Read more in the interview!

What is the idea behind your online shop?
Our mission is to supply original Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks for our customers all over the world.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
We are located in Schoenwald, in the Black Forest in Germany where the first Cuckoo Clock was invented by Franz Ketterer in 1737. As an internet agency we already had our own shop technology to set up the shop when we started in May 2005.

Do you work full-time or part-time for your online business?
We work full time and have 3 employees.

Which measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
Our shop has been certified by Trusted Shops. We use the Trusted Shops customer rating and we use an SSL certificate with extended validation.

Why did you choose the Trusted Shops products?
We think it helps us to improve consumer confidence.

Where are your customers located?
Our customers are located all over the world. Most orders which reach us are from customers outside of Europe, but in Europe, UK is one of our key markets.

Which shop system do you use?
Our shop system was written by ourselves, from scratch. We included several special features you won’t find in any standard shop.

Which payment systems does your shop offer?
We offer credit card payment by Mastercard, Visa and American Express, as well as payment by PayPal and bank transfer with a 2% discount.

What special features or functions does your shop offer?
The customer can select the country for the delivery and the currency at the top of the website.

Where do you gather information about online shopping and e-retail?
forums.digitalpoint.com

What recommendations would you give to other e-retailer?
Implement a customer rating and a seal.

What are you currently working on?
We are currently working on our Portugese shop.

What is your favourite online shop as a consumer?
amazon

Find out more about MOM’ILC in our interview!

What is the concept of your online shop?
The idea was to create a site dedicated entirely to Fritz! products, without creating an additional shop. I had the idea of creating Fritz Land as to be an ideal place to purchase Fritz! products outsite of an Apple store. momilc.com is a place where the Fritz! products don’t mix with all the other products.  It’s very simple, you know why you are there! And to get off to a good start, we are referenced as a certified AVM retailer.

Why did you decide to start a retail website?
I decided to launch a retail website because the internet has now become the place to be for business. It’s an additional way of gaining exposure for the company in future. It is also a good way of reducing operating costs as much as possible, to the benefit of our customers at unbeatable prices. In the beginning I wanted to do it in the traditional manner, that’s to say by telephone or door-to-door. But that didn’t work very well since I am more of a technician than a businessman. I then started to design my first site myself with free templates, then with the Post Office with the ready-made retail websites with monthly payments, then using another more professional template subject to charges, finally accepting the idea that the matter should be entrusted to professionals, among the many on offer we chose to work with Capacity Web Solutions. And then things became clear.

Our new “Fritz Land !” shop has been online since August 2010.

Does your retail site constitute a full-time or a part-time activity?
It is actually a full-time activity. I don’t have any employees at the moment. I work in close collaboration with my partners, such as the manufacturer AVM, which allows me to considerably reduce my workload.

Why did you opt for Trusted Shops products?
The Trusted Shops solutions are an obvious choice for us, because they permit us to strengthen our online shop, particularly as the Trusted Shops system of certification stipulates strict rules concerning e-commerce laws and consumer protection. We noticed an increase in our online sales only 1 week after having obtained the certificate of authenticity of Trusted Shops. Why did we not do this sooner?

Where are your customers located?
Our customers are located all over the world, in France, Germany, Portugal, Denmark, French Polynesia, the USA, England…the French market represents more than 70% of our sales, although Fritz! products do not yet account for a large part of this. So it is a market to be developed. In terms of sales, the international market is quite open since our products can be exported to almost all countries throughout the world.

Which e-commerce solution (platform) do you use for your online shop?
We use Magneto as a platform for our online shop. The system itself is fairly complete but, all the same, we have had to add and customize certain functions, to create a unique design that makes us stand out from the competition.

Which payment systems do you offer on your retail site?
We currently offer payment by bank card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, carte bleue debit card, JCB, Diners Club International etc.), and by cheque. In the near future, we plan to add PayPal to our shop, although our customers can already order via Paypal by going to our Facebook page MOM’iLC FACE (shop section) or by clicking on the Facebook icon at the bottom right (footer) of our homepage momilc.com.

What are the advantages offered by our online shop compared to a traditional shop?
An online shop offers international visibility and allows the company greater and faster exposure to a large number of people in a highly cost-effective manner. Visitors can come and go as they please, without any bother, without having to pay for petrol or public transport … they are really free.

