Launching an e-commerce store is easy and requires minimal setup. To sell an online product, you need content relevant to the target page and article subject to go along with an eye-catching image. A platform such as Shopify will provide you with the tools you need to showcase your products. Here are steps on how to set up an e-commerce store.
Decide your platform
Many different e-commerce platforms are available to choose from, depending on your business, tastes and budget. Wix is a free website builder with basic drag and drop tools and built-in e-commerce features that can accommodate a one-person business selling only a few products.
Some platforms are devoted to niches or special industries. Etsy, for example, is a platform for selling arts and crafts.
Shopify is among the most popular sites for setting up an online store because it provides a wide range of professional themes. It is also very affordable and integrates well with shipping carriers and drop shipping services. If you have a physical shop, you can connect with its point of sale system and add online sales to your revenue stream.
Although no design skills are needed to build your store, experts are available to help you set it up.
LemonStand is a newer platform that provides SEO and customized checkout capabilities. Other options include X-Cart cloud, Squarespace and BigCartel.
Some platforms offer free plans for a limited number of products. The more control over the look and feel of your store the platform gives you, the more opportunities you have to run marketing campaigns consistent with your branding.
Name your store
A key consideration before you make a final decision on the platform hosting your online store is a store name. Using the same domain name as your website or business makes remembering your store easy for customers.
That’s why you will have an advantage with a platform that allows you to have a custom domain name and a web presence to go with it.
Organize your products
If you choose a flexible platform that can be used for selling a wide selection of merchandise, such as Shopify, you will be able to manage all your products in one place. You will have simple tools to manage your entire inventory and know instantly which products bring in the most revenue.
The most user-friendly platforms make adding products simple, usually with a button that says “add a product” in the “manage my store” section.
Taking orders and building your business
Fulfilling orders can be done in one step when your platform provides you with selling tools that integrate with built-in e-commerce. You will not have to hire a software programmer to create a proprietary enterprise solution, which was more common a decade ago.
Choose the type of account that best fits your business, based on the volume you expect. You can always upgrade to a bigger account if you have more products to sell.
Instead of worrying about how the technology works, you’ll be able to focus on tracking sales and improving your business. The platform provides you with analytics for tracking sales of each product and plenty of additional data to analyze.
Not only does the platform handle your payments, it helps you market your products.
If your business sells its own products, you need a barcode for each product. Two alternatives to consider are reselling existing products or promoting products made available to you at low prices from wholesalers.
Conclusion
Selling products online no longer means building an online store from scratch. Use an affordable, existing platform such as Shopify that allows you to easily and quickly set up an online store.
Using a popular hosting platform turns your store into a 24/7 business from the start. All of the technical and sales work is handled for you. You can design a unique online store and start selling products within a day.
Through digitization, e-commerce has revolutionized customer attitudes towards shopping. You can simply click a few buttons from the comfort of your living room and negate the need to step into a store to shop for stuff you need and desire.
Apart from enabling you to accept deliveries of your selected merchandise at your doorstep, benefits like making online payments or exchanging stuff help the online shopping fraternity.
With this technological innovation garnering patronage from different sections of shoppers, here is the rundown of 9 ways in which digitization will impact the future of online shopping.
1. A plethora of shopping options
“Unlimited choice” will be the buzzword attracting online shoppers to spend more through digital interfaces. In an attempt to encourage sales, online shopping interfaces will have stored information as part of the shopper’s digital fingerprint.
This will help marketers offer products that are desired by their patrons. Shoppers will also experience transparency and a sense of customer-friendliness which, in turn, will do away with the need to repeatedly authenticate their card number for every transaction.
2. Browsing history of online shoppers – a treasure for marketers
The browsing and shopping histories of online shoppers is akin to a wealth of knowledge for online marketers, who have their eyes focused on gaining such data.
This, when teamed with a detailed listing of basic customer data, their recent transactions and interactions with customer care professionals, will throw light on the purchase behavior of customers.
There are various futuristic ways to comprehensively analyze customer buying behavior. When this information is captured by specialized technology from brands like Lintech, marketers can enjoy higher payoffs through repeat purchases, while shoppers get exactly what they want.
