This post has 2 bits of news for you, nothing major but both opportunities you can take advantage of.

Hostgator 20% Discount
The huge web host provider Hostgator.com currently have a promotional code which you can use on checkout to get 20% off your hosting order. Simply enter AUTUMN and receive the saving. We host 3 different websites with them and have always been very happy with the service.

Ecommerce Directory
A small but important new section has been added to our website. It is a free webmaster dir where you can submit your link, all you have to do is place a reciprocal in return. Hopefully this will make dropshipblog.co.uk stronger and gives you the chance to make your website stronger as well!

If you are on the lookout for new websites to purchase whether it be ecommerce or another business type, Flippa.com is worth checking out. It was formerly the Sitepoint Marketplace.

A lot of the listings on the site are junk so you will have to sift through the rubbish, but there are enough genuinely profitable websites to make the time worthwhile if you have the cash to invest. Recently there was a listing (has now ended) for an ecommerce store which dropshipped bird products such as bird boxes, baths, tables etc. It had been running for a couple of years and made small but solid profits each month.

Opportunities like this aren’t that easy to come across so Flippa is an ideal place to find them, although be prepared to wait because like I said, many of the listings are junk.

During the month of September LCN.com, the UK web host and domain registrar, are providing a new promotion code each day giving you ways to save lots of money! All offers are valid for 24 hours so you have to be quick, you can check daily the offer on THIS PAGE.

Current Deal
At the time of writing the offer is 99% off 1 years web hosting (1 years hosting for 21p!), but it expires in about 12 hours so by the time you read this I guess there will be another offer on.

What’s The Catch?
At first I wondered “Whats the catch?”, for the offers to be as ridiculous as this. But then realised that they are doing the offers simply to try and get as many new customers as possible, and then hope in a years time you renew your hosting (or domain name, or whatever offers you take advantage of) at the full price. As it happens, there prices are quite reasonable anyway, hosting starts from just £21 per year up to £56 per year, the monthly cost works out decent value for money for UK hosting.

How To Take Advantage Of The Offers
Simply visit this page each day where they provide the promotion codes and copy it. Then you checkout as normal and paste the promotion code during the checkout process and the discount is applied, very simple to do.

Who are LCN?
On their ‘About’ page it says they were established in February 2000 and currently hold 350,000 domain names and host 50,000 websites. So they are an established company. If you want to be sure about their customer service before you take up any of their offers do the usual test of contacting them (via phone or email) and seeing how friendly they are, how quick they respond and quality of response.

These offers are only on during September 2009 so don’t miss out, it is a great chance to save quite a bit of money on your overheads. Visit the LCN homepage now or check the latest offer available now.

Here is a very good document titled User Experience Activities which should help you with various aspects of your own ecommerce website and business as a whole.

The points are only short so you will have to research more into a lot of them. Other points have the ability to just make you realise something (the penny drops) instantly. I especially like the 4th point down under the ‘Analyse’ section which says “If the company sells tangible products, get your hands on them and use them. To think like a customer, you must be a customer.” Short, sharp, and so true.

Blogs (or weblogs) have been a major success on the web, look at the impact ‘celebrity bloggers’ have had and the readership levels they boast. But blogs are not just home to people talking about celebs, cooking and cars.

There are thousands of blogs on the topic of small business, whether it’s; ecommerce, general webmastering, marketing, SEO, affiliation, entrepreneurship, dropshipping (like this one!) or simply how to be a successful blogger yourself they are all covered.

Blogs are now an integral part of the web and it is wise you take advantage of them.

How To Find Good Ones To Read
Google is your friend. The obvious way is to search for them, simply looking for “SEO blog” returns pages of blogs. You will also find that once you naturally end up on one blog you will stumble across others, the blogosphere is heavily linked so it is easy to cover a lot of ground finding new resources in relatively little time. You can also try; technorati, stumbleupon and other social media sites. Your general travels across the web should also lead you to blogs, such as forum signatures etc.

Don’t Read Any Old Content You Find
You don’t want to end up reading bad advice, or outdated information. Or have someone giving you advice who hasn’t even achieved anything themselves. So look for an ‘about’ page or find out more about the blogger before subscribing or believing what they say. Also check dates on articles as the information may not longer be valid if the post was written years ago.

