Just a quick note to all you FedEx customers.

A note from FedEx:

FedEx understands the importance of real-time transactions and we regret any inconvenience this outage may cause. We will be updating our systems on Saturday, October 4, 2008 from 9PM to Sunday 3AM CDT

Please note: Ground shipping and Ground rating services will be impacted.

If you have any questions or need technical assistance, please contact the FedEx Help Desk @ 1-877-339-2774 or send an email to websupport@fedex.com

Thank you for using FedEx Web Services, FedEx Ship Manager API or FedEx Ship Manager Direct.

--- We hope this helps!

Google base is a great tool for increasing traffic to your ecommerce site.

What is Google Base? It is a simple product feed that accepts an export of your products to be uploaded into Googles system.

Have you ever been to Google and searched for something and see a little set of 2-3 products listed with their prices? This would be just under the top Google Ads. These are results from various retailers who have uploaded their products to Google Base that match as closely as possible (per Google). They don't always come up, but mostly they do and they make things easier for the shopper looking for specific items.

There is also a Google Base shopping area, that your products can be listed in. This area allows customers to drill down into specific product listings and it is pretty extensive with many different attributes. You will need to read up on the various attributes that you can add to your products that show things like available colors, or sizes or isbn numbers. There are a ton of attributes and the more work you put into Google base when creating your products the more likely potential customers will find you.

Best of all -- IT'S FREE (for now). Google may end up charging for this solution, but as of this writing Google Base product submissions are free.

In my previous post, I mentioned Google Checkout. And Kurt from www.seedandgarden.com commented on why would you add Google Checkout if your customer is leaving your site? I too would question that and honestly, I really wish that Google would have handled this differently, but they don't.

So here is why "I think" utilizing Google Checkout and Google Base together adds a one - two punch. If you have your google base feed uploaded and your site offers Google Checkout, your listings in Google Base will have a Google Checkout button next to your listing, this helps highlight your listing even more than your competitors who DON'T have Google Checkout (your Google Checkout icon, is also shown in the Google Base shopping area, and customers can choose to only see results with Google Checkout, ikes you may miss out if you don't have Google Checkout). It also allows more of your products to show up after someone clicks the link below the 3 results to see more results "from companies who use Google Checkout", note this is not just other results, but ONLY results of people who are using Google Checkout. These are all free additional advertising avenues. The only drawback is that when they start there checkout process they are actually pushed over to Google Checkout instead of your normal SiteDirector checkout.

I guess my thought on it is this, it is pretty inexpensive on a per transaction charge to use Google Checkout, it's just another way to get additional revenue and really, do you care where the money comes from, just as long as money is coming?

All in all it is a pretty sweet solution.

So you might ask, how do I get my products into Google Base. Inside of your SiteDirector console follow these instructions.

• Click on Import / Export
• Click on Google Base Export
• This will generate a simple file that you can download locally
• RIGHT mouse click to save the file locally on your hard drive
• Go to Google Base, select Data Feeds
• Follow the directions from there
• Within 24-48 hours, your products will start showing up

Simple as that. Every bit helps especially when the internet has become a very competitive place to shop.

I hope this helps!

This is just a quick fix that a number of folks have emailed us about and it is one line of code to add to your stylesheet that will correct this display problem.

During the checkout process when you are on the customer input (billing and shipping) within the checkout process. In FireFox 3.x the bottom form fields are skewed on the page.

In your /scripts/default.css stylesheet, locate the .form dt {} style and add the line (line-height: 17px;) It will fix your problem.

So by default, your code should look like:

That should fix you up and everything should look good!

A business partner of QuillDesign, Clark Valberg over at Epicenter Consulting has created a tool called the Developer Circuit.

This is basically a job board for people looking for Coldfusion, Flex and Air programmers. It's a great little site that is easy to use. Especially if you are looking for a Coldfusion programmer.

One of the nice things about the site is that it allows you to download a widget to put on your site to display the latest jobs available (See widget below). What makes it really cool is that you can put the widget on your site and earn a commission. If someone posts a job from your widget on your site, you can put a cool $50.00 bucks in your pocket or if your are an iTune fan you can just get a $50.00 iTune gift certificate. Pretty nifty!

Checkout the widget below

After a delay, we have released our online demo for SiteDirector v4.6 a complete CSS / XHTML solution.

Please take a look at our online demo at http://demo.quilldesign.com. You will be able to see a full store with all kinds of different solutions and everything is CSS / XHTML.

If you purchase SiteDirector, you have the ability to download both the tabled version or the CSS/XHTML Tableless shopping cart.

We recommend the CSS version, not because it took us a long time to get it to production, but because it is much more easily customizable and search engines eat up the code, it's much easier for the spiders to read.

Also there are a few new features:

• Previously Viewed Products - SiteDirector now stores the last 5 products the customer has viewed. This is great to allow your customers to get back to the products they were looking at.
• Send Page To Friend - Nothing new in the ecommerce world, but somewhere along the line, this fell off of the feature list of SiteDirector.
• Contact Form - SiteDirector now comes with a simple contact us form that you can use.

So, drop into the demo and let us know what you think, we would appreciate your comments.

Sometimes in the design world, we get caught up in making everything on the website cool. Making things stand out, POP off the page. What happens if you are not careful is if you put alot of POP on your website, then nothing POPs at all.

Sometimes we make our ecommerce sites (the look and feel) the most beautiful thing about the page. Headers that rock and left navigation that's smooth and flashy. My thought is that if you get too much flash (not Adobe flash) but loud popping site designs, your actual content is washed out.

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Site Search is the Holy Grail for Ecommerce websites. You could have great products, great pricing, but if your customers can't find what they are looking for, then it's like having a website that no one visits.