3. Shopping through smartphones
According to a recent study, smartphones and tablets account for a quarter share more than shopping via desktops.
Demonstrating a propensity by the current online-driven generation to shop 54% through online, this is seen in contrast to 49% of the sales coming from store shoppers.
Smartphones embedded with state-of-the-art audio-visual features will slowly, yet steadily dwindle the figures connected to store-only purchases which dropped to 20% in 2016.
In view of these statistics, it goes without saying that marketers who incorporate rapidly advancing mobile-driven shopping facilities will stay in the competition, while others perish without a trace.
4. Dynamic pricing strategies
The dynamic price range of products is among the biggest attractions of online shopping. The marketer who has his eyes focused on the changing patterns of prices will stand to gain.
Driven by the endeavor to offer better user experiences to their clientele, online shopping platforms working in sync with the prevailing competition will resort to dynamic pricing strategies.
This will be a move towards optimizing sales driven by its demand along with a constant need to alter its price. Bigger e-commerce giants, such as Amazon, have already begun doing it extensively.
Smaller marketers too will soon follow suit.
5. You simply wish and the store grants it
Imagine an instance when a couple is scouting online for a washing machine for their new home. They put in the search words on Google Maps via their phone to identify a physical store that sells home appliances in their vicinity.
After identifying one, they decide to head there.
This retail store, which has a digitized transmitter installed at the entrance, sends an alert to the smartphone of the spouse who keyed in the search upon his/her entry.
This will simplify the effort to look for pieces that are tagged with discounts and offers. The couple will then have all the information about such washing machines along with their specifications on their phone.
This way, the couple reduces their time and effort to finalize a branded washing machine that suits their budget.
6. Mannequins – a futuristic solution to convert window shoppers to prime customers
We all have noticed the presence of mannequins in retail stores to display the clothes and accessories that are on sale. With a technology called iBeacon fitted into these lifeless figures, mannequins will be able to build a relationship with customers.
The in-built technology will establish a connection with smartphones and iPads of the customers within a 50-meter periphery, and will enlist all the pertinent information of online products along with their placement, supported with price lists.
This way, the modern world will wake up to the technological upgrade of a digitized figure pushing the sales of marketers.
By permitting the marketer to present his online merchandise to his prospective customers in a user-friendly manner, the numerous brands that the store sells can be brought into customers’ focus.
Another attraction can come in the form of rewards and offers that customers can avail.
7. Bringing in the advantage of new user experiences
With all the online platforms targeting the same customer base, it pays for every marketing interface to differentiate itself from the rest to sustain and thrive.
To make this happen, retail sites will start supporting online videos to be uploaded by customers as part of their reviews about a particular product. This is a prominent digitization trend that is all set to capture the attention of first-time customers to transform themselves into brand loyalists.
The concept of “same day delivery” is also being plugged into online portals, bestowing customers with a sense of immediate gratification.
8. Online shopping sans geographical barriers
The face of online shopping attracting mobile transactions will register a complete transformation. This will happen when geographical barriers are circumvented.
Seamless shopping experience for customers will be guaranteed when they are empowered to make a purchase through their mobile, PC or enter into a transaction with an overseas portal without any hassles.
9. Automated solutions to frauds and their prevention
The day is not far when digital interfaces will not only be tagged under the head of cheaper shopping alternatives, but also serve as gateways for safe transactions.
Supported by real-time decision-making, it is through the concepts of machine learning and rich data that online portals will finally bid goodbye to manual assessments of transactions.
Automation will be the key to not only detect, but also prevent the spread of online frauds, which is a notable benefit to both, the merchant and the shopper.
Conclusion
It goes without saying that the e-commerce industry has several players operating through multiple channels. Driven by the necessity to offer better shopping experiences to patrons through value-additions, digital tools will practically support the famous statement that “Customer is king.”
Better shopping experiences will be manifested in the form of customer personalization efforts, and the customer will have the last word on payment modes and price changes.
Author bio
Ann Neal is a writer with a keen interest in career, business, tech and lifestyle topics. She is passionate about music and loves to play guitar in her free time with her cute pooch listening quietly ;). Tweet her: @Ann_G_Neal
The load time of a blog is a critical factor not only for retaining visitors, but also for performing well in search engines. There are many ways you can reduce the load time of a blog, and in this post I will look at an actual example of how I managed to reduce the load time of a blog by 90%!.
