Grow Your Facebook Sales with ShopTab

With the ubiquity of Facebook, it’s inevitable that online shoppers are sharing their favorite products with friends and subsequently purchasing more through social media sites.

According to a recent analysis by Booz and Company, sales of physical goods through online social networks will grow by 93 percent per year in the U.S., reaching $14 billion by 2015.

“Everybody has a Facebook account these days, and more and more people will go there to shop,” says Garry Kline, owner of web storefront Kline Tours.  “It makes sense to have your web store in another place that’s easily accessible.” 

To create his Facebook store, Garry turned to ShopTab.  The eCommerce tool creates a shop right on your Facebook page where you can showcase your products.  Shoppers can also search by keyword or category.  

“Now customers can make purchases directly from there,” says Garry.  “They click on whatever they want, and it leads them to our actual store.”  They can also share products with their friends.  And it all takes less than 15 minutes to install. 

The best thing about ShopTab is that it’s super easy to set up.  “"I had it up and running in five minutes.  I’m not kidding,” says Todd Walbridge of Tuxedo T-shirts Online.

ShopTab supports foreign languages and more than 35 currencies.  Merchants can easily add and edit products via CSV or XML data feeds.

“The cost, $10 a month, is a no-brainer,” says Steve K. of web storefront Stepani Style.  “Even if I get just one or two additional sales a year, it’s well worth the money.”

Todd has definitely noticed more traffic coming to his store from ShopTab but “it’s also about appearances.  When customers come to Facebook or your web store, you want it to look professional,” he adds.  “With ShopTab, you look more cutting-edge, and your consumer confidence level goes up.”

ProStores merchants get a chance to try ShopTab for 30 days - FREE!  For details, visit ProStores Merchant Offers page.

Mobilize Your Web Store and Drive More Sales

Todd Walbridge had a mobile site for his web store Tuxedo T-Shirts Online, but it was mostly informational—customers couldn’t actually check out on their phones.  Garry Kline of Kline Tours didn’t even have a mobile site, so his web store was hard to view on a smartphone.

With the world becoming increasingly mobile, both merchants realized that they had to get a fully functional site up and running.  “Mobile online shopping used to hover around two to five percent of total traffic, but now it’s up to 15 percent,” explains Todd. 

That's when both store owners discovered DudaMobile, the platform that creates mobile-friendly storefronts optimized for the smartphone.  DudaMobile can customize your site and then get it up in one business day.  The mobile version automatically syncs with your regular web store.  When shoppers type in your URL on their smartphone, they’re immediately directed to your mobile store.  DudaMobile then tracks that traffic.

 

Todd also added a click-to-call button so his customers could easily contact him.  “That DudaMobile feature is huge.  We have a great conversion rate – 60 to 70 percent -- with people calling in.”

Thanks to DudaMobile mobile customers can now shop at Garry’s store.  “Our mobile store is much easier to use.  It looks a lot better, and it’s very user friendly.”  “You want your phone web store to be one column,” adds Todd, “so customers need only scroll up and down and not left to right.  DudaMobile takes care of that.” 

Since his mobile store went online, Todd says maintaining it has been a cinch.  “As soon as I make a change in my main store, it automatically shows up on my mobile site, so I don’t have to create two feeds to keep them both going.”

The improved user experience has manifested into concrete numbers.  “Thanks to DudaMobile, we’ve seen a 50 percent increase in mobile conversions in the last three months,” says Todd, “and our informal polling of customers shows a larger percentage of them calling in.” 

DudaMobile has an exclusive offer just for ProStores merchants:

- $99 setup fee waived
- Pay just $9.95/month (normally $19.95/month) for the first three months.
- Get 30 day money back guarantee.   

Offer available through Dec. 31st, 2011. Go mobilize your store!

Featured Products and Video Tutorials

Based on numerous requests from merchants, we've increased the number of products you can designate as Featured Products from 5 to 20.

And if you haven't discovered the series of video tutorials we've been putting out over the last year or so, we've listed them all here.

Be sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel to be notified of new tutorials as they come out.

ProStores to phase out eBay’s third party checkout service

As previously announced, eBay will discontinue support for third party checkout services effective June 30, 2011. In order to comply with this decision, ProStores will begin phasing out support for the eBay Checkout Redirect feature in ProStores during late Q1 and early Q2, 2011.

Here is a timeline of key changes that will take place during the phase-out:

ProStores 10.2 Now Available – Merchant Feedback in Action

ProStores 10.2 introduces enhancements to key features based on requests and feedback from members of our merchant community.  

Save time with updates to Page Builder.  Convert more sales with promotion codes now working with PayPal Express Checkout.  Get more exposure with a paid NexTag feed. 

Find out more about these upgrades and other enhancements in ProStores 10.2.

