BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

Elaborating on the previous post (WordPress or Joomla?), next often asked question that we at Zealus Web Design see is which shopping cart should one use?This one is just one notch easier. First - we already know that customer wants a shopping cart solution. Second - he is aware that whatever choice he makes is going to affect him in the future. Uploading or entering inventory is a time consuming task and not many people have time to experiment with that. But the ultimate question remains the same - what kind of problem the customer has? What is he/she selling and in which quantities?

Speaking from experience, I’ve seen customers who’s only reasonable solution would be an eBay. Some people can use quick shopping cart options, like PayPal’s shopping cart or even CafePress. Some could benefit from ZenCart, osCommerce, VirtuMart or peers. Sometimes company grows out of bunch of Excel spreadsheet and starts using CRM, sales and inventory tracking systems, such as RegKeeper, some flavor of QuickBooks or other platforms.

Using full-blown shopping system if you only need to sell two flavors of your widget is unwise. Using PayPal for web store with thousands of clients may cost you significant percentage of your business. Each tool has its own (limited) scope of use.

Popularity: 16%

You might also be interested in reading this:

• No client left behind (January 18, 2008): We get to deal with many leads. However, not all the leads become clients. Part of that non-converting crowd are people who choose hosted shopping cart software. The reasons why we like those people are numerous, but I am going to list just one of them. Reason 1: Even if they didn't accept our services, [...]
• Zoundry Blog Editor (January 15, 2008): While contemplating on my ideas of blogging editor I stumbled upon various reviews of existing blogging clients. One of them caught my eye, so I ventured ahead and downloaded Zoundry - free blogging client. I am attempting to write this post in Zoundry, version 1.0.40. Generally, I am not looking for features I came up with [...]
• WordPress or Joomla? (January 4, 2008): When choosing a Content Management system for your web site it is usually a good idea to ask yourself - what is the problem you are trying to solve? Most people (as I noticed on several message boards) make same mistake - they try to figure out what software they need to make money online. "I [...]
• Version or Revision Control Software (September 11, 2008): It has just occured to me that I don't know any single small web development suite (from UltraEdit all the way to Dreamweaver) that would have a simple version or revision control. Of course, there are SVN, CVS, Visual SourceSafe and that monstrous Team Foundation Server, but they are not the solution. But what a small [...]

In continuation of Blogging Editor saga - here’s some crazy ideas that I think worth mentioned. Not sure what would be the best course of action - write the whole thing up and pass it to someone who can create a piece of software or jump on this project myself. The problem with creating the software myself is that I do programming for Windows only. And a lot of bloggers use Mac. And I don’t even have Mac, and never had.

• Have different flavors of the software - Windows, Linux, Mac
• Have two types of software - free and paid
• Probably outsource free version, while paid would have more elaborate features, targeted to Pro bloggers
• Have the software to back up posts and tags into some sort of database that can be accessed without the software itself (like OpenOffice database or similar)
• Ability to work with all major blogging platforms, including WordPress, WordPress.com, LiveJournal, Xanga, Vox, Blogger and so on.

Popularity: 14%

You might also be interested in reading this:

• Zoundry Blog Editor (January 15, 2008): While contemplating on my ideas of blogging editor I stumbled upon various reviews of existing blogging clients. One of them caught my eye, so I ventured ahead and downloaded Zoundry - free blogging client. I am attempting to write this post in Zoundry, version 1.0.40. Generally, I am not looking for features I came up with [...]
• Qumana Blog Editor (January 16, 2008): For the second round of blog editor software reviews I decided to go with Qumana Blog editor. Available at Qumana.com, this free software is available for both Windows and Mac OS platforms. Current version as of writing this post is 3.0.1. The software is written in Java. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but [...]
• Blogging Editors - My Wish List (January 10, 2008): At various moments I tried to use different blogging tools. Most of the time I blog using WordPress admin interface. However, sometimes I feel like I need a special piece of software, that would help me work the words. This post was written with the help of yet another (after Windows Live Writer, Writely and many [...]
• Blog Editor - Wish List Continues (January 11, 2008): One more thing to add to my Blog Editor Wishlist is To-Do list. Or ability to have some tags for offline use only. For example, if you have a large topic, like web design, there exist a huge number of nuances that you can cover. Given that you know what you are talking about. Let's say [...]

One more thing to add to my Blog Editor Wishlist is To-Do list. Or ability to have some tags for offline use only. For example, if you have a large topic, like web design, there exist a huge number of nuances that you can cover. Given that you know what you are talking about.

Let’s say you are writing about how much CSS means for design and as a side thought you realize that it would be good to elaborate on inline vs. inner vs. external styles. By the time you’re done with post or article, you may already forget about it. But in our editor you right-click on a word (CSS, in our example), select a menu “Create a To-Do Note” and fill in fields where you would specify what you want yourself to do in a future.

Pretty neat, right?

Popularity: 12%

You might also be interested in reading this:

• Blogging Editors - My Wish List (January 10, 2008): At various moments I tried to use different blogging tools. Most of the time I blog using WordPress admin interface. However, sometimes I feel like I need a special piece of software, that would help me work the words. This post was written with the help of yet another (after Windows Live Writer, Writely and many [...]
• Zoundry Blog Editor (January 15, 2008): While contemplating on my ideas of blogging editor I stumbled upon various reviews of existing blogging clients. One of them caught my eye, so I ventured ahead and downloaded Zoundry - free blogging client. I am attempting to write this post in Zoundry, version 1.0.40. Generally, I am not looking for features I came up with [...]
• Qumana Blog Editor (January 16, 2008): For the second round of blog editor software reviews I decided to go with Qumana Blog editor. Available at Qumana.com, this free software is available for both Windows and Mac OS platforms. Current version as of writing this post is 3.0.1. The software is written in Java. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but [...]
• Blogging Editor - Crazy Wish List continues (January 14, 2008): In continuation of Blogging Editor saga - here's some crazy ideas that I think worth mentioned. Not sure what would be the best course of action - write the whole thing up and pass it to someone who can create a piece of software or jump on this project myself. The problem with creating the [...]