Which characteristics or features are offered by your shop?
Our online shop firstly offers a pleasant space, simple and really practical, with a unique concept “Fritz Land !”, a personal space for each customer, a live chat system, assistance and advice, in addition to support by means of a ticket system via the support page of our site.

What measures have you implemented to increase consumer confidence?
To give maximum protection to the sensitive information of our customers, we have chosen a comprehensive 2048-bit security certificate. Unlike other certificates, this one offers real proof to visitors that they are on an official page thanks to the name of the company and the country of residence being displayed in green at the top of the address page. Protection of $250,000 against possible fraud. And to round this off, we obtained Trusted Shops certification to guarantee protection.

Which web 2.0 applications such as Twitter or Facebook do you use as marketing tools?
In addition to Facebook and Twitter, we use Livezilla, Viadéo, Linkedin, Google Blog, Google Adwork, Google Adsence, Google Analytics and Google Buzz as marketing tools. Recently, we have been focusing more on using Facebook, which is now our principle marketing tool. We use Google Analytics and Livezilla on an almost daily basis. Linkedin, viadeo, and the others to a lesser extent, so we have much less experience with them.

Where do you obtain the information you need concerning online purchases and commerce?
Information useful for online purchases and commerce often comes from Google research and we use it for fine tuning. We also use the documents provided by our partners and suppliers as models.

What advice would you give to other e-business retailers?
The content of your site is not worth a lot if you cannot prove its worth. That is what certificates like Trusted Shops are there for. Likewise, SSL certificates should never be neglected, in order to guarantee the online purchases of your customers.

Which project are you currently working on?
We are working on the creation of a site devoted entirely to anti-virus and other software on the server side.

What is your favourite online shop as a consumer?
Apple Store.

Find out further information at www.momilc.com.

Can you describe your situation in 3 phrases?
PrestaShop is an e-commerce open source solution used throughout the world, in more than 50 countries and translated into 45 languages. It permits every retailer to create a high-performance online shop and combines more than 200 features. PrestaShop is a solution adapted to all types of activities and is characterised by its user friendliness and optimal technical performance.

What are the strong points of your e-commerce solution? How many shops have you registered online?
PrestaShop is a lightweight solution characterised by constant innovation thanks to its open source community of more than 130,000 members, who support its development. Reliable, high-performance and user-friendly are terms that perfectly reflect the situation. Today, PrestaShop is used by more than 40,000 shops throughout the world and major accounts such as the Pompidou Centre, Peugeot, the Zannier group, Prado, and smaller companies.

Which license models and offers do you propose?
PrestaShop is an open source solution, published under the OSL 3.0 licence. It is available free-of-charge at Prestashop.com. PrestaShop also provides an official market place, PrestaShop Addons, which brings together more than 1,000 modules and topics to enrich its e-commerce solution. Finally, PrestaShop publishes the ready-to-use PrestaBox solution, an SAAS offer that permits retailers to simply launch into e-commerce, without consideration of technical aspects, assured of technical support and optimal hosting.

When did you first offer your e-commerce solution?
The solution has existed since 2005, and was initially created at the Epitech IT school. In 2007, Bruno Lévêque, one of the creators of PrestaShop, collaborated with Igor Schlumberger (founder of LeGuide.com) to create the company of the same name and make PrestaShop an international open source software product.

How many people do you employ to perfect this solution?
PrestaShop has put together a team of more than 30 people who are working together daily to perfect the solution. This team, mostly comprising developers who are working on the software core, is constantly researching innovations.

Which role does security play in your solution?
Security is a crucial point in our software publishing work because of the number of transactions conducted via the 40,000 PrestaShop shops every day among other things. We attach great importance to the code security of our software. Our team includes a dedicated expert who regularly performs verfication.

Do you already have an international presence?
Translated into 45 languages, managing an infinite number of taxes, currencies and languages, PrestaShop is, above all, an international software product! It is already used in more than 50 countries throughout the world and on 5 continents.

What are your strong points?
The trump cards of PrestaShop are its many features (more than 200 features in version 1.3 and more than 250 in version 1.4), it’s high-speed execution in conjunction with all types of hosting, and its technical performance especially with regard to its high scalability, making it an essential e-commerce solution.

Which projects are you currently working on?
Our team is currently focusing on developing PrestaShop version 1.4. This new version is a major step in the evolution process of PrestaShop and boasts more than 50 new features. By the time you read these lines, it will be available in the Alpha verison from our open source community.

