Shopping carries risk whether you are shopping in the mall, on Main Street or online, but fortunately in all cases, as long as you take simple precautions you are usually very safe. Online shoppers never need to worry about parking, traffic accidents, pickpockets, muggers and thieves nor catching a bout of swine flu from a fellow shopper with the sniffles! Online shoppers do have to take some precautions though, and in this brief article we shall look at some of the issues and how you can protect yourself while enjoying your online shopping experience.

Protect Your Computer

The first thing to be aware of is the protection state of your computer. Your computer can be the victim of cyber-attacks which plant malicious code on your machine without you knowing it, and a keylogger can capture every keystroke you make – including your banking and other password information. You must protect your computer from this kind of attack before you can safely use it for sharing your personal and financial information with anyone over the web. Many computers come with trial subscriptions to high grade security software and there are even some programs available for free if you spend enough time searching for them – best to take advice from an expert on this.

Know Your Seller

Do you know the retailer you are thinking of doing business with? If the answer is “Yes” then you can take an extra degree of confidence; almost all major retailers have an online presence and you can expect the same standards of quality and service from their online channels as from their bricks and mortar retail outlets.

If you do not know the retailer, then this is not a deal breaker but you should take extra care that you are dealing with a bona fide merchant and not someone passing themselves off in order to get your credit card information. Check out the About Us page of the website, and check the merchant does exist – if they have a telephone number, call them and speak to them before you place your order. Check online reviews for the merchant to see how their products and customer service stand up to scrutiny too – there is a wealth of information available as you probably already are aware.

Pay with Plastic

Paying by a credit card gives you an additional layer of fraud protection. Credit card companies can “charge back” to merchants in situations where a charge has been wrongly or fraudulently made against your credit card. Credit card companies also frequently provide extended warranties and insurance to protect you from products gone bad or theft or damage. You may be liable for the first $50 of liability using a credit card, but in practice, most credit card providers waive this.

Do not pay with your bank account by a transfer or bill pay unless you are absolutely sure this is a reputable merchant to do business with. This information, such as your checking account number and routing codes, can give a criminal direct access to your bank account. Never provide any merchant with your social security number!

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The cheap cost of establishing an online store belies the true cost associated with generating a successful online business.  This is something many advertisers omit to tell you when you sign up for “free” ecommerce packages – as with everything else in life, the only thing that is free is “free”.

Establishing a website does not mean you will instantly attract traffic.  A website has to be promoted to make itself more visible to people and who may then decide they are going to swing by for a visit.
The issue becomes, how do you drive traffic to your website in order to stand a shot at making some sales?

SEO Explained

The search engines are a primary means of control over who gets to see what on the internet.  Most websites are found by gaining a high enough ranking in the search engines which means their listing gets read by more people and therefore, more traffic is generated as a consequence.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of helping you become more visible to search engines, to gain a higher ranking and therefore improve your popularity.
How this is achieved will take a few volumes!

Create Original and Engaging Content

A crucial element for any website is engaging and relevant content.  By content we mean the text, images, video, photographs, audio – everything your visitor will see and hear when they visit the site.

The greatest importance should be attached to the text you use, because this is the medium search engines work with (it’s not easy for a computer program to categorize a photo or image unless the words are already associated with it).  Search engines will categorize your website and ascribe a degree of relevance on a search term, used by a surfer, based largely on the words used on your site.

By creating relevant content which caters to the needs of your human readers, you will be more successful in making them stay or pay a return visit.  Even better, you are more likely to be referred amongst other users too, especially amongst social media websites.

Using Social Media to Gain Wider Exposure – Going Viral

Social media sites cover a wide range of applications and websites in which the medium if exchange is personal information.  Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are two very good examples of social media sites, but there are quite literally hundreds of others which may cater for social networking or provide  self-help and information services, e.g. Wikipedia.

In one respect, social media sites are an adjunct to the search engines as a means of sourcing visitors to your website.  Surfers may use search engines for specific phrase searches but they are spending inordinate amounts of online time using social media sites..  There are two things you can do immediately – review the various social media sites which comprise the mainstream and establish your business pages on there and do some networking (this is free but time consuming).  The second thing to do is to look for social media websites which cater for your particular product or service – if you are offering baby products, then look for parenting forums and sites or go into the larger sites and find the parenting groups – register on there and again, do some networking.

The Answer to the Question

The original question was if you build your website will the traffic come?  The brutal answer is “No!” – building a website is like erecting a billboard in the desert, but online, this is a desert you can water and cultivate, and you can bring traffic to your door.  Building your website is just one step on the road to creating a successful online business and for which you are going to need more than a simple website.

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Once again a webmaster entrepreneur is utilizing a the power of the internet to provide his goods and services to the world with a 24/7 shopping cart solution. This wordpress user has taken his passion for fishing, lures and bait and designed a word press blog with the full functionality of a shopping cart.

Custom Baits promotes several different fishing bait lures to help even the novice fisherman catch his fish.

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In the construction business, knowing the accurate measurements for your lumber is vital.  This ecommerce website at WoodCalc has a product that will help you converts lumber measurements  from imperial to metric and metric to imperial with ease.

They are utilizing a Wp shopping cart solution to offer their goods and services with inside a simple Word Press Blog CMS.

Adding a Word Press Shopping cart to your existing word press blog is simple and easy. Or starting a new website you can utilize the functionality of word press without fear of losing the shopping cart abilities.

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Here is a great example of a website that is utilizing a fantastic designed website to offer it’s products and services.  One would never know from looking at the website that it is build on a wordpress foundation.  They are offering their product through a word press plugin shopping cart.

Are you just a weekend duffer or are you serious about your golf game?  The folks over at Putting Arc have an shopping cart where you can purchase the tools and tips to improve your putting game.

Many golfers try to putt in a straight line. This stroke is both incorrect and awkward. We have molded the perfect swing path of a putt into the Putting Arc. You’ll make square contact with the ball, and you’ll see more putts go in the hole. Improve your Game, Improve your Putting with the Putting Arc instructional tools available at this Ecommerce WP Shopping Cart. Putting Arc

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The Project Financing Benchmark Report is available through the Infrastructure Economics Org website.

The website is a huge resource of information from expanding markets including China and India. They also include informational resources on performance investment stock analysis on several emerging markets infrastructural investments.

Adding a shopping cart to your word press blog appears to be simple and easy.  No matter what topics you cover, if you have a product it can be easily added to your exsisting word press installation.

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Taking a look at http://www.quietheadphones.com one would never know that the website is using Word Press Blog as it’s CMS.  When you visit the Noise Cancelling Headphones website you will be greeted with a the option to purchase your product directly from their shopping cart on the home page.  Yes in Self Hosted  Word Press you can add a simple Shopping Cart Solution.

Further exploring the word press website, the admin is using a word press plugin to enable him to offer products for sale via a shopping cart scenario.  Awesome!

The Plugin for WordPress that this admin has used quite effectively and efficiently is called PHPurchase.

As you can see from the image above, there is the opportunity to utilize all the functionality of a standard shopping cart without loosing the freedom and benefit that the Word Press Blog offers.

Three cheers to the WP-Plugin  for providing a simple yet affordable WP shopping cart solution for word press users everywhere.

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