I created this blog at 1ShoppingCart™ Experts to teach you guys how to use what I think is a great piece of software to help simplify the order fulfillment process and reach customers.

You may have seen recent posts about when refunds are posted to your account, or how to make sure you’re not losing money on international orders. I’ve even written about how to help customers who want to change how often receive a recurring delivery to simplify the process.

As I thought about it, I realized that most of the tips and tricks I’ve come across with 1ShoppingCart™ with my clients relate to specific problems.

It seems to me that you guys should be asking the questions that you want to see answered here on this blog. I want to help you make your website as profitable as possible, but that only comes with knowing your specific concerns.

So, fire away and let me know what aspects of setting up an account or keeping it running are giving you a headache. Consider me aspirin that comes in several forms:

1. If it’s a quick question, you might see me pop into the comments to address it as soon as I get to reading it. You don’t have to worry about long waits.
2. For more involved processes, you may see the the answer as an upcoming blog post. We’ll be sure to let the asker know and credit them in the post!
3. If you need a full-scale consultation to make sure that your business can go from scratch to fully up-and-running, you want to contact me through this site so I can assess your needs.

Three choices and whichever you choose, you’ll get rapid responses about your 1ShoppingCart™ needs from a leader in the field.

Let’s get started: What do you want me to write about and answer just for you?

Yes that’s right… Fire them today! Ok, maybe not today but I bet you could in a week or so.

Let’s take a look at a few things on your site.

Page views are up on your site equipped with 1shoppingcart. Your 1ShoppingCart is optimized and looks good. Your search engine optimization strategy is working full hilt. And yet no one’s buying your product.

As you may know I work with clients like Evan Marc Katz of evanmarckatz.com, Dick Mills of pitching.com, and David Wygant of davidwygant.com, who is the #1 dating coach on the web whose products continue to fly off the shelves. And the list goes on.

These are not isolated clients either; I’m known for bringing in revenue to sites like these at a rate well in excess of where they were before I came in.

The difference between these sites above and a site that doesn’t perform is simple: A long-form sales letter that works.

You need to sell people in a way that makes them want to click through to your check-out and buy your products and services.

If I’m preaching to the choir, then I apologize. But so many people don’t realize that the value of a well-written sales letter pays dividends months and years down the road.

In fact, along with setting up your website properly, it could be the most important investment you make.

So what do you do once you have the salesletter written?

Find someone on Elance? Overpay a webmaster to put it up? What fonts do you use to increase readability? What color do you use for a headline to maximize your conversions? What about your sub-headlines? And the list goes on.

These days, finding quality freelance webmaster can be a pain. You might see a sales letter sample from a Craigslist ad or a freelance jobs board posting that stands out, but you’ll be paying hundreds of dollars, and in most cases for the high quality work thousands of dollars.

I’m not here to tell you how you should be spending your money, as each site owner and 1shoppingcart user goes about their business a little bit differently.

What I will say though, is you don’t need a fancy webmaster if you can find the right program that helps you build a sales letter website on your own. That’s were I come in.

I built a WordPress plugin that quickly and easily builds a salesletter for your website. And the best part is, everything in the plugin – from the colors, font, layout, etc. has been tested since 2001.

And just for you, my 1ShoppingCart subscribers and readers, I am knocking $60 off the regular price.

You can see my wordpress salesletter theme called ‘Instant Salesletter Websites Creator‘ by clicking the link above.

There has been a lot of talk about setting up and tweaking 1ShoppingCart so that your site’s potential revenue can be maximized. Before worrying about that, you need to make sure you’ve got the right sales letter, or else they’ll never see your shopping cart. So make sure you check out my Instant Salesletter Websites Creator so you too can easily create high converting salesletters for your business.

Everyone is always looking for ways to increase their marketing footprint, brand awareness, and conversions for their business. And as you know, there is definitely no shortage of strategies, tips, gurus, and everything under the sun out there telling you about what works best.

One of the most overlooked and underutilized strategies is also something that your customers see each and every time you send something out, your signature!

Every auto-responder and broadcast you send out contains your signature, and you’d be surprised how many people leave this as the default and miss out on another opportunity to connect with their customers!

