Building and operating an e-commerce website is a varied affair. I do not intend on giving you a price range as that depends a lot on the who, what, where and when of the project.

What I am sharing with you are the fees and services you will have to pay for during the lifetime of your enterprise. These include, fixed or one time expenditure, yearly, monthly and even daily expenses that are a part of building and managing an e-commerce website.

Fixed Costs

Web Development Costs
This cost covers the initial amount you spend to create your website and is usually considered a fixed cost. There are instances where this could be a monthly cost if you use a platform like shopify for instance.

The cost for Web Development can be anywhere from zero if you build it yourself, to thousands of dollars depending on the complexity of the project and the developer you employ.

Other costs that may be rolled into this includes:

● Logo design
● Stock photography
● Digitization of your catalog
● Copy writing

Yearly / Monthly Costs

Domain name
Your domain name is usually a yearly cost, even though its possible to purchase multiple years at a discount. If your business is just starting up, register for a year. Upon renewal you can look into bulk buying based on the outlook for your business.

Website Hosting
This is another cost that is usually monthly but can also be purchased yearly at a discount. The advice is the same as above for start ups. FYI, avoid cheap budget hostings that are under $10 per month. Budget hosting might seem like a good deal but cheap web hosting like that is unreliable especially of you get a spike in traffic.

Advertising / Marketing
Because you built a website doesn’t mean potential customers will find it without your help. So plan to spend some money on Google ads, paid Facebook or Instagram promotions or even banner ads on popular websites that serves your customers.

Website Maintenance
Let’s face it, things go wrong even when no one is at fault and your website is no exception to this rule. Maintaining your website is good for your SEO, it keeps your website working smoothly, keep hackers out and ensure you are prepared for disaster.

Weekly or Daily Costs

Shipping / delivery costs
Depending on the frequency you send out, your orders will have to pay for shipping. Whether you choose to cover this cost or your customers pay for shipping.

You will have to pay for:

● Sending the package
● Packing tape
● Shipping packages
● Transportation to shipment location if your shipper does not pick up

Costs Per Transaction
Most payment gateways Paypal, Stripe etc, charges you per transaction. This is the current standard. The actual amount charge per transaction varies depending on the gateway.

Some institutions may even charge you a setup charge and or even a monthly maintenance fee to use their gateway. If your provider does this, then look for a better provider.

These are some of the costs you can budget for if your planning to build and maintain an e-commerce website.

This list is by no means exhaustive and their might be additional charges that are specific to your circumstance.

About The Author
Jermaine Valentine is the CEO of Think Interactive (Web Heroes) – a website development company based in Kingston, Jamaica.

As well as COO of GiftBoxx and Kahtah – an online gifting service and online store respectively also based in Kingston Jamaica.

The post The cost of building and operating an e-commerce website appeared first on Web Heroes.

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Almost two years ago, the guys over at Elegant Themes created a list of the best WordPress maintenance services they knew at the time.

That however, never stopped us from wanting to create another one.

Our Motivation

Simply to create the Best WordPress Maintenance service period.

Fast forward to today, I think that we are on track to accomplishing just that as having a WordPress and a website is quite essential for development companies, thus making it easy to find the information. So I am going to put that theory to the test and see how Web Heroes compare with the established service providers.

Disclaimer

Web Heroes, was crafted with care by us so we definitely have a leaning

The original article did a pretty good job of breaking down why a person would want use a maintenance service to manage their WordPress website.

The primary reasons are still the same

Save time – Maintaining your website is nt only about keeping content fresh, but also ensuring that it is optimized for speed, search and as secured as possible against malicious attackers. staying on top of all these requirements is going to eat into the time you spend n what you do best.

Save money – Managing your website is a full time position (see above). Most small businesses and individuals cannot however afford to hire a full time or even part time webmaster.

Expertise – WordPress’s popularity is largely due in part to its ease of use out of the box. That said expertise are required to create and manage advance websites and applications, or just as fallback when things go wrong.

The Established Companies

The established companies from that list includes:

I stuck Web Heroes in there so you can see how our price compares to the top dogs. As you can see we are in the middle of the pack in terms of actual dollar amount, However continue reading and see how we manage to actually be more cost effective and deliver more bang for your buck than the competition.