Small Business Shipping News: USPS Rate Changes

Exciting changes are afoot in the New Year that will help web stores and small businesses lower their shipping costs and improve efficiency.  

Starting today, the U.S. Postal Service will change its pricing for Commercial Plus and Commercial Base customers on services like Priority Mail, Express Mail and most International Mail classes.   

Commercial Plus customers get:

Shop Online This Holiday Season - Shop ProStores!

We just launched our “Shop ProStores” page at http://shop.prostores.com/ where you can now easily search and shop for all kinds of products and holiday deals offered by over tens of thousands of ProStores web stores. You can either go directly to that URL or just click on the new "Shop" tab on our homepage at www.prostores.com.

If you are a ProStores ecommerce merchant, consider buying from your fellow community of ProStores small businesses. And be sure to tell your friends and family.

From all of us at ProStores, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

ProStores 9.3.1 is here!

Today we announced several new features designed to increase store traffic, save merchants time and improve store conversion.

New features in ProStores 9.3.1 include:

•    Traffic Driving Feeds: New free product feeds on theFind.com and NexTag will drive traffic and increase sales.
•    New Product Promotion Discounts: Merchants can now offer two new product discounts to their customers: percent off or amount off.
•    Multiple Product Images: This enables up to four product images to be displayed, giving customers a better of idea of what they’ll get with a purchase.
•    Tools to Drive Repeat Business: Shoppers can bookmark pages so they can return to a particular store, while merchants can join the Sales in a Click email newsletter service and send emails to their customer database with one click.
•    Time Saving Enhancements to Catalog and Order Management: The Copy Product feature lets merchants quickly create new products from their existing product catalog. It also makes it easier to sort and search for orders ready to be shipped.
•    Checkout Improvements: Buyers who pay with PayPal Standard will now be able to see store credits and promotions as separate line items when reviewing payments in PayPal. We’ve also added progress indicators to the multi-page checkout flow so buyers will know where they are in the checkout process.

The enhancements also allow merchants to work more efficiently with eBay. Merchants can synchronize their eBay listings with matching ProStores products based on titles or SKU numbers. Merchants can also control which listings get imported into ProStores from the new Inbound Listings page, as well as create listings using custom eBay listing themes in ProStores. Other eBay enhancements include supporting eBay-approved Checkout Redirect, immediate payment and the eBay sales tax tables on listings, eBay variations, and listing reminders and suggestions.

For more details, check out our New Features page.

For even more features, we also announced the launch of over 80 ProStores Plug-Ins, available in the ProStores Template and Services Store. ProStores Plug-ins are code snippets that can be added to a ProStores store to provide additional features and functionality. Professional implementation, provided by the ProStores Certified Designer, is included.

Introducing ProStores Plug-Ins

ProStores Plug-ins are code snippets that can be added to a ProStores store to provide additional features and functionality. We've just added 68 new plug-ins to the ProStores Template and Services Store, with more on the way!  Examples include:

• PowerReviews Express installation
• Live Chat
• Mini Cart Displays
• Home Page Multiple Image Slide
• Link/Banner Ad Installation
• Button Colors

Professional implementation, provided by the ProStores Certified Designer, is included in the package price.

Be sure to browse through the full list of plug-ins and see how they can help merchants do even more with their Prostores web store.

Visit ProStores Plug-Ins: http://www.prostorestemplates.com/servlet/the-template/browseplugins/Page

ProStores Jumps Into Social Media With New Customer Videos and Places to Reach Us

To help spread the word about ProStores version 9.3, today we issued a press release that features a video interview with ProStores customer Mike Moran of CurrySimple.com. In the video, Mike discusses what he likes about being an e-commerce entrepreneur and why he uses ProStores as his online storefront solution.

Check out the ProStores release and CurrySimple interview here.

In addition to the video, we’re creating more avenues for ProStores customers to interact and learn with us. We’ve created a Delicious page for ecommerce entrepreneurs highlighting articles we think will be helpful to newbies and old hats alike. Check it out at www.delicious.com/ProStores_eCommerce_Tips. Follow us there to keep apprised of our favorite links and tips for growing your ProStores business.

We’re also working to build out our Facebook fan page, adding new content and encouraging our fans to share their success stories and products as well as tips for fellow entrepreneurs. In the future you’ll see more customer interviews, videos, podcasts, helpful links and other tools for success on the page. Be sure to join us and become a fan!

Lastly, if you haven’t noticed already, we’re on Twitter. This provides us with yet another way to connect with our customers, answer questions and learn more about you! Follow us at @ProStores to stay up-to-date on all our latest news.

As mentioned above, we’ll be doing more videos, podcasts and e-commerce success stories with our customers and partners in the coming months. If you’d like to be featured, Tweet us or share your story on our Facebook fan page and we’ll get in touch.

Thanks and enjoy!
ProStores