Assembly Insight

Join the FB group, estorecoaching.com/fb to ask Elysia any questions!

Elysia Tsai started as a Certified Athletic Trainer helping injured athletes, physical therapy patients and fitness clients return to sport and achieve their goals. In 2001, she had an idea to improve the current balance board designs. It wasn't until 2004 after returning home from graduate school that she began this journey. After three years in developments they finally had a product line and started sales in 2007.

Listen to some of the critical decisions she made during her journey before you start!

Grasshopper - Get a toll free or local number with multiple extensions, call fowarding and now, even send business text messages without any new hardware. I even get faxes sent directly to my email. If you go to grasshopper.com/jason, you will immediately get a$75 credit towards any plan you select!

Material is a truly free Ecommerce platform coming out to the market, no transaction costs, monthly hosting fees. or plans.  Out of the box, all themes comes fully responsive and has a market place for additional add-ons.  This Ecommerce platform is built to provide you a great way to quickly build your website with a real-time editor.  

As of today (the day I posted this article), I have not received access to this Ecommerce platform, but I can't wait to check it out and tell you guys what I think.

• Social media is your best friend. It’s impossible to make it anywhere in the world of ecommerce without having a strong social media presence. Master Instagram, Facebook and whatever other new social channels are popping up, and be sure to provide your followers with unique, intriguing content. People will only want to follow you if you have something interesting to say, so think abstractly about how you can capture their attention!

Today on the show, I have James Lees from Advantage Learn, a South Africa startup with passionate educators who started teaching in 3 facility centers before offering online courses with no VC funding.  We'll get into his background and what it took for him to get started and his approach over the past year in launching his business and his plans to grow.

James talks about his journey on finding the technology behind Advantage Learn.

Launched "click to learn" as their minimal viable product, platform to allow users to find the course, make purchase and take the course - two course with multiple modules.

James talked about the "ecommerce triangle", Three Levers of Ecommerce: Price, Quantity and Conversion.

1. How much it cost people to purchase your product and convert?

Email marketing contains the highest conversion for his audience because their emails contains focused content - one course per email vs. slamming users with multiple courses/product in one newsletter.  

There have been many studies done before on this theory, that more choices are better for the consumer, but in actuality, people who were offered more choices, ie ice cream flavors or candy, purchased much less than people who offered fewer flavor or choices.

Wow, today is day 30, you are ready to launch.  I can’t believe how excited I am for you!

If you haven’t done so yesterday, notify your support team if you’re using a hosted solution to see if they need anything from you before you go live.  There might be a couple of settings that the both of you would need to sync up on before you go live.

If you’re using Wordpress, don’t forget to go to SETTINGS tab, click on READING and uncheck the Search Engine Visibility option so that search engines can start crawling.

We need to submit your sitemap, which is exactly what it sounds like, a map of your website, containing all the links that Google, Bing and other search engines can use to crawl your website.

Your ecommerce platform should give you the ability to generate this file for you to manually upload or give you a URL for you to submit to the different search engines. 

Google instructions: https://support.google.com/sites/answer/100283?hl=en

Bing instructions: https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/how-to-submit-sitemaps-82a15bd4

That is all you need to know and do for sitemaps.

The next step is to submit your domain to Google and Bing as a way of telling them, hey, I just launched my website, go check it out.   Its your way of notifying them, its not guaranteed, but another way to promote it.  Go to the two links below, add your URL, ie www.estorecoaching.com and click on ADD URL, that's it!

Google URL Submission: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?continue=/&pli=1

Bing URL Submission: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url

I just want to congratulate everyone who followed through from day 1 and stayed committed in building wealth for yourself and your family.  If for some reason you got stuck in one of the days, relisten to the show, sign up for the Facebook group on estorecoaching.com/fb to get help from me personally and sign up for the videos and downloads that complements the show on estorecoaching.com/build, which complements the #30DayEcommerceChallenge.

Go to estorecoaching.com/resource for a list of ALL the links used in the #30DayEcommerceChallenge and all the resources I have used to build my ecommerce business.

This is just the beginning, 1 out of the 3 pillars.  The next step is Marketing.

This is where we get traffic and convert users into customers.

Go to  estorecoaching.com/market.  to get notified once this comes out.