Features comparison

The features standard for WordPress maintenance service for almost all the players include: No contract, WordPress core updates, plugin and theme updates, website backups, security and up-time monitoring, help-desk support.

How we compete:
Standard features unique to Web Heroes include: Disaster recovery (regardless of why your site was lost), Staging environment for testing, free migration to any web host, Malware cleanup, Configure SSL certificate, Email Setup, Social Media Integrations and more.

Monthly Hours – the number of addition hours you get per month for site updates.

Interestingly enough roughly half of the top companies actually believe that a maintenance package should actually have no maintenance hours.

Are we the best WordPress Maintenance Service?

Let us know? In the meantime we are striving to become the most cost effective, efficient and best WordPress maintenance service available. Our goal is and always will be the same:

To provide everything a website owner needs to manage their WordPress website in a basic package

We do not believe that in order to have full coverage of your website’s basic needs you should have to upgrade to more expensive offerings. We give you everything you need (and a lot of what you may want) to keep your website healthy for a flat fee of $69 per month, that’s the Web Heroes promise.

The post The Best WordPress Maintenance Service 2017 appeared first on Web Heroes.

I get it, it is cool to say hit us up in office, on the telephone, Email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Live chat and Whatsapp but does it really make a difference to your customers if they get the same bad customer support across all those channels?

A good example of bad customer service I had the displeasure of experiencing recently

ME:

I need to make a query on my bill. My mobile phone is roaming so I cannot dial 1800 numbers, can I get a customer service number with the 876 area code?

Them:

“Dear Jermaine Valentine, Thank you for your recent contact with (company name). As requested our customer service line is 1-800-000-0000. If you are still having difficulties accessing that telephone number…”

Why this pissed me off

I took the time to explain to you what my problem was, you totally ignored my issue and provided me with absolutely useless information!

How you can avoid pissing off your customers

Listen. Listen with the intention to learn, once you have identified the customers problem craft a response that addresses the problem the customer is having not the one you have an answer for. Unfortunately, this is a common problem. Learn more about PCN as this communication network trains its operators to be professional and helpful to customers.

Another recent situation

I had to pick up an item from a company’s office. I called my agent and let her know I was pressed for time but was on my way and that I would be at her office in approximately 30 minutes.

She assured me that the item was ready and waiting to me at the front desk. When I reached the front desk and Identified myself the front-desk person was clueless as to who I was and what I was supposed to receive.

She called my agent, spoke for a few minutes and said my agent would be down with my item in a few minutes.

A few minutes turned out to be 20 minutes later

Why This Pissed me off

My time was was totally disregarded!

When your customer takes the time to indicate a time constraint do not over promise and under deliver! I do understand that shit happens sometimes, but she told me the item was ready for pick up when it was not.

Don’t waste my time…If I am sitting in your office waiting on you…I am not getting things done.

Don’t make the “outro” mandatory

In the example above, after wasting my time and pissing me off the agent then had the gall to spit their marketing slogan at me.

“Have an extra-ordinary day from…”

Check the temperature in the room…if your customer is fuming and feeling like you have totally screwed them over, have a good day sounds like sarcasm….have an extraordinary day…is a punch in the face!

Tips to improve your customer service

Don’t make me fix your error

We all pork the pig from time to time…its human, its normal it is totally fixable.

However when the error is yours do not make it the customers job to fix it. The cost of business cannot solely lay with your customer, if the error is yours then it is your job to fix it. Hell sometimes you even have to take one for the team and fixed a problem that the customer created.

Call it good Karma.

Don’t Tell me What you cannot do

I wish I could sing, play the guitar, drink milk.

Face it there are tons of stuff we cannot do and that goes for your business as well as mine. We can make your WordPress website purr, but if you want your taxes done…then your looking for some other guys.

Few things are more annoying than listening to customer service person go on and on about the things they cannot do to help you!

I DON’T CARE!

I don’t care about the one thousand and one things you cannot do, they do not help me so I don’t care. Instead of wasting both our time with the list of can’t dos focus on the one or two things that can actually be done to fix the situation and explore those options instead.

Nothing annoys a person who comes to you for help more than hearing about the many ways you cannot help them.

