Avactis Store Styles (Templates) created for the Avactis Shopping Cart

Why absolutely every smaller business owner MUST maintain an up-to-date Web site today.

• 1) It extends every other form of marketing that small businesses are already doing.
• 2) People today use internet search engines like they used to use phone books.
• 3) When done properly, it yields the very best ROI of any marketing media available.

The internet is not only here to stay, the importance of e-commerce and e-marketing is only going to continue to grow.
When it comes to small businesses effectively marketing, the importance of an up-to-date, properly developed and marketed Web site will also continue to grow.

You as a business owner do not have much time to impress your potential customer.

How your site looks represents your product.
No matter how great your product, your site helps define not only that but you.
Are you professional?
Do you cut corners to make an extra buck?
Have you cut corners because you can not afford to be in business?

"Cheap doesn't mean good. It means cheap. The Web is not a case of "build it and they'll come." It's a case of build it, promote the heck out of it, provide entertaining, ever-changing information, and they may come -- and then they may stay." (thank you Sitepoint Tribune #387 for this very true statement)

The internet shop owner does not have the investment in real property in order to sell a product. It is the easiest of businesses to open.

If you are a smart business person you WILL invest in a good professional looking site. That investment can come from you learning what it takes to build your own site, you can buy a ready made style from here or you can hire some other professional for design.

Since I have been working on store styles for the Avactis Shopping Cart I have begin to notice how many very amateur sites that are tossed up by owners who think just any old design works.

It works in one case scenario. You better have the only product of its kind or your product better be cheaper than any of the other millions on the market just like it. Then as all internet business owners know ... being found can be a grueling challenge.

I was staggered also to discover how many sites have terrible shopping carts. If anything puts a damper on an impulse sale it is to go through a long buying process that somehow malfunctions and all of the items you have collected vanish into the ether.

Much of the time internet buying is impulse. When that impulse strikes ... you as a business owner better be ready with a fully operational cart THAT WORKS to nab the sale.
Is that to much for a customer to ask?
As a prolific consumer myself ... I don't think so.

This is only 1 typical example that happened to me recently.
A year ago I happened onto a site that had beads that I wanted for projects in the future. I spent an hour picking and choosing. The total was nothing to sneeze at a little over $100. I clicked the checkout button, entered my information (which required me to sign up as a member)and clicked confirm.
I was greeted with a page that said there was an error with the processing. Nothing that told you what the error was or how to correct it. My cart was gone with all of my order.
I book marked the page thinking the business would contact me.
They did not.

I forgot about the order until the other day when I ran across the link and checked it out. "Oh My great beads" ... let me order. You guessed it same thing happened AGAIN only this time a year later. That triggered my remembering the incident from the past. So this time I wrote the company (turns out a small mom and pop business). They had no record on their server of the sale and according to the CC company that managed their cart there was no sale either. I of course copied the cart page with all of the information so we did have that.

The moral of the story is ... I am but one person to have this malfunction with this ONE COMPANY. How many others had the same problem and the business owner simply did not know it? How many customers bother to write you if their sale does not go through properly? Most important HOW MANY customers remember not to come back and delete you from their favorites list?

This is not simply my opinion it is a fact.

• The Avactis Shopping Cart is THE BEST shopping cart available on the market today.
• It is a software package that allows you to open an online store on the Internet immediately.
• You can purchase a license here for $199.
• You get either a $49.95 credit toward a Store Style (Template) or 1 year FREE hosting with your license purchased here.
• The Avactis store style (template) is a full site design, custom created for the Avactis shopping cart.
• The Store Style is a directory of everything needed to add a custom design to your installed Avactis Shopping Cart.
• That install is as simple as uploading the directory structure in the zip file you purchase and changing 2 lines in a text file.
• Your site design is then installed and ready to add your own product.

• ANY web template can be converted into an Avactis Store Style (template)
• Web templates can be purchased from a few dollars to hundreds.
• You need a pretty good understanding of HTML, CSS and a graphics program like PhotoShop to do that.
• Once you have your design the Avactis Shopping Cart needs to be integrated into that design.

Things you may not have thought about:

• Is your time better spent selling your merchandise or designing a new website?
• Is $199 a reasonable price to pay to have a ready to operate store tomorrow?
• Would you prefer to pay hundreds of dollars for a designer to make a custom site just for you?
• Do you have the time to wait?
• If you have the time to wait do you really want to wait?
• To the savvy business owner time is money or the loss of it.