Don’t Over Do It
Don’t fall into the trap some webmasters do of just spending hours on end reading blogs (I’ve done this somewhat before myself), it happens without you even realising. You want to learn from the bloggers, and then put it into practice. Only read what you need to and what will help you.

2 posts previously I was halfway through updating the DropshipHelp.co.uk dropshipper list and wrote about the change in the way dropshippers do business. In the end the number of companies in the list grew further but the pattern stayed the same, a shift towards companies having greater control over who their sellers are. Definitely a positive move in my opinion.

Other Changes
Other upgrades to the DropshipHelp.co.uk members area include;

• big improvement to the dropshipper list with lots more companies now listed
• a whole new section called ‘eDocuments’ which has free ecommerce tips
• free dropship ebook now available again
• updates to existing content to freshen it up (remove dead links etc)
• alteration of main pages and navigation bar to make using the members area easily
• coding improvements so the pages load faster for you

All-in-all the changes are nothing too dramatic but it is a real improvement for the service. So if you haven’t yet joined or haven’t logged in for a while get over and check out the upgrades – as ever it is all totally free!

Image source: members area screenshot

This is a guest post by Ran Nir, the founder of online marketing agency Conversion Counts and a Google Analytics Consultant.

Google Analytics offers free enterprise level analytics software for everyone which just a few years ago would have cost an arm and a leg. Google Analytics will be an important tool to achieve your business goals provided the initial configuration is carried out correctly. Although Google Analytics offers some very complex solutions, the 10 benefits below are my favourites to increase conversion rates and revenues. They all require a basic understanding of Google Analytics and in many cases no additional configuration.

1. Track your website revenue: The Google e-commerce module is very comprehensive, in fact it can be used as a simple stock management system. Both online and offline orders can be tracked using Google Analytics which will provide your business with a complete picture in terms of revenue by category, revenue by channel, revenue by keyword, conversion rate, average order and many more important measurements.

To enable e-commerce reporting, follow these steps:

- Log in to your Google Analytics account
- Click ‘Edit’ next to the profile you’d like to enable
- On the Profile Settings page, click ‘edit next’ to Main Website Profile Information
- Change the E-Commerce Website radio button from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’
- Get a developer to install the tracking code available from Google
- Schedule a daily email e-commerce report so every morning you can start the day with a smile

2. Analyse and fix your sales funnel : You can use Google Analytics in many ways, but the most straightforward is to analyse and optimise a sales funnel. If the goal is set correctly then each stage in the sales funnel can be analysed and optimised to increase conversion. For additional information on how to set goals, visit the Google Analytics support page

3. Locate website errors and fix them : Having broken links on a site is bad news for user experience, site revenue and for your search engine optimisation efforts. Using Google Analytics to find error pages (404s) is really a breeze.

To locate error pages, follow these steps:

- Make sure you have a custom 404 page (you should have one anyway)
- Customize the page title of your error page, for example ‘Sorry Page Not Found :: SiteName’
- Visit your Google Analytics account >> content >> content by title
- Paste your unique page title in the free text under ‘containing’

4. Improve content by analysing the bounce rate : For online retailers, a high bounce rate hits where it hurts – the bottom line. Bounce rate is the percentage of entrances on the page that result in the visitor immediately leaving the site = missed revenue. There are a number of ways to reduce the bounce rate, my favourites are:

- Get rid of low quality traffic if you’re paying for it
- Improve the page content and address some basic usability tactics
- Ensure accurate metadata descriptions so you’re not promising something you can’t deliver
- When selling a product, ask yourself is the price competitive?

5. Track the effect of SEO metadata and content optimisation : If one of your SEO goals is to increase organic search CTR (if not, never too late to start!), Google Analytics can help. Once your changes have taken effect and are visible in the engines, head to Google analytics and follow those steps:

- Compare two dates, before and after your changes, taking into account seasonal and weekly fluctuations
- For site wide analysis, head to traffic sources

6. Track revenue sources : Best practice is to track and report on every channel which can turn into revenue. Using Google Analytics URL Builder it’s easy to assign a unique trackable URL or Tag URL as some people call it. Once the URL is tracked, you can analyse revenue, bounce rate, page views etc and start spending more cash where it matters. 

7. Track outbound links : If you link out from your site or blog, make sure you add onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/link/linkname’); “ It’s nice to know where your users are going to.

