osCommerce templates,Zen Cart templates,CRE Loaded templates
Click to go back to the site, to the collection of free e-commerce templates and premium oscommerce,cre loaded and zen cart templates.How difficult is to learn how to make osCommerce templates?
Well, this is something that everybody should ask about any predefined engine, when it comes to designing skins. No matter we speak about oscommerce templates here or about Zen Cart templates or even about WordPress skins, designing a themes for a predefined engine is not an easy task.
The fact is that you need to comply with particular constraints, to match them, because the engine that you dress probably has a lot of widgets, toolbars, features, etc that you will need to dress also.
Really, are osCommerce that difficult to make?
Personally I would appreciate they are. Actually if you are not a pretty good designer or programmer you will probably find it very difficult to make.
How could you start designing an osCommerce template?
I think that the best way to do it is to start with the default theme and then to adapt that one. This way you will have the constraints already respected, the theme will already be adapted for the engine and it would be easier for you to add some design parts around the already embedded tags.
An other interesting solution would be to take an open source osCommerce theme and to change that one. The Open Source license will allow you to adapt it as long as you probably keep the link back to the original designer. Then,one step at the time, try to design your own themes and templates and you will see that you will manage to come up with nice looking skins for your osCommerce, Zen Cart or CRE Loaded ecommerce websites.
Build your confidence, trust, customers will come and money also
One of the problems a popular website will need to face is spam. People spam a lot on the internet and I don’t quite understand why, from my point of view it doesn’t make sense, but hey, if they do it, probably they do it for a reason. And what’s the best reason than money?!
Most of the sites that spam are related to a shady area of ecommerce, adult products. While I am not going to speak about this here, I wanted to make you aware that spam is not the way to go. I am not speaking here from a legal point of view, but from a long term relationship point of view. The best way to make your ecommerce site is to build a relationship with your customers and to make them grow with you, to make them understand why you bring vaue to them and why they should continue the relationship with you and with your site.
When somebody spams, it is a total different approach, people hide, don’t want to decline their identity, because it is illegal, but also because they probably have different sites and don’t want their image be associated to spaming. This is true, believe me, there are people spaming for some sites while maintaining good ones, clean and with a strong name.
That is why I say that the best way is to just build up your trust, your name with your customers and in time money will follow.
When promoting an ecommerce site, you need a goal
I was thinking these last days about how you should run an ecommerce website. One of the most important ideas that came to my mind is that you need, absolutely need to have a goal. Your goal, as any other goal, should be measurable, concrete an reachable.
Let’s see for example, you propose to make your site runing, but in what way? Let’s say that your goal would be to reach 500 unique visitors per day in the next 6 months, from search engines, mostly. OK? Then you will need to work each and every day to this, but thanks to the 3 criteria above, you may get somewhere.
It is clear why you need to set up a goal, if you wouldn’t have a goal it would be like when asking somebody how long it will take him to get to a point that has never been defined. It wouldn’t be too easy to answer, right?
Suppose that the target would be to get on the first 3 positions in Google for osCommerce templates. By the way, for free osCommerce templates we are there already, but suppose we would want to be in the first page for the other criteria too. What would you do? You would analyze where you are, how to get there, what is your competition, etc, but the first thing is already done: you have a goal - geting on the first 3 positions for the specified criteria ans that is a good start!
Build links for your ecommerce templates site
One of the most important and constant activity that you need to have related to your website is link building. After you build your website, you can not leave it like it is, you just need to build links. And not any kind of links, no. Relevant links, only those that count.
A few tips for a good link
- In order to count, to have a good weight, you need that the page that links to you speak about the same topic as the page that links to, so if you have a page about osCommerce templates, a link from a page about laptops will not be relevant, you need a link from a page that speaks about osCommerce templates, design or at least about ecommerce templates.
- The link must be on a particular page, in a natural way, not a sitewide link that repeats itself, in such a way that the link be the result of a natural linking process, from an incontext paragraph.
- You should not build links only to your homepage, but also to your inside pages. If you have a site that provides ecommerce templates, the way I have here and a page that provides Zen Cart templates for ex,don’t point all the links to the domain itself, it is better to point some of them, relevantly, to the inner page too.
- Have on your links relevant keywords, for example if you point to a page that sells osCommerce templates, than the link should have these 2 words on it, like in this example.
- Don’t have more links from the same page to the same page, the importance of the link will decrease, not increase. A good idea if you want to link from a single page twice, is to have 2 links to 2 different pages of the site.
- Build links continuously. Never stop, even if it is boring, I know…
These are only a few small tips that you should consider when starting an ecommerce website, because they will help you on the long term. So, build links…each and every day!
Ecommerce is easy, right? Not quite, my friends…
One of the biggest errors people make when thinking to build an ecommerce website is that they think it will be easy, or at least easier than in the regular down-to-earth environment they are already used to. I mean, if you have a regular brick and stone shop in the city, it is not easy, you know that, because you struggle to make it work day by day, but in the online environment it must be easier, because there are so many online stores out there and they all work fine!
Wrong! Nothing is easy in the online commerce! The key to a regular brick and stone shop is the place where you have the store, so people pass near your store and visit it, so the most important thing is traffic! Well, what do you know?In the online commerce, traffic is also the most important thing! Just that there is a small difference! No matter where you put your store, in the beginning you will have the same traffic: zero!No traffic!
