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2. Designing A Facebook Fan Page: Showcases, Tutorials, Resources
3. 5 Reasons You Should Copy Amazon
4. Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide
5. Report: Email Still Beats Social Networks for E-Commerce

4 pillars of online trust: 80 percent increase in the conversion rate

Ash is CEO of the online agency www.sitetuners.com in San Diego, which specialize in the optimization of landing pages. During the ConversionConverence in San José, he clearly described how to increase customers’ trust in online shops.

On the one hand, the user needs to boost customer confidence with the first page view. On the other hand each visitor needs to accomplish trust no matter who he is or what requirement he has of the shop.

The four pillars Professional Design, Seal, Guarantee and Customer Review help build this trust. Due to Ash, they even increase the conversion rate up to 80 percent.

Seal

According to Ash, a seal provides evidence that the shop is approved by an independent certification company. The UK Online Fraud Report 2010 also measured that 85 percent of the interviewees look for signs which give them convidence that the shop is secure.

A seal like the Trusted Shops seal of approval can be such a sign. It is only integrated in online shops that achieve more than 100 legal criteria checked by the Trusted Shops legal experts.

Guarantee

Tim Ash went on to explain that guarantees help retailers to reduce customers’ fears in online shopping. With guarantees, retailers adress consumer fear and provide immediate solutions.

This is how Trusted Shops buyer protection works. It includes a money-back-guarantee if the money paid in advance is not refunded following use of the right to cancel or shop insolvency. Therefore buyer protection is an important attribute of the seals’ trust and thus the confidence in Trusted Shops.

Customer review

Sharing customers’ opinions and experiences about an online shop helps generate social acceptance of the shop and increase customers’ trust, as Ash explained in his speech. But a retailer will only achieve this acceptance if he communicates the opinions publicly.

The Trusted Shops customer rating system is an example of how retailers can generate trust throughout a community. This can be used to clearly demonstrate customer satisfaction immediately in the shop.

Optimise trust in your online presence with Trusted Shops

With Trusted Shops, online retailers can optimise three of the four pillars of online trust in their shop. Find out more about the seal of approval, buyer protection and customer rating.

eTailers showing the Trusted Shops seal of approval not only offer their customers money back guarantee for every order, but also for various different causes, e.g. in reversing transactions.
Plus they will encounter Trusted Shops’ personal service: Consumers can contact an experienced, multilingual Service Team of Excellence by mail, telephone or online if they experience problems when ordering online and thus obtain support.

To learn more on Trusted Shops Premium Services, contact sales@trustedshops.co.uk

To any eTailer this means on the other hand to meet certain quality criteria / passing a quality audit. But what if  ’passing a quality audit’  requires knowledge or skills beyond daily business matters? In this situation, external help may be required -  for sure a cost factor, sometimes business critical to  small and medium-sized businesses.

Trusted Shops PREMIUM  Membership not only offers you the regularly updated Trusted Shops Compliance manual with quality criteria and text modules (as already included in Trusted Shops PRO Membership), but also free support service from our Trusted Shops Teams of Excellence (esp. Legal and IT). Thus directly saving you money!

To find out more about the Trusted Shops services (and also about marketing benefits from our partners), please contact sales@trustedshops.co.uk

Here are our recommendations for this week.

1. Developing a Social Media Strategy: 6 Lessons from Kodak
2. 10 Secrets of a Winning Facebook Fan Page
3. The Convergence of Content, Community & Commerce
4. Google incorporating site speed in search rankings
5. Customers rely less on credit cards when buying online

While only 12% blamed the banks, and 28% said it was their own fault that they had lost money or had their identity stolen, the majority of 60% blamed eTailers for making them vulnerable to fraud.

In this context the results of a 2009 study of Germany’s GfK reflects that 75.4 % of all first time visitors found that trustmarks are very important.

Standing for secure online shopping in European key markets Trusted Shops demands SSL secured payments from the beginning on in 1999.
Thus any shop showing the Trusted Shops seal of approval has passed our quality audit, providing highest level of security:
Audit of all quality criteria to check the shop’s compliance with the Trusted Shops quality criteria, which are based on current recommendations by consumer protection associations and on statutory regulations. This catalogue of specifications is continuously improved and amended to incorporate the latest developments in jurisprudence and consumer protection. The Trusted Shops quality criteria are based on national and European guidelines relevant to online shopping.