The default signature looks like the following: (This is my example)

Everything Web Based, LLC
14241 NE Woodinville-Duvall Road, #398
Woodinville, WA 98072

All it has is your company information. You should be using this space to add material to decrease your liability and increase your sales. I mean, a lot of times you send out quality information with no call to action.

This is good, as it increases the value of the relationship with your customer. However, it doesn’t increase sales. So how can you use your signature as a natural way to drive the customer to sales with coming across as overly “salesy?”

It’s easy… Just follow the steps below.

Things that all signatures should have:

1. Links To Your Products
2. Customer Support Information
3. Copyright Information
4. Company Name and Address (Required By Law)
5. Unsubscribe Message

Breaking down each section above, it should look like the following:

1. Links To Your Products

This should be the first thing people see. You should close your email message and then put in links to your products. I personally like the following headline:

YOUR NAME Personal Resources and Products:
—————————————
Headline:
Link To Your Product:

Headline:
Link To Your Product:
—————————————-

2. Customer Support Information

This is important. You want to take care of your clients and be sure to let them know you are there for them. This is what I call a ‘feel good’ message. This lets your clients know you are a real company and there for them!

Have a question? Click the link below to contact us directly. We are here for you!

Link To Your Support Page

3. Copyright Information

This is to cover your material so no one copies it and posts it as their own. Below is an example I use.

All material contained in this email is provided for informational purposes only. This email is protected by copyright, 2010, Your Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any portion of this email is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of Your Company.

4. Company Name and Address

This is required by law (which is why it’s the shopping cart default). You must include your company information in all emails.

5. Unsubscribe Message

As you know the bottom of all emails have unsubscribe links. I always put a “warning” unsubscribe message because the last thing you want is someone to unsubscribe. A great example is below.

*WARNING!* By clicking the link below, you will be permanently unsubscribed from all lists. Proceed with caution.

A Quick Tip: Leave 2 lines of space at the end of the message so your signature flows with the end of the email and looks natural.

Bonus Tip: You could also add an About The Author section. This would just have a quick bio to gain credibility with your clients.

Here is a great example of what my signature looks like:

Tyler Sorensen’s Personal Resources and Products
————————————————————————
Learn how to setup a fully automated affiliate program in 5 days:

http://www.1shoppingcartexperts.com/affiliate-setup.html

Print hundreds of invoices and packing slips in less than 15 minutes:

http://www.1shoppingcartexperts.com/rapid-printing.html

Have a 1ShoppingCart™ question or need help:

http://www.1shoppingcartexperts.com/help.html

If you are sick and tired of unreliable Webmasters visit:

http://www.1shoppingcartexperts.com/webmaster.html

————————————————————————

Have a question? Talk live to one of our customer reps by clicking the ‘Live Support’ button in the lower right corner on the following page.

http://www.everythingwebbased.com/support.

All material contained in this email is provided for informational purposes only. This email is protected by copyright, 2010, Everything Web Based, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any portion of this email is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of Everything Web Based, LLC.

Everything Web Based, LLC
14241 NE Woodinville-Duvall Road, #398
Woodinville, WA 98072

*WARNING!* By clicking the link below, you will be permanently unsubscribed from all lists. Proceed with caution.

————————

To create your new signature in 1ShoppingCart™ follow the steps below:

1. Login to your 1ShoppingCart™ account
2. Scroll over “My Account” in the main menu and click “Contact Profile”
3. Scroll down and enter your new signature under the “Custom Signature Files” section
4. 
5. Click “Save Changes”

Once your signature is approved you will receive an email stating that your new 1ShoppingCart™ Signature has been approved. Next, be sure to log back in to your account and scroll over “My Account”, and click on “Contact Profile.” Then scroll down to your new signature that was approved and be sure to set this as the “Default Signature.”

And just like that you have a new signature at the bottom of all your auto-responder and broadcast emails!

As I work on my and my clients websites I use this one incredible tool EVERY TIME.

It’s so easy to use, and best of all… it doesn’t cost a single penny.

We’ve all done the quick, how does my site look in the couple different browsers I have on my computer check, and if you don’t do this, start NOW!

Well most of us only have a couple or few browsers on our computer, and having a quick to check ALL browsers is out of the question. Well, there’s a tool out there that helps  solves this…

It’s called Adobe BrowserLab.

When you go to this website, put in your site’s URL and it will automatically give you a screenshot of what your website looks like in ALL browsers (e.g. IE, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, etc.).

