Various Services Offered By Ecommerce Development Companies

It is a fact that the internet has entered all fields and walks of life. It has a great influence as well as role in accomplishment of numbers of tasks related to anything in personal as well as in professional life. Same holds equally true for various types of businesses too. Now almost all businesses, regardless of whether they are big or small, have their own websites for ease of customers. Also it helps in simplifying various business operations. The websites for real-time and online businesses are called as ecommerce websites. It is because these are operating though the electronic mode or online mode. To help business owners develop such websites, numbers of ecommerce development companies are there. These companies or agencies offer some of the most important services to the customers as discussed below.

Planning for the ecommerce websites
It is one among the most important services offered by the ecommerce websites companies. They help business owners to plan about their business website well-in-advance. It may include outline, size, content, designing, images and such other features related to the website. They also help customers to decide about the numbers of pages and the numbers of words and images per page for their website. All this is planned well-in-advance so as to get the best model for the ecommerce website.

Designing of the ecommerce website
Again it is an important service offered by the ecommerce development companies. These companies help in proper and most excellent designing of all the pages of the client's websites. Unique designs, layout and images are used so as get the most attractive designs. It requires lots of efforts, hard work and intelligence.

Content creation
The ecommerce development companies help their clients in yet another important way. They help in drafting and development of relevant content for the business website. It is done by getting input from the concerned business owners so that most effective content may be provided to the concerned business website.

Final development of the ecommerce website
After finalizing everything and developing all the parts of the ecommerce website, the final development of the ecommerce website is accomplished. For this, all the things such as content, images, options etc. are inserted at proper pages and places throughout the site.

Editing
Once the final layout is ready, final editing of the website is carried out. It is done so as to identify any mistakes and rectify the same before finally going live on the internet.

SEO or internet marketing
It is yet another important service in the list of services offered by the ecommerce development companies. Apart from development of the websites for the businesses, these companies also help in promotion and marketing of the business in the online world. It is done by using tools such as search engine optimization (SEO) or social media marketing.

This was all about the most important services offered by the ecommerce development companies to the business owners or clients in general.

Reserving and shopping at Argos

I love shopping at Argos. They usually have great deals on a number of products all the time.The nearest Argos store is at Gallagher Retail Park at Stoney Stanton Road. Check out your nearest Argos store on their Store locator.

Normally I would reserve the product and then choose the "Reserve for store pick up" option on their site. I like the fact that you don't have to register on the site to reserve the items are the stores. Wish other online stores were this user friendly. They will then give me a reservation number (I have the option of having it emailed to me and/or sent to my mobile via sms) and the item will then be held in the store for a specified period. On certain occasions where the item is not available in your nearby store, they will point out the locations of other stores where they have the particular item in stock.


A vacuum cleaner I bought from them some time back.

You can also buy online and have the product delivered to your house next day for only only £4.95. In case you opt for a Saturday delivery, it is just £2.95 extra.

Online Shopping Search + wiki = ShopWiki

ShopWiki is an online shopping search engine combined with a wiki contributed by consumers.

Normally if I were looking for a product, say a perfume, I would do a search on Google, read reviews on various sites and then compare prices offered on various e-commerce sites. Searching for Perfumes on ShopWiki gives me a list of the best new releases (including some that are not in the market as yet). Apparently ShopWiki actively crawls more than 180,000 online stores.

Get Cash back on your online shopping

One of my geeky friends recently introduced me to Quidco, a cashback site that helps you get money back on your online purchases. It's very simple - Quidco pays you the commissions that they receives for your transactions from merchants listed on their site.

The list includes some of my popular online stores including Tesco.com, Dell, iTunes, Marks & Spencer, etc. My power company (Scottish power) and even hotels (Travelodge).

They will transfer your earnings to your PayPal or BACs account.

It is totally free to join and they just take an annual £5 subscription from your Quidco earnings (not charged).

Wish I had known about this earlier. I could have got some money back from all my online transactions.

Free Nitendo Wii games from Amazon

The two free games from Amazon finally arrived on the 20th last Tuesday. It was a bit of a hassle - I had to pay for them on the Amazon.co.uk site and they refunded the money back.

