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Building Your Website
You have found the products you
would like to sell and have sourced out all of your suppliers
and now it is time to place all of those products on a working
website. We will be utilizing Volusion e-commerce software
because it is simply the best and most easy software to use.
With little to no coding knowledge you can have a fully
functional, feature rich website in a matter of days. With
Volusion you will receive a free 14 day trial. This gives you 14
days to build your entire website. Don’t worry! This is more
than enough time to complete the entire site and have it ready
to make your first sale.
Since you are following our
guide, our sister company is excited to offer 10% off of
Volusion! They are an authorized reseller for Volusion
e-commerce platform and provide awesome customer service! By
utilizing this discount you can save about $20 - $30 per month!
ABOUT VOLUSION E-COMMERCE PLATFORM
Starting an online business has never been easier. The experts
at Volusion have done the hard work for you by compiling all of
the tools you need to sell online into one search engine
friendly shopping cart software solution. Volusion’s
user-friendly ecommerce software gives you the power to start,
grow and manage your online business with ease.
This
platform is simply the best e-commerce solution available
because it has all of the tools you need in one centralized
location. Your hosting, email, customer relationship management,
live chat will all be provided through this powerful software.
To get started go to
http://www.brynwebdesign.com/TrueWebMoney-Special.html and
fill out the form and they will get your free trial going within
24 hours. You can also go to Volusion.com and sign up directly
through there but you will NOT receive the 10% discount. Either
way you decide to signup you will still receive FREE Google
Adwords advertising credits. You will also receive 24x7 support
through Volusion via chat, email or phone.
The pricing on
Volusion e-commerce is a tiered structure based on the number of
products you plan on offering for sale. You can always expand
your plan if you decide to add more products later on. Please
see the figure below:
Bryn Web Design’s fees are the same as
Volusion’s for the first month pricing and setup fee. You will
be billed through Bryn Web Design if signing up for the
discount. To see Volusion’s features and pricing guide go to:
http://www.volusion.com/ecommerce-web-hosting.asp
To get the discounted rates please visit http://www.brynwebdesign.com/TrueWebMoney-Special.html.
SETTING IT UP!
If you signed up through Bryn Web Design then you will
receive setup instructions and a phone number for support. If
you signed up directly through Volusion then you should be all
setup. We suggest you signup through Bryn Web Design and receive
your 10% discount! It could save you up to $250 per year!
REMEMBER: Make sure you use the email address you created in
section 6. Once you are all signed up you should get to a screen
that looks like this:
Use the easy setup wizard and
follow the instructions throughout each step. Don’t worry too
much about the design template as you can change this at any
time.
On step 2 type in your company name, such as
myCompanyName.com. We will come back later and place a nice logo
in there.
On step 3 you can add content to your home page
if you want to but we cover this in greater detail later in this
chapter.
You can skip step 4 and step 5. Once you get to
the last page click the “launch my dashboard” button.
This brings you to your home dashboard where you can see your
daily sales and a variety of other information. You can edit
each of these to display whatever information you want. At this
point go ahead and click the “Storefront” link in the top left
corner of your dashboard. This brings up your website frontend
(the place customers shop). You may notice the little pencils
around different items. These are editable regions. You can try
clicking the pencils and editing anything you wish to change.
Whenever you make changes to the backend (the administration
panel) the changes will appear on the frontend (the place where
your customers shop).
***Throughout any of these
processes you can use the Volusion training manual at any time.
If you are still confused you may wish to chat with a Volusion
representative. The training manual can be accessed by clicking
the “Training Manual” link at the top right of your
administration panel.
It is now time to setup some
important information about your business. Go back to your
dashboard and click settings on the main menu bar (it’s on the
right) and then click company.
Make sure to click “More Settings” under each setting and fill in the appropriate information. Under the email settings fill it out as follows:
We will create these email addresses later. Go ahead and finish
filling out the rest of the information and make sure to save it
when finished. Make sure to replace “myDomainName” with the .com
name you purchased in section 10.
Now go ahead click on
“Shipping” on the menu bar at the top. Setup the shipping
methods that you wish to use. If you plan on using FedEx, UPS,
DHL, or USPS you will need to register with these companies to
get live shipping rates for your shipments. You can also setup
flat shipping rates if you wish. Registering with the shipping
carrier will allow you to get live rates to calculate shipping
accurately. Volusion also has backup shipping rates built in so
if the curriers website ever malfunctions, shipping rates will
be calculated using the backup rates.
Go through the menu
bar filling out each screen including your tax, payment and
currency pages. Make sure to click save at the bottom of each
page! On the payments page make sure to select “other” and click
PayPal and include the PayPal address you created back in
section 9. We will come back to the payment page later on after
we setup your merchant service provider in section 14.
Now you are all setup with your company information, shipping,
tax, payment and currency settings. We will move on and setup
your company’s categories and show you how to add products.
