Easy Way to Build an Online Store

You’ve got products or services you know will delight your customers. In fact, you’ve been selling locally for awhile now and are convinced you could sell like crazy online, too. Now, if only there was a way to get up and running on the Internet with an eCommerce site that looks good and works perfectly.

What’s holding you back? Is it the fact that you have no design experience and fear that anything you create will look amateurish and might not even function correctly. That’s going to ruin your reputation and send customers away for good. Getting shopping cart code up and running? Ha! That’s got disaster written all over it.

What you need is more of a turn-key solution with proven code and the flexibility to easily customize it to reflect your brand. Well, now there is just such a solution and you can even try it for free before you make any commitments.

It all starts with a library of professionally designed templates. No cheesy graphics or “I just got started with HTML” look. If you have a template you would like to use, you do have the option of doing that too. I’m guessing that you are just getting started in eCommerce and would be best off choosing from one of the pre-build templates that look like you are reputable and serious about selling online.

Let’s say you are selling your own creative T-shirts. You know that offering just one size or color limits sales. With this eCommerce solution, you can give your shoppers a choice by offering various sizes, colors, men’s or women’s fit, and even up-sells like custom slogans. Shoppers get to see what the finished product will look like and cost before they place their order.

How about other products like artwork, jewelry, stuffed animals, photography, specialized electronics, cell phone covers or unique tools? You can showcase your products with multiple images and views, including a magnifying glass so that potential buyers can get a close up view.

By the way, this solution also works for services like lawn service and gardening, ebooks or other digital goods, and subscriptions. If you’ve got it to sell, you can get it online quickly and easily.

You also know that many customers are now shopping from their tablets and smartphones instead of traditional desktop computers. No problem. You can have a mobile-ready version of your store up and running in minutes. It’s just an extension of the standard eCommerce tools. You can also get instant order alerts from your store while you are on the go. The mobile notifier for iPhone gives you instant notification when orders are placed.

This particular solution goes far beyond simple shopping cart software and a standard website. You also get business tools to let you easily manage orders, so you can track status updates from receipt of payment all the way to order shipment. Customers can even register for an account and look up their own orders.

There’s a lot more to this, too. You can capitalize on social media by offering unique promotions on blogs, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Create your own affiliate program to expand your reach. Use autoresponders for targeted email campaigns to your best prospects. Offer discount coupons or free shipping. Whatever it takes to bring in those sales.

Are you ready to find out if this simple but sophisticated eCommerce solution will work for you? There’s no risk involved. Simply sign up for a 30 day free trial and see for yourself . If you like the way it looks and works, you can then decide to keep going with a monthly or yearly subscription. No contracts and no long term commitments. Plenty of experts available to help you along the way, although you may not even need them.

Point to Point Lines Connect Dealerships

Car dealerships, real estate companies, medical centers, radio stations and fine restaurants all have something in common. They're often big enough and successful enough to have more than one physical location. What they need is a way to tie two or more locations together as if they are one company. That's what point to point lines and MPLS networks do.

A common scenario is the successful car dealership that has an opportunity to buy out another dealership with similar or competing vehicles. Common ownership has strategic advantages, but consolidation of common functions offers an opportunity for cost savings. Back office operations such as accounting, marketing, IT, and so on are ripe for centralizing and right sizing to a level that can efficiently serve all locations. But this only works if each location can be served as well or better than with an on-site staff.

With so many functions now electronically data driven, there is real opportunity to standardize on computer based systems for everything from sales to accounting to inventory management to maintenance records to Web sites to telecommunications. You can set up similar networks and workstations at each location. But how to you tie everything together?

Chances are that you already use T1 lines for PBX telephone service and/or dedicated Internet access now. There is another type of T1 line, called a point to point T1 line, that is perfect for connecting two locations. As you may have guessed, the point to point T1 line is a direct connection from one location to another. Usually, these locations are in the same town or geographical area. But they don't have to be. You can have one point in New York and another in Los Angeles and it works the same way.

What's important about point to point T1 lines is that they are a dedicated service. In other words, you have exclusive and private use of the connection. It's as if there is a wire stretched between your locations, and in a way there is. Because there is no bandwidth sharing, point to point links are inherently more secure than just connecting two places over the Internet. For really sensitive data, such as your customer or business records, you can choose to encrypt the data during its transit from point to point.

Point to point T1 lines can be used for more than just data exchange. Radio stations use these as program lines between their studio and transmitter. They can also be used to transfer programs and commercials between stations with common ownership.

Can point to point lines be used to connect more than one location? Sure. You can connect a P2P (Point to Point) T1 line from every location to every other location. As you get more locations, this can get rather expensive. You are probably better served to organize your WAN (Wide Area Network) in a hub and spoke arrangement with headquarters acting as the hub to provide connectivity to all the branch offices or other locations.

For mesh connectivity to many locations, another popular service is MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching. This is a private shared network that guarantees bandwidth and connectivity. You typically use a T1 line at each location to provide access to the network. The MPLS provider then sets up paths that define which locations can talk to which other locations. There are other users on the network also, but you will not be impacted by them the way you can be on the Internet.

Is Point to Point T1 or MPLS service right for your operation? The best way to find out is to compare service options and prices and then select the connection scheme that gives you the right connectivity, bandwidth, privacy and cost.