Next week, you will start hearing other entrepreneurs who have been absolutely crushing this and listen to how they got started and grow their online business.  Hey, if you’re one of them, drop me a note, I would love to interview you and feature you on the show.

Hey, congratulations once again, your journey is not over, its just the beginning and its going to get tougher before you get into a rhythm, but hang in there, it be well worth it.

I have had sites that been hacked into and there were times when I made an Wordpress or a plugin upgrade and it completely made my website useless because it was no longer compatible or I had the white screen that required me to do a complete rollback.  

Of course, if you go with a hosted solution, your provider will handle all of the upgrades -  but in either case, hosted or self-hosted platform, there are different files you’ll need to backup.  So don’t be foolish in thinking this would never happen to you, it actually might not, but when it does, you won’t be a nice person to be around you’ll be surprise how much you’re will to pay someone to fix it.  

Before I answer that, let me explain the two areas to your website, your database and your website files.  Your database is where all the data is stored like your product, customer and order information.  Website files are more like your theme and images.

Some people prefer to backup their entire website on a regular basis, but it might not be necessary if your images and theme haven’t change.  If you have a thousands of image, it’s a waste of space if it hasn't changed since the last time you backed it up.  In this case, just back up your database where you keep the product, customer or order information.  Some platforms even allows your to export specific areas like your orders and customer files only.

How often to back up is based on how comfortable you are on not having the information since your last backup.  So ask yourself, is it critical to have my customer or order information from last week or even yesterday?

Depending on the type of platform you are using, self-hosted vs hosted, there are different methods of backing up your site.

So if you are using a self-hosted platform like a WooCommerce using Bluehost to host your business, you are completely responsible for backing it up.  Even though your hosting company might make courtesy backups, it’s not guaranteed.  

When backing your self-hosted platform, you can either manually back it up or use a third party tool to automatically back your database and your website files on a set schedule.  

Here's a video that you can use to manually backup your Wordpress site from Bluehost.

Don’t forget to export your website and database files and save it to a Dropbox or your computer.  I love Dropbox in general for file storage, but as you scale, grow and have multiple team members, this is great way to keep things in sync.

For third party Wordpress tools, I highly recommend BlogVault to backup your WooCommerce site.  All you have to do is install the plugin, sign up for an account on their site, and they will perform daily backups every day.  I used it many many many  times to migrate my business to different hosting companies as I grew out of plan and it made my transition quick and seamless to the customers.  

If you are on a hosted platform like a Bigcommerce or Volusion, you’ll need to manually export the critical files yourself, some of platforms like a Sparkpay has scheduled exports.  

Your products, customers, orders and theme.  If you have a blog include those as well.

For you media files, connect to your server and transfer your media to your computer.

The next step after testing your customer workflow is to test your order processing workflow, which is how you would fulfill and process orders after an order has been placed on your Ecommerce platform.

Here’s a basic order workflow of what you might see when you first start out -

#1 Customer goes to your online store and makes a purchase.

#2 Both you and your customer should get some sort of order confirmation via email - we spoke about transactional emails that your Ecommerce platform should send out automatically back on episode 14.

#3 You or someone from your team would log on and go to your order tab, this is basically the hub of all the transactions.

#4 Your shopping cart would normally update the inventory level if that is something you track, otherwise, this is ignored.

#5 Your payment gateway will handle collecting the payment upfront before it hits your order tab.  If you provide other options such as term, COD or checks, you would either hold or release the order.

#6 When you’re reviewing your order, things like billing and shipping information, payment & shipping type is collected during checkout, but you might still want to review it.  Here’s kind of what I look for.

I still review my orders because my carrier or distributor will not ship to PO address and my platform does not prevent a user from entering a PO, though you can state that on your checkout page.

If there are any special customization required, I need to make sure I have proper instructions or artwork before going to the next step.

Look for potential fraud.  There are software out there that can  integrate with your platform to give you some sort of score to determine if its fraudulent.

Read the notes if any on the order.

#7 After reviewing your order, you’ll need to determine if you need can ship it, cancel and issue a refund or maybe even put it on hold.  Test each of these scenarios.

Set it to complete and enter the tracking number to complete the order.  Make sure both you and your customer gets the email shipping notification.

