Bonanzle

In a previous article we described a special offer for Bonanzle booth owners. This offer highlighted the idea that we could use the inventory items they have already uploaded to the Bonanzle marketplace on stand alone websites allowing each merchant to not only promote their own products but the Bonanzle platform itself.

Lets take this idea one step further and propose a radical idea…

Shopping Cart

Almost anyone interested in selling merchandise online may want to consider taking advantage of the Bonanzle platform. This solution makes for a relatively painless to set up an easy to maintain, search optimized and infinitely adjustable eCommerce shopping cart for almost any website.

Bonanzle is a perfectly functional shopping cart with checkout integration through Google Checkout and PayPal which are already integrated into Bonanzle, as is a shipping calculator.  Yet this shopping cart has other advantages other low cost solutions do not have.

• Google Base integration - Any products properly set up in Bonanzle can be fed to Google shopping via the integrated Google Base export tool
• Cross Linking - With products listed on a platform like Bonanzle, where linking to your own website is not only allowed, but encouraged, every product listed on Bonanzle can be designed to link back home to a merchants main website.  This will provide more link juice to your website than any stand alone ecommerce shopping cart solution.
• Bulk Editing - Bonanzle offers and easy to use bulk editing tool. This makes changes to pricing or other factors an easy task no matter if you have ten changes to make or 1000.
• Established product category system - Bonanzle now uses the well established product category system and labels found on eBay.com.  This will help to optimize any products placed into this system with tags that are common across the Internet. People search for products with keywords learned over time. Better to use the systems already in place than to try and re-create the wheel.
• Feeds - Bonanzle produces feeds which can allow your web developer a way to display any and all products listed within your Bonanzle account on your own website.  These products will be dynamically generated, this means when a new product is listed on Bonanzle, that same product will be automatically updated on your own website.  When an item sells, that item will automatically be removed from your website.  Essentially we are talking about a painless and easy management of a multiple channel selling solution with minimal cost.

Here is an example of the product feed in action.

Give us a call if you would like to learn more.

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Our Client Wade’s Equipment Service of Pasco County Florida has had an eye opening experience with Word

autoproequipment.com

Press as a Small Business Website CMS (Content Management System).

Wade’s sells automotive lifts like the challenger lift you see in the photo on the right. Wade’s main clients over the years have been auto dealers and auto repair garages. Recently however Wade’s has experienced a new trend. Homeowners are requesting information about how they can install these heavy duty automotive lifts in their home garages.

Anne and Bob Graybill, the owners of Wade’s equipment (previous owners name was Wade) wanted to explore the idea of having a website which could help them take advantage of this trend in addition to anchoring their standard business of commercial installations and repair of auto lifts, lathes, parts washers and other garage equipment.

We inspired Anne and Bob to try using Wordpress. Not just because it would be easier for them to learn, but also due to the incredible flexibility of the platform when used as a CMS for small business websites.  When I told them they could update the site themselves, at first they were a little intimidated. But after I explained that iBusinessLogic would train them in how to use the site and in reality posting new content is almost as easy as sending an email, they were in!

The website url we helped them chose is a good one: http://autoproequipment.com , we selected that url in case they ever wanted to expand the online portion of the business into ecommerce.  The new name will be much better for search that wadesequipment.com would have been.

The site has yet to be completed but we have installed and customized the theme, laid out the static page menus and had a training session on how to format a page and a post.  We have had the sites up for just a few weeks.

The very first official post is here: Challenger Introduces CLFP9 Low- Profile Automotive Lift 

The post describes a low profile auto lift manufactured by Challenger Auto Lift and made in the USA. Anne had just received the information about this new product from her factory rep in an email so we used that information to write up a blog post on the web site. The lift is designed to accommodate the very market Anne & Bob want to explore, residential garage equipment and automotive lifts.

Turns out that the power and speed of Word Press has taken the auto lift community by storm. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but it is not an stretch to say that autoproequipment.com had the information about this new lift online and indexed by Google even before the manufacturer. 

With that significant head start, Wade’s equipment has been fielding calls from the far reaches of the country, with questions and requests for quotes on this new product.  They may have even sold one this week, directly from the single blog post about the product. 

I find this story to be inspiring and gratifying.  It is absolutely awesome to have the ability to help small businesses in a way that significantly proves itself worthwhile.  It honestly feels great to hear these stories from clients and I enjoy helping them to find their way into the new world of Internet commerce. There are so many small businesses here in Tampa Bay, Florida and across the nation who want, need and deserve better, faster and more productive website development. 

Using WordPress as a small business website framework, with the proper design and training has helped this one small company to find a whole new audience for their products and services. 

With the speed and power of Wordpress, along with the right content, keywords and tags, this website started to pay for itself within a few short weeks.  Tell me how many web 1.0 websites have ever done that?

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Site Comparison Analytics

Compete.com

Many merchants in America are finding the eBay marketplace to be a challenging environment of late. The question we receive most often concerning eBay is where else can I go? eBay of course has a huge lead on almost any competition, but if for one reason or another, you have decided to look elsewhere (besides your own website) to sell goods, where should you go?

According to Compete.com it seems etsy “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade” is the place to look if thoughts of a new place to sell handmade items fill your mind.  Etsy has the most traffic of any competitor to eBay (besides Amazon) and that traffic graph is heading upward and a steady confidence building pace up 179.8% in the last year.

Of course, adding Bonanzle.com to this chart is both unfair, and a compliment as they have only just started the site at Bonanzle last July. Month to month with very little track-record to analyse, Bonanzle has grown 190.3%.

Onlineauction.com experienced a nice bump last February but since then the traffic graph has been flat and actually losing -7.2% of their projected traffic in the last month.

Based on this limited and incomplete snapshot of information, one could conclude etsy.com is the only place to look when considering a move off of eBay or simply to add an additional channel of sales revenue.  But I will submit there are many more factors to consider than simple traffic when choosing a place to offer your wares.

More on other considerations in a follow up post soon…

Last Thought: Keep an eye on Bonanzle.com

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