I just hope they make it clear that two selected games are FREE with the Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort and Motion Plus Controller (Wii).

You have to click the link 'Special Offers and Product Promotions' to take up the offer of the two free games but it is really easy to miss. I did miss it and had a bit of a hassle talking to various customer service people. They allowed me to order it separately but I made the mistake of following the steps written on the page and ended up ordering another Wii console. I was supposed to order only the games and they would have refunded me the sot of the games.

I finally received the free games and I sent back the extra console but looks like I have to pay for the return charges.

The games are  'Trauma Centre: New Blood' and 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Republic Heroes'. I haven't had the chance to try them out yet. Will be reviewing them later here.

Amazon does mean it when they say "We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company"

I am amazed and delighted.
I knew that Amazon.co.uk's customer service is good but I never knew they were THAT good.

Anyway, following my latest email to their customer service (read my previous post), I received the following reply today:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk with your enquiry concerning the promotion on the item in the above order.

I have reviewed and found that this order is a qualifying purchase for this promotion.

For all questions regarding eligibility, we encourage you to view the terms and conditions listed online at the following URL:
(url)

In this case, as an exception, I suggest you to go ahead and place a new order for the qualifying games listed in the above mentioned link and write back to us with all the new order details and we would be happy to issue a refund for the total cost of the new order.

Please use the following link to write back to us:
(url)

I promptly went to their site and picked 'Trauma Centre: New Blood', which costs £16.74 and 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Republic Heroes', which costs £29.99 and I will get both games for FREE (total savings of £46.73). Yeah!

Just noticed that they have further reduced the price of the Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort and Motion Plus Controller (Wii) by £10. It is now £169.99. Damn, should have waited for a few days.

Anyway, I just checked on Argos and they are still selling the Nintendo Wii at £179.99 but they are including the Wii Sports Resort with Motion Controller, Super Smash Brothers, Mario Tennis and Wii Compatible Mega Accessory Pack for free. A bit of a limited choice of free games as compared to Amazon and it's all a bit confusing as you have to click the special offers tab to take advantage of the offers. People who are not too savvy with the Argos site might miss the offer altogether. Moreover, I couldn't find Mario Tennis listed anywhere, even though it's on offer.


UPDATE (20 October, 2009):
My two free games -  'Trauma Centre: New Blood' and 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Republic Heroes', arrived today.

Finding a cheap International phone card

This holiday season, we made hundreds of phone calls to our families back in Malaysia, my siblings in Australia and friends all over the World. Somehow, an email feels too impersonal and cold. It can never match the feeling of hearing the voice of your loved ones. However International calls are not cheap and we are expecting quite a hefty bill this month. This is despite the fact that we took the cheap International call plan with our telephone provider.

I am aware that phone cards are a great way to save money on long distance calls but somehow I didn't want to go through the hassle of searching for the right one. The last time I bought one I was shocked to find so many choice that I didn't which one to choose, it did save us a couple of pounds.



If you are like me and have been wishing that there was a easier way of finding and buying cheap phone cards online - our answers have been answered. Found out that the site PhoneCardsAvenue can help us find and buy a cheap prepaid phone card. They have hundreds of international phone cards listed alphabetically. You can even search by country or by product name. Right now they are offering a cash back rebate program where they will give you 3% on every card purchase.

If you do make a lot of international calls, do check out the site. I am sure you will find one that's will save you a lot of money.

Setting up an ecommerce site

I have a lot of entrepreneurial friends who are running their own businesses. Most of them have an official company website up but most of these are static sites - much similar to an online catalog. On talking with them, I discovered that almost everybody wanted to set up an business/ecommerce site. They were aware that having an an ecommerce website would bring them a lot of benefits including getting rid of the middleman and related costs as they could then deal with the customers directly.

The only reasons that they didn't have one was because they assumed that having an ecommerce site would be expensive and that it would be very complex and time consuming. Their excuse was that they were not technical people and that they just didn't want to go through the whole hassle of putting in the infrastructure and getting trained staff to handle the new system.

I was telling them they didn't need to go through all of that. There are specialised companies who could help them through the whole process. One of them is AQHost - a one-stop business hosting 'online store' with over fifteen years experience in Information Systems and related technology. They are specialised in ecommerce hosting and can help with website design, setting up shopping carts and other ecommerce applications so that you can start accepting payments on your site as soon as possible. One of the advantages of doing business with them is the fact that they offer 24/7/365 support.

