Filed under All Ecommerce News, Infographics by Amy on September 1, 2010 at 6:30 am
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September 1, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team
An infographic is a graphical display of information created for easy consumption and viral appeal. Infographics can be used to explain large amounts of data through images, a specific process, or to clarify a topic that is hard to grasp. Infographics serve a variety of purposes including engaging users, building a brand, link building, and improving a site’s authority with regards to the topics covered in the infographic. Because this new medium is becoming a must have for many online businesses, a variety of companies are springing up to offer services related to the design and syndication of infographics and for the greater part of this year, SubmitInfographics.com has done just that. While their consulting and work in this space is not necessarily coming to an end, it is turning the page to a new chapter and remodeled website dubbed Killer Infographics.
Matt Weston, a spokesperson for Killer Infographics told us that “there isn’t one central hub online where businesses can submit their infographics and be certain that they will receive the appropriate credit and link for their efforts.” Because of this, the team at Submit Infographics has sought to provide a solution to this problem. At Killer Infographics, anyone can submit their infographics for free and “as long as they meet the not at all strict guide lines,” their infographic will be live for the world to see within 2 business days.
The team at Submit Infographics believes that this makes their original job of syndicating infographics null and void. “If we can provide a common location where everyone goes to review infographics, vote for the best, and add their own, then the user base will do the rest for us,” Weston suggests.
Killer Infographics is still in its infancy, with the site only launching in full force yesterday, but it is already showing great promise. The site will soon have a variety of features to help users create their own infographics, vote on existing ones in the gallery, earn featured positions for improved visibility, and much more. Time will tell if this site becomes the next Digg of the Infographic space, but rest assured it will at least achieve it’s current goal: “To add yet another site to the mix that decreases productivity online because it’s too fun not to use.”
Filed under Infographics by Amy on August 26, 2010 at 1:00 am
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August 26, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team
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Operation Ecommerce: A Game of Dissecting The Best Ecommerce Software by ZippyCart: Shopping Cart Reviews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at zippycart.com.
Dissecting the Best E-Commerce Software Solutions
Finding the right e-commerce solution to power your online store can be a daunting task, especially when there are so many affordable solutions with the same basic feature set. Because of this, we put together the infographic above, which details the minimum features that make the best e-commerce solutions stand out from the crowd. When reviewing e-commerce software, you should expect some bare necessities like an online admin panel, the ability to customize portions of your storefront, the ability to accommodate one currency, an email account, the ability to sell down-loadable products, etc.
While these bare necessities will help you start selling online fast, they will not lead you to success. Many e-commerce solution providers understand that merchants need to focus on selling and not spend their time setting up a clunky system. Because of this, additional tools are included to make the management of your online store a breeze. These features include marketing tools, product and inventory management, easy design tools, FedEx, UPS, and USPS integration (for real-time shipping rates), control over tax rules, and basic tech support.
While all of the features listed above are very helpful, some e-commerce solutions go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that you remain ahead of the competition. This is where the best e-commerce software solutions come in, and the features they offer make them great options for any merchant that wants to sell online full time. These unique and optimal features include the ability to add a blog to your online store, email marketing integration, affiliate management tools, full access to HTML and CSS for 100% customizable design, highly intuitive design tools for those that do not know code, Facebook integration and other social commerce tools, mobile commerce tools, shopping feed integration, PCI/PA-DSS compliance (or both), an included SSL, and superior customer support… to name a few.
Review the infographic above which details the bare minimum requirements you should expect from some of the best e-commerce software solutions. If you’re ready to start comparing solutions and looking for somewhere to start, then two great solutions with all of these features and very low monthly costs include 3dcart and CoreCommerce.
Filed under Infographics, Online Marketing & SEO News by Amy on August 9, 2010 at 1:25 am
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August 9, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team
Part 4 in a Series of SEO Tips for Ecommerce Success.
When you run an online store, the most important thing you need is traffic. Traffic translates into customers, which translates into profit, it’s as simple as that. No matter how great your storefront looks, your ecommerce solution works, your deals are, or your products might be, if you don’t have anyone visiting your store, then you won’t be able to make any sales. The best ecommerce software solutions know how important this is, which is why they provide many great tools to optimize your online store. Beyond on-page optimization, though, you must also build inbound links to your storefront from other reputable websites. This is because part of Google’s algorithm considers inbound linking a differentiator between the sites that deserve high rankings and those that don’t. To understand why, you must first understand PageRank. We created the infographic below to explain PageRank in more depth:
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Understanding Google PageRank by ZippyCart: Shopping Cart Reviews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Note: The content from this article has been moved to the page where the infographic above lives. We found that 90% of our traffic has been going to that page instead of this one, and wanted to fully explain the infographic there without duplicating our content. To view this full article, please checkout What is Google PageRank, an Infographic.
