Ecommerce Jargon For New Online Web Store Owners

Posted in blog by charlestang on October 27th, 2009

There are a couple of shopping cart software providers out in the market (agora shopping cart, 3d shopping cart, to name a few). But whether you’re making use of a cheap shopping cart solution or one that costs a bomb (or an even better alternative: you’re engaging InstanteStore), a new online merchant might get lost in all the ecommerce jargon strewn across cyberspace.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a way of getting quality traffic to a site without any financial outlay. This natural or organic method involves tweaking the site’s content, coding and HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) to boost its relevance to exact keywords and make it easier for search engines to index and thus increasing the site’s visibility on a search engine’s result’s page (SERP).

SEM

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is a way of marketing a site via the use of paid placements or paid inclusion. This form of internet marketing can improve your visibility in SERP’s much faster then SEO alone, but at a cost of course.

Hard Goods And Soft Goods

An online store may sell a variety of goods that are essentially divided into 2 categories - hard goods and soft goods. Hard goods are tangible items like shoes and electronic goods. Soft goods are products that exist electronically like MP3’s, software and ebooks - items that can be downloaded.

Internet Merchant Account

An internet merchant account helps the receiving of online payments, usually by credit card. If you have problems obtaining an internet merchant account, you can consider the services of a merchant broker. A merchant broker would then charge a setup fee and develop the software and hardware necessary either by lease or sale, as needed.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate has nothing to do with religion. As an alternative it relates to the percentage of visitors to an online store who are converted into buyers. Conversions do not happen effortlessly and depend on a few factors to help capture a visitor to buy from a particular store. The clever use of images, content and call to action phrases all play a part in this process of conversion.

So before you sign up for a feature-rich yet cheap shopping cart solution like InstanteStore, ensure that you brush up on your ecommerce jargon.