Before I go into the steps, I’ll provide a little background. I recently switched hosts, and while the new host is cheaper, I noticed a decrease in performance. On top of that, I am on the shared hosting plan, so I don’t have the performance luxury of a VPS.
Since I have chosen to have my blogs on a cheap plan, there aren’t as many options available to me as there are for the more expensive plans, such as memory caching and more dedicated hardware.
While there are limitations, there are also options that I can use to help with the load time of my blogs. The good news is that the options to increase the performance of my blogs don’t cost anything, and can actually be done in minutes, and not hours or days.
In the next several sections I will show you the performance of my blog before optimizing it, and then after it is optimized. There are a few things to note:
The blog I am optimizing is a simple gaming blog called Skyrim Travels.
It currently uses the free service from CloudFlare to help with content caching.
The blog uses a child theme based on the Thematic theme.
For WordPress caching, it uses the Hyper Cache plugin.
All tests for load time will be performed using Pingdom Tools
With the above points in mind, let’s first take a look at the starting point for reducing the load time of the blog.
Reduce the load time of a blog – before
To begin, I head over to Pingdom Tools and analyzed the load time of my Skyrim Travels blog. You can use any online tools for measuring your blog, but I find Pingdom Tools to be easy to use and easy to understand.
After running the test I got the below result.
Pingdom Test Before Optimization
The load time of the blog was at 2.55 seconds, which wasn’t too bad, but it still was higher than I would have liked it to be. Actually, I was surprised and thought it would be higher.
The performance grade indicated 61 out of 100, which I don’t like. You can see some of the issues in the lower part of the image, with the colour red meaning something could be improved. There were several issues with the performance, and the good news was that many of the issues in red could be fixed easily and with minimal effort on my part.
The one thing I do want you to be aware of when performing tests on your blog is the number of requests that are made to display a page of your blog. The more requests a visitor needs to make, the longer it will take to display the content. Try to reduce the number of requests needed for your blog as much as possible. In the case of my blog, I could reduce the number of requests automatically as I fixed the issues.
Pingdom Test Before – Content Breakdown
Speaking of requests, the image above helped show me the content for the various requests that are made to my blog. The two tables on the right showed the content type of each request and the domains receiving the requests. From the table I could see that 19 requests were made for scripts and another 19 were made for images. The Skyrim Travels blog does have a lot of images to display, so I won’t worry about those requests, but I could do something about the number of script requests.
Apparently a lot of CSS files (15 requests), are also downloaded from the blog by a visitor. I should be able to also reduce this number, as well.
On the left side we can see the content size by both type and domain. While I won’t worry too much about the size, I should be able to reduce the number slightly. The largest size for content are the images, which I should be able to compress further, but at this time, I do have other options. The scripts and CSS files I should reduce slightly as I perform the optimizations.
Reducing the load time
Now that I know some of the issues that I needed to fix, let’s look at each issue and the solution that I implemented to fix the issue.
Note:
When I did the optimizations for my blog I disabled the Hyper Cache plugin as well as set CloudFlare to Development Mode. This allowed me to see the effects of the changes I was making to my blog. When All optimizations were done, I re-enabled the Hyper Cache plugin and turned off Development Mode in CloudFlare.
Combine external JavaScript and CSS
For my WordPress blog, fixing this issue was fairly easy as it just required me to install and configure one plugin – Better WordPress Minify. I have used other minify plugins in the past, but I find this one has worked the best for me.
I simply downloaded and installed the plugin and BWP Minify appeared on the left from my WordPress dashboard. From there I clicked the BWP Minify option to view the General Options page.
Since I wanted to minify both the JavaScript and CSS files I clicked the Manage enqueued Files tab at the top. When the page to manage the files was first displayed I was shown the following message:
No enqueued files detected.
Please try visiting a few pages on your site and then refresh this page.
You should clear this list once in a while to get rid of files that are no longer being used as this is not done automatically.
I then visited my blog – it doesn’t get much traffic so it would take a while for the enqueued files to populate the lists. Once I viewed a few pages, the two lists were automatically populated.
