a helpful way to keep interested readers coming back to your site.  If you are an avid internet user, you know how easy it is to overflow your Favorites folder or to get distracted going from one site to another via clicking on various links.  By allowing customers and potential customers to subscribe to your blog’s feed, you eliminate this.  Now updates to your blog are updated in real time right to a feed reader or to that individual’s email inbox.

Zen Cart is an open source online store management system.  This system is aesthetically useful for anyone who sells products online and is need of a professional web site that utilizes a shopping cart feature.  Zen Cart provides countless features within its system, allowing the administrator to sell their products, whether their store is strictly an online store, or whether they are simply branching out and exposing their products to an online community.

This free system, developed by other shop owners, programmers, designers and consultants, “puts the merchants and shoppers requirements first.”  It is so easy to use that you do not need to have extensive computer knowledge in order to get the most out of this store management system.  Taken from the main Zen Cart website, here is a list of some of the system’s major features, broken up by categories.

Easy Installation

·         checks the database and server for requirements before installing

·         installs using a built-in installation tool

·         prepopulates the basic store information

·         optional demo products

Customer Status Modes

·         unrestricted shopping

·         must register to view prices

·         must register to view prices and merchandise

·         showroom only

Categories and Products

·         unlimited category depth

·         physical merchandise

·         downloadable virtual products

·         products can reside in multiple categories

·         product options as dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes, and text input

Powerful Administrative Tool

·         configure your minimum and maximum values, image sizes and customer details

·         choose which layout settings to use for the spotlight listings

·         pick which details to show on your product details page

·         edit your policies pages with HTML (if desired)

In the last post we began looking at Joomla and, more specifically, the handy “Beginner’s Guide to Joomla” that the makers of this content management system provides at their web site.  Hopefully by this time you have taken the time to sit down and really ask yourself what you want out of your own web site, as this is always the first step.  Without this foundation, your web site may become a scattered assortment of pages that have no rhyme or reason.

Per the “Beginners Guide to Joomla” recommendations, an extremely helpful thing to do after you have figured out what you want out of your web site is to check out the Joomla v1.5 Quick Start Guide.  Much time was spent in creating this helpful 49 page guide, and it is full of guidance, screenshots, and everything you need to get started.  Once you install the program, the guide then teaches you how to configure extensions and work with components, modules, and plugins.  The guide is an asset to beginning your web site, especially if you have never used Joomla’s system before.

For each component that you wish to configure, there will be both an administrator side of it and a site element.  As the Joomla site states, “Components are the major portion of your page because a component is driven by a menu item and every menu item runs a component.”  Next, you have your modules.  The login component of your web site is a module, as well as the footer.  Modules can be integrated into the components of your site, or they can stand alone.  Plugins handle the events on your site.  “When an event is triggered, plugins that are registered with the application to handle that event execute.”

Site administration is a crucial component to understand, as you will need it when you find it necessary to backup and restore your database.  You just never know when these instances will arise, so it is best to know how to handle them prior to even getting your web site going.

One tip that Joomla cautions against is adding anything and everything to your site at the onset of starting out just because it “looks cool.”  Here is what Joomla specifically says about this:  “It's best to maximize the use of the core code before you add extensions to your site. With each extension that you install, you complicate your site administration requirements and slow your site down. Upgrades are also more complicated. Extensions are great but make certain you really need them, first.” 

This is an important tip because you really do not want to complicate your web site from the beginning.  This undue frustration can be eliminated simply by taking some precautions and determining what it is you really need.  The extensions are there for you to utilize.  However, just like every web site is different, what you will actually need for yours will be different, too.  Keep this in mind as you move ahead.

These tips, and many others, can be found at Joomla’s web site.  Countless guides are available so you do not have to go through setting up your web site blindly.  Simply taking some extra time to learn a bit about this content management program will save you time in the end.