Don’t commit to a course of action you WONT COMPLETE

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Do not promise follow up action you do not intend to take it. If your not going to call me back then don’t take my number and tell me you will.

The management of your customers expectations is a part of good customer service.

I AM NOT A CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERT

I am a web developer.

That said, I know what aggravates me when I do business with other individuals and companies.

So at Web Heroes our customer service focus is based simply on the answer to the question:

how can we make our customers problems go away?

If you build your customer service around this simple question, you too can have multi-channel customer service that doesn’t suck.

The post Why Your Customer Service Still Suck appeared first on Web Heroes.

Our pricing equation is simple, we create value for our clients while creating value for ourselves.

Our primary aim is to make a profit. In that respect our business and those of most of the clients we hope to serve shares a similar goal.

Sure we love what we do.

However we cannot pretend that love is all that is in it for us. Making a profit, not only contributes to our livelihood it also enables us to fund our love.

What negotiating our prices really means

Price negotiation, means that you think we set our prices at a point where we are making more profit than we deserve.

It means that you think we have over valued our services.

It means that you believe, that somewhere South of what we are charging you is a “fair price” that we can de-value our services and still be profitable.

It is an assumption that we have included room for negotiation.

The truth is we do not include room for negotiation in our prices. We are Web professionals, not negotiators.

The reality of the situation is that we have done everything possible to calculate the fairest most equitable prices we could for your business, while ensuring that we meet the needs of our business.

There is no room for negotiation, our prices are low, firm and final.

The post Our prices are non-negotiable appeared first on Web Heroes.

Many small businesses as a matter of cost opt to maintain their websites themselves, relying on paid support for things like feature additions or custom WordPress development.

Managing a successful website requires time, money or both!

The basic requirements for a successful website begins with having a good website, one that is easy to use, loads fast, able to handle multiple screen sizes and resolutions and of course regularly updated with quality content.

To keep your WordPress website in tiptop shape and to give yourself a chance of success, you need to ensure that you are regularly maintaining and enhancing your the website, and also maintain a dedicated wordpress hosting website. At the very least your website management checklist should include.

The WordPress Manager Checklist

Core updates

WordPress core files are updated quite frequently due to the tireless work of an extensive developer community who work hard to ensure that the software is constantly improving as well as ensuring that security issues are dealt with as soon as they are identified. Running your website on out-dated versions of WordPress makes your site vulnerable to exploits that may have been found and documented for those particular versions. Running old WordPress versions also limits your ability to take advantage of newer features of WordPress.

Plugin updates

Plugins are modular components that you can add to your WordPress installation to add functionality that is not a part of the core. An example of a required feature would be an events calendar.

Thanks to the army of developers that support WordPress you can find free and paid plugins for almost any functionality you can think of. And if you cannot find one that works exactly how you would like, you can always modify an existing plugin or build your own from scratch.

The interaction of plugins with the WordPress core opens up the possibility of a badly coded or outdated plugin being the source of a breach to your website defenses.

To ensure that your site stays secure, only used plugins that you either; download from the WordPress plugin repository or that that you purchase or download from a reputable source. When choosing plugins ensure that you choose those that are actively developed and compatible with the version of WordPress you are using. Updating WordPress plugins should however, be done with care as occasional updating a plugin can break your website through incompatibilities.

#TIP un-install and delete any plugins that you are not using. Having outdated un-used plugins in your website might also be a source of entry for unwanted intruders.

Themes updates

Keep all themes, in your WordPress website updated. Ensure that themes you use are either downloaded from the WordPress theme repository or they are purchased or downloaded from a reputable source. Delete any unused themes that you may have. **#TIP** keep the latest WordPress theme installed so I can use for debugging purposes.

WordPress Content updates

A general consensus of search marketers is that regular updated websites tend to rank higher than stagnant ones. A website with outdated content is not a cue that goes un-noticed by potential clients. Websites with two year old news articles on their homepage screams “Go away! I have been abandoned”.

Your website is the first point of contact for many of your potential customers. An outdated website does not inspire confidence, in some instances it may even give the impression that you are no longer in business.