I accepted the defaults, and clicked the Save Changes button at the bottom. Once the changes were saved, I opened the blog to ensure it was still displaying correctly. Minifying resources such as JavaScript or CSS can affect the look at feel of your blog so it is always best to view multiple pages on your blog, and to try out various aspects, such as commenting, to ensure everything is still working.
Note:
Since I disabled both my caching plugin and CloudFlare, I could see the effect of minifying my JavaScript and CSS files immediately. Had I kept either enabled, then I would have seen the cached version, and not the results of the minified files. Ensure that you disable any caching before viewing your blog after minifying the files.
Once I confirmed my blog was still displaying correctly, I looked at resolving the next issue.
Leverage browser caching
Resolving this item involved editing the .htaccess file on my server. All root folders for your WordPress blogs should have a .htaccess file created. All I needed to do in this case was open the file in a text editor and add the following lines:
The above lines set the cache expiration time as well as the cache control settings. I won’t go into detail about what all the lines do, as they are well documented online. For your blog, you may want to adjust the times and cache settings as you may wish to use different values.
That was all that was needed to enable caching for the files. The next step was to remove the query strings from files to properly enable the caching.
Remove query strings from static resources
This is the last issue that I had to fix. By default, WordPress tends to add the WordPress version to the static resources by appending “?ver=” to each of the files. This has a negative affect on caching, and also one way for miscreants to determine which version of WordPress you are running, and then take advantage of any vulnerabilities in that version of WordPress.
You don’t need to have the version number appended to any of the static resources, so it is best if you just remove it.
Removing the version query string was really easy; I just had to add the following function to my functions.php file in my theme:
Once the function was added to my theme, I reloaded my blog and viewed the source. All static resources no longer had the version query string appended to the end.
One additional change in CloudFlare
I had corrected the issues that were reported by Pingdom Tools, but there was one additional change that I needed to make on CloudFlare to ensure that my blog not only loaded as fast as possible, but also allowed me, once I re-enabled CloudFlare, to preview any new posts without having caching issues.
Since my blog was already in CloudFlare, I didn’t have to go through the setup. So I logged into CloudFlare and selected my blog and then clicked Page Rules at the top. By default, CloudFlare allows me to add three page rules with the free CloudFlare account.
The three page rules that I added were as follows (you will obviously change the URL to match your blog):
URL: *skyrimtravels.com/wp-admin*
Disable Security
Cache Level: Bypass
Disable Performance
URL: *skyrimtravels.com/*preview=true*
Cache Level: Bypass
Disable Performance
URL: *skyrimtravels.com/*
Browser Cache TTL: 30 minutes
Always On: On
Cache Level: Cache Everything
Edge Cache TTL: a month
What the above three rules do is disable any caching when I access the WordPress dashboard (anything in wp-admin), or preview a post (preview=true in the URL). Everything else, like viewing my blog, I use the cache settings outlined in the rule. The cache settings will cause everything to be cached on the CloudFlare servers for one month. Anything that doesn’t have a browser expiry cache, will default to 30 minutes.
So after the browser cache expires in 30 minutes, and a new request is made for the same resource, the resource will be returned by the CloudFlare server instead of blog’s web server. The reason is because there are many CloudFlare servers around the world so regardless of where the visitor is located, it will be faster to download the files for my blog from a closer CloudFlare server than from my host’s server.
To avoid any issues with accessing the login page since it would use the third rule, I also installed the Rename wp-login.php so I could rename it to something like https://skyrimtravels.com/wp-admin-mylogin. It doesn’t matter what you name it as long as it begins with wp-admin so it would use the first rule, and not the third one.
Once all the above changes were made, I returned to Pingdom Tools to rerun the tests.
Reduce the load time of a blog – after
After making the changes I outlined above to my blog I was interested to see what improvements would result from the changes. Needless to say that I was surprised with how much of an improvement was seen once I ran the tests. One thing I should not, however, is that because I had to prime both the WordPress and CloudFlare caches, I had to run the test twice to see the improvements.
The image below shows the results of the test after the changes to the blog.
Pingdom Test After Optimization
The most notable improvement is in the response time, which is about 90% lower than the initial tests I ran. I ran the test multiple times and all tests reported around the same response time.