Find out more about the company at www.prestashop.com

Read more about Tailor Store in the following interview.

Mr Höjman, what is the idea behind your online store?
We want to be the natural choice for online shopping of customized clothing.

When did you start your online shop?
We started in 2004 because we had interest in online shopping, contacts with textile sourcing alternatives and we saw an opportunity to create a site that nobody had offered before.

What measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
We are Trusted Shops certified as well as “Trygg e-handel” certified.

Why did you choose the Trusted Shops products?
Trusted Shops gives the customer confidence to continue shopping and to actually buy and pay.

Where are your customers located?
We have customers in more than 30 countries. Sweden is our domestic market and still the single biggest market. We export more than 50% of our sales and the western european countries are the most important to us.

Which shop system do you use?
We have developed the user interface as well as all systems internally.

Which payment systems does your shop offer?
We offer bank transfer, credit card and invoice in most markets.

What are the advantages of your online shop as compared to a high street store?
24/7 availability, lower price, possibility to create your own designs.

What special features or functions does your shop offer?
You can design your own unique clothes and we make them to your measurements.

Do you work full-time or part-time for your online business?
We are working full time and are 12 people all together.

Which web 2.0 applications, such as Twitter or Facebook, do you use for marketing?
We are using twitter in a limited way and have tried facebook. We will invest more in these communication channels starting this fall 2010.

Where do you gather information about online shopping and e-retail?
Newsletters about e-tailing, blogs, online magazines for internet and e-tailing.

What recommendations would you give to other e-tailers?
User friendliness is extremely important- develop, test, develop, test ….

What are you currently working on?
We are developing new products that will be launched during fall and early spring.  We are improving the check-out process in order to even further increase the user friendliness.

What is your favourite online shop as a consumer?
www.grandshoes.se

Find more information about this shop at www.tailorstore.co.uk or have a look at the tailorstore profile and Tailor Store Customer Reviews.

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 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.

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.

Mr. Anderson from e-z buy talks about his experience as an e-retailer.

What is the idea behind your online store?
The idea behind our online store is to offer our past and present customers a more professional and easy shopping alternative to our age old eBay store.  On top of this we wanted the option of keep our loyal customers coming back for more so we needed a site which could handle offering discounts to our Loyal Registered Customers.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
Our Small Family Run Business initially started up in 1999 as an Engineering Parts Sourcing Company.  Basically, customers would come to us with a drawing for a Metal Casting and we would have it produced by one of our numerous suppliers in China. As you can imagine this involved many trips/meetings in China which opened our eyes to many, many other products.

The very first thing that caught our eye was a Terrific Grandfather Clock which stood almost 7 feet high!  We thought what the heck if you don’t take the risk we’ll never know.  So we went ahead and ordered a 20’ Container of 2 different models of Grandfather Clocks without thinking how we would sell them. We thought we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it!  Anyway, it took us nearly 3 years to sell them! We tried all sorts of ways, advertising in magazines, local auctions, leaflet drops and then we hit on an online Auction. But even on there things where extremely slow until one Lady in the South of Wales purchased one. As we were setting the clock up for her in her home when she just happened to mention “why do you not sell them on eBay”? To be honest we never really used or heard of eBay…. yes I know what you’re thinking but its true. Within months we had sold out and had enquires for more and more. All thanks to the Lady In Wales.

Since then we have moved into many other products, good products bad products, of all kinds. All of which where being sold on eBay. Now we have tried to settle to what we know best we have my Father who specialises in Clocks and Furniture, me who specialises is anything Electrical or Mechanical and then there’s my Wife who like any other woman is an Expert on anything that sparkles! Now we don’t sell just anything we sell products that we understood and we have a great knowledge of. In this way we can give our customer full support and a professional service.

As any business we wanted to grow, wanted more sales and reduced cost so we decided to try and move away from eBay due to the fees and started looking at web stores. While still selling on eBay we found a small cheap web store which we could offer up to 20 items. We opened the store and basically sold next to nothing over a period of about 12 months we also had nothing but trouble with it. So we closed the shop and continued to use eBay.