Set it to cancel and refund the order.  Your ecommerce platform might be able to communicate to your payment gateway at the same time so you dont have to manually issue the refund.  If not, you’ll need to manually refund it after you set it to cancelled/refund.

Sometimes you might have to create a partial refund.  Try doing that as well.

#8 If you can ship it, process the order by creating proper shipping labels and packaging.  Or if you dropship, send a notification for your manufacturer to fulfill and send out.

#9 Update the order to the appropriate status, for example, from NEW to PROCESSING or to SHIPPED and enter the tracking number. This would trigger the email notification.

#10 As the store owner, change the status of the order to CANCEL and SHIPPED.  As the customer, you will receive the respective emails for order cancellation and shipped products.    Be able to refund cancelled order from your payment gateway if your platform does not have the ability to do this

Hey, you're about to launch your Ecommerce website for the very first time and the last thing you want see happen is that you are getting tons of traffic but not getting any sales because you forgot to turn on your payment gateway to accept credit card payments.  We don't need fancy software when it comes to testing your website, just a plan.

I kept it simple by separating testing by the different pages on your website , what to test for each, from the homepage to what happens after checkout.

The general sales funnel of your Ecommerce website might look like this.

Preproduct page (like your home page or category page) → to your product page → cart page → checkout page → and finally, your order confirmation page

If you have a responsive theme, check your website on a mobile device such as a cell phone and tablet.  You should be able to navigate through your site easily and it should look different from what you see on your computer.  Everything should not be cramped into a little screen.

Check to make sure your Website compatible with multiple browsers; Chrome, Explorer, Firefox and Safaria - if you don’t have all these browsers on your computer, just do a search for “multiple browser testing”

Check that your navigation and menu items are working, you can see the different categories and click into them.

Search bar can show searched items.  If you type in your product name, your product should show up.  If you have suggestive search, that means, while you type, it will display your results and as you type more letters, it will quickly narrow down your search, similar to a Google search - make sure that works.

All your content pages are linked, ie About Us, Terms & Condition, Privacy Policy, Contact Us.  

If you have a image slider, make sure all the images and links to those images are working.

If you have certain widgets turned on, for example, new or featured items, it should display your products that fits those criteria.

Category page can filter and sort correctly.  Play with the different options and see if you can find a couple of specific products using the filters.

All category and subcategory has category images and that all product thumbnails are showing up.

Product pages are displaying correctly, check your product title and if you’re using your title as your URL, it is showing correctly.

All product variants are available and that you can select into (ie colors and sizes)

Images are optimized across web pages, meaning that if you product page only can display 2500 x 2500 pixel when enlarge, your image should not be 4000 x 4000 pixel and that your images are compressed.

Is your quantity discount calculating correctly (ie if you have a 10% discount when you order 5 products, is the cart showing 10% off when you have 5 products.

Adjust quantity of products to order. Can you order 1 or 100 items?  If you have a minimum set to 12, can users actually enter a value less than 12 for that particular product

If you have upsell or related to widget, are they showing additional products. Depending on your ecommerce platform, you might have to manually set the related or upsell products, on the other hand, some platforms have their own logic for selecting products into the widget.  Make sure it makes sense.

Other widgets such as shipping calculator.  See if it's calculating properly - you get different prices for different quantities.

Add to cart button can actually add a product into the cart.

Social share buttons on your product pages allows you to connect to the correct social media channel and allow you to share

Customer can add a review to the product

Can you remove a product and update quantity

Get a shipping quote by inputting your zip code

Go to your checkout page and see if your site is secured using your own SSL.

As a customer, add your billing and shipping information

Select different shipping options, eg if you have ground and 2 day, and that you can display different prices based on your selection

Use various payment methods if you have more than just credit card as a form of payment and complete several transactions. Use fake credit card information.

Confirm your Thank you page after your checkout.

As a customer, receive the order confirmation email

As the store owner, receive the order confirmation email and on your order page

If you have a form submit a message successfully

As an admin, see questions or comments submitted from the contact us page.

Your contact information is showing correctly, like your phone number and address.

Can a customer, create an account, login and log off and see status of order.

One thing I want you to keep in mind while testing, don’t be disappointed if something doesn’t work.  This will happen.  Fix the big issues that doesn’t allow you to launch first, the show stoppers like, not being able to accept cc payment or your SSL is not showing up on the checkout page.  