For detailed information, please contact sales@trustedshops.co.uk

Trusted Shops now rolls out its activities in UK

Trusted Shops has worked successfully for more than 10 years in the fields of online retailing and consumer protection. The company offers services for internet retailers to create trust in their business. Trusted Shops services help online shoppers to choose trustworthy shops and also increases conversion rates and sales significantly.

Along with this third party approval, it’s good for business to have trust created by word of mouth through other consumers who have already used the retailer. Therefore Trusted Shops offers in all its packages a customer rating and review tool which allows the retailer to collect and analyse customer’s feedback and display it on its homepage.

Free entry to Trusted Shops customer ratings

Retailers can choose between three packages that best fit their needs. The start package is the ideal entry package for merchants who want to learn how to increase trust and credibility. It includes unlimited customer reviews.

Spread word of mouth with customer reviews

The Trusted Shops Pro package is ideal for merchants who want to spread word of mouth with the customer reviews and rating. The customer reviews and rating can be embedded into the Online Shop visible for each potential customer. With the compliance manual and modules retailers get useful insights into legal compliance in additional.

Boost the conversion rate and sales

Ideal for merchants who want to boost conversion rate and sales with the full range of trust solutions is the Trusted Shops premium package. It offers not only customer reviews and rating. Retailers benefit also from the Trusted Shops legal compliance audit and seal of approval as well as the money back guarantee for shoppers.

“Safe web shopping has various components”, says Jean-Marc Noël, founder and CEO of Trusted Shops. “Other than on the high street the consumer can not look closely at the retailer’s business and does not know if he can trust in it. Trusted Shops therefore has a close look at the shop – with a team of lawyers we check if privacy, terms and conditions as well as secure payment procedures are compliant with consumer protection rights.”

Read more about the Trusted Shops packages.

“The national law is transferred from the same EU regulations in UK as in Germany but we felt that in daily business online retailers have different needs,” says Dr. Carsten Föhlisch, Head of the Legal Department Trusted Shops Cologne. “Therefore we decided that getting UK law offices involved and to adopt the text modules we provide to retailers to the UK market. We do not only provide a code of conduct – our legal audit involves a thorough check of all legal matters in an online shop. Starting from the imprint, the terms and conditions, the privacy throughout the whole order process our team makes sure that consumers data is being treated secure.”

Learn more about the Trusted Shops Legal Compliance Check

This April, at the Internet World Munich, Germany, Trusted Shops featured its free Legal Compliance Check. This powerful legal tool helps retailers finding legal weaknesses in their online shop right away and provides useful upgrading hints.

The Trusted Shops Legel Team of Excellence in certification had guided the retailers through the Legal Compliance Check: A personal service which didn’t take much longer than 10 minutes in average. Receiving a detailed analysis, their shops finally met relevant legal criteria.

Meet Trusted Shops at Internet World in London

From April 27 to 29 the Internet World is present in London. Take the chance to meet Trusted Shops at the trade fair and find out more about the Trusted Shops Legal Compliance Check  as well as the Customer Ratings!

You will find Trusted Shops at the Sage Pay ‘networking bar’, located in the middle of the exhibition floor at Earls Court / stand number E4035 in Earls Court 2. Or arrange a time with our sales team: sales@trustedshops.com.

The Internet Word boosts the UK’s largest gathering of leading industry suppliers and unrivalled networking opportunities for professionals across retail, publishing, digital marketing, advertising, IT, design and other senior level business strategists.

The entrance to the Internet World is free, if you register before. Further information about the trade fair are available at www.internetworld.co.uk.

Find out more about this interesting shop in the following interview with director Tony J. Namdar.

What is the idea behind your online store?
The idea is to create an online rug store which offers a huge choice by archiving the rugs and carpets of wholesalers worldwide into one database with user friendly access for everyone.

When did you start your online store?
The online store exists as the B2B version since 1997, as B2C since 2005.