The second improvement is in the number of requests – decreased from 56 to 33 (41% decrease). This is a result of minifying both the JavaScript and CSS files into one or two files. The results of the minify also impacted the size of the files being download, which you can see in the page size. The initial test showed a page size of 348.6 KB, while the latest test shows a size of 278.3 KB, which is a 20% reduction in size.
The combination of reduced requests and page size have a drastic effect on the response time of the blog, as it would on any site.
Let’s have a look at the content that is being downloaded from the blog.
Pingdom Test Before – Content Breakdown
The content information is largely affected by the minifying process for both the JavaScript and CSS files. When the two file types are minified, both the number of files that need to be requested, and the file sizes are reduced. The file size is reduced because the spaces, carriage returns, and comments are removed from the files.
As you can see above, the number of JavaScript and CSS files has been reduced. Both used to be two of the three most requested file types on the blog, with combined requests of 34. Now, after minifying the files, the total requests is 22 – a 65% reduction.
The largest reduction is with the JavaScript files. The initial test had 19 files being downloaded, and the now the requests number 4 (79% reduction). While not have as much of a reduction, the number of CSS files decreased from 15 to 8, which is still a nice 47% decrease in the number of files being downloaded.
As for the file sizes, that has also decrease, as well. The total size of the JavaScript files decreased from 116.64 KB to 51.8 KB, which results in a decrease of 56%. The CSS files didn’t have the same amount in decrease, but it was still a nice change – from 19.96 KB to 14.94 KB (25% reduction).
As I mentioned above, the decrease in both the JavaScript and CSS files are a result of minifying both file types.
With just a few changes made to my blog I have managed to significantly improve the response time for the visitors. There are many ways to optimize a WordPress blog, such as reducing the number of plugins, choosing themes that don’t load a lot of resources, but the changes I applied here can work for any blog, and Website.
When I reinstalled Windows 10 on my desktop I noticed the issue of folders loading slowly in Windows Explorer when I tried to view their contents. The issue was very noticeable as it took several seconds to the display the files within a folder, and accessing multiple folders became frustrating.
I hadn’t experienced this issue in the past, at least not when I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, so I didn’t know what the solution to the problem was.
After some quick research I managed to find a solution, which I outline below.
Quick Access – not so quick
While I thought about the usual culprits to Windows being slow, such as the Windows Search, I had that service enabled in Windows 7 and Windows 10 previously without any issue. I figured that it had to be something else.
It turned out I was right.
The culprit was the Quick Access options under the General tab in the Folder Options. Once I cleared those options, Windows Explorer was loading folders quickly again.
To change the Quick Access options, use the following steps:
Open Windows Explorer by typing Windows Key+E.
At the top of Windows Explorer, click the View tab, and then click the Options button. The Folder Options dialog should now be displayed.
On the General tab, uncheck the following two checkboxes under Privacy:
Show recently used files in Quick Access
Show frequently used folders in Quick Access
The Quick Access options in the Folder Options in Windows Explorer.
After unchecking the checkboxes, click the OK button to save your changes.
What the above options does is show the recently used files and folders in the Quick Access list at the top of the folders list in Windows Explorer. I usually like to customize the list to what I actually need to access on a frequent basis, so turning of this option was beneficial to me. I was actually getting annoyed ad folders and files appearing in the list.
After stopping Windows 10 from showing recently used files and folders in the Quick Access list, the problem of folder loading slowly in Windows Explorer was no longer an issue for me.
Starting a new project can be daunting for anybody, especially when it affects your livelihood. Sadly, a lot of aspiring online merchants give up on their dream of owning and operating their own e-commerce site due to fear of failure.
To a certain extent, this is understandable. A successful e-commerce vendor is equal parts entrepreneur, marketing expert and customer service representative; and that’s a lot for a newbie to handle.
But thankful, there are ways to conquer this anxiety and get your e-store up and running, without a lot of stress and heartache.
Here are 5 things holding you back from success in the e-commerce world.
Fear of Failure
Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
You will, without a doubt, encounter some obstacles to creating your first e-commerce store. It’s all right. You won’t be the first one. Not to mention that the web is full of articles (just like this one!) to help you combat almost any hiccup.