Ecommerce footer is very often the very last thing that one would consider in a design.  What ends up happening is checking out your competitors site and mimicking their design with your own links.  So let me give you some best practices when it comes to designing your footer, 9 trust elements and 9 non-trust elements you can add with a note on design.

Remember back on Day 13 we created the Privacy Policy and Terms & Condition pages.  This is where you need to put them.  These pages explain what your website collects and what the users agree to when they visit your website.

This can be a phone number, address and link to your contact us form. People trust companies with a phone number and address.

Add Social media icons like Pintrest, Facebook or Instagram as a way for visitors to see what other channels that they connect with you.  

Tip: Have you ever thought of why you see this at the footer instead of the header?  

The reason why we put this in the footer is so that you will not lose out on the traffic immediately before someone actually looks at your product or service.  You work so hard to earn or pay for the traffic, you don’t want them to click off so quickly. 

Twitter feed and Facebook widget is great to have if you’re very active on social media.

Your mission and value statement summarized into 1 or 2 sentences and a link to your about us page for a full story.  Great reminder to the person to why they are visiting your website.

Awards and certifications that you have acquired for your industry is another form of social proof that can build trust.  How many times have you been to a doctors office and saw rows and rows of recognition and awards.  Makes you feel like you’re in good hands right?

How about associations and memberships?  If you’re an alumni or sponsor certain events that your customer can relate to or perhaps them themselves have a particular affiliation with, they’re more than likely want to do business with you.  This includes chambers of commerce and industry associations. Any connection you make with a customer would just build trust and people want to buy from people who they can associate with.

If you can get your customers to say how your product and services have benefited them, this will definitely add value.  Not only can you put this in your footer, but also your emails, specific product pages and on your cart page.  A testimony might the way to get a customer who is on the fence to make that purchase especially if your product is a large ticket item.  

Testimonies is more effective if you can, get a picture of the person giving the testimony and a link back to their website or social media profile.  How many times have you read a testimony and wonder if it was fake or not?  

Shopping cart abandonment rates vary by site, but are generally between 55% and 75%.  Of consumers who dropped out of a purchase, 17% mentioned “concerns about payment security” as a reason.   SSL Certificate is a great way to ensure that your payment security is secure to your visitors.

Check your analytics and list your most popular subcategories here.  Also include things like your login or my account.  Some people include all the categories and subcategories listed out.  I don’t have any data to tell me which works better, a full or partial navigation, so you’ll need to test this for yourself.

Email signup forms – maybe your customer couldn’t find anything they like today, but they like your brand, give them the option to optin.  Better yet, give them a lead magnet like a first time customer discount or a valuable download specific to your industry that they can use.

I don’t see this used that often in the footer but sometimes it makes sense.  By the time someone gets to the bottom of your page and if they can’t find what they are looking for, give them an option to search.  Sure they can scroll back up, but sometimes users will go for the “x” to close the tab instead of search.

Mini gallery is great if you have images or your artwork or portfolio. You can add a widget to show tiny thumbnails of your product or projects.

Add your Logo/brand as another chance to reinforce your brand.  Maybe an alternate logo with text or a different shade.

If you like to run events, having a calendar of events is another option to promote them.  

If your website contains content such as images, videos or other media, make sure to include to copyright the material.

Sitesmaps is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.Your last ditch effort at your Call to action.  This can be to donate or subscribe to your podcast or whatever it might be.  By adding it to the footer, you can make sure that it will appear every where.

In short, a list of all your webpages used by search engines to index your website.

Your last ditch effort at your Call to action.  This can be to donate or subscribe to your podcast or whatever it might be.  By adding it to the footer, you can make sure that it will appear every where.

Two points I want to make to designing your footer.

Make sure your footer color contrasts from the rest of your website to give users a visual separation.  For example, if the background of your website is gray, you should have another color like blue or black.

The number of rows and columns you will have on your footer will depend on which elements you want to show on the footer.  For example, if you want to include your SSL certificate and a list of links like your privacy policy and terms and condition, you might only want one row and two columns.  If you decide to add an email signup form, you can add a 3rd column.  And if you decide to add more, you can add another row for your footer if you like.  First decide what elements you want before the design.