If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that we’re crazy about Magento. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not willing to give other platforms their due – because we most certainly are. Shopify, for example, is an equally viable e-Commerce solution for anyone who has ever thought of building an online store, boosting sales, and enhancing Internet presence. The platform is growing very quickly, too, with over 16,000 Shopify stores to date. Like Magento, Shopify features an easy-to-use store builder, as well as a set of fully customizable store designs. (If you’re good with codes like HTML and CSS, you can create your own design from scratch.) It’s also integrated with a number of today’s most popular payment gateways, including PayPal, Authorize.Net, Google Checkout, QuickBooks Merchant Services, ePay, and more. Shopify caps off its rich feature set with unlimited e-Commerce hosting, which includes automatic updates and backups, Level 1 PCI compliance, unlimited bandwidth, and its own – Read the full article
If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you’ll know by now how much Lakeshore Branding loves Magento eCommerce. We’ve been gushing about how awesome it is, but at the end of the day, of course, it’s just our recommendation. There are literally hundreds of e-Commerce platforms and shopping cart solutions to choose from – aimed at retailers of varying sizes across a number of industries – and we thought that on this post, we’ll look at one of the notable non-Magento ones. Hey, we’re all for fairness. Established in 2006, Shopify is a hosted e-Commerce solution designed expressly for small online retailers. It’s been generating plenty of buzz recently for its ability to get startups and home-based merchants up and selling – quickly, easily, in a matter of minutes, even. Shopify boasts of a rich feature set that’s accessible via its elegant, easy-to-use interface. Almost everything is drag-and-drop, making store management a breeze. To get started, you choose a theme – Read the full article
Missing more than hitting in your E-mail marketing campaign? Don’t give up on it just yet. First of all, before you continue reading, you may want to check out our previous post on how to start an E-mail campaign. We hope you’ll enjoy applying the great tips we’ve listed in there. After the tips come the tools. We’ll let you in on a little secret: here at Lakeshore Branding we use something called MailChimp. So MailChimp is basically this cool new E-mail marketing service that’s simple and easy to use. It’s fairly new, but the service has grown to have more than 400,000 users (including us!) and 20 million emails served daily. If you’ve never launched a marketing campaign through E-mail before, then you might want to consider using MailChimp to make the whole process easier for you. Yeah, sure, the name sounds kind of quirky, but don’t be deceived: MailChimp has a powerful, developer-friendly product that definitely makes E-mail – Read the full article
