As a store owner, the bottom line is always important. Its this number that you are constantly thinking about. When we see it go up, we smile; and when it goes down, so does our attitude. A big part of business is coming up with strategies that increase this number, and one simple way to do this is by creating Product Kits.

One reason many people steer clear from shopping online is because of shipping costs. They’d rather drive to the local Target or Mall. A lot of the time, your store’s visitors are people browsing for prices on the products they want to buy. A really great way to compete with other online stores and also local merchants is by offering free shipping.

The chart details holiday shopping, but I personally think it can be applied to all year. In many ways shopping online is much more advantageous than shopping at the store. There’s no waiting in line to process your order, you can shop at any hour, you don’t have to deal with crazy people, the list is pretty long. However, there are off course disadvantages as well.

Now that we have a basic understanding of licensed solutions, we should now disucss the other end of the spectrum. Hosted ecommerce solutions utilize the Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
What is SaaS?
Wikipedia explains that SaaS is s a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. [...]

With all the multipe options for a shopping cart platform out there, an easy way to break them down is by licensed or hosted (SaaS) solution. In this segment of the series, we’re going to discuss the reasons for using a licensed solution.
Why should I consider a licensed solutions?
Ernesto, a web consultant in the Washington [...]

I was on a sales call yesterday discussing various options for this lady’s store. I will have to say this question is one of my favorite and most dreaded questions to answer. Essentially, it is just a matter of opinion, but also depends on your store’s individual needs.
Hosted Ecommerce Platform

Pros

No need to find your own [...]

Design

Horizontal Navigation Menus: Trends, Patterns, and Best Practices: A good look at what to do and what not to do. This post also brings about some nice design points and also points of organization and structure.
Swiss table slices into portable workstations: It’s the simple but interesting things in life that still amaze me. How come [...]

When searching for a Shopping Cart solution, there are six questions one should always ask.

Do they support my Merchant Account/Gateway? If you’re a brick and mortar store, you already have a Merchant Account to process your credit card transactions. Generally they will have a Gateway that you can utilize when you decide to take your [...]

What is an SSL?
An SSL is a Secure Socket layer. The basic description is that it is a protocol installed on your server that encrypts information that is passed through the user and the server (e.g. credit card transactions). You can read more information at the Wiki.
Why get it?
An SSL is necessary if you choose [...]