Becoming A Google Trusted Store
The Google Trusted Stores program helps online shoppers identify stores that offer a great experience. When customers see the Google Trusted Stores badge on your site, they’ll know you offer great customer service and ship on time. To earn the badge, stores work with Google to demonstrate that they ship on time, have low occurrence of customer issues, and resolve customer issues quickly. The badge shows customers a detailed report card of your store's performance in these areas.
Sales Tax Compliance - The Ticking Time Bomb
Shopping online has always had one big advantage over shopping in a physical store - no sales tax. If the online store you are buying from has no physical presence (nexus) in the state where you live, the seller is under no legal obligation to charge Sales Tax on the order. If you are making large purchases online, this can result in hundreds, even thousands of dollars in savings. But, as you can imagine, with online sales accounting for more than $250billion in revenue last year in the U.S. alone, this online tax-free joyride is costing the States, Counties and Cities millions of dollars in lost revenue each year, and unsurprisingly, they are making aggressive moves to put an end to it. Today, online merchants must make sure their operations are Sales & Use Tax compliant. Any merchants that are not, are leaving themselves wide open to an audit, and the result of that audit will be stiff fees and penalties when it is proven that sales tax has not been calculated or collected properly.
GIVEAWAY - AdWords $100 Vouchers
We are heavily involved with Google here at MyCommerce. We use most (if not all) of Google's products - Gmail, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Merchant Center, Places, Search, AdWords, Google Checkout - the list goes on and on! The most heavily used of Google's products is almost certainly Google Analytics. All our sites are fully integrated with this enterprise-level, FREE, web analytics and statistics service. Not only does it provide tons of useful data on traffic and user behaviour, but also has an e-commerce component to track goals, conversion and sales. So we were delighted to receive a recent "thank-you" e-mail from the Google Analytics Team which gave us not one, but THREE $100 Google AdWords vouchers to give away to anyone that signs up for a new Google AdWords account.
Ubercart BOGO Module
We're delighted to announce that our BOGO module (Buy One Get One Free) for Ubercart has been completed. Why is this a big deal? Firstly, Ubercart (awesome solution though it is) is lacking when it comes to specials offers and incentive-based purchases. Secondly - because we have provided far more functionality than just the standard "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" deal and instead given Store Admins a powerful BOGO Discounting System.
Put Your Business On The Map!
MyCommerce recently launched on Google Places. This free service offers several fantastic features and benefits for businesses. If you're a business owner - read on to see how Google Places can literally put your company on the map!
Optimizing Your Images For the Web
Customers are not going to hang around waiting for big image files to download, so it's crucial your images are optimized for web download. This article looks at the three main web image formats, plus recommendations for image dimensions, file naming and how to retain image quality but reduce filesize.
Google Product Search Rocks!
Google's product search is a powerful tool often overlooked by most merchants and businesses. We look at what Base does, how to use it and the impact it can have on your product sales.