I am going shogging

Have you heard about Shogging? It is made up of the words Shopping and Blogging. This new term is also the name of a brand new and unique comparison shopping engine, that allows customers to Compare, Buy, and blog about the products they're shopping for.

This new concept - the ability to shop and blog (SHOG) within the same user experience, comes from Pepperjam, an internet marketing agency with nearly 10-years of industry experience. Led by President & CEO, Kristopher B. Jones, the company has become one of the fastest growing full-service internet marketing and technology agencies in the US.

Shogging.com is powered by the most cutting-edge tools available , namely AJAX and Python, which integrates e-commerce, search along with the blogging experience. I was listening to exclusive PRWeb Podcast interview with Kristopher. he explains that in traditional e-commerce websites, whenever you write a review you are taken to another page which disrupts the whole shopping experience. In the case of Shogging.com, this does not occur as the customer never leave their unique, individual shopping experience.

After looking at the site, I found that it is one of the best price comparison sites around. It's not surprising as their Merchant Partners include the large online department stores like Wal-Mart, Target and Buy.com, as well as niche e-tailers like Petco, Staples and igourmet. The site mentions that their database lists over 20 million products. Isn't that amazing?

Great planning software for project planner

I have just discovered an awesome project management tools service provider that provides project management software for Mac OS X and Windows. These easy-to-use yet robust tools can connect from the desktop to their hosted project server. They are quite cost effective as well.

Those who are interested in having an effective project management system, may want to see some samples of project plans (over 1000 of them) on their website. These plans are available for free for reuse and extension.

Best place to buy storage media and printer inks

I remember the good old days when we used to save our data on big (by today's standard) 5.25-inch floppy discs. It's amazing how fast technology has changed. Just four years ago, I was the only one in my entire department with a 128MB flash drive. Now almost everybody has one, some with capacities of up to 4 GB space.

If you are looking for a reliable and cheap source of blank CD/ DVD media products, then I recommend Supermediastore.com. This major reseller and wholesaler of blank media products is based in Southern California. It was established in 2002. According to their site, they were rated as the #1 preferred online store to buy good media with excellent selection, excellent pricing and fast shipping by DigitalFAQ.com.

Besides blank CD DVD media, their online store also sells CD DVD packaging case, computer hardware, memory as well as ink and toner cartridges. Talking about ink, they are now offering a weekly special - 30% Off on all printer inks. They are also offering extra 5% savings on Brother ink (OEM as well as compatible) cartridges.

Video Fireplace

Have you ever wanted a fireplace in your house but decided against it because you have kids and were scared of accidents happening or maybe you were turned off by the fact that they give off fumes and may require cleaning. Well I have the perfect solution for you. Why not get a video fireplace DVD

How does it work?

All you have to do is play the Ambient Fire movie in your DVD player and you instantly have a realistic roaring, wood-burning fire in your room, complete with fireplace sounds and accompanied by Jazz music. Must be really calming.

This product comes from Vat19, which carries a range of fun and interesting products. Another unique item on the site is the Ambient Water video aquarium. With this aquarium, you don't need to feed the fish nor clean the tanks and the fishes never die.

Cell phone accessories store

I would have laughed if somebody had told me 10 years ago that we would be moving around with a wireless phone that can fit in the palm of my hand, with a color screen, play games and music on it and take pictures and movies. The idea was there but in sci-fi and James Bond movies. However, it's a reality now and it was reported here in the UK that, many houses don't even have a land line anymore as more and more use their mobile (or cell phone).

Along with the phones, an entire industry has developed - for cell phone cases, batteries, and other accessories. Not only are they used to express your individuality or fashion sense, they are often used to make our life much easier - the hands free kit for example.

You can find accessories for all types of cell phones at AccessoryGeeks.com. This online company has been in business for three years now, supplying cellular and iPod accessories to customers in US and Canada. With over 20,0000 items, Accessorygeeks.com is said to be the store with the most 'Complete Line of Cellular & iPod Accessories' around. Taking a look around their online store clearly verifies this claim.