So don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. It’s the only way you’ll learn.
Brand Identity Crisis
By now, you probably have an idea of the types of products you want to sell, whether it be apparel, cosmetics, hand-crafted home décor or collectible novelties.
But the truth of the matter is that someone out there is probably selling the same goods. How do you make your brand stand out from the crowd?
It’s important to remember that successful vendors sell more than just products, they sell a brand identity that connects with shoppers.
Are you selling make-up or “cosmetics for the timeless beauty?”
Are you selling sports memorabilia or “man-cave essentials?”
Research your target audience and develop a brand personality that speaks to them.
Funds
If you are troubled by the idea of programming your own website or paying a developer to do it for you, I’ve got some good news: there are various platform providers that take the stress out of how to make an e-commerce website by offering the tools you need to launch your site quickly and easily, including payment processing, content management, product management and more.
Design Disasters
If you are nervous that an ugly website could distance shoppers, well, you’d be right. Research shows that 25 percent of shoppers leave a site without buying simple because a website is a pain to look at or use.
Ensure a smooth customer experience from start to finish. Develop a website that is easy on the eyes, free from clutter and keeps important functions (like the search bar, contact page and cart) front and center.
Similarly, you’ll want to remove any roadblocks or disruptions from your checkout process.
Marketing Know-How
Does the idea of doing your own marketing give you cold feet? Well, before you shell out big bucks to an agency, you might want to take advantage of the numerous low-budget, high-ROI opportunities out there, including social media, email marketing and blogging.
Social media, for example, is a wonderful way to consistently interact with customers and stay top of mind. You can also run contests, host surveys and encourage followers to share images or video of them using your products.
Email marketing is perfect for keeping consumers abreast of upcoming sales, product launches and limited-time offers. Not to mention that it has one of the highest ROIs around.
Finally, blogging is useful for building a following and boosting your SEO. Don’t know what to write about? Start with some how-to guides, seasonal fashion tips or little-known facts about sports memorabilia. Just so long as it relates to your products.
In the end, there are no obstacles so insurmountable to discourage you from at least exploring the world of e-commerce. Don’t be afraid to experiment. After all, it’s your store and your story.
After recently upgrading my Plex Windows 10 machine, I had an issue where I couldn’t prevent hard drives from going to sleep on that system. After the system restarted, a few hours later I would get an email from Stablebit Scanner indicating that one or more of my drives were no longer connected.
With the exception of the system drive, all other drives connected to the system were USB-connected external hard drives. I couldn’t connect to the drives, and the lights on the drive casing indicated that they were in sleep mode.
I hadn’t experienced anything like this since I setup the system over one year ago. After some investigation I found out that there are actually several settings, in two locations, in Windows 10 that I needed to change in order to prevent the hard drives from going to sleep.
I detail the steps below.
Changing the power plan
The first setting I had to change was the USB suspend setting in the Windows 10 power options. This does require an administrator to change, but you will be prompted to enter the administrator password if you are logged in as a standard user.
Click Start->Settings->System->Power & Sleep to display the options to change the power and sleep settings.
Click the Additional power settings link under Related power settings. The Power Options window will appear.
From this window, Click the Change plan settings link beside the power plan you wish to change.
From the power plan window, click the Change settings that are currently unavailable link, and enter the administrator password when prompted.
Click the Change advanced power settings link to display all the power options for the plan.
From the power plan window, click the Change settings that are currently unavailable link, and enter the administrator password when prompted.
Expand the USB settings and then the USB selective suspend setting option.
Change the Setting value to Disabled.
Disabling the suspend setting in the Power Options for Windows 10.
USB controller device settings
While I thought changing the USB suspend option would solve my problem, the USB-connected hard drives still were put to sleep by Windows 10. At this point, I decided that there must be another setting that caused this problem. After a bit more research online, I did find something that led me to the setting that solved the issue – disabling the ability for Windows 10 to turn off the device from the USB controller settings.
To make these changes, you can use the following steps:
Click Start and then type computer management. When Computer Management appears in the search results, right-click it and then select Run as administrator.
Enter the administrator password and click the Yes button to open the Computer Management window.
