E-Commerce Journal Part 3 Page 5

By Joe Burns

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/webmaster/projects/article.php/3459441/E-Commerce-Journal-Part-3-Page-5.htm (Back to article)

Repairing the International Shipping Concern

Obviously, the checkout system needed to be revamped. To begin with, we got rid of the entire concept of adding $25 for international shipping. The radio buttons on the first checkout page that ask where your package is being shipped to have been revamped so neither is checked off when you arrive.

Furthermore, the radio buttons have a script attached to them so that if you do not check one or the other, an error pops up asking you to choose.

If you choose international shipping, a line appears on the following checkout pages and on your receipt that we will contact you with shipping charges before running your credit card through the system.

We're now waiting for our next International order to see if the system is tight.

What Now?

Build traffic. That monthly request from the bank that gave us the loan doesn't pay itself. We're good to go for the first two months. The business, so far, has given us enough to make those first two payments. That's a true blessing. I really didn't expect that, since we're not in the search engines quite yet. Past that, we will undertake the following over the next month:

The paintings are being re-categorized so that people can search by topic. There will be choices like landscape, monuments, water scenes, and abstract. We want to keep those down to around ten to fifteen topic areas.
We have applied for a business account with a credit company so that we can begin charging all shipping and packaging to that one credit card for easier business records.
We will write a press release now that we're happy with the site, and submit it to numerous magazines and news outlets offering ourselves for an interview.
I will resubmit to some search engines and add other pages to what I have already submitted.
In order to drive traffic, once the credit is set for shipping, I intend to use that to begin selling some of our art on eBay and other auction sites. Hopefully we can only do that for a time just to help drive traffic, but who knows? Maybe the site will be a nice showroom and eBay will be the main sales drive.
No matter what happens with the site, we will be taking a trip back to Europe in the summer of 2001. We'll hit all new countries and hopefully come back with some stunning work.

Next: The wrap-up