I joined my father’s company in Hamburg/Germany after university. Hamburg and London are two of the main locations for Oriental carpet importers worldwide. Our main activity was to find the right carpets for retailers and wholesalers from overseas. Mainly this was done “in bulk” i.e. our customers were looking to buy several hundred square meters of oriental carpets and rugs each time. Often there were inquiries for certain oversized rugs – large than 3 x 4 meters – in certain colors from certain provenances etc. Eventually, I made it my mission to archive these rare rugs in an in-house database, in order to offer them to our clients quickly without having to search for them. This database has grown rapidly and was made available online. Initially only for retail customers, then increasingly for private use. The database was later expanded to include all types of carpets.

In this way we provide carpets directly from the importer to private customers at low prices and the customers can subsequently browse the stock of thousands of wholesalers worldwide.

How important is the UK and the international market for you?
Since the business started off in Germany, our main clientele is still there. However since opening our office in London our business within the UK has grown rapidly. The USA is an important market for us as well because we have the world’s largest choice of large and oversized oriental rugs and the USA are the biggest market for large rugs.

Which shop-system are you currently using?
We had it custom made for our purposes. It was not possible to “weave” the special characteristics and categories of rugs into a standard shop system.

Which payment systems does your shop offer?
We currently accept credit card payment for MasterCard, Visa and Diners Club. We are planning to accept American Express, PayPal and direct debit.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
The first and most important advantage is the unbeatable choice. With a powerful online database browsing the products and finding the right carpet is much quicker and easier than finding a rug in any high street store. Lastly we can offer lower prices by not having to keep a stock of thousands of rugs, all made possible by the world wide web.

Does your store have any special features or functions?
The sheer number of criteria by which rugs can be searched on our website is the main functional advantage we have over our competitors. You will not find another website that covers all of these criteria including whether the carpet should have an allover design or a medallion, whether it should have a Mahi or Bukhara design, whether it should be new or antique (down to 20 years accuracy). All this is made possible by a sophisticated database, and the meticulous categorization of each rug.

Which special services do you offer?
Each rug is described in detail including the history of each rug origin/provenance and its special characteristics. We try to describe each rug and its condition (in case of used antique rugs) as honestly as possible.

For special requests, we also offer a comprehensive service. We are often asked whether we can make an assessment of the value for money performance of certain carpets. We do this gladly and objectively. One important reason being that due to our business concept of not having our own stock we are objective and not under any pressure to sell specific rugs which have been in stock for a longer time because wholesalers keep the stock for us. Nor are we motivated to sell rugs with a lower purchase price and therefore higher profit because our markup percentage is the same with each carpet. Therefore truly objective advice and guidance is possible, by the nature of our business in a way.

Customer phone service goes far beyond normal business hours, simply because our phone system automatically transfers calls to the mobile phones of our employees who can access all carpet data via a special technique on their mobile phones. E-Mails are answered within 20 minutes, mostly quicker, also beyond normal business hours (the Blackberry makes it happen).

What measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
First and foremost becoming a member of Trusted Shops was an important measure which is basically like the MOT for online shops. Another very important step was to grant our customers free shipping within the entire European Union and within the USA. Lastly our customers have full right of return without any shipping costs involved.

Which recommendations would you give to other e-tailers?
Find a niche of difficult to find products and invest in usability of your website and in good customer service.

What are your plans for the future?
I am currently working on a completely new design of our website under a new domain which covers modern rugs as well as oriental rugs.

What is your favourite online-shop as a consumer?
That is easy, amazon.co.uk. They are always my first stop when I want to buy something online.

To find out more about this shop go to oriental-carpets.com or have a look at the shop’s profile at Trusted Shops.

Learn more on chances for bargain with or without Buyer Rating.

A recent survey held by the German E-Commerce-Center for Traders (ECC) in association with the German Postal Bank P.O.S. Transact Company reports growth rates up to 38.7 %.
Looking at small and medium sized businesses, German ECC’s project manager Sebastian Baal strongly recommends the use of buyer rating tools.
In the context of this survey, almost 1,000 test purchases were conducted by 200 online shoppers. Visiting online test shops, they were free to choose any product they liked. Some shops received positive buyer ratings, others did not meet the customer’s requests.
According to this, the study detected only 10 % chances for bargain for those shops, not showing any customer reviews. 13.9 % chances for bargain were memeasured at shops displaying positive buyer ratings.