As many of you may know lots of things have changed recently on eBay one of them being there fees! Due to this we decided to find another Web Store, a better quality one than we’d previously had and hopefully something that could integrate with eBay and other shopping channels. We found BT Trader Pack Shop which is hosted by ePages. We registered back in August 2008 but due to the lack of time we really only got our store up and running early this year 2009.
We where getting the odd sale here and there but still not what we expected.  While setting the store up we had noticed the setup for Trusted Shops but at the time this didn’t seem very important to us. A couple of months later and still with low sales we decided to look more into the Trusted Shops Seal to see if this would improve our sales because we where getting the hits but not the sales. Since this time we are getting much more sales and much more enquires so we think it’s been a worthwhile exercise.

Could you tell us about your professional life before you started your online store?
I’m a full trained Motor Vehicle Technician with a Distinction In Micro-Processing and Electronics in Motor Vehicles. My father is a Fully Trained Engineer who has work for Large Multi National Companies. My wife has always been a Secretary and her specialist interests are Jewellery.

Do you work full-time or part-time for your online business?
Me & My father work Full Time, My Wife and Mother are part timers. 4 in Total

Where are your customers located?
Majority of our sales are to UK customer but we do get a few sales every month to EU Countries and some times the USA. We would like to increase our sales to EU customers due to the strength of the Euro but our web store can’t currently handle it.

Which shop-system are you currently using?
We use a BT Web Shop provided by ePages. Its template based but I designed and implemented everything in the store.

Which payment systems does your Shop offer?
We currently Offer PayPal and Google Checkout but today I’m filling out the application form for Sage Pay… Formally Protex. This will allow us to take mail order/telephone sales.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
We only have a warehouse, most high street stores have a warehouse a shop front and mountains of staff. We are a small family run business which have to make sure product are right and customers are very happy.  If we don’t we stand to loose our business. Unlike high street stores if a problem arises you are speaking to a company Director not just a paid employee who most of the time just turns up to work to get paid. You are speaking to the highest authority within a business and it’s us the Directors who make the final decisions. You don’t get passed around/fobbed off you get results, positive results, results which keep our customers happy and hopefully coming back for more.

Do you also run a high street store?
No, no high street store.

Does your store have any special features or functions?
Email Marketing, Cross Promotion, Product Recommendations, and User Accounts where the customer can track their orders and also store their information. We are currently looking at offering a 5% discount to all registered customers.

What measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
Applied the Trusted Shops Seal of Approval. Also everything which we send out is opened check and repacked to ensure it leaves us in perfect condition.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
I submit a data feeds weekly to Google Shopping and also advertise with Google Adwords. We are currently looking into other shopping comparison sites. We also send flyers out with every eBay sale.

Are you using web 2.0 approaches for your online business?
I’m not 100% sure what Web 2.0 is, I have read something about it on another site which offers ecommerce sites. I think it may be soothing to do with Search Engine Friendly Sites.  Sites which have a Page for every Product instead of dynamically producing a page when the product is called.

Which recommendations would you give to other e-tailers?
To invest in a good system early on which can handle multi channel selling from one inventory point and can handle Shopping Channel submission automatically. Also have a good brad a brand which will be recognisable from any of the shopping channels they find you on.

What are you currently working on?
As above. We want to implement a system which will handle multichannel shopping from one central inventory. We want to direct more sales to our web store rather than on eBay.  Also we want to introduce more products.

What is your favourite online-shop as a consumer?
I think that would have to be Play.com because I have used this more than any other.

Find out more about this interesting shop in the following interview with CEO Jürgen Enninger.

What is the idea behind your online store?
To allow our customers who have no direct contact to retailers to find, pre-listen and buy our music productions.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
There was a growing gap between the demand for our productions and the physical presence of the CDs in the shops.

How did it all start?
It started with email requests from Jazz aficionados from Canada and Australia who lived in remote areas and had no chance to get in touch with our products.

When did you start your online store?
We started our activities four years ago.

Could you tell us about your professional life before you started your online store?
Before the online shop started we were a purely physical production company which produced Jazz CDs and Vinyls and sold them through the usual channels.

Do you work full-time or part-time for your online business?
In total we have one person only doing online business.

How many employees are currently on your payroll?
We currently have 10 employees.

Where are your customers located?
All over the world.

How important is the UK and the international market for you?
Especially important because we take care of British musicians such as Gilad Atzmon and Mike Westbrook.

Which payment systems does your Shop offer?
Visa, Master and bank collection.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
Anyone on the globe with internet access will be aware of our music and can buy our CDs and printed music.