Not only will it give you what your website looks like in the current version of a browser but it will show you what it looks like in past versions as well. Quickly comparing IE8 and IE7 is now a snap.

You will be amazed at the things you will find when looking at your website in different browsers. And this isn’t just from a “look pretty” standpoint, you could actually be losing sales because something doesn’t show up correctly in one of the browsers.

But the best feature, is the ability to test different resolutions. People have their screen sizes set many different options, and checking those manually is a HUGE pain. This tool gives you the option to check different resolutions, which can be a big time saver.

There’s even more subtle options, such as checking to see what happens to your site when a user has javascript or Flash disabled. (And yes, there are people who visit your site with these disabled)

So save yourself some time, and visit the site below to check out your website in different browsers. You’ll have to setup an account if you don’t already have one, but don’t worry… it’s free!

https://browserlab.adobe.com

One of the biggest flaws 1ShoppingCart™’s recurring billing system has is the ability to change the duration (how often someone is billed) once a new recurring order is placed.

Sure you could push out the date, but what happens when someone wants to change the service, or a better example, goes from billing every 30 days to every 60 days?

For example:

One of our clients sells vitamins. Every 30 days a client is billed and shipped a new bottle and each bottle contains 60 pills because you take 2 a day.

Lets say a client named Bob orders a bottle of vitamins every 30 days. Bob forgets to take a few pills every month so he starts to build a surplus.
After a while he calls up and asks if we can pushout his next order. That’s easy, we just push out their next bill date in his recurring options.

(In 1ShoppingCart™ it’s the “Date Next” field, which is the next processing due date)

But what if Bob wants a bottle shipped every other month because he only takes one pill a day? (Bob isn’t very good at following directions)

This gets a little tricky and most of the time our client would re-enter all of Bob’s information and create a whole new order.

This is such a pain and waste of time. I mean, to do this you have to write down a lot of information: billing name, address, shipping information, product information, credit card information, etc. and then enter it all back in.

We thought there had to be a better way. And there is…

Here’s all you need to do to change Bob’s order in the system.

1. Login to your 1ShoppingCart™ account
2. Scroll over ‘Orders’ in the main menu and click ‘Recurring Orders’
3. Search the recurring orders and find the clients account
4. Click the link under the “Charge Status” column (This will bring up their previous completed order)
5. Click “Create Recurring Event” that is located in the top links
6. Edit the information accordingly and be sure to check the “Select” box at the end of the row.
7. Click ‘Create Recurring Order’ to save the information

OPTIONAL

Now you will have 2 recurring events for that client so if you only want one recurring event be sure to go back and delete out the original.

That’s it… Easy wasn’t it?

I just got a question from a client and instantly thought of my readers. The question is a simple one to answer and yet, no one knows about it.

You see my client sells Chocolate and when someone goes to order most customers want to order more than 1. So how do we set it up for someone to order 2, 3, 5, 10 or even 100 chocolates in one order so it’s seamless for the customer?

Sure they could go to the order page and change the quantity themselves. But don’t you think that you will lose sales by doing this?

I sure do.

Now I haven’t tested this personally but I can tell you from my experience that you are losing sales if your clients have to add the quantity manually because the client will forget or will see the price and back out.

So here’s a quick fix for this solution.

At the end of the product URL to the order form all you need to do is add the following:

&qty=2

The number at the end is the quantity you would enter. In the example above I am adding a total of 2 products to the order. If I wanted to add 10, all I would do is change the 2 to a 10.

So here’s an example.

To order just 1 of my Affiliate Program Setup Packages I would just use the 1-step checkout URL and it looks like this:

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/SecureCart/SecureCart.aspx?mid=E919F4C9-ADAF-4A66-9807-63E1E74FD68E&pid=002508019ecbde7ccc9614e63d8710fb&bn=1

Then if I wanted to add 2 or more my link would look like this:

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/SecureCart/SecureCart.aspx?mid=E919F4C9-ADAF-4A66-9807-63E1E74FD68E&pid=002508019ecbde7ccc9614e63d8710fb&bn=1&qty=2

Now, if you have a programmer you can do a drop down list where clients can choose their quantities and it would automatically add that many to their order.

It’s that simple! Talk to you soon.