Buyer Ratings to boost new business

The study has detected a high impact of buyer rating on trust and confidence in eCommerce business. Especially for those online shoppers, visiting at first glance and who do not have any detailed information on the shop, do highly bank on buyer ratings and reviews. This also reflects the result of Germany’s GfK survey conducted in September 2009: 75.4 % of all first time visitors found that buyer ratings are very important; also 68.5 % of all visitors choosing prepayment have set high value on positive rating scores and reviews.

Especially for small and medium sized businesses, these studies have clearly proven a positive impact of buyer reviews. Customer reviews appeared to have a rather low bias on a purchase decisions made by test shoppers who could choose among a variety of alternative of shops.

Web shops displaying buyer ratings encountered a chance for bargain of 59.7 % among test shoppers choosing between only two web shops. Web shops displaying buyer ratings encountered a chance for bargain of 17.7 % among test shoppers choosing between four web shops. Taking into account the distinction, buyer ratings rather influence any purchase decision of first time visitors.

Click here to find out more about the Trusted Shops buyer rating.

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1. What’s Next in Web Design?
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3. Google AdWords cleared by European Court but advertisers warned over trade mark abuse
4. Creating an Online Video Strategy
5. 10 Secrets of a Winning Facebook Fan Page

Learn more about this shop from managing director Marco Schuler.

How would you briefly describe your shop?
In fact, we’re a crazy bunch of people, ready to take the challenge of selling solely these unique sports goods. Due to the fact that we have a narrow range of products, we can surely be called experts on Powerisers Jump aids. Anyone should feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions on our product, we’re happy to talking to our customers.

When did you launch your online shop?
Our go live was due to January 1, 2006.

Would you call the ‘Powerisers’ shop your fulltime job?
Yes. Currently our staff counts 2 fulltime employees, supported by freelancers on demand, e.g. promotion teams at trade fairs and events.

Do you also run a ‘Powerisers’ store location in addition?
Yes. Our store is located downtown near the station measures 550 sqm: 150 sqm sales floor plus 400 sqm storage area.

What is the impact of Web 2.0 / interactive communication on your marketing strategy?
We care a lot about our buyers’ opinion. In this way, we’re looking at Trusted Shops ‘Buyer Rating’ as being a very strong marketing and research tool.

Recently implemented on our homepage, we are now getting a good idea on our buyers’ opinions and their expectations too. Taking this into account, we are able to deal with any problems just in time. Also, steadily improving our services and our product performance according to our customers’ needs, helps us to keep customers happy, thus loyal.

In addition, we have found our engagement in social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, or our postings at selected online planes, as of being essential to raise awareness for our brand. What you see is what you get: Only visibility and interactive dialogue may establish trust and confidence.

How do you earn your customers’ trust?
We are customer obsessed. Every customer is important to us and we continue working hard to meet his individual needs every single day. Keeping our buyers happy means us being  successful!

What are your preferred marketing channels?
We are using Google Adwords and ebay ad commerce. Currently we are working to integrate affiliate programs, such as affilinet and zanox into our marketing plan.

What is your strategy for customer loyalty?
We believe that attractive promotion deals help us winning over the customer. Also we have established a cost-free newsletter service, providing valuable content on a regular basis.
Yet, simple as that, we strongly believe that keeping our customers happy is the most efficient way to keeping them loyal to our shop!

What features are you using on your web shop yet?
We are currently using online videos showing both, our product features and product practice. Also our websites provide high-quality pictures and flash animated features. This helps us best to promote the unique product features.

Trading in Germany and European mainland markets, did you encounter legal difficulties yet?
Oh yes, yet these problems did rather address brand trademark law rather than our online shop business. Also, mistakes in our legal terms & conditions had to be corrected (which is one of  Trusted Shops member service core competencies, note by author).