In that window, click Device Manager to display a list of all the devices installed on your system, organized in various categories.
From the list of categories on the right, click the Universal Serial Bus controllers category to display all the devices in that category.
Right-click each item in the list, and the select Properties from the context menu that appears. A properties dialog will appear.
If the properties windows contains a Power management tab, then click that tab. If it doesn’t, then close the window and repeat the previous step for the next device in the list.
In the Power management tab, uncheck the Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power option.
The USB Hub power management properties with turn off device option turned off.
Click the OK button to save the changes.
Repeat steps 5 to 8 for each device under the Universal Serial Bus controllers category.
With these two settings set to prevent hard drives from going to sleep in Window 10, you shouldn’t have an issue with any USB-connected hard drives from being disconnected.
More and more people are buying products online because of the convenience and cost benefits this gives them. If you are running an eCommerce website, you should consider complementing it with an effective eCommerce blog. This is because:
Search engines see blog pages as fresh content for your site, which is good for SEO since you will have internal links pointing to your site and your blog content will be keyword optimized.
A blog humanizes your website. You can express better what your team’s passion is and what you care about on a blog as opposed to an eCommerce website, where focus is on selling.
You will be able to advertise your wares to visitors who visit your blog just for the content (who had no intention of buying from you). You should, however, be subtle in how you market your wares.
A good blog will bring you out as an expert in your niche and build trust, factors that will improve conversion rates.
You can include social media badges that can be used by your visitors to share your content. This further increases your reach.
The comments your visitors leave will give you valuable feedback on what you need to improve.
Creating a blog does not have to be difficult. You need not post daily and you can even invite guest bloggers. If your blog is to make real impact, it needs to be better than what your competitors are offering.
You should know the common mistakes eCommerce business owners make with their blogs so that you can avoid them.
Only writing about your products
An eCommerce blog, unlike an eCommerce website, gives you freedom to express yourself. Avoid the common mistake of only talking about your products as this will bring monotony and readership will go down.
Other than your products (what you are selling, where it came from, how it is made, and features that differentiate it from what is in the market), you can also blog about such things as:
Your story (the history, vision, and growth of your business).
Events that you are participating in or that you are running.
Tutorials on how your product is used.
Advice on related products that you may not be offering.
Updates on your company.
Major developments in your industry.
Announcements such as when you have a sale.
Something interesting that is trending and that would interest your readers.
Lack of focus
There is no contradiction with the previous point. Although you should write more than just about your products, do not deviate too much from the topic.
Do not write about each and every topic that you think about as this will create disinterest in those who read your blog posts for specialized information.
You do not have to produce a blog postevery day as this could lead to burnout, preventing you from finding something relevant to write about.
Blogs that are hard to find
You may have a very good blog but you will not get visitors if it is hard to find. In eCommerce websites where blogs are an afterthought, you would have to Google the blog to find it.
You should ensure your blog is accessible from the main website and you should use it to link back to your site.
Poor blog design
Whilst many eCommerce websites are investing heavily in their main websites, little investment seems to be going to blogs. This leaves them with blogs whose design is inconsistent with that of the main page.
Readers will notice when a blog seems to have been put up in a hurry. The layout, font, and other design elements should be consistent with those of the main site and if possible, have the same web design company develop both your site and your blog.
Forgetting SEO
One of the greatest benefits of blogging is that it boosts your SEO efforts. Avoid the common mistake of forgetting SEO rules such as keyword optimization and link building.
You should only use White Hat SEO tactics since Grey Hat and Black Hat tactics could lead to the banning of your site.
Mediocre title
Some bloggers concentrate on the content and forget about the title. Your title is the gateway to the blog and you should ensure it is short, mobile-friendly and attention grabbing.
A boring title will devalue your article. However, this is not to say that you should turn your title into the equivalent of a Vegas billboard.
Neglecting the intro and the CTA
If you have a good title that entices a reader, whether or not the reader will continue with the rest of the article will depend on the intro.
Another common mistake is assuming that readers will visit your site if they find your content interesting. You need a CTA (call-to-action) to entice your readers to visit your site.
Not having a target audience
Face it, your blog will not be liked by everybody. You should write with a target audience in mind. What works for millennials will most likely not work for baby boomers.