Do you also run a high street store?
Yes we also run a street store and those two concepts suit perfectly as we  can also refer to each others activities.

Does your store have any special features or functions?
We have a pre-listening function and a page view function for the printed music.

What measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
We have special features such as trusted shop and acquired a special security certificate.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
We have linked our shop system to different other websites.

Are you using web 2.0 approaches for your online business?
Yes, we have linked our shop to myspace, facebook etc.

Which recommendations would you give to other e-tailers?
As secure as possible and as convenient as possible any obstacle is one customer less.

What are you currently working on?
We plan a complete relaunch of our website.

What is your favourite online-shop as a consumer?
Jpc.de.

About ENJA Records

Established in 1971 in Munich by long-time jazz fans Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber. Beginning in the late fifties M.W. was exposed to many US jazz musicians when growing up in Frankfurt – then the jazz capital of the country. At after hours sessions at famous “Jazzkeller” and a couple of other live jazz spots he met and listened to Oscar Pettiford, Phineas Newborn, Sonny Rollins, Lee Konitz, Attila Zoller, Roy Eldrige, Kenny Clarke, Albert Mangelsdorff, Don Menza, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins, Chet Baker to name just a few. When M.W. set up ENJA he attended Munich University as a graduate student (economics and sociology).

First recorded artist was U.S. expatriate Mal Waldron. European and Japanese musicians followed (A. Mangelsdorff, Terumasa Hino, Masahiko Sato). After this European style avant-garde phase American fare became the focus produced by Matthias Winckelmann during frequent working visits to New York (Tommy Flanagan, Chet Baker, New York Jazz Quartet, Freddie Hubbard, Abdullah Ibrahim – then Dollar Brand -, David Friedman, Hannibal Peterson, Bennie Wallace, Abbey Lincoln, Franco Ambrosetti, Kenny Barron a.o.)
The Munich club “domicile” offered many opportunities to record visiting U.S. artists (Charles Tolliver, Pepper Adams, Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, John Scofield – his first recording -, Terumasa Hino a.o.), and so did European festivals where ENJA recorded Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Yosuke Yamashita, Walter Norris, Jerry Gonzalez & The Fort Apache Band.

Some tapes were acquired and added a historic dimension to the catalog (Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Elvin Jones, Hampton Hawes. In early 1986 Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber decided to separate and to work individually from now on. Differing views on work intensity, on “where to take the label” were solved this way. M. W. got even more involved with New York’s jazz and produced an average of 30 albums annually on ENJA (Kenny Barron, Ray Anderson, Mitch Watkins, Wayne Krantz, Gary Thomas, Leni Stern, McCoy Tyner, Arthur Blythe, Abdullah Ibrahim, Elvin Jones, Abraham Burton, Maria Schneider Orchestra, Ingrid Jensen, Dan Wall, Lee Konitz, Kevin Mahogany et.al.).

To be able to present “border-crossing” music he established also the TIPTOE label, recording Mike Westbrook’s tribute to the Beatles, Michael Gregory, Kevin Bruce Harris, Intergalactic Maiden Ballet feat. John Zorn, Blue Box, Paul Jackson-Mike Clark a.o. The dormant blues label BLUES BEACON was revived by several releases of the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir and classic blues artists such as Bukka White, Little Brother Montgomery but also contemporaries Lillian Boutté, Christian Willisohn, Nick Woodland, Al Jones.
In recent years Matthias Winckelmann opened ENJA to musical territories far beyond the jazz mainstream and jazz avant-garde of the early years.

The most important artist in this repect has become Lebanese oud player/composer Rabih Abou-Khalil whose work combines classical Arabian technique with a European compositional approach and jazz influenced improvisation. Others are Tunesian vocalist / oud player Dhafer Youssef, Brazilian group Rosanna & Zelia, Lebanese composer / guitarist Mahmoud Turkmani, Israeli instrumentalist and novelist Gilad Atzmon, Moluccan vocalist Monica Akihary and her group Boi Akih, Pasaporte and Clave Y Guaguanco from Cuba, Hungarian acoustic guitar wizard Ferenc Snétberger, Okay Temiz from Turkey – the groove has truly become universal.