What’s your piece of advice to etailers?
Running your online shop successfully means way more effort than just providing a website. First, you got to know your visitor to turn him into a customer. In this way you will establish trust. Second you have to understand and to meet his needs. This guarantees you to make him a happy customer. Third, understanding your customer’s individual demands gets you to offer the best fitting product and service to him (which is the essential to Trusted Shops Buyer Rating, note by author). This makes him a loyal and valuable buyer, keeping your online shop successful and highly efficient.

What is your main source of information on relevant topics in e-Commerce?
Google and Trusted Shops weekly newsletter.

To find out more about this shop go to Powerisers.

There are now more than 6,900 Trusted Shops members all over Europe! Along with the German market, the UK and France make up our company’s primary markets. Parallel to the relaunch of both the UK and French websites, Trusted Shops is now boosting activities in UK and in France. In addition, in the near future we will focus on e-commerce activities for entry into emerging markets such as Poland, Spain and the Netherlands.

We believe that qualified staff is the foundation for our growth!

Trusted Shops is now hiring

• commercial lawyers (team certification)
• account managers (team sales)
• IT-experts (team IT)

in order to support our various teams of excellence. 60 people currently make up the team in Cologne, Germany. Ulrich Hafenbradl, one of Trusted Shops’ 3 founders / CEOs and blog author, outlines this year’s business targets:

“Our aim is to have 10,000 certified Trusted Shops members by the end of this year. Furthermore, we are looking to gain a high profile in the main European markets. We will also continue to expand our product portfolio and invest more in emerging markets in our anniversary year 2010!”

Find out more about Trusted Shops as your future employer!

Now that you have got acquainted with our staff and products in our video, you now have the opportunity to learn more about our philosophy.
Simultaneous to growth rates in e-commerce, we have observed increasing demand for trust and security. In order to best benefit from this, we are aiming to offer specific training programmes. In this way, we will also achieve our own goals: highly trained employees with passion for our customers and their requirements.
In this capacity, you will find us at leading exhibitions and careers fairs for students and graduates, for instance the German “Career Fair” in Cologne, part of the “World Business Dialogues“, the world’s largest student-organised business congress. Furthermore, we place great importance on closely collaborating with selected universities and colleges in order to offer career opportunities to graduates.

How could Trusted Shops fit into your career planning?

Find out more about our job openings:

• Java software engineer / web developer (m/f)
• Support key account manager / sales support (m/f)
• Bachelor/Master of Laws, commercial lawyer / certification (m/f)
• Students Master of Laws / internship (m/f)
• Trainee (m/f)
• Student SEO / research: search engine optimization (m/f)

For detailed information, please contact

Mrs. Nicole Thiele
bewerbung [at] trustedshops.de

Online customer reviews and ratings have a significant influence on the shopping behaviour of consumers buying online.

According to the Deloitte study more than half of all U.S. consumers and 69% of Millennials say that reviews and ratings by other consumers influence their buying decisions more than any other type of online advertising. As a result of the study 51% of the respondents said they had purchased products based on an online recommendation, and 24% said they would like to have an online service that recommends products based on consumers’ recommendations.

An ecommerce persuasion poll, carried out by user experience consultancy, Webcredible, revealed that almost one third (28 per cent) of online shoppers are most likely to be persuaded to make an online purchase by the reputation of the retailer.

Only 50 % of the eretailers use customer reviews

Still, though, only 50% of online retailers use customer reviews on their sites, according to Forrester Research. Those who don’t likely fear what their customers might say. They shouldn’t, according to Forrester, which also found that 25% of online shoppers report that they are unlikely to purchase a product after reading negative reviews, and most don’t take those reviews seriously.
But there is another reason why retailers should consider integrating a system into their online-shops that gives their customers the opportunity to share their service experiences: It can increase their creditability with their customer base overall.

Honest and impartial reviews written by real people enable consumers to choose the right shop for a product or a service and to buy with more confidence.

The Trusted Shops buyer feedback service

In addition to the well known trustmark Trusted Shops is offering a review and rating service where online buyers can provide feedback on transactions, rate online shops in a structured way and leave comments, provided they registered for a Trusted Shops guarantee at checkout.

Shopkeepers can use these unbiased buyer feedbacks to learn what customers liked and disliked, identify potential issues and use these insights to improve the shopping experience.

