open source e-commerce tools – free and online

Looking for an e-commerce solution to help you sell your stuff online? Here’s a web page that highlights 16 open source e-commerce tools — including a popular New Zealand-developed e-commerce tool for WordPress blogs.

web page make-over!

Expert and real-world advice here on how to make a landing page really work on your website.

The experts at the Copyblogger site take a sales web page of a struggling small business and give specific advice on how to improve it and attract purchases from it.

Tips on everything from the text and images on the page to shopping cart placement and getting the right emotional hook. You’ll learn a lot from these guys.

seven key steps to keeping afloat in a recession

Helpful article from the NZ Herald here looking at how to survive a recession, with tips on cashflow, debt restructuring, customer care, staff and stakeholder communication, and more.

And also from the Herald, marketing in tough times – how to avoid waste.

And from the National Business Review: ‘In a prolonged recession, what is the best strategy for business survival?‘

hello, hello – internet phoning for small business

Two new, free phone services announced recently hold heaps of promise (and cost-savings) for small businesses.

Yellow (the Yellow Pages people) has announced free Skype calls to any of its listed businesses.

(If you haven’t tried Skype, it is really dead simple to use and includes inbuilt video calling. Download the free Skype software and then all you need is a web cam and a mic, plus headphones if you don’t want anyone else to hear the person you are talking to. Visit Skype here.)

And, in the U.S (though not yet in N.Z), Google has announced a service that offers dirt cheap calls but best of all its sweet range of fancy high-tech features — such as a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones; a central voicemail inbox that accessible on the web; text transcriptions of voice messages; and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail.

A video explaining Google Voice is here:

make it easy for the customer and make it cheap

Some good lessons here for small online businesses from one of the superstars of online trading: Amazon is making healthy profits in hard times. Its motto: Make it easy for the customer and make it cheap.

As well as value, Amazon also offers convenience and greatly improved delivery times.

how to make your online and offline business gel

Barkers Men’s Clothing’s two-year-old e-commerce website has boosted business and also nicely complemented the business of its 26 ‘bricks and mortars’ stores. It’s a good little case study:  Get the full story here.

Highlights

• They try to ensure the homepage mirrors the look of the shops.
• They research similar online businesses to find good online business models.
• Google Analytics plays an important role in monitoring the site’s effectiveness.

six ways to make Web 2.0 work for your business

Six ways to effectively use the five main groups of Web 2.0 and social media tools in business have been detailed in a report by McKinsey.

A bit dry and jargon-heavy to read but full of good, informative stuff.

For example: appeal to people’s egos and needs—not just their wallets!

Boost the reputation of participants in relevant communities, reward enthusiasm and acknowledge the quality and usefulness of contributions. Research has found that when prizes for contributions were handed out at prominent company meetings, contributions were far higher than when the awards were given in less-public forums.

want to get into digital publishing?

Digital publishing – what is it about and how to get into it? Seminars in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch next month will explain all.

The Digital Publishing Forum will provide insight into what is happening internationally and in New Zealand, and guest speakers from the industry will explain what they do and how they do it.

The seminar is spookily well-timed! The newly launched e-book reader Kindle 2 (from Amazon) is getting heaps of positive press and looks set to be a huge seller, even more so than the Kindle 1. It could do for e-book sales what the iPod did for sales of online music.

E-books currently make up less than 1 percent of the total book market, so there’s tons of opportunity to get on board early in this sector and develop an innovative business model.

One company that has done this is New Zealand’s BookHabit, an online book store where writers can upload their own books to sell, and readers can download the first chapter for free.

10 resources for writing an e-business plan

Make a 2009 new year’s pledge to get more organised! Here’s a good list of resources from Massey University to help you write an e-business plan.

But what, you ask, is the point of an e-business plan, and why will it help my business? Get the good oil here.

how to do business with Aussies

Harden up is the short answer, apparently! The longer answer is the “five Cs” – cash, clarity, commitment, capability and connections, according to an NZ Trade and Enterprise survey. Find out more here.