Today, ENJA has become a label which is highly respected worldwide and is well distributed in most parts of the globe. We are quite proud that we have achieved this in a truly difficult market place. In October of 1996 M.W. was awarded the Honors Prize Of The German Phonographic Critics, a body of 100 music critics in classical, jazz and pop music. To quote the jury: “Again and again Matthias Winckelmann sets the standard for quality with his productions. He succeeds with ambitioned projects in a market swamped by mediocrity. The name ENJA has gained an excellent reputation throughout the world.” In 2006 Jürgen Enninger joined Mattthias Winckelmann as CEO of the company.

If you want to find out more about the shop go to enjarecords.com or have a look at the shop-profile at Trusted Shops.

Find out more in the following interview with Managing Director Walter Meyer.

At onlineprinters.com several print technicians are at the customers’ disposal for the calculation of individual inquiries and for consulting on different assignments. If desired experienced media designers check the customers’ files and prepare them for printing.

What is the idea behind your online store?
Onlineprinters are selling printing products like flyers, posters, catalogues, postcards, stickers, stationary, business cards and much more. You can also order marketing tools as flags, displays and so on. These products are printed in high quality offset-print or digital-print. The difference to a traditional print shop is, that we are due to aggregate daily production of many individual contracts. So the customer is reducing fixed costs, this is not possible with normal printing processes. This production is limited to the high order volume in the online area.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
The reason why I started an online-shop was the decline of the conventional printing business.
The company was founded in April 2004. The online-store went online in August 2004. In June 2007 a complete relaunch of the online-shop and mail order software completed the internet presence.

Could you tell us about your professional life before you started your online store?
I still am a manager of a conventional printing company. The entry into the online business required a total rethink and further training. In many areas the online business is different from the bricks-and-mortar business. For instance the advertising is completely different.

How many employees are currently on your payroll?
Nearly everybody in our online-shop is working fulltime. At the moment we have nearly 250 employees (including our production) but we are steadily growing.

Where are your customers located?
Our customers are located all over Europe. We hope that UK and the international market will become more and more important for us, because we’ve started our English shop 2 month ago. Now our international business grows steadily and will soon represent up to 30 percent of the total sales.

Which shop system are you currently using?
Our online-shop was created by the company “Websale AG” from Nürnberg. The online-shop is linked to a mail order software from the company “D&G Software GmbH” from Karlsruhe, which controls the internal merchandise management, order management and the accounting. Some special features of the website and the mail order system were programmed for our special purposes.

Which payment systems does your Shop offer?
We currently offer Pay Pal, Giro Pay, credit cards like: American Express, Visa Card and Master Card and DIRECTebanking. We also offer cash on delivery and advance payment. Current we’re not planning to widen our payment options because we offer a variety of systems already.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
The advantage to a high street store is that the customers don’t have to go outside to make an order. They’re saving time, because their orders will be delivered to their home or to their workplace. They can save time and money because they don’t have to pick them up.

Do you also run a physical store?
No, we don’t run a physical store.

Does your store have any special features or functions?
We are very proud of our ordering processing with automatic pressure data upload. Each product can be offered in all kinds of variations. The consumer can calculate, see the price immediately and order online.

What measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
One step we’ve taken to increase consumer confidence was the certification by Trusted Shops. It was an important milestone in our customer acquisition. The Trusted Shops trustmark shows potential customers that onlineprinters is a reputable and reliable shop.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
We have taken several steps to optimize our online shop for search engines like “Google”. We are also investing in “Google AdWords” and try to put more emphasis on offline advertisement like television ads.

Are you using web 2.0 approaches for your online business?
Not yet. We observe the development in this area. If possible we will implement some special features in our Shop.

Where do you gather information about online shopping and web-retailing?
Most of the information I get from newspapers and magazines like “Webselling”, “Deutscher Drucker” and “Handelsblatt”. I also read the Trusted Shops newsletter and regularly visit the Trusted Shops website.

Which recommendations would you give to other e-tailers?
I can only advise you to use different ways of communicating with your customers. Inquiries by customers should be answered as quickly as possible. I know from my own experience: nothing is more annoying when you buy products online get no response to your questions afterwards. That shouldn’t happen in a professional online-shop. Complaints must be handled quickly and correctly, too. The customers will be grateful.

What are you currently working on?
We are working on the translation of our online-shop to other languages like French. This way we try to increase the number of foreign customers.

What is your favourite online-shop as a customer?
My favourite online-shops are amazon and expedia.

If you want to find out more about this interesting shop you can find it here.