If you are using a site search that doesn't allow for fuzzy words or mispellings, then you need consider upgrading. Another wonderful feature is some of the more popular site search engines is "related words". If someone types in a word, you can redirect that word to another more relevant word. Example; the correct word is a "fishing rod" NOT "fishing pole" No products are labeled "pole" so if someone searches for "fishing pole" you can re-direct that search to "fishing rod". This is very powerful and very useful. This allows your customers to search on what THEY know and not what YOU know, making the whole shopping process smoother.

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In my last blog entry It's All About Selling Your Product we discussed how it is so important to give your customers as much information about a product as you can. Trying to capture them and sell them when they view your product.

This entry is about your images and their importance as related to selling your product. This is a very common sense entry, but one that needs to be mentioned as it is sometimes overlooked because store owners are in a hurry to get their products online.

We talked about putting as much information as possible on the product page and that you usually have one shot to sell your customer. Along with all the other pieces of the product page, the image is one of the most important aspects of the product sell.

You have to have the highest possible quality image to display your product, anything less is almost a waste of time. If you were in a store and were looking at shirts, you wouldn't want to see shirts that are wrinkled, dirty, dusty or whatever would you? Take the extra time to get the perfect shot of the image or take the extra time to scan in a high quality image. Display your product with pride and not cut corners, you only have to do it once for each product.

Additionally depending on he product, you may want to have multiple images per product to completely display and sell the product. If a product has multiple parts or multiple views make sense, take the time and put the additional images on the page. This helps sell the product, shows that you care about the product, shows that you know about the product and this will in turn provide you with more opportunities to have the customer use YOUR site for their research on the product and raise your odds of selling that product to the customer.

To summerize, spend time using high quality images for your products. If your product would benefit from multiple images to display it well, then spend the extra time putting those images with your product.

Quality images = Quality website!!

Search Engine Optimization is king, everyone wants to be at the top, everyone strives to optimize their website so it can be eaten up by search engines. This is a great thing, it keeps people on their toes, its tough yet rewarding when it works.

But once all the dust settles and you have your site optimized as best it can be (at least for the day), you start to get the traffic from all your hard work, whats next?

We have so many clients who focus solely on SEO that they forget that customers who find their site need information to make informed purchases. We have found and I believe it is documented someplace (source I do not remember) that people who browse for product information are more likely to buy from the store who is the most informative about a product. Even if the price is higher, a customer will tend to purchase from one store over another because this store seems to be the most knowledgable about the product, this store is percieved to be the authority on the product and subject.

This is a very powerful point. You can get that traffic, then overwhelm the potential customer with content/information, not only is that content beneficial for search engine optimization, it is also very beneficial in closing the sale, which is why you have an online store anyway.

Lets say for example that you have a brick and morter business, one with a storefront that sells outdoor gear. How much time would you spend with a customer selling them one backpack or jacket. First you would show them the features, second they would try it on, third you would tell them how it looks, or how it fits and so on. You could easily spend 30 minutes to an hour working with the customer for just one sale.

Now take that "one" sale time and put it into that product. Spend some quality time writing as much as you can about the product, giving the details, how it works, what it's best at, give the customer a visual picture of them owning it, flood them with information. Dig out the specs of the product, what its made of, it's options, its purposes, features features features.

Next get some good images of the product, don't settle for one blurry product image, get as high a quality picture as possible, use multiple images, put video, audio on your site.

Let your customers review the product, let them praise the product for you. Add customer reviews on your site or testimonials.

So when that same customer comes to your website instead of your store you have only one shot to sell them on YOUR product even if they can buy YOUR product from multiple places. You have got to sell them now and not let them go anyplace else.

So lets recap our thoughts here. You have optimized your site for search engines, you are now getting traffic to your products. You've spent alot of time, engergy and cold hard cash getting everything the way you want it. Now it's time to have your product ready to sell and to do that you need the following:

• Information
• Detailed Description
• Pictures (multiple views)
• Specifications (materials, mechanics etc)
• Paint a mental picture of the customer owning the product
• Customer Reviews - Let your customers help sell the product

Overload them with these items. Don't give the customer a reason to research the product anyplace else, give them everything they need at your store, you have to put that 1 hour sales pitch on the page and show them you are the authority of this product and stand behind the product.

I was at a conference this past week and in talking with other folks about how we have so much information, and there is so many products, processes and procedures we can offer our clients, we began to discuss keeping things simple.

For example, we software developers, web developers, SEO companies and the like offer so many products and services. Our teams have great knowledge that we sometimes spew out to our customers who don't have like knowledge we tend to overwhelm them, by giving too much information and solutions. What we then see is their brains shutting down and not hearing anything especially the important information, the critical bits of info that can help drive their company to success. When this happens, we have lost them for good and lost the sale or upsell of our product or service.

The solution to this problem? KISS keeping it simple. We all have whitepapers, and information to give our customers. What you need to do is dummy down that information, put it into a one page bullet pointed document that is easy to read, easy to understand the problem and the solution. Let the customer ask the question, "I want more information".

If the customer can understand that they have a problem and what the problem is and more importantly you have the solution, they will ask that question. But if they shut down before they understand the problem, you may not get the next question for more information and thus lose the sale and not provide the customer with the service he/she is looking for.

Take your solutions and break them down into a simple to read and manage document

• Title the problem
• Describe the problem
• Briefly describe that you can offer a solution
• Add in a high level bullet point list of the problem
• Set those bullet points to a different color for highlight
• Rap it up

By over simplifying the situation or problem service, your customers will quickly relate and have understanding, thus making your sale cycle shorten and easier to address. You want your customer to ask questions, and ask for more details. This is where you can then shine or get the right person to shine for you.