Getting to know the Indie Wizard

We developed the Indie Wizard to help our merchants as quickly and effectively create free online stores. While the Indie Wizard isn't meant to increase traffic to your store (don't worry that is coming up), it is a quick way for you to get a professional looking store. By filling out all the information on the Wizard you give your store a much greater chance of ranking highly on our search results. The Wizard consists of 5 points to help you get started to selling goods. By using the wizard you will go step by step to simplify the process. The first step is to upload a logo, while the second step is to pick a premade theme. Also you can customize a theme by yourself if you know CSS coding. Step 3 takes you to our customized layout page where you will be able to add any social media sites, create a blog and move modules around. Step 4 is uploading your products and the final step 5 is turning your store from private to public. Assuming you have all your files on your computer and are uploading no more then 10 products, the Indie Wizard can get you a create looking store in under 15 minutes. Of course the more time you spend on your store and the better it will look. I recommend at least 1 hour setting up your store which will include products, blogs, and connecting to your Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or YouTube.

Websites to judge the effectiveness of your marketing

Creating a website isn't enough if you want to be successful on the Internet now a days. 20 years ago, you but up a site and you were basically the only game in town for selling a certain product online. Now the online marketplace has become more competitive and tougher to make sales then off line. Yet some individuals make great money selling online with low overhead and great margins while others struggle to make even one sale. While may goal of this blog isn't to necessarily give you marketing tips, but to present you with websites that will help you score your efforts (Albeit on a scoring system they have created)
The first website is www.websitegrader.com
IN their own words they say It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective"
The same creators of website grader also came up with a grader for your Twitter page. Which should be an indication to you just how important a Twitter page is.
You can find it http://twitter.grader.com/ basically this tool allows you to judge the effectiveness of your twitter page vs. over 2 million in their system based on their predetermined metrics.
The final website that I will mention is http://www.seomoz.org/ which is basically an easy to use SEO optimizer where you can rank various aspects of your website and see where you need to improve. It is available for free and an upgraded version for a fee.
Knowing how effective your marketing is to search engines is key. Every social bookmark you create and every social media page you start for your business shouldn't be judged only on how much referral traffic it brings in, but also on the residual traffic that search engines will drive to your site due to your efforts.

Recent Press

I would just like to share some recent press that we have recieved in the month of January. The biggest news comes from a website called Killer start ups. YOu can check out the editorial here http://www.killerstartups.com/eCommerce/indiemart-com-creating-a-store-made-simple
I must admit it was a great review and one I am more then happy to mention, written about us on a top ranked website. Another article which featured IndieMart was on feed my apps which is basically a website which compiles interesting webpages and applications from the internet. We are planning something very big in the media which I am not at liberty to speak of at the moment, but hopefully it will come together in the next 4 months.
Nothing pleases me more then having independent websites give us positive reviews which validates all the hard work our team at IndieMart has put in to try and put out the best possible product. Hopefully we can have many more positive reviews in the future and like always I will be happy to share it with you.

Even Lower Fees

In our about us section we have made a promise to keep our fees as low as possible. Due to our strong growth in our first few months of operation we have reassessed our objectives and decided it was possible for us to decrease our fees even further. Under our old fee structure, free stores were able to list up to 10 products at one time and were charged 2.9% per transaction while premium members were able to list unlimited items and charged 0.9% per transaction. Now free members can list unlimited items and are charged 2.9% per transaction while premium members can list unlimited items and all transaction fees are waived. We would like to thank all the merchants that have signed up and made this possible. As we grow and generated more revenue we will try to pass any savings as possible to our merchants. Our goal is to create the best selling experience possible, we hope this move is one step closer to that goal.

Ways to help you Customize

IndieMart is adding features every week, which is a good things because your free store can look as good as possible. However we understand that customizing your store can be a difficult task so today I will write a few quick tips on how to customize your store to start selling online as quickly as possible. Some people might ask if customizing your store is even important? It is one of the most important things you can do for your IndieMart store. Before customers see you product and buy online, they look at your store, this first impression is very important.
Currently we have premade themes were you can choose colors and displays for your boxes, or create your own customization. When choosing premade themes you still have the ability to move around modules and add or delete any modules you may have. These themes are more to help you choose combinations that look good and flow with your website.
The modules can be moved around or changed in the customized layout tab. This tab is very important because it will help customers stay on your page. You can upload or write a blog, put a introductory text about your product, attach your social media sites on this page or move the modules around. You want your web page to be as informative as possible and at the same time having them create a attachment to your page. By adding social media sites, even if the customer doesn't buy from your site, they might add your Facebook fan page or start following you on Twitter. This is very important as you not only want sales but also to create brand awareness for your product.
The add product tab is where you can add your products to the website. You have the ability to upload multiple photos of your product and we suggest you take a look at it. The more photos you upload, the greater the probability of a customer buying your product
The last topic today is the Google Analytics tab on your dashboard. It is important to add a Google Analytics code because knowing your traffic volume and where your merchants are from will help increase your sales. Using Google Analytics was an easy choice for us to incorporate because their statistics are extremely complete and offer a great geographical description.
By spending some time on these tabs, you will be able to increase the attractiveness of your store, and more importantly the time people spend browsing your site. Which will hopefully lead to increased sales, which is probably the reason you wanted to sell online in the first place.

Highligthing products

Every once in a while I like to highlight certian products on the site that I feel have caught my eye. Now to be fair this is usually going to be something handmade and for some strange reason I have a love affiar with glass or ceramic objects. I have no idea where this came from, but I really enjoy looking at handmade trinkets. Today I am going to highlight a store out of Bolivia which you can find here.
They make hand crafted minature homefronts out of ceramics, which in the stores own words can be best described as latin folk art. There are over 10 products to choose from so picking onve you like shouldn't be too difficult. The close up photo reveal very nice detail on the homes. If your into these sort of trinkets, this would be a nice pick up for yourself or gift for someone you know.

Recent Success and Milestones

First of all I would like to thank everyone who has made our first 6 weeks very successful. I am very proud of the growth we have achieved over this little bit and hope we can continue to growth from there. We have been featured in two prominent internet websites. Killerstartups.com and Feedmyapps.com both gave us great feedback and it is encouraging to get some recognition from other sources around the web. You can check out the killerstartups here and the feedmyapp here. Secondly today we are in the top 325000 website worldwide as traffic measured for the last week by Alexa. Considering we Started off in 4 millionth positon 6 weeks ago, this is growth I am very excited about. I hope our growth can continue at this pace and that some of you are able to become a part of it.
Thank you from the entire Indiemart team!!!