PR 10

Was just wondering whether there are any websites with a perfect Pagerank of 10. As I found out, there's more than a hundred of them out there. This includes Google's home page of course. However, Google UK page has only PR 8.

According to this site there are 148 PR 10 sites (as of today).

Do you want to be a PR 10 too?

I don't know about you, but that's my aim. In the meantime, I am going to wear the t-shirt shown here. There are more in my SEO Expert store

Tags: pr 10 t-shirt

Buying GPS gadgets on Gigaweb

I used to be quite tense driving to new places here. Normally I would download the map on the net and then take hours trying to memorise the route I would have to take, to get there and of course, to get back as well. Got lost so many times and going miles before I could find a way to turn back, was quite normal.

That changed right after I bought my TomTom Satellite Navigation or Sat Nav as it is more commonly known as. I never leave home without it anymore.

Aid to navigation is but one of the uses of Global Positioning System devices.It is now used for making maps, land surveys and other scientific uses. It is also used as a security tool for vehicle tracking. While looking for gps vehicle tracking from Garmin, I landed at the Gigaweb.com online store. They carry an excellent collection of various GPS gadgets and accessories.

Even though I didn't find one from Garmin, there was a similar "Wireless Vehicle Monitoring and Tracking Service" from Skypatrol. It costs $299.99 plus monthly service fee of $19.99 with unlimited use. Check it out on the site.

Sweep away spyware

It was a few years ago. I noticed that my office PC had noticeably slowed down while I was doing work and would sometimes crash for no reason. It was really frustrating , especially when I was in the middle of preparing an important presentation or writing an article and discovering that I would have to start all over again on starting up the computer.

I initially assumed that it might be an hardware problem - due to RAM failure or overheating of the processor. However, everything was working ok when I checked. I then blamed it on the unstable Windows' operating system. We were still using Windows 98 that time.

I then handed it over to our technical people who informed me that the problem was a multitude of spyware in my computer - probably from a few of the hundreds of software that I had downloaded from the net. To get rid of it, they had to completely format my hard disk and reinstall the operating system.

I wish I had Spy Sweeper at that time. This antispyware software has won the most awards and according to Download.com:

Definitely worth the money

Spy Sweeper has one of the most advanced spyware detection, blocking and removal programs available that can beat dangerous spyware programs. It even detects spyware hiden using rootkit technology.

Unlike other Spyware detection programs which you have to run from time to time in order to clean any spyware that you may have unwittingly let into your system, Spy Sweeper has powerful new Smart Shields that block known and emerging spyware threats as you browse. To ensure that users are protected all the time, Spy Sweeper's definition database is regularly updated automatically. Plus it comes with free customer support.

Don't just believe my words - look at what PC Magazine, PC World, Download.com and SmartComputing has to say about this software. Right now the License for 1 PC is $29.95. However, they are offering the software for only $19.95 now. You save $10.

Your own personal plantarium

I can vaguely remember the first time I ever went to a planetarium. I was a kid and my father had taken me there as a surprise treat. It really had a great impression on my mind and even though I don't recall it, my mum was telling me that I went on about it for days.

It's been years since I went to a planetarium and I was really happy when I found out that now I can have my own personal planetarium in our house. The Meade MySky Personal Video Planetarium is a cool astronomy gadget. It is a hand-held, point-shoot-and-identify multimedia guide to our universe. The MySky features a full-color LCD screen with the added ability to control computerised meade telescopes.

This would make a great gift for kids or anyone interested in astronomy. I found cool this gadget at OpticsPlanet.com, which has the guaranteed lowest prices on a wide selection of optics and technology products from telescopes and binoculars to microscopes and flashlights. Besides Meade, other famous bands include Celestron, Bushnell and Nikon among others.

They offer free delivery by UPS on all orders above US$29.95.

Getting t-shirts made to order

A customer tells us how easy it is to have t-shirts made to order on Cafepress, the leading online marketplace allowing almost anybody to "create, buy and sell customized merchandise online".

If you are a car enthusiast, check out my store here.

BTW, I got this news feed though The News Room. Read my post about it on my blog here. If you want to carry the news, all you have to do is just click the green "Mash" button and follow the steps.