#TIP A lapsed domain name is a very big red flag for potential new business. Even if you no longer use your website, ensure that you remain some control over what information is associated with the domain name if your business is still functioning.

WordPress Page speed optimization

Do as much as you can to load your website as fast as it can. Utilize a CDN wherever possible to load images or other resources. Optimize assets as much as possible before uploading them. Install and configure a caching plugin to compress and deliver optimized files to your user.

WordPress Back-up

You should have at least one off-site backup of your website and then make periodical backups. How often you back up your website is dependent on how often you update your content. If you do not have scheduled backup system in place then try to back up after every major changes or updates. Make sure you back up your database, your wp-config file as well as your wp-content folder.

WordPress 404 error check

Check your website periodically for 404 errors, Google Search Console installed on your WordPress website will enable you to monitor 404 errors. It might be tempting to use a blanket solution like redirecting all 404 errors back to your website homepage. But while this might stop your site from producing 404 errors to search engines it does not help your visitors who might be looking for a particular piece of content.

As a WordPress manager you should take the time to check each 404 error and do a 301 redirect to the most appropriate alternative content on your website if the original content is no longer available.

WordPress Traffic Analysis

Knowing who is visiting your website, when they are visiting your website, where they are from and what they are looking for is critical information that you need to make an informed decisions about how you execute your online marketing. The free Google Analytics is an excellent tool for gathering demographic data on your website visitors.

WordPress Security check

Scan your website from time to time to check for any signs that your site might be compromised. Exploit Scanner plugin is a free tool you can use to “…searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual file names.”

Sucuri, one of the leaders in WordPress security has a basic free scanner on their website that you can use. It is not as powerful or effective as their paid option but using it in tandem with other security plugins will definitely make your website more secure. You can also find a similar tool on Hacker Target website.

#TIP create complex passwords for your WordPress administrative accounts. It doesn’t matter how secure you make your site if your password is weak and easy to guess.

WordPress Form Submission

Test your online forms from time to time to ensure that they work and that they are sending your messages to an email address that is still in use. Reply to messages promptly even if they are general inquiries. Many persons will strike up a conversation on your website to test your responsiveness when dealing with customer queries.

#TIP enable and configure the Akisment plugin that comes bundled with WordPress to reduce spam from your online forms. If you enable comments on your website then akismet will also help you keep comments spam in check. Using the WordPress comment blacklist is also an effective countermeasure against spam.

This is by no means an exhaustive check-list, your website and its unique features will definitely give rise to elements and issues that I did not cover. But this guide should get you started in the right direction to become a successful WordPress Manager.

If however, you do not have the time to manage your WordPress website yourself, the Web Heroes would be more than happy to do it for you.

The post The WordPress Manager Checklist appeared first on Web Heroes.

Many SEO experts seem to take the view that if your not paying an arm and a leg for search engine optimization, then the service you get cannot be good. Somehow they seem to have forgotten the first rule of SEO.

A little SEO is better than no SEO

Many small businesses are competing among themselves for clients, they are not playing with the big boys. Their competition in many cases are other small businesses just like themselves.

While reading about web design on this Source, I realized that there are very few companies which offer all the services to a client when compared to companies which the only concentrate on one area of expertie, which is good, but also too exhaustive for a client. In their arena, many of their competition have no websites, or if they do, its dated and is as badly in need to try these tactics for better SEO as their own. In this scenario $100 per month definitely puts you ahead of your competitor who is spending $0.

At this level simple changes like making your website mobile friendly, or creating and integrating some social pages followed by customers, family and friends can have a huge impact on your website’s ranking.

Affordable Search Engine Optimization Case Study

I have a case study of a client who came to me at a point where he was buying traffic. Little did he know was that all those folks in India were very very unlikely to ever walk into his business place in the USA.

His budget was small, only $99 per month yet within 4 months we were able to help him achieve 4 first page rankings, 5 second page rankings and 1 third page ranking on Google for 10 key terms that he previously did not rank for. Strategic affordable search engine optimization does work.

His website traffic has doubled since his traffic buying days and lead generation from his website has gone up over 300%.

Now I am not saying that this sort of SEO strategy would scale up to compete with the big boys, but in this particular use case it does not need to. My client just needed to do a little bit more than his competitors in his particular niche and that is exactly what we did.