Learn more about security risks in the following Interview.

What kind of risks are shops facing that aren’t protected against attacks?

Hendrik Lennarz:
At least 80 % of all websites have serious weak spots. But online-shops are especially vulnerable because they usually collect a fair amount of sensitive data and enable customers to make various financial transactions.

In this context attack scenarios can create severe financial losses both to the online-merchant as well as to the customer. The takeover of access-data, the manipulation of prices in the data base or the accessibility of the online-shop are some of the threats the online-merchant have to face if they don’t take the necessary steps to protect their websites.

Because an attack on an online-shop doesn’t require special tools, scripts or programs so these days the potential of losing the customers faith trough an attack on their online-shop is quite high for online-merchants that don’t protects their shops against these kinds of attacks.

What are the most common mistakes that e-tailers make in this context?

Hendrik Lennarz:
It is important to differentiate between technical mistakes in the coding or the system configuration of a shop and flaws in the procedures and workflows of the online-shop.

The classical mistake is the missing validation of the input fields of a website. This enables hackers to enter dangerous code that allows cross-site-scripting, which eventually provides the hacker with access data and passwords. Needless to say that hackers like older versions of standard software because they don’t have to look for the weak spots of a site. These are mostly well known and are publicly available on the websites of the software companies.

Logical mistakes are as critical because they’re often used to prepare an attack. The display of detailed error messages often allows a try-and-error attack on a system. If a standardized error message is issued irrelevant of the fact if the password or the username was wrong, the hacker cannot obtain any additional information. The weak-spot I’ve mentioned are also referred to as “low-hanging-fruits”. On one this means that these can be easily used for attacks by hackers but on the other hand can be fixed without too much time and effort.

Input masks like the login for registered customers are mentioned very often as security risks. Should e-tailers stop using customer registration completely?

Hendrik Lennarz:
The registration sure is the target of many attacks on internet-shops. But to refrain from using this function in a shop is not the right solution because people expect a member’s area and the usability would be affected as well.

Further on I think that is often not the technical solution that is the problem but the “malicious users” that is using that feature. Password restrictions like a minimum length and the use of italics can increase the security and make it much more difficult for hackers. As an e-tailer you have to find the golden way between security and usability.

Hendrik Lennarz has studied business computer science at the University of Siegen with a focus on project management, IT-security, IT-controlling and software-development. In the past he was working as a software-developer for Deutsche Bank AG, Campana & Schott and DERTOUR. Today he is a web technology consultant with Trusted Shops responsible for security-audits, frontend-development and online marketing. (For more information go to Hendrik Lennarz’s XING-profile or to Lennarz Twitter-Profile)

Find out more about the backround of the project in the following interview.

Alexander Ringsdorff is the CEO of the Visions New Media GmbH and in charge of the development of the mydeco design boutique.

How did the cooperation with mydeco start?
Mydeco had evaluated a number of e-commerce solutions including commercial ones like the one from Venda from England. None of the evaluated systems could be customized to meet the needs of mydeco in the according timeframe and the amount of necessary modifications would have limited the ability of the software to be updated. This was one the reasons that mydeco started considering to use Magento for their design boutique. We could confirm that Magento would meet the requirements without limiting the ability to update. Another criteria for the decision was that Magento is open source and there are no royalties on the software.

What was the scale of the project?
There was a team of three developers working on the mydeco project before the closed beta phase began in October. After a month of testing and training the new design boutique was integrated into mydecos’ system.

Was the project realised from Germany?
Yes. Needless to say that we were constantly in contact with the mydeco team in London. But mydeco has a lot employees working at locations around the globe so we could use their means of communication to work together on the Magento project. From previous projects we are used to work far from the customers location so the implementation from Hannover wasn’t a great challenge.

Were there any obstacles implementing Magento?
The greatest challenge was the order-splitting that is dividing the shopping basket into products of different traders and designers in the backend of Magento. Every order is divided into different sub-orders that can be administered by the designers and traders in their own Admin accounts. To realize this all the processes connected to payments, invoices and credit notes had to have a multi tenant function so the complete order could be displayed to the customer.

Could the entry of products by the different designers be automized so there is no further maintenance necessary?
The majority of the online-traders and designers listed on mydeco uses the administration of mydeco for the administration of their products. So there were only adjustments that had to be made to allow any easy entry and processing of the products. An extension of Magento is checking the main criteria before it approves the publication of products on mydeco.

