Of Holidays, Shopping Carts, and Partnerships

From my many years in the music industry, I’ve always considered September 1st to be the real beginning of the holiday selling season.  For retailers, that is.  Selling holiday merchandise to wholesalers often begins in June or even earlier for the toy industry!

As an internet consultant I typically begin ranting and raving about building your online shopping experience in JANUARY!  Why?  It is very simple.  Shopping carts from over-the-counter” open source systems like OS Commerce or Zen Cart to custom-programmed systems take time to install, programme and fully beta test.  Plus there’s custom graphics work, getting you cradit card processing and gateway systems in order, getting your products professionally photographed and all the data entry involved in adding your products.

THEN we begin optimizing using the available code and pages generated by the shopping cart but possibly even building HTML-based K.I.C.Pages to supplement the integrated search engine optimization.  After that’s been completed, we have the months of tweaking, analyzing, and advertising necessary to bild traffic BEFORE September 1st hits.

Invariably, September rolls around and I begin receiving calls from new clients wanting to build a eTail store and needing it done before the end of October!  This gives us less than one month to bring a site from nothing to shopping perfection.  There will be web designers out there who will say to you “Sure.  It can be done.”  They’ll whip up a shopping cart, maybe throw your logo on a pre-designed template, give you the login information and an 80 page instruction book to read.  Heck.  I can install OS Commerce and Zen Cart and get your basic information plugged in in minutes! I’d be happy to do that.

But, my goal is to not just install a shopping cart, but to help you get your site to 100% functionality, wonderfully merchandised, and you trained on how to manage the “back end.”  My goal is to give you a leg up on the competition, help maximize the ability of your website to sell your product.

As such, Transmutation Sciences has a great team of people that you will have access to when you come to us for your online retail store.  One of our design team members, Paul Wright, is the most skilled logo and corporate ID / branding wizard I have ever had the pleasure of working with.  Your logo should instantly convey the story of your business and he does that for you.  Another team member is Shannon Butler.  Shannon is a professional photographer who, among other things, shoots photos of products (and people) for inclusion in catalogs and, of course, for your online retail store!  Another partner in the our shopping cart team is Sage Payment Solutions.  Their specialty is helping us get you the best credit card processing systems and rates for your online store.  The systems they provide work for businesses with just a few products to online stores with hundreds of products.

If you are considering diving into the very competitive world of online sales and online retail stores, call us at 971-207-4492 for a FREE consultation on how best to implement your online retail store.