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Cyber Skill #15
Setting up a shopping cart system

Please note: This lesson isn't organized into individual steps, because there is only one step needed after reading this Introduction to Shopping Carts and that's to try one out at 1shoppingcart.com. Sorry if this piece sounds a little pushy; it's just that I believe in the shopping cart notion, as well as believing in 1shoppingcart.com which handles more coaches than any other system. I rarely endorse products or services, but I do endorse this one to the point that I am an affiliate and am even working to private-label their system as a licensee. Their system is sheer genius and much more than "just" a shopping cart. It's a marketing and management system. And the annual use cost is as low as $150 which is a steal.

Introduction
Please don't roll your eyes on this one. It's very, very important and will increase your revenue significantly, plus just the setting up of a shopping cart will get you into the e-commerce game. Even if you're not 'quite' ready to set this up, please read this one through so you'll understand why to move this up on your list of priorities. You do not need to know HTML in order to set one of these up. It's web-based, automated and takes just minutes to set up. And, if you don't yet have a merchant account, this system can help you get one quickly (costs are minimal, approval rate is 99% and all you need is a business checking account).   And, if you don't have a website, this shopping cart system can set one up for you automatically! Imagine, offering products and services without having to set up your own website. (And if you DO have a website you can seamlessly link from your site to your shopping cart so that visitors will feel like they are still on your site!)

What is a shopping cart?
If you want visitors at your website to do one or more of these things, you're going to need to get a shopping cart to handle their 'orders.'

1. Let visitors register for a free or pay TeleClass or TeleClasses, pay online using a major credit card and automatically cut off new registrants when the course fills up).
Again, automatically. This is very important because if you force the visitor to call or email you, you'll lose 30-50% of those potential customers. A real-time shopping cart makes it effortless for the visitor to act immediately, when they are hot. (When we at CoachVille installed our automated shopping cart last year, sales increased by 150% within 24 hours.) If you're thinking "Oh, they will sign up if they're really serious, you'd be correct about only 50-70% of your visitors. Why walk away from the others?

2. Let visitors hire you on-the-spot via your website and set up their first appointment.
Visitors are impressed by coaches who make it EASY for them to hire you. Some clients just won't do business with coaches who make them jump through the traditional hoops. Coaching is now a very competitive business and the shopping cart gives you both a marketing and a delivery advantage.

3. Let visitors buy and receive an ebook instantly - totally passive revenue!
If you haven't written an ebook yet, you will! And with this shopping cart system, the ordering, payment and delivery system is 100% automated. It's simple -- you wrote that ebook, and you use the shopping cart system to handle the back end of cash collection and delivery. TOTALLY passive revenue on your part.

4. Invite visitors to receive a free e-course via email, or join your mailing list, or enter 'advanced areas' of your website if they'll just give you their email address.
90% of first-time visitors won't buy from your site, but most of them ARE willing to give you their email address in exchange for something worthwhile, like an e-course, special reports/information, your ezine and/or immediate access to special materials at your site.   With the 1shoppingcart system, Information and access requests are fulfilled instantly and leads are automatically added to your mailing list! Personalized follow-up letters are automatically sent at predetermined intervals to customers and prospects building trust. The bonding/warming up process takes 1-12 months until the visitor becomes a buyer and this automatic follow-up system is the KEY to the marketing process because you won't 'forget' to follow up with them. The system does it ALL for you.

What else can a shopping cart do for you?
A well-programmed shopping cart can do a lot more than "just" accept orders. It can:
1. Act as your client/customer database because all orders and leads are added to your secure online database saving you countless hours of data entry!
2. Help you set up unlimited auto responders that automatically follow-up for you to maximum response rates. (Sequential auto responders double or triple the initial response rate.)
3. Broadcast email to those who have expressed an interest in your services/e-products using their ezine management system (comes as part of the shopping cart).
4. Set up and track affiliate program that you set up for your own services/products so that 1000's of webmasters and customers can promote YOUR products or service.
5. Produce surveys so you can find out what potential customers/clients WANT to buy from you.
6. Automate sequential emails for upselling offers.
7. Fulfill products/services ordered from you using an automated product delivery system.

With 1shoppingcart.com you can select from over a dozen merchant account processing gateways including..

and

Why is a shopping cart such a cool thing?
A 1shoppingcart is more than a typical shopping cart and 95-99% less than the cost of hiring a programmer to create one yourself. Here's why it's so cool.

1. When you get a shopping cart, you enter the world of e-commerce.
Why does that matter? Because you can learn a ton from the world of e-commerce and this shift gets you thinking about new services, classes, e-products and the like that YOU can come up with. Once you enter this game, you'll be NATURALLY pulled forward, just because it's incredibly fun.

2. When you get a shopping cart, you automate all of the related administrivia.
Payments for services and e-products and TeleClasses is completely automated and when something is automated, you tend to want to do a lot more of it. Tracking sales and setting limits for TeleClasses and setting up automated welcome and confirmation and survey emails in advance of the course, provides you with much more free time (and space) DURING the course you are teaching.

3. When you get a shopping cart, you WILL create more services and products.
You just will because it's so fun. And when the orders start coming in for your first e-product, class or service, you will WANT to create more, because you now have a system that supports the selling and ordering of your services and products. And remember the most successful coaches don't just coach -- they have e-products, teach classes, conduct group coaching, sell assessments and more -- all of which can be entirely handled by your shopping cart.

And perhaps most important of all....
4. When you get a shopping cart, you automate the upselling and cross selling process.
Now, please don't get turned off about the word selling. It's important to realize that most buyers need help in buying your product and that it may take 1-12 months for them to buy. And, once they do buy and they like what they bought, they DO want to buy more stuff from you. And if you can automate the upselling and crossing selling process, you'll save not only hundreds of hours of follow up, but you'll have more time to create more e-products and services.

FYI, your ordering area/shopping cart is 100% secure with a certificate from

so your customers feel safe about ordering online.

Okay, okay, now I get it. How do I get a shopping cart?
There is only one shopping cart system that I recommend and it's the most popular shopping cart system among coaches. It's called 1shoppingcart. Click here to take a look at their site and see a demo of their system. (They also offer a 30-day, risk free trial as well. (NO programming. NO software. NO downloads!)

Remember, 1shoppingcart has done all of the programming for you and you get even more than a shopping cart. You get an online marketing and management system that will help grow and grow your coaching business. Having a system is absolutely essential to scaling up your business. If you keep doing things manually, you just wont be able to scale quickly enough.

Read more about their packages and services, or even sign up for a 30-day free trial, at 1shoppingcart.com.

Was something not clear? Was there a typo or other error?
While we aren't able to provide 1-1 tech support, please email confusion-questions-corrections-improvements to reply@coachbrian.com. Again, we won't reply to your email but it will be read and this course will be improved as a direct result of your assistance.