Ecommerce Beginnings - XVI

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

As I mentioned last week the wholesale products database is still under construction, but I have been promised that it will be completed within a few days. That should allow me to input all of the information that I need to into it. The next step will be to go live with the revamped sites. I can't wait to do this!

In the meantime I focused on the creation of my ebook this past week. I am proud to say that it is complete and ready to be published. It ended up being what I would call more of a guide than a book. It is 32 pages in length and provides information on the following:

• A Real Business with Real Business Requirements
• Finding Products to Sell for Your Niche Business
• New England Wholesale Product Shows
• New England Fairs
• Creative Product Sourcing
• Appendix of Helpful Business Links

Once I completed this my next step was to convert this to PDF format so that it could not be altered. An additional requirement was to make sure that all of the hyperlinks contained in the book would be clickable. This is where I ran into some problems. Long story short, if you don't own Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0, ($499) which is more than adequate for this task, there are much less expensive alternatives available.

After doing some research I found out that Adobe has an online service that they charge for, $9.99/month or $99/year that will allow you to convert your word documents into PDF format, and will make it so that your hyperlinks are clickable in your new PDF formatted document. It is a personal decision, based on cost and need. If you think you will need this service full time on a continuous basis then maybe you should buy the full Adobe program. If you only need to use this service occasionally then I think the online option is much more economical. This is the route I chose and it works like a charm. You upload your file, it is converted and a link is sent to your email notifying you that it is complete. Next you click on the link to open the file. If it is ok then you can save it to your desktop, folder, etc. The link to access this is: http://createpdf.adobe.com/

PS You will at least need to have Adobe Reader if you use the online method. Adobe Reader is a free download. Click on this link to access the free download: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

That's all for this week!

As always, I wish you the best in your success!We hope you found this weeks' article helpful. Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - XV

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

Well I spent quite a bit of time working on the "Best New England Made" website during this past week. This site is going to be all about wholesale product sourcing. This site presented the biggest obstacles to me in respect to the home page. There is so much information available. I lost count of the number of revisions that I went through before I felt that it looked and conveyed the information the way I wanted it to.

I have one major step left to complete on this site. That would be the New England Made Wholesale Products Directory database. This was just a little too techie for me, so I contracted someone that knows all about MySQL database creation to put this together. Once it is complete I will input all of the wholesale supplier information, test it out and then the site should be ready to go.

The other item I had done was to have a new logo created to differentiate this site from the other Original New England sites. Here's the new logo:








I was really happy with the way this came out. What do you think?

Together with completing the wholesale directory I have a list of other things to do to complete the revamping of Original New England. So, while I am waiting on a couple of things I have started to work on my next project - the creation of an ebook on sourcing unique, quality, New England Made wholesale products. This ebook will be a complete guide to sourcing wholesale products in New England and everyone will be able to get it for FREE! The only requirement needed to obtain this e-book will be to sign up for the Original New England Home Business Solutions Newsletter! Now that's what I call a good deal!

That's all for this week!

As always, I wish you the best in your success!
We hope you found this weeks' article helpful. Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com

Ecommerce Beginnings - Part XIV

Welcome to this weeks' Ecommerce Beginnings article.

The redesign continues! I am learning more and more concerning web design - new terms like MySQL database, I-Frame, how to make a page password protected with javascript and more! All of this can get confusing, but, in reality, I am enjoying all of the learning that is taking place as part of this process.

We are still on schedule for our May 1st new release date. (lots of work and hours to go - if you know what I mean) What started this process was the realization that there was just too much information on the main website: original new england enterprises

After analyzing just what our goals are and how we want to convey this message to our customers, we decided to take the original site and to break it up into three unique sites, in addition to our other two existing web presences. The plan is for it to end up like this:

• Main Corporate Site w/ links to all other sites
• Ecommerce Site
• Wholesale Products Site
• Online Opportunities Site
• eBay Site

By segmenting this way we believe we will be able to present a much clearer and well focused message for each of these sites vs. the cluttered and unfocused message currently being conveyed. As they say: "Change is inevitable - so embrace it!" Our hope is that these changes will meet everyone's expectations and that we will all be able to become more successful because of them.

That's all for this week!

As always, I wish you the best in your success!
We hope you found this weeks' article helpful. Make sure you stop back each week for our latest installment. Take care and have a great week!
Mark@original-new-england-enterprises.com