Posts in this Series
Part 1: Choosing an SEO Firm To Drive Traffic to Your Online Store
Part 2: Finding Profit Driving Keywords to Optimize Your Online Store
Part 3: Optimizing Your Online Storefront for Search Engines
Part 4: Understanding PageRank to Optimize Your Online Store
Part 5: 13 Ecommerce Link Building Tactics For Your Online Store
Filed under All Ecommerce News, Infographics by Amy on August 3, 2010 at 1:18 am
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August 3, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team
Infographic: The History of E-Commerce
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The History of E-commerce by ZippyCart: Shopping Cart Reviews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
The History of E-commerce in a Nutshell:
The history of e-commerce is filled with many ups and downs, with dot-com bubbles, dot-com busts, a variety of sales models, and more. Understanding what has led the e-commerce industry to its current state can help merchants better prepare for the changes ahead, as e-commerce evolves into mobile commerce, social commerce, and so much more. Above, you will see a detailed visualization of how e-commerce has evolved and shaped the way we do business online. The data is also detailed below for those who wish to read all of the information rather than view it above.
- 1979 – Michale Aldrich invents online shopping: Aldrich was a British inventor who created a number of things including the Teleputer, which was a computer-based entertainment center. In 1979 he developed a predecessor of online shopping to enable online transaction processing for B2C and B2B needs.
- 1981 – Thomson Holidays submitted the first ever B2B electronic transaction using online technology. Thomson Holidays was a UK based travel operator that used online technology to help users book travel and pay.
- 1982 – France Telecom invents Minitel – Considered the world’s most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. Users could make online purchases, train reservations, and more through the Videotex online service, accessible through telephone lines.
- 1984 – Jane Snowball, age 72, was the first ever online home shopper. She used the Gateshead SIS/Tesco System to buy online.
- 1987 – The first electronic merchant account was created by Swreg. It was created so that software developers could sell their solutions online.
- 1990 – Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser using a NeXT computer, thus creating the World Wide Web.
- 1991 – The National Science Foundation (NSF) lifted restrictions on the commercial use of the NET, which cleared the way for e-commerce.
- 1992 – J.H. Snider and Terra Siporyn published Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy. This book was an amazing predictor of the future of e-commerce.
- 1994 – This was a big year of firsts for e-commerce. Netscape Navigator released their browser, SSL encryption became a reality (ensuring secure online sales), Pizza Hut had the first recorded Internet sale (a peperoni & mushroom pizza with extra cheese), the 1st online bank opened, the first e-commerce solutions are built for merchants to sell online, and the first ever email spam occurred (known as the Green Card Spam)
- 1995 – The dot-com bubble began with the IPO of Netscape. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos sat in a garage in Bellevue, WA to start Amazon.com. South of Bezos in California, eBay began as “AuctionWeb.” Craigslist launched and VeriSign launched as a way to verify merchants online.
- 1997 – Dell.com became the first company to make $1,000,000 in online sales
- 1998 – The US Postal Service entered the e-commerce space by selling stamps electronically through e-stamp. At the same time, two Standford students began their plans for world domination by launching Google.
- 1999 – The US Supreme Court ruled that domain names are property.
- 2000 – The dot-com bust
- 2002 – Ebay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, niche retail start ups CSN stores and NetShops created the concept of selling products through several target domains rather than a central portal.
- 2003 – Facebook began as a college website called Facemash, which let students rate whether or not other students on campus were good looking. At the same time, Amazon posted its first ever profitable year. Finally, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 changed email marketing forever by ruling that marketers “can spam” as long as they follow certain standards.
- 2006 – Google bought YouTube. In the same year, Sex.com sold for $14,000,000 which was the highest recorded sales price for a domain name. Finally, iTunes became the largest digital music retailer with over 1 billion downloads.
- 2007 – US Broadband users reached 200 million, which aided in e-commerce success for small and large companies. Google Adwords surpassed $21 billion in revenue.
- 2009 – Yahoo and Bing teamed up to better compete with Google. While the full merger is still taking place, soon Yahoo will adopt the Bing algorithm, making search results almost the same across the two search engines. Near the end of 2009, Facebook made headway in traffic by becoming the site with more traffic than Google.
- 2010 – 2010 is expected to reach $173 billion in e-commerce sales, an increase of 7 percent over 2009. This is due to an improvement in the economy mixed with new e-commerce trends like mobile commerce, social commerce, group buying, and private sample sale sites.
The future of e-commerce remains to be seen, but it is clear that the industry will continue to grow and opportunities are there for the taking.
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