No matter how little the budget you have for your website’s SEO strategy, it is always going to be better than when you were spending nothing, as this link combo can help grow your business steadily. If you do not have the money to spend on an expensive campaign, then check out our affordable search engine optimization services and we will customize a campaign for you that ensure you get the most bang for your buck.

To succeed online you need to invest time OR money!

If you have absolutelty no money at all for SEO don’t despair, do a little research, invest a little time and elbow grease and do some DIY search engine optimization.

Tips to Jump-start a Zero Budget Search Engine Optimization Campaign

1. Claim your Google My Business page, it’s free and most pundits will agree that +1s have a positive impact on SEO
2. Identify and Fix broken 404 errors on your website. The free Google webmaster tools makes finding those pesky 404 errors a breeze
3. Claim your local listings and ensure that your name, address and phone number (NAP) is correct and consistent across all. If your not sure where to start do a Google search on your business name and claim any listings you may find for your business

Now those three SEO tips might not get you the number 1 position on Google’s SERP but it will definitely make your site easier to find than it was before you implemented them and they won’t cost you a penny out of pocket.

Search engine optimization is a marathon not a sprint and while you might not be the biggest dog in the fight, if you focus on doing what you can afford to do, then you will definitely benefit in the long run.

The post Affordable Search Engine Optimization For Small Businesses appeared first on Web Heroes.

To get started, do a Google search for your business name and claim any listing you may find. It is very important that you ensure that your business name address and phone number (NAP) is correct and the same across all platforms.

Ensure that your name address and phone numbers are correct and standardized across all platforms

Google Business

A free Google My Business should be one of your first tools to promote your business online. The account connects you directly with customers, whether they’re looking for you on Search, Maps or Google+.

Facebook for Business

Create a free Facebook Business Page to build a closer relationship with your audience and customers.

Bing Business

Add your business to Bing and make sure customers always find the right information about your business

LinkedIn Company Pages

Build a presence for your business on LinkedIn. Create your page, attract followers, and post company updates to drive engagement.

Yelp

The best way to manage your business on Yelp is by claiming your Yelp Business Page and creating a business login. It’s a great, free way to engage the Yelp community.

City Search

City Search is run by CityGrid, which in turn pulls data from ExpressUpdate. Click here to add your business to Express Update

Yellow Pages

Create a FREE Listing Yellow Pages listing in minutes and get your business found.

Superpages

Claim your Super Pagesbusiness listing.

Include as much details about your business as you can. Write an accurate description of your product or services, and include photos wherever possible. Encourage and give incentives to your current customers to review your products and services. Reviews are especially encouraged for Yelp and Google business listings.

If you already have a website for your business, don’t feel left out, having your website listed in local search pages is an important factor in ranking your website for local searches so you will still benefit from claiming or adding your listing, experts from the Chatmeter Review Management Platform agree that what is important here is to ensure that your NAP is correct and the same on all platforms.

NOTE: Yahoo local is now Aabaco Small Business and they charge $29/month to list your business and manage that listing across a few pages included some listed as free above.

A Word of Warning

While I encourage you to add your business profile to local search like the ones above, do not go over board with adding your website to every directory you can find as this might be seen as spammy and could actually hurt your efforts to promote your business online.

The post How to Promote Your Business Online Without a Website appeared first on Web Heroes.

If you are like most people nothing…at least not immediately…and for the vast majority of us not ever. And the reason for this is that content marketing as we know it suffers from one major flaw. Before I examine that flaw let me layout a definition of content marketing.

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

– source –

Content marketing is used to divert traffic from one site to a company’s official site, thus making them as potential customers who then based on the requirement might become the companies clients. This is one of the many reasons why companies have begun to buy cool sites, especially the local ones as its the design and layout of the website which is what a client first sees and if they are not impressed by it, it would be long before they move onto another site.

The flaw behind content marketing is that it operates on the basis that the world and by extension the Internet is a level playing field…one where quality content will rise to the surface because of its value and relevance. It assumes that the value and relevance of a piece of content exists at the time of its creation.

