Online sales has been the key to success for many firms like Amazon.com, Zappos.com and, eBay—however online sales have also been a lucrative endeavor for traditional brick and mortar companies like Barnes & Noble and Home Depot.
If you are trying to launch your online store, it's critical to make the correct decisions right from the start. Planning your online catalog, designing the appearance of your eCommerce store, and creating a solid foundation to manage transactions are all critical to the success of your eCommerce project. With expert guidance from the team at NLI Media Group, your project launch will be both exciting and financially rewarding.
Just like physical retail locations are carefully designed to maximize sales and provide a positive experience for shoppers, eCommerce stores must also be designed with the user experience in mind. Our team of experts includes media consultants, developers, designers and project managers. Each member of your eCommerce team brings a specialized set of skills that will insure that your user's online store experience is second-to-none.
Many make the mistake of simply designing an eCommerce site, putting it on a server, and waiting. Launching an online sales endeavor requires a serious marketing campaign to insure that users find your site. Online traffic generation is not an afterthought with NLI Media Group. From our very first project meeting, we'll be discussing how your new eCommerce site will generate traffic, and how that traffic will be "captured," so that site visitors turn into customers.
The Components of an eCommerce Web Site
eCommerce web sites are more complex than regular business sites. The sites must be flexible enough to handle multiple catalog items—some of which may have multiple options (colors, sizes, etc.). Online stores must also be able to handle frequent changes in price, track quantities in stock, and provide an easy administrative interface for the eCommerce store owner to run the web site.
NLI Media Group eCommerce Web Sites all have the following components:
Online Catalog: Your product catalog is the heart of your online store. You will enter products through a password protected administrative back-end interface. For each product entry in the catalog, there is an image, text description, summary, and pricing information. When the catalog items are displayed to the shopper, strong images trigger the users' interest in items in the catalog.
Online Product Search: Making it convenient for your eCommerce customers to find what they are looking for is an important component of online success. Every NLI Media Group online store includes a catalog search which allows users to pull up products by searching for terms that may be included in the product title or description.
Featured Products: The ability to put products on sale or feature specific items is important to every eCommerce site manager. NLI Media Group eCommerce sites let you select products to be included on the front page of the site, likely increasing the sales of these items.
Product Detail Page: Internet shoppers are often looking for specifics while shopping. Product detail pages provide all the details a site visitor might need to make a purchasing decision. Often the product detail page can include several images of the product, a detailed description, and size and color information.
Shopping Cart: The shopping cart metaphor is widely accepted and understood by online shoppers. Most eCommerce sites use some type of shopping cart and most online store visitors expect one. A shopping cart allows users to select multiple products and purchase them in one transaction.
Order Page: Another critical part of the eCommerce process—the order page allows users to see all the items in their shopping cart, confirm the order is correct, and provide their payment information. A well organized, clean order page is a necessity to prevent users from abandoning their shopping carts before purchasing.
Secure Administrative Module: Every store—even eCommerce stores—needs a manager. The secure administrative module allows you to manage all aspects of the store. You can add, edit, or delete items from the catalog; choose which items to feature—even change prices through the password protected administrative page.
Payment Gateway: To mediate between your online store and your bank NLI Media Group installs a payment gateway. This gateway manages the process of accepting credit and debit cards on your online store and makes sure the proceeds are promptly deposited into your dedicated account.
The Site Development Process
After developing hundreds of web sites NLI Media Group has developed a unique process that shrinks the development time line considerably. For our clients, that means a better web site developed in less time, often for a lower price than the competition. Once you engage NLI Media Group to design (or redesign) your company web site, you'll meet with one of our media consultants who will guide you through the process. With your consultant you can consider options for your site and get sound advices on features, content, and creative direction.
Once you have decided upon the features to be included in your web site, your dedicated project manager will lead a kick off meeting where all members of your development team will be present. The art director will discuss options for the look and feel of your web site. You'll be asked questions about your color preferences and we'll make recommendations for design based on the best of current industry practices. Our developers will ask very specific questions about how you want the web site to function, what data you want to be able to access, and how your site will perform.
Following the kick off meeting your assigned art director will develop site concepts. From the concepts you may choose one design and tweak it until you are satisfied with the look and feel. NLI Media Group will coach you on your decisions to make sure that not only the look of the web site is satisfactory, but also that the design will be effective and intuitive for your user.
Your project manager and developer will layout the entire site and site functions on paper before writing a single line of code. It's very easy (and inexpensive!) to make functional design changes on paper, but very difficult once programming has started. Every function will be mapped and described using our unique user-centric perspective.
Once you have approved both the artwork and the functional design our project manager will be in touch with you on a weekly basis to ensure you know what progress has been made on your project. Periodic progress meetings will be held. Once the software and artwork have been fully produced our testers will make sure the web site is error free. At this point you will test the web site yourself and ensure all is correct before your new web presence is deployed and made publicly available.
Silver eCommerce Package
The silver eCommerce package includes everything you need to launch your online store. The following items and services are included in the Silver eCommerce solution.
- Up to Six Content Pages that can include information about your company, products, personnel, and other important material.