SETTING UP CATEGORIES
Categories help organize the
products of your website. You should have a good idea of what
categories your products should go in to. For instance, if you
are selling power tools you could separate by brand or you could
separate by use and then create a category for each of these.
There are many ways you can organize your products into
categories. You will have to decide what will work the best for
you and your business. To begin learning how to setup categories
go ahead and go here:
You see the categories that currently appear on your demo store.
You can click the category name and change it there. If you need
to delete a category hover over it and click “advanced view.” On
the next page at the bottom right of the page you can click the
delete button.
You can setup sub-categories for your
categories as well. This is a great idea if you have a large
number of products you need to add.
Make sure to setup
your categories before you begin adding products. This will
allow you to place each product in the appropriate category. If
you wait to setup categories after you add products to your site
you will have to go back and categorize all of your products.
This can be very time consuming so it is best to setup your
categories now.
NOTE: You want to view
the “Advanced View” option for each category and setup all of
the META fields. If you do not do this your SEO settings will
not function properly. See the image below for settings.
SETTING UP PRODUCTS
Adding products to
your website is very simple with Volusion. Most of your time
will be spent copying and pasting product information or
building a database file to upload your products all at once.
To simplify the process you should watch and learn all of
the videos at the following address. These videos will give you
a complete tutorial on how to setup your entire site with
Volusion. Visit
http://www.volusion.com/training_videos/default.asp and watch
the videos.
NOTE: You want to view the
“Advanced View” option for each product and setup all of the
META fields. If you do not do this your SEO settings will not
function properly. This is similar to the categories above.
Once you have learned how to add products and gain a general
understanding of how the Volusion system works you can begin
adding your products. Once all of your products are added we
will move on to setup some additional configuration settings
EXTRA CONFIGURATION SETTINGS
Search
engines are your friend and you want them to be able to crawl
and index your site easily. In this part you will be changing a
few settings to ensure that your site is search engine friendly.
Browse to the following link in the main menu of your
Volusion administration panel.
Make sure the two boxes are checked! You also want to fill in
the Meta tag fields. Keep the setting in easy mode when filling
out these areas. Remember to save the page!
The next
section you want to go to is Design. Once you are there click
“website text” in the submenu. On this page you have a list of
website text which you can edit. You want to go through and
change your physical address, company name, phone number and any
other information that pertains to your business. Go ahead and
write your home page and any additional pages such as your About
Us page. It is a great idea to put your contact info in the
About Us page as well.
EXPLORING CUSTOMER SERVICE OPTIONS
The
success of your business will rely on you providing phenomenal
customer service to your existing and potential clients. You can
achieve this by providing your customers an array of ways to
contact you. We suggest you use email, chat, phone, physical
address and fax. You already have everything setup except the
live chat feature. It is free for a single user and provides a
very professional image for your business.
You can try
out the live chat feature right now to see if you like it. Go to
the following link and you can download it for free.
http://www.volusion.com/livechat_software.asp
Once
you have downloaded the file. Install it and you can begin using
it immediately. For complete instructions on how to install and
use the live chat software please follow this link:
http://www.volusion.com/livechat_help.asp
You now
have all of your products and categories lined out. You also
have your supplemental pages customized. Go ahead and go test it
all out. Look for broken or missing images. Proofread your
writing and customize your home page so it is unique and eye
catching. When writing on the internet try to keep paragraphs
under five sentences to keep the reader’s attention.
If
you have any trouble at all throughout the product and category
adding you have the option of the training videos, training
manual, knowledge base and Volusion’s friendly customer support
team.
You can utilize the following links to help setup
your website. You will learn all of the features of the Volusion
software. Learning all of the features will allow you to present
an outstanding website and provide the fastest, most efficient
customer service.
Volusion Training Videos:
http://www.volusion.com/training_videos/default.asp
Volusion Training Manual:
http://manual.volusion.com/ (Use the version 5 manual)
Volusion Knowledge Base:
http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp
Download the
Live Chat:
http://www.volusion.com/livechat_software.asp
Live
Chat Help:
http://www.volusion.com/livechat_help.asp
Login to
your admin: yourDemoStoreId.demo.volusion.com/admin
Customer Service Number: (800) 646-3517
In the next
section we will work on branding your business with an
attractive logo and color scheme. Even if you have no graphics
design experience you will still be able to design an attractive
logo for your company. Read on to get started!
Step 13 - Branding Your Business
The True Web Money Dropshipping eCourse Outline
Start Here - Introduction
The Power of the E-Commerce
What is Drop Shipping?
Why You Should Drop Ship
Getting Started
Setting up a Temporary
Contact
Picking a Niche Market
Getting Started with a Plan
Business Structure and Legal
Picking a Domain Name
Product Sourcing and Finding
Suppliers
Building Your Website
Branding Your Business
Finding a Merchant Service
Provider
Marketing Your Business
Putting it all Together
Sales Strategy
Defining Business Systems
Conclusion
Step by Step Checklist
Website Resources
