Online Auction Anyone? Welcome to this edition covering SalesCart PRO 3.0.  There has never been an E-commerce solution like this before.  Learn about the most powerful shopping cart features ever combined and how these can help you avoid Customer Step-out at Checkout.

The purpose of this newsletter is to help people get through the trials and tribulations of creating their own E-commerce site.  To manage your subscription or to unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter.

Get SalesCart STD Absolutely FREE
Here's your chance to get SalesCart STD for FREE or save $149 off of any SalesCart E-commerce Solution.  Its simple, just get your Web Hosting Provider to be a SalesCart Partner.
Learn how at:  http://www.salescart.com/free-reseller.htm 

SalesCart NOW!
Every SalesCart purchase now comes with optional 30 days of Free support-only-based Web Hosting.   SalesCart NOW! allows our support engineers to more easily troubleshoot problems related to your SalesCart site by allowing them to see it running on our web servers.  You can also use this time to get your shopping cart up and running before you take it live.

Total E-Commerce Integration Service
Maybe you want an E-commerce site but you don't have time to create it and get it up and running or maybe you want to initially have an expert design it and create it but you want to take it over later.  This is not unusual and can be a very cost-effective way to get your E-commerce site up and running as quickly as possible with a minimum of hassles.  ComCity, our parent company provides this service at very cost competitive prices starting at only $275.
Learn more here:  http://ecommerce.comcity.com 

Customer Step-out at Checkout
Did you know, that according to a recent survey by BizRate.com, over 55% of  customers abandon their shopping cart before completing the purchase.  Shopping cart abandonment is a major problem especially for shopping carts that require you to register before you can even start checking out, hide shipping charges, look totally different than the rest of your web site, or can't remember returning customers to name just a few problems.  Read more about this important article entitled Keeping Shoppers Hooked:  http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/promotions/articles/landing_shoppers.html.
Read our follow-up article on this here:  http://www.salescart.com/pressrelease/article070601.htm  

Never Underestimate Trust
One of the biggest things that many E-commerce shop designers forget about is TRUST.  There is no single more important issue for any E-commerce web site you design.  We buy things from people becomes we trust that they will deliver a good product to us, they will stand behind what they sell and they will help us with our problems no matter what.  Your E-commerce web site must be secure, all aspects of the design including the checkout must be consistent, and customer confusion must be held to a minimum.  BankRate wrote an excellent article a while ago on how you can make Trust a centerpiece of your Web site entitled Web site must inspire trust to yield sales, read the whole article here:  http://www.bankrate.com/bzrt/news/biz/Ecommerce/19990204.asp 

  

SalesCart enabled web site featured in TEEN MAGAZINE.

LolasLounge, featured in Teen Magazine, is a great Teen hangout to lounge around and chat with your buddies or visit the boutique where you'll find a "Will the Spider" monitor or Mouse cover for your computer. After you're done adding items to the Shopping cart go through the always friendly interface of SalesCart STD! After you're done shopping you're re-directed to the super cool and interactive Flash interface!  You'll need sound to get the full effect of this site. 

See the site at http://www.expression-ecommerce.com /topsites/welcome.htm.

The heart of any shopping cart, that also has a major affect on customer Trust, and can be an influential tool to reduce shopping cart abandonment is your checkout system.  One of the biggest often overlooked features of SalesCart is the ability to customize the checkout system.  SalesCart allows you to change the look and feel of your checkout system so that you can maintain the look and feel of the rest of your Web site.  When the checkout system looks like the rest of the Web site, stays on the same domain name as the rest of the web site, is secured with SSL, and is straightforward, you stand a much better chance of getting your customer to complete his order.  100% customer order retention will never happen but you have the power to increase the number of customers that finish and finalize checkout.

Take the time to add graphics, change colors and other things to customize your checkout pages.  Make backups of checkout pages before you start customizing just in case you mess up any coding.  With backups, you can start over with the original checkout pages if you make any mistakes.  You will see that virtually all of the Web sites we choose for HotSite have at least partially customized checkout pages.  Checkout pages that are systematic and cohesive with the rest of the site have dramatic professional appeal.

We look forward to telling you about the newest things next time..