Click here to learn more about the Buyer Feedbacks by Trusted Shops.

Find out why trust is so important in e-commerce.

To watch the Interview click on the Screenshot below:

Learn more about the Market Ready Package Germany.

The Germany ready package is the largest free available extension for Magento, and it is a part of symmetrics SaaS platform for sophisticated e-commerce solutions. This release by symmetrics in close cooperation with Trusted Shops is an important contribution to the community and it is actively working on the dissemination of Magento on the German market.

The backround

Magento out of the box, configured as a universal and international product for shops of any size on the German market is not easy to handle. It takes time and requires expertise in the countless configuration steps. To help with these processes the missing valuable modules, as well as the valuable theme of the legal security symmetrics decided to launch a part of the SaaS configuration in this package. Symmetrics not only hope to inspire significantly more dealers for Magento, but also to improve the professionalism among developers, agencies and partners to drive forward the permanent standard tasks. They permanently carry out standard tasks and now they can automated solve it through the package.

A B2B package for the Magento Enterprise Edition and interfaces to more leading e-commerce services are in progress.

Here are some of the changes which are made by the localization package:

1. Creation and adaptation of information pages for supplier marking (imprint, terms, disclaimer, shipping, payment types, data protection), and filling the pages with variables from the centralized Imprint module
2. Standard configuration of the entire store for the German market (customer groups, rates, date formats, VAT rates, currencies, daily settings, basic store configurations, display of cart items, etc..)
3. Involvement of meaningful and easy to find links to information pages
4. Centralized management of all data in the new imprint module
5. Displaying and linking the price of components and additional costs incurred (including 19 percent VAT, plus shipping) to the necessary authorities
6. Optimization of orders (indication of delivery time and shipping weight, ad inventory through traffic light function)
7. Adaptation of the information in the order process and invoicing and others by a new accounting module
8. Relative SEO and options of performance
9. Distance warning from endangered formulations Shop and e-mail templates and delivery patterns of German texts (Must be the pattern with their own and replace variables in the texts of the imprint module)
10. Integration of the current German Language Pack with extensions
11. Numerous other optimizations, in particular to reduce the risk of a legal warning

With immediate effect the German localization package for Magento Commerce is ready for free (OSL 3.0 license) download for all interested parties on Magento connect.

We hope you enjoy reading the following blog-posts.

1. Understanding Magento Scalability and Performance
   
2. 21 Beautiful And Creative Navigation Menus
3. PHP Security: Fortifying Your Website- Power Tips
4. Web Form Validation: Best Practices and Tutorials
5. Link Consolidation: The New PageRank Sculpting

Find out more about this subject in the following article.

Online shoppers use alternative payment methods

In 2008 the company trialpay found out in it’s Alternative Payments Survey, that 75% of online shoppers have used an alternative payment method, such as Google Checkout, PayPal, Bill Me Later and TrialPay to purchase an item online. And 59% of online shoppers say they are more likely to make a purchase online if there is an alternative payment method available.

More payment options – more trust?

40% of those surveyed by ClickandBuy also said that they would feel more comfortable purchasing from a retailer who offers a wide range of payment methods than a retailer who only offers one payment option.

One third (36%) of survey participants said they would be spending more online than on the high street in 2009 than in 2008 and 45% agreed that they would be spending more time shopping online for cheaper versions of things they used to buy on the high street.

Financial security risks associated with ecommerce continue to be a concern, however, with 83% of respondents believing that the number of people trying to commit fraud on the internet is increasing. Only one third disagreed with the statement ‘I feel no safer when buying online now than I did five years ago’ and less than half (42%) of regular online shoppers are totally confident that their credit card details are secure when entered online.

Concerns of security risks

Of the 32% of adults surveyed who do not regularly shop online, over half (54%) said that this is because they are concerned of the security risks from entering credit card details online.

Commenting on the findings, Nick Drew, director, e-commerce operations, ClickandBuy, said:

“The message to merchants is clear – consumers are prepared to shop more online, but they want to feel completely comfortable and secure in doing so. Competition is rife in the online space and if shoppers aren’t being offered the right service and payment systems to meet their needs, they will take their purchase elsewhere, leaving merchants to potentially miss out on millions of pounds of business. Yes, e-commerce is set to grow, but only for those merchants who appreciate that different consumers have different preferences when it comes to making online transactions. The logic is simple – by offering a wider range of payment systems, the more customers a site is likely to appeal to.”