Your target audience should be based on what you are selling.
Neglecting comments
Enable commenting on your blog. Comments give you valuable feedback that you can use in product development and to make improvements to your current products.
Answer questions raised in comments and do not delete negative comments as they humanize your brand.
Doing it all yourself
Join a blog community for content from guest bloggers. You should also consider getting content from your employees. This will give a fresh perspective to your blogs and eliminate boredom.
Other common mistakes that you should avoid are:
Ignoring social media (through social media buttons).
Not promoting the blog through such forums as mainstream media, article submissions, and press releases.
Grammatical mistakes resulting from failure to properly edit the content.
Failure to use visual effects to add to the attractiveness of the blog.
You would be surprised at just how many eCommerce businesses, including the most prominent names, make mistakes. Making these mistakes will make your efforts futile.
You will not only waste time and money, but you will also miss golden opportunities.
Modern employee communications take place online. Employees are more productive when they understand how they fit into a company and are helping to achieve those company goals.
Open communication provides feedback to management as well as faster troubleshooting when problems arise. This communication leads to employee retention and better customer service.
A company intranet system can provide this communication. Your intranet should engage people and reward them for participation.
Surveying employees can provide feedback on the type of information they want to receive and how they will interact with this information.
By including employees in the planning process, you help gain employee buy-in of the process and make staff feel like an integral part of the company.
Some uses of a company intranet may include daily bulletins, employee events, policy changes, company performance, and press mentions.
Allow people to respond online with questions and comments. Try surveying employees to gain a consensus, or provide an anonymous form for suggestions or complaints.
New contracts, expansions, and new hires are always newsworthy. New people in different positions can be introduced to the entire workforce through an employee intranet.
Special projects, programs, and discoveries help educate employees on company business. A new patent or a new piece of equipment can be the focus of a daily or weekly update.
Some additional types of news you may want to include are:
Updates across different divisions or locations.
Interdepartmental updates and goals.
HR updates and employee benefit news.
Awards and honors such as outstanding service, perfect attendance or community outreach.
Sports and recreational updates such as intramural events or the locally sponsored Little League team.
Weekly highlights or records.
Special events like charity drives, donation programs, or the Go Fund Me of an employee’s family in need.
The great thing about an intranet is that you can also customize your site based on specific group needs.
The finance department may sound dull to the person involved in engineering, even though finance processes payroll and determines yearly bonus checks.
Marketing, contracts, and manufacturing all have specialized news needs that can be met by creating a group within a group online.
Use these smaller groups for daily departmental updates that won’t clog up the newsfeed of the larger organization.
Emergency procedures, OSHA, MSDS
Every business must have emergency procedures for fires, floods, and other mishaps. Emergency procedures vary based on the individual business, and the intranet provides a local backup for safety procedures specific to your location.
The intranet can update emergency evacuations and other procedures on a regular basis. This can include everything from an armed robbery to an employee having an unexpected meltdown that may be dangerous to other people.
Create quizzes to test employee knowledge for emergency plans from earthquakes to a simple power outage.
Intranet solutions can also provide a backup for federally mandated paperwork. In addition to standard onsite binders, you can store backup information on OSHA, FMLA, MSDS and more.
Health advice
Company communications demonstrate how a company cares for its workforce, emphasizing good health in the workplace. Encourage people to take breaks, exercise and eat healthy food.
Many companies offer free flu shots prior to winter and the intranet provides a simple way to remind everyone of your upcoming clinic.
Employees who have personal problems at home should be encouraged to talk to people who can help either in the company or outside. Human Resources usually work with people who have problems within the company that can interfere with work performance.
Intranet management
Your intranet will be run by a team of technical workers who manage and maintain the site, as well as content managers who create and share company news.
The person in charge of the company intranet must be responsive to people and know how to use communications software.
In addition to the talent for working online, you will need someone to coordinate departmental news across many channels, assisting, rather than hindering your already busy managers in customer service, operations, and human resources.
Capitalize on the benefits of an employee intranet now, using employee engagement and communication as a method to increase employee happiness.
Make sure your employees are being heard at all levels from management to entry level with a customized intranet solution today.