- Professional design and layout by one of our award winning art directors insuring your design is state-of-the-art.
- High quality stock photography that makes your web site look like it's from a Fortune 500!
- Professional project management by one of NLI Media Group's project managers who will keep you informed and involved throughout the development process.
- Complete catalog of items you have for sale online. The catalog is efficient for up to 10,000 separate items for sale.
- Importation of your product catalog from a Excel spreadsheet or other compliant text format.
- Installation of a Authorize.net Payment Gateway. (Authorize.net is the #1 gateway provider)
- Complete administrative controls that let you add, edit, delete or modify items in the catalog.
- Beautiful product detail pages which will help make your catalog item sell!
- The ability to feature multiple products on the front page of your site. You can change these items at any time through the convenient secure administrative interface.
- Complete catalog search that will allow users to type simple or complex searches in to a text field. The search will return all items that are relevant to the search term.
- Reporting module that will allow you to monitor how your store and specific items for sale are performing
- Compliant HTML/CSS coding and development to ensure your site is designed to the latest code standards.
- 2 Hours of Content Development Assistance to ensure that your site text is marketable.
- You own the site and all files when its complete
- One Hour Marketing Consultation on How to Market Your Site when Complete.
- Permission Marketing List Sign up form—Give your customers an opportunity to request more information—LEADS!
- One Year of FREE Hosting.
- Up to 100 Hosted Email addresses and FREE webmail. (One Year)
- Store can be .net or PHP/Linux based (NLI Media Group will work with you to pick the correct technology platform)
- 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
Gold eCommerce Package
The gold package includes a great eCommerce web site and everything you need to market your site with our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing Plan. The SEO Marketing Plan will insure your site gets listed towards the top of Google, Yahoo, and other important search engines driving traffic and sales to your site. The Gold Package includes:
- Up to Six Content Pages that can include information about your company, products, personnel, and, other important material.
- Professional design and layout by one of our award winning art directors insuring your design is state-of-the-art.
- High quality stock photography that makes your web site look like it's from a Fortune 500!
- Professional project management by one of NLI Media Group's project managers who will keep you informed and involved throughout the development process.
- Complete catalog of items you have for sale online. The catalog is efficient for up to 10,000 separate items for sale.
- Importation of your product catalog from a Excel spreadsheet or other compliant text format.
- Installation of a Authorize.net Payment Gateway. (Authorize.net is the #1 gateway provider)
- Complete administrative controls that let you add, edit, delete, or modify items in the catalog.
- Beautiful product detail pages which will help make your catalog item sell!
- The ability to feature multiple products on the front page of your site. You can change these items at any time through the convenient secure administrative interface.
- A complete catalog search that will allow users to type simple or complex searches into a text field. The search will return all items that are relevant to the search term.
- Reporting module that will allow you to monitor how your store and how specific items for sale are performing.
- Compliant HTML/ CSS coding and development to ensure your site is designed to the latest code standards.
- 2 Hours of Content Development Assistance to ensure that your site text is marketable.
- You own the site and all files when its complete.
- One Hour Marketing Consultation on How to Market Your Site when Complete.
- Permission Marketing List Sign up form—Give your customers an opportunity to request more information—LEADS!
- One Year of FREE Hosting.
- Up to 100 Hosted Email addresses and FREE webmail. (One Year)
- Store can be .net or PHP/Linux based (NLI Media Group will work with you to pick the correct technology platform)
- SEO Reporting and Analysis—All initial reports including ranking reports, keyword reports, and site content reporting. One set of reports each month for 1 year.
- Keyword Analysis—Complete development of keywords for each page of your site (30 page limit). Includes all research and development of one primary keyword set and 2 secondary keyword sets for each page. You will be provided with metrics on all your keyword options include the frequency that the keywords are searched in major search engines
- Site Marketing Evaluation—Evaluation of your site from a marketing perspective to ensure maximum capture of site traffic.
- Site Code SEO Makeover—Complete redevelopment of your site code to ensure that the code is as compatible as possible with current SEO strategies. (30 Page limit—Dynamic / CMS sites may be extra)
- Content Development—Eight hours of consulting with our content developer and/or SEO consultant to ensure that your content is prepared for search engine consumption.
- Backwards Linking Strategy Development—Your dedicated SEO consultant will work with you to develop a strategy to get important links to your site that increase your search engine rankings
- Continuing Consultation—Each month for a year you'll have a one hour consultation with your SEO consultant who will continue to coach and guide you through maintaining and increasing your SEO position.
Bonus:
- Installation of a Blog—Blogs are GOLD for SEO, as they offer the opportunity to increase the amount of content you have using keyword dense text on a regular basis.
- Blogging Training—One hour training session on creating blog content that will cause your search engine rankings to skyrocket!
Second Bonus:
- SEO mini-course for all of your staff—A 90 minute mini-course put on for your staff during which you will learn the basics of SEO and how to do the behind-the-scenes work that will keep you ranked high for years to come!
- 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
Need to tie in with existing POS or A/R system?
If you have an existing Point of Sale, Accounts Receivable, or Inventory system that you need your eCommerce site to tie into, please let us know. We are happy to provide a quote on that work!
(512) 485-9505