8. Compare historical data : One of my favourite features in Google Analytics is the ability to compare historical and seasonal trends. With e-commerce websites I use this information to better understand customer behavior and shopping habits so the right offer is always available at the right time. New offers can be compared to historical offers so your business can see what’s working and what’s not. Great for comparing seasonal keywords, traffic sources and more.

9. Manage sub domains and directory separately : This feature makes it easy to analyse and report, especially for websites with large folders and many pages. If you run a large website, this might be the only way to really turn raw data into actionable information. For additional information on tracking sub domains, visit the Google Analytics support page 

10. Reports by email : A great feature for businesses who like to stay 100% on top of things and get involved as much as possible. Using Google Analytics you can configure different reports to be sent to different people in the company, resulting in less manual work for yourself and happy customers.

Connect With Other Business Owners

Once you are a member make sure you utilise the power of business forums.

The best part of business forums is the depth and quality of information contained within. All forums have a search function so just type in what you are looking for and there is a good chance some posts will come up with the answer you need, or at least shed light on your situation.

If that fails to help you just post up your answer in the relevant section and other members should help you out.

Give & Take
To fully maximise forums you really need to be an active member. Not just always asking questions to help yourself but also answering questions other people have. Being a part of the community with have its long-term rewards.

You will also soon get to know people a little bit, ideal for if you need someone to help with your business and you want to contact them privately.

Example Of Forum Help
Here is a post I’ve had bookmarked for ages on my computer and I go back and refer to it when I need to. It’s on a business forum you don’t even need to be a member of to read posts like this! Here is the thread: 101 Tips To Improve Your Web Presence.

Largest UK Business Forums
You want to be part of a large community, this has obvious benefits. But you don’t want to join a forum which is crowded, then you can’t get to know people as much and responses to threads can be less personal. Here are 4 popular UK business forums:
UKBusinessForums.co.uk
Teneric.co.uk
A1businessforums.co.uk
InternetBusiness.co.uk

I don’t recommend you join all of them. Just one or maybe 2, then you can focus on building up relationships and getting info from them.

So go forth right now and utilise the power of business forums!

You Need A Team To Succeed!

10 Ecommerce Resources To Help Your Business Succeed:

• Entreprenuer eBusiness – A section on entrepreneur.com dedicated to eBusiness with lots of great articles and how-to guides on getting started, getting traffic, operations, site design etc
• Practical eCommerce – A very helpful advice website with articles, blog posts and podcasts
• Get Elastic – An ecommerce blog with regular posts from quality authors. Worth subscribing to (free) so you don’t miss any of their content. A recent article I liked was Online PR Tips for Consumer Safety
• eShop Forums – A forum for webmasters selling products online. Not a highly active forum but there are over 5,000 posts with info you can search through
• The eCommerce Blog – The name says it all! Not many regular postings but lots of archives worth going through to dig out some great content. A post I like is: non core products as a loss leader
• Top 100 eCommerce Tips – This is a forum post from webmasterworld where members each contributed to the thread with their own tip
• Choosing A Shopping Cart – An article which clearly explains everything about shopping carts so you can get the right one for your estore
• Top 10 eCommerce Tips – An article published by smallbusiness, its an old article (2006) but still a good’en!
• Increase Online Sales - 7 tips from gotwww.com about how to increase your sales online
• This Blog – of course how could I not include this blog in the list! We do regular postings (every monday mornings) and you can subscribe for free or add us to your bookmarks!

So there you have 10 really good ecommerce resources which can help you with your business, all that is required on your part is the time to digg out the info and implement what you learn – so what are you waiting for?

Life's A Beach!

• Getting the best price for your asset – great post about domain sales and when you come to sell your online assets.
• SEO trends – an interesting post on netbusinessblog about google changing its stance on SEO.
• How to say nothing in 500 words – running any kind of online business involves a lot of writing, whether it’s articles, product descriptions or even emails. This is a useful post for all webmasters.
• Surpise suprise, Google knol ranks well in Google – Darren comments on the SERP’s of keyword search terms to do with new knols created. Google knol is another good way for you to show you are an ‘expert’ in the products that you dropship.

I’m sure there are other good posts about there but these are the only ones I read so they’ll have to do for you! I’m back on August 19th so if you have any questions or anything please get in touch the normal way and I will reply to you when I get back. I run my online business full-time so someone is watching everything whilst I’m away so the blog will remain online so you can read through past content if you wish.