Find out more about this interesting shop in the following interview.

What is the idea behind your online store?
With MiaDeRoca we are offering products that are not available everywhere. We are specialising on beautiful things that are produced in the Alpine region or are inspired by the Alps, its symbols and its traditions. Our product range encompasses funky handbags, messenger bags, exclusive purses, garnet jewellery, woollen caps, porcelain, fake deer trophies and exceptional cookie cutters. It is very important to us to visit and get to know manufacturers and designers that provide products for the MiaDeRoca shop. We have had the luck, that so some very special and exclusive products were developed. MiaDeRoca is in fact the combination of all things we love to do – travel, explore, scout local products, test and promote them online.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
Like always, there have been several reasons. Since 2003 we have been running an internet marketing business and had developed and optimized online shops for customers, we were more than ready for our own adventure. The second reason is of course, that we love the region were we live and that we love, that the Alps are extremely diverse, encompass several nations, all different dialects and traditions. And the wonderful MiaDeRoca shop enables us do look for interesting design and manufacturers from Vienna to Monaco. The planning started 2006, the English webshop was launched in autumn 2007.

Could you tell us about your professional life before you started your online store?
We run an internet marketing business focusing on the German speaking market, but work internationally as well.

Do you work full-time or part-time for your online business?
MiaDeRoca is in fact an online family-business. Regina Kainz and Florian Fischer work part time and we do have employees on our payroll during the more busy months.

Where are your customers located?
Our customers are located all over Europe. If we would put a pin on the map for every purchase we had since 2007, there would be a big punch of pins within the boundaries of Germany, several in the UK, quite some pins in Ireland and of course a nice bulk in Austria.

Which shop-system are you currently using?
The Shop System is based on Zen Cart. Numerous modifications have been developed to improve the usability and to make the shopping experience more powerful and better than at standard webshops.

Which payment systems does your Shop offer?
Prepayment and PayPal. We will add other payment methods as well.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
One of the advantages is time flexibility – you can shop whenever you want, you can take as much time as you want, buy and leave or read thoroughly through the descriptions, look at the pictures, sleep it over and then go for it. The MiaDeRoca advantage is of course the product range, our customers find a selected range of products from handmade bags, exceptional jewellery to unusual cookie cutters.

Do you also run a high street store?
We did run a fantastic high street shop in the medieval centre of Salzburg from November 2007 until April 2009. We had some customers who bought online after visiting the high street store and we had customers who visited the store after exploring the online shop. Unfortunately the high street store soon was too small for all the products and logistics needed for the online shop, and city centres are wonderful to stroll and walk, but not ideal for daily deliveries and the quick shipping of products.

What measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
We follow all legal necessities, we try to provide clear information on the shopping process and of course the Trusted Shop Certification shows that we are certified by a renowned company.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
We promote MiaDeRoca in several ways. Offline promotion has mainly been through press releases and press contacts. Internet marketing has its emphasis on search engine optimisation and networking.

Are you using web 2.0 approaches for your online business?
We run the MiaDeRoca magazine, a blog where we post Alpine recipes, sightseeing tips, book reviews and some crafty stuff.

Where do you gather information about online shopping and web-retailing?
Through all kinds of media, be it books on consumption theory, blogs on usability or discussion boards on internet marketing. And we value the information exchange with fellow shop owners.

Which recommendations would you give to other e-tailers?
An online-shop is never finished, it is a continuous process.

What are your plans for the future?
We are constantly adding new products to the shop and are scouting new designers. There is a big number of creative and skilled minds in the Alps! One new section we will introduce during the next weeks is “DIY Projects”. There will be basic patterns to felt knitted bags or to crochet iPod purses or flower scarfs. In autumn, right before the second birthday of MiaDeRoca, we are planning some nice give-away and lottery.

If you want to get more information go to MiaDeRoca or visit the MiaDeRoca Magazine which presents on monthly basis interesting facts about Alpine Lifestyle.