SSL For Ecommerce

01 Sep 2010 | By admin

Building an eCommerce store without SSL would be like opening up shop in a war zone—no matter the quality of the product you are selling, customers won’t feel safe doing business with you. When making an online transaction, customers need to know that their sensitive information is being transmitted securely to a trusted web site. If web users have apprehensions about sending their credit card information to your web site, your potential customers may go elsewhere, and sales will be lost. SSL certificates provide a way to build trust between you and your customers by securing transactions and signifying that your site has been deemed trustworthy by an online trust authority.

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and has been the standard for secure internet transactions since 1994. SSL is a protocol for encrypting the data sent between a user’s web browser and the web site he is visiting. Normally, information sent from a web browser to a website is sent in plain text, easily read by anyone who happens to be listening. By using SSL, you can provide your potential web customers with peace of mind, knowing that when they type in their credit card information and click “submit,” their information will be transmitted safely and securely to your web site to be processed.

The benefit of SSL is two-fold. First, secure certificates which make SSL possible must be obtained through issuing authorities such as VeriSign and Thawte. These authorities will only issue certificates to companies they find legitimate and trustworthy. Through the issuing process customers can be assured that your web site is trustworthy because a trusted authority has given its stamp of approval. Second, by using SSL, data is sent in an encrypted form, so it cannot be easily deciphered by anyone but the intended recipient.

Who Needs SSL?

Any web site that sends or receives sensitive information such as credit card numbers should use SSL. All sections of the web site need not be secure, only the pages transmitting the sensitive data.

How It Works (The Technical Details)

1. A customer comes to a web site and begins the check-out process. The check-out process will transfer the customer to a secure page indicated by https:// in the URL and a padlock or key icon in the browser, signifying that the connection is secure.

2. The web site sends the customer’s browser a digital certificate, and the customer’s browser checks to make sure the certificate is authentic.

3. The customer’s browser and the web site exchange encryption keys whichallow them to transmit encrypted data that can only be decrypted with these keys.

4. An SSL connection is established, and the browser and server begin communicating securely.

How to Get Started Using SSL on Your Web Site Contact your webmaster and request a CSR (Certificate Signing Request). The CSR is a block of unreadable text that you will need in order to get a secure certificate. Go to a trusted authority (We recommend www.verisign.com or www.thawte.com.) and purchase a secure certificate. During the check-out process, you will be asked for your CSR. After you have been verified by the issuer, you will be sent a digital certificate. Give this certificate to your webmaster to install. (Note: Your site must have a unique IP address to use SSL. If you do not know if you have a unique IP, contact your webmaster.)

Category: ECommerce  Tags: ,  One Comment

Creating A Client-capturing Website

31 Aug 2010 | By admin

Writing web copy is different from writing other material because people read websites differently than they do books, magazines or print ads. You’ve got about 5 seconds, tops, to catch your website visitor’s attention. And if what they read bores or confuses them, they’ll click that mouse button faster than you can say, “But wait…!”

Yet most people don’t focus on the content of their site. Instead, they happily spend tons of money on fancy images and flashy graphics, thinking (mistakenly) that that’s what their visitors want. Au contraire, mon amie.

Your website visitor is pretty much interested in one thing – Do you have the solution they’re looking for? And they’re not going to find the answer to that question in the graphics. Nor is it likely to come from material written by someone inexperienced in writing website copy.

The truth is there is no factor more powerful for your bottom line than your copy. A well-done site truly can help grow your business. Use this checklist to see if your site content has what it takes to turn your visitor’s interest into action.

* Does it clearly identify your audience? This is one secret you don’t want to keep. Your visitor wants to know whether they belong there – or not.

* Does it have a bold, attention-grabbing headline that points toward the challenge your visitor is facing (and that you solve)?

* Does it create emotional connection with your visitor? It’s crucial to begin building a relationship with potential clients right from the outset.

* Is the content results-based and benefit-oriented? You want your visitor to have an immediate sense of the results they’ll get from working with you.

* Is the writing style conversational? It’s much easier to feel connection when the “voice” you’re reading is friendly and informal, rather than stilted and impersonal.

* Do you tell your visitor’s story – from the challenge they’re facing to you as solution? The whole thing is about them, not you (even your About Me page!).

* Does each page make the most of short, engaging writing to capture and keep their attention (not more than 350-500 words for Home page)? Every word should count.

* Do you have a clear objective for each page? Don’t leave your visitor guessing about what action you want them to take next. Spell it out and give them a plainly visible call-to-action button to click.

* Is the layout easily readable? Screen viewing tires the eye quickly. Use dark text on light background, colorful (but not dominating) images, bullet lists and short paragraphs to break up the text and lessen the eye strain.

* Do you have an opt in box with an enticing freebie to elicit their contact information (so you can maintain the connection you established with your website)?

* Do you maximize your use of testimonials? Real-life snippets of how you’ve helped others are not only deeply personal (there’s that sense of connection again), but also excellent vehicles for demonstrating the specific results you offer.

Category: website  Tags:  One Comment

Mass Email Software

30 Aug 2010 | By admin


Email marketing campaigns are very popular these days. People use this vital marketing tool efficiently to market their business or products. Moreover, email services are used to hold your customers and attract new ones. If you are inexperienced businessmen even then you need to add email marketing tool in your tool kit to popularize your business and products to achieve sales leads. However, sending mass email could be headache if you do not use mass mail software. If you are using free web based email accounts to carry account your marketing campaign then just imagine how much efforts you need to input to send personalized emails to your target audience. And, if you use that “send to many” or you send emails to your mailing lists then there are much chances that your audience either do not open your mails or the server of ISP blacklist your email id.

So, to carry out an email marketing campaign, you must hire professional bulk email services or mass email software. There are a lot of such software available in market on internet. Even some websites allow you to send bulk emails via their gateway and some software enable you to send your bulk emails or carry out email marketing campaign through your desktop and even from your own website gateway.

Nevertheless, due to increased safety by the internet service providers several emails do not pass through their email filters and, hence are reported as spam or junk mails. In such cases your campaign can simply go waste. You will waste a lot of money on carrying out your campaign and in return you get nothing. To avoid such situations, you must only buy trusted and reputed mass email software.

So what you should look for, while purchasing bulk email software –

1) Only buy software from a reputed developer- your campaign is very essential investment that has the potential to bring you awesome sale leads and therefore, you must not compromise on the email software. So, you should go for software which is developed by a reputed software developing firm. This software must give you easy to use interface and should be efficient enough to handle your customers contact information, mailing list, automated and personalized replies to the emails / queries. Moreover, there are software available in markets that give you analysis of your email campaigning results and also delivery reports, etc. Buying such software is of course a better investment.

2) Use customized and personal mass mailing service or software- some businesses uses combined or reseller versions of such services to save the cost incurred. No doubt such services provide you cheap email marketing medium but they create a negative impact on your target audience. Therefore you must buy independent bulk email software for effective results and full control.

3) Use advanced software according to your needs- there are a lot of software available in market but you must conduct some research and the buy the one that suits your needs. Advanced software allows you integrating email campaigns and different information software. They work the best to customize your campaigns for your clientele and target audience.

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