There are a couple of shopping cart software providers out there (agora shopping cart, 3d shopping cart, to name a few). But whether you’re using a cheap shopping cart solution or one that costs a bomb (or better alternative: you’re using InstanteStore), a newbie online merchant might get lost in all the ecommerce jargon strewn across cyberspace.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a way of driving quality traffic to a site without any financial outlay. This natural or organic method involves tweaking the site’s content, coding and HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) to raise its relevance to specific keywords and make it easier for search engines to index and hence improving the site’s visibility on a search engine’s result’s page (SERP).
SEM
Search Engine Marketing or SEM is a way of promoting a site via the use of paid placements or paid inclusion. This form of internet marketing can improve your visibility in SERP’s much faster then SEO alone, but at a cost of course.
Hard Goods And Soft Goods
An online store may sell a variety of goods that are actually divided into 2 categories - hard goods and soft goods. Hard goods are tangible items like shoes and Tvs. Soft goods are products that exist electronically like MP3’s, software and ebooks - items that can be downloaded.
Internet Merchant Account
An internet merchant account facilitates the receiving of online payments, usually by credit card. If you have problems getting an internet merchant account, you can consider the services of a merchant broker. A merchant broker would then charge a setup fee and provide the software and hardware necessary either by lease or sale, as necessary.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate has nothing to do with religion. But rather it relates to the percentage of visitors to an online store who are converted into buyers. Conversions do not happen automatically and depend on a few factors to help convince a visitor to buy from a particular store. The clever use of images, content and call to action phrases all play a part in this process of conversion.
So before you sign up for a feature-rich yet cheap shopping cart solution like InstanteStore, make sure you brush up on your ecommerce jargon.