Well, then, how do you bring people to that wonderful store of yours? Eee, that’s the tricky part, my friends and that is the reason for which I say ecommerce is not as easy as it looks like!When you build an online store, you don’t have traffic so you need to build it day by day, bit by bit, visitor by visitor! You need to bring people over, they won’t come by themselves! That’s the most difficult part of online commerce! That is why, no matter how many experience you have in traditional commerce, you need to learn big time how to drive traffic to your store! That is why you need to read, learn, test, experiment!
And you know what? I will post here as often as I can articles on this topic so be sure that you don’t miss them and stay close to this site for follow ups!
Start your own ecommerce website but be wise about it!
These days, everybody speaks about starting your home business, there are so many tutorials on how to start your business from home! Personally, I think this is great since starting your own business is the way to go for everybody and I recommend this without any doubt. The fact is that you don’t need to let go everything you do at the moment, you can start your own online store from home, in your spare time without dropping your current job.
I don’t write this article to teach you how to do it, there are too many articles out there telling you about this, seems that everybody is an expert these days. The fact is that there are so many tutorials on it that you can not make the difference between a good article and a spam one.I have even tried to link a few articles from this post but when I have seen that the first 3 articles that I clicked are spam, I kind of stepped back.
This made me think a bit. The fact is that when I want to read about this, I don’t just go on a search engine and look for matterial, no, I go to some websites or blogs that I regularrily read and I have there all the information I need. This is the way I suggest you do it also.
You should subscribe to a few good blogs that you find and stick to them. From my personal experience, too many are, well, too many! You will never manage to read them all so you’d better stick to a few good ones that will give you enough information to learn your way throught it. Just don’t resume yoursef at reading them! Instead, try yourself. In time you will see you will fail a few times, but each of these failures will teach you something and after a good period you will manage to make a living out of it!
Remember to not put your hopes from the start in this home business and neverthink that right from day one you will drop your 9 to 5 job! Instead, take it easy, one step at a time, build your ecommerce website and start working on it, promoting it, making it known. In time it will pay!
Is Ecommerce a goal in itself?
Is E-commerce a goal in itself or is just something that you add to your website? This question should be asked before joining the ride.
I have been asked a few weeks ago if I could add an ecommerce module to a website that was a catalogue of products. Yes, I can, just that my mind immediately jumped to a question: does the client actually know what this implies? Is he ready for e-commerce from the point of view of putting effort into this new side of his business?
In many times, people want ecommerce modules because they think they will immediately sell, which is not the case. They need to put everything they have into that website in order to make it work and not only to add the technical capabilities.
That is why I advise every client I have to look into this very carefully and learn as much as possible about ecommerce before joining this beautiful but difficult ride!
Ecommerce website templates are exactly what the name says
I have been asked on an other website of mine, on an other topic, if the templates come with ASP or ASPx code or PHP code behind so I said it is better to state here as well. We deliver here a lot of ecommerce website templates, osCommerce templatez, ZEN Cart and CRE Loaded templates, and they are all exactly what the title says they are: layouts for ecommerce websites. That is all. None of these designs come with scripting behind. You can not build an online store just purchasing one of our e-commerce themes.
They are, again, what the name says: ecommerce templates, nothing more. You take one of them, download an e-commerce engine such as osCommerce for ex and dress it up using the e-commerce theme you have purchased. Then and only then, the site can be considered an online store.
For most of you, reading these lines, probably it is obvious and you probably don’t need me saying what I say here, but I just wanted to be clear so when you purchase a premium e-commerce template, you know what to expect and don’t complain about the fact that what you have purchased doesn’t offer you a shopping cart or a module for orders management. Remember, all those come with the engine, our e-commerce layouts just dress up the engine and gives your store an unique look and feel that will help it establish an image in the eyes of your customers.
What cheap Zen templates mean to you?
I was asked the other day about some cheap Zen templates. Cheap Zen templates meaning cheap Zen Cart templates, of course. And I have started to think about this. Cheap is a relative concept, isn’t it? Depending on how much people is willing to pay for other stuff. For example, if you pay like $50.000 for a store, you will probably not look at a $700 professional stock ecommerce template as being expensive and probably a $2000 custom design e-Zen Cart template will seem quite reasonable to you, while if you built your online store on a shared hosting using Zen Cart engine or osCommerce cart, then some beautiful $100 theme would seem not quite cheap to you.
But of course, you need to ask yourself what exactly do you want and be aware that in most of the cases, cheap means also low quality. We don’t have such ecommerce templates. Low quality website themes are bad and we support this with all our heart. We like to distribute high quality, professional ecommerce templates, at a reasonable price.
In such a case, cheap Zen Cart templates refer only to the price you pay for it, and not to the quality of the theme, which is great, being designed by professional designers. Consider this the next time you buy a theme Look closer to our themes and see which one fits you!
Ecommerce website templates sales are low in the hot season!
I was previously speaking about the fact that traffic for online commerce websites diminishes over sumertime. This is actually true for more than ecommerce websites, but in my particular case, also. But as a matter of fact, beside traffic, what diminishes over time is not only traffic but also the number of sales. People buy less over sumertime, it is a proven thing.
So, every online shop probably has this problem and observed it: sales are low in the hot season. No matter you sell ecommerce templates like I do, or other kind of products, generally speakin, sales are low. OK, if you sell summer related items like sunbath related products or scuba diving products or tshirts then it is probably not obeying this pattern since these products are seasonal and they won’t have sales outside summer time. Nobody will buy scuba diving products in the winter, I guess.
But Zen Cart templates, CRE Loaded templates, they are products that work all year long, just that not that great in this part of the year. They will probably jump again when autumn will come, it is the case with other websites I run and I guess this site won’t make a difference.
I will wait and see!