How does the connection of the external systems of the individual designers work?
The connections are done with the Magento Core API. Due to the use of standards like SOAP and XML-RPC it can easily be operated from external systems.

Does the interface that is responsible for the communication come from Magento?
Yes, there were only a few adjustments like the multi tenant function that had to be integrated.

Tell us something about the about the technical side of the project.
The Magento elements of the design boutique were placed on an optimized high-availability cluster at COLT Telecom in Hamburg that is connected to all the European core markets by two fully redundant Gigabit uplinks. Colt has its own glass fibre network so that even international projects can be realized with this infrastructure. To maximise the availability all of the components of the cluster are redundant and the cluster system is regularly serviced and audited by independent security firms.

What are the future plans at mydeco?
We got a very positive feedback from mydeco about the Magento solution and are currently working on a roadmap for further functions and modules. It should be mentioned that mydeco has adapted the open source idea and you can expect to find the Magento extensions that we did for mydeco in the Magento community, soon.

Thank you for the interview.

Tell us a little bit about SEOmoz?
SEOmoz is a company founded by my Mom and I. Originally, we did primarily SEO consulting, but now the free sections of the site (the blog, marketplace, free tools and guides) and PRO membership (which includes Q+A, upgraded tools and Linkscape) are the focus of the company. We’ve got 17 employees – 8 developers, 3 SEOs and some marketing and support staff. We’re also hiring right now so if you know any great SEOs in Seattle, we’d love a reference :-)

When and how did you start?
Gillian and I started doing web work in 1997, but in 2002 we began SEO projects and by 2004, SEOmoz had a name and was a small blog and set of tools. In 2005 we officially began projects under the SEOmoz brand name.

What kind of services do you offer?
Most of what we do today is focused on PRO membership, which includes a Q+A service, where members can ask questions on any SEO-related topic and get answers from us online, lots of cool tools for SEO analysis and common SEO tasks (including our new link intelligence tool – Linkscape), and tons of content for learning and honing SEO skills.

Who are your customers/clients?
We’ve got more than 3,000 members – everyone from the SEO departments at HP.com and the NYTimes.com to small SEO shops and individual webmasters who run their own affiliate or ad-backed blogs and sites.

Do you have a german website?
We don’t have a German website, and I’m not terribily familiar with the German SEO landscape. I do have some good friends in Germany, though – Christoph Cemper (cemper.com), Thomas Bindl (Refined Labs) and Marcus Tandler (mediadonis.net).

Tell us about your new tool “Linkscape”? How does it actually work?
Linkscape works on a link graph of the web, based on a crawl we built that covers more than 30 billion pages. Using this massive dataset, you can see metrics and links to virtually any domain and page on the web. It’s a fantastic tool for link analysis, comparing websites and pages that rank well in the engines and understanding how they’ve earned their rankings and, of course, for link building, too – finding where the competition is earning good links and pursuing them.

Could small or medium size german online-shops use this tool?
Absolutely. The index is currently a bit biased towards English-language sites, but we’ve been surprised several times to find that we actually show more links to a .de (German) site than Yahoo! Site Explorer!

What’s the idea behind your blog?
We really wanted a place with a high signal to noise ratio, that would provide daily value and interest for our readers. We also didn’t want to cover the same topics as the other search industry sites – there’s plenty of news out there, so we’re much more of a tactics and strategy focused content portal.

What are you’re favourite 5 SEO blogs?
Well, I already mentioned some German SEOs I like, so I’ll shoot for my favorite blogs in the space:

1. searchengineland.com – if you’re not reading it, you simply won’t know what’s going on in the world of search
2. searchenginejournal.com – lately, their articles have been terrific – covering lots of tools and techniques in the SEO world
3. seobook.com – Since Aaron picked up Peter as a co-blogger, the quality of the posts and content there has gone even higher.
4. stonetemple.com – Eric Enge puts together phenomenal posts on SEO and great interviews to boot.
5. vanessafoxnude.com – Even though she doesn’t post often, the content quality is tremendous, and you can count on the fact that Vanessa knows what she’s talking about :)

So what’s coming down the pipe, what’s next with SEOmoz?
Well…. We’ve got a lot of improvements coming to Linkscape, and a toolbar that will let you see mozRank and our other metrics across the web. We’ve