The sad truth is, however, the world isn’t fair and neither is the Internet, the playing field is far from level. Due to such vast unaddressed issues is why most of the business owners are resorting to learning various forms of marketing techniques from sites like the Chaz Edward LLC website, which covers a vast area ensuring no stone in the field of marketing is left unturned.

The value of a piece of content is as much a function of its intrinsic value as it is the perception that the content is valuable.

Perception of value is rendered imperfect by human bias., and while one can argue that the Internet is not indexed manually by human beings there is no doubt that the algorithms that giants like Google uses are riddled with the bias of their human creators.

Interactions online are govern by human interaction, they might be virtual and some persons might be able to create alter egos that are completely different from their real life personas, this online role play does not however change the underlying framework of human interaction within which online interactions take shape.

In real life interactions, discourse is dictated by the powerful and by the popular.

This holds true for online interactions as well. Content marketing assumes that if you create some fresh original content that it’s inherent value will float it to the top as persons validate the content with shares, links, likes and other forms of endorsements. This view fails to take into account that human interaction is often shaped not by the weight and gravity of what is said but by the weight and gravity of the person who said it.

This is the very phenomena that creates influencers, persons whose every thought and musings echo across the Internet largely in part because it came from them. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that influencers are not adding quality content to the online discourse.

I just believe that they have a leg up on the rest of us because of who they are and the legions that follow them.

A tweet from a person with hundreds or thousands or even millions of fans perceived value is increased exponentially as you move up the scale. Not necessarily because of its intrinsic value, but by the tacit endorsement of the many persons who see the tweet and then re-tweet or like it.

I am not saying content marketing doesn’t work, But I will say that it’s a tactic that is stacked against the small and the less popular. I am saying that for most of us it’s the long… very long… game and that for smaller individuals and entities that have not attained a critical mass of fans and followers there are much better marketing strategies that may be employed.

What do you think of content marketing and what are some of the ways you think the playing field could be leveled?

The post Is Content Marketing a Losing Strategy for Small Businesses? appeared first on Web Heroes.

Now I am not going to tell you about content marketing, social media or SEO strategies — these are an integral part of the plan — but those have been covered elsewhere and in much greater detail than I ever care to write. What I am going to tell you about are the actual steps that I took to grow my business, that you can take yourself, without have to dip in your pocket and pay someone else in order to get results.

Make sure your product is good

If your product is bad your business is doomed…it’s that simple. You don’t need to be perfect but you need to be on par with or better than your competitors. And if you are, don’t rest on your laurels continuous improvements is the name of the game here. Push the envelope, speak to your existing clients and find out what they think will make them love your product even more. Invest in your product, take a loan, if needed, finding the right lender in Georgia is not a problem.

Diversify your offerings

5 years ago building websites was worth roughly 90% Of our income, since then we have added domain services, Web hosting, website maintenance, social media management, search engine optimization and PPC marketing to our repertoire. The equation is simple grow your offer – grow your business.

The more products and services you have to sell, the more people you have to sell them to.

Have great customer service

Even if your product or service is not the very best within your niche you can have the very best customer service. Providing a great customer service experience keeps the clients you have and encourage them to tell others about your business. When in doubt take one for the team, the karma you create will come back to you.

Make your products and services convenient to access

Convenience is one of the biggest deciding factors in making a purchase. People routinely purchase what’s nearest or easiest over what is best or cheapest.

Make your products or services convenient to access by your customers. Offer it online if you’re brick and mortar, offer it offline if you’re web based. Offer payment options, take cash, cheque, credit card, PayPal even bitcoins if you are able. One may discover more and venture further into the benefits that cryptocurrency offers us. The more ways they can pay, the more money they will spend.

Offer incentives for your current customers to spread the good word

The best marketing is word of mouth, people generally rely on friends and family and co-workers first for reference before they start going through reviews online.

A positive referral from an actual customer to a friend or family is almost as good as cash in the bank, so you want as many as those referrals as you can get. Most of your repeat customers may be happy to spread the good word, adding a little incentive will encourage them to spread it a little further.

So there you have it, actual real life steps you can take to grow your business doing the everyday things you do… everyday. Sure marketing in all its form will help but that my friend should be icing on your cake.

The post How to grow your business for average Joes appeared first on Web Heroes.