Get Free Training To Sharpen Your Ecommerce Skills And Increase Your Stores Revenue

One of the biggest challenges in starting your online store is advancing through the ever-evolving landscape of building a website that converts sales and attracts visitors to the site to purchase.

Knowledge is power in this sense, but testing your knowledge in the real world and learning from others who have done it are much more valuable. You need the mind-set to learn it, and follow through with blind enthusiasm.

Luckily we have resources like Steve at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com to share his experience and insight on how to create a profitable online store that supports a family oriented and free lifestyle. Not only can we learn from his tactics, we can be
inspired by his results and what he and his wife have achieved.

The MyWifeQuitHerJob.com free mini course and paid profitable online store course are unmatched in the material that you can find online to jumpstart your store to become a substantial source of income for your family.

One challenge that individuals face when running their own online business is the fact that by nature we are social beings and the process of learning new strategies and tactics and the interactions of your store are for the most part on the internet, email, social media, and on the phone. We want to share, we want to interact, and we want to feel significant and sometimes it helps to be able to do that face to face with other human beings.

New age workers are turning to shared workspaces, entrepreneurial support groups, local meet ups, and paid conferences for these types of human interactions which are all great ideas. Most people don’t realize that there are tons of opportunities to attend free events with companies that are promoting their ecommerce products and services but are extremely valuable learning experiences nonetheless. Did I mention that most of these events have open bars and free hors d’oeuvres?

I recently attended 2 events in New York City that I learned a lot from. Both events were put on by local ecommerce companies along with Magento Commerce, which is the Ecommerce platform/system that I use for my online store. Sometimes the best learning experiences are when you are in a new environment and not distracted by everything going on in your world and this proved true for me at both events.

The first event was put on by a Magento certified partner who integrates Magento stores for businesses selling their products online. I was simply invited to the event because I was on the Magento Commerce email list and in the New York City geographical area. Even though this year I may not have the budget for using the services of the development company, there is no telling what the future holds.

During the event I got to listen to the company CEO present their strategies for launching online stores for their clients. I vigorously took notes and generated about 20 actionable ideas that I took home to implement. We also heard directly from Magento account managers for their Enterprise edition and future releases.

They even touched on the recent acquisition from Ebay and let us know that the Community Edition (open source / free) will continue to be supported as it serves as a great spring board for feature requests and testing for their development team.

But what was the best part of the event was networking with the other online store owners. There were people that had driven 4 hours from Washington DC to New York to attend and everyone was Ecommerce minded just like me. I loved it! I met one gentleman who had an online store that did over $1M selling military supplies that he started himself. It was a really inspiring and fun time, and the food and open bar wasn’t bad either!

The next event was about a month later and was a conversion seminar that was put on by a company in New York that customizes the search feature for Magento stores to provide better results that convert sales more effectively. The other companies putting on the event were another Certified Magento Developer, and my hosting company Nexcess that I use for my Magento site (and who graciously invited me).

The search results on your Ecommerce website are extremely important and this event reminded me of that. Again, I had instantly gone home and worked on optimizing our search results page after attending this event with fresh ideas.

The Certified Magento developer also did an excellent job in giving us tips for converting sales on our website. As Ecommerce Marketers we all need to know there is more value to converting our current visitors before we start driving more traffic to the site.

They gave tips many of us know such as make your phone number prominent, using trust logos, using video to convert sales. Things I knew but that I also went home and tested such as adding shipping carrier and credit card logos during checkout as additional trust logos beyond our ssl certificate.

Finally the hosting company we used went into detail about how to optimize your Magento store for performance which was very helpful. They showed us how to minimize your css, javascript, and all the calls to the server for images in Magento. They also went into using web caching and clearing log tables in the database to increase performance.

In the future as our traffic grows we may also use their Content Delivery Network to improve performance of our content by placing it on servers all over the world. Keep in mind we pay $25.00 per month for our hosting so it’s not over the top by any means. The hosting company presentation really enforced the importance of fast performance of our store for both converting sales as well as for search engine optimization to make sure Google and other search engines get fast load times when they index our site.

The networking at this event was also top notch. I even ran into store owners from the previous event and we shared some laughs about enjoying all the free food and drinks together. After both events I now have about 10 other Ecommerce site owners I know that I can reach out to and stay in touch on Social Networking sites and continue to learn from (and learn about the next free events).

My best advice is to find out who the local Ecommerce companies are in your area. If you live close to a large metropolitan area this is even easier. Sign up for their email lists and learn from them online, but when there’s a free local event take advantage and attend, you won’t be disappointed. Every online store started at $0.00 but it was the people who persisted and continued to push themselves to learn more and in different ways that reached new heights.

So don’t do all your learning online, find some free events to attend and network with other Ecommerce professionals in your area. Once you build up your sales then you can bring it even further and purchase yourself tickets to some of the most coveted events such as Internet Retailer Conference, Shop.org, and E-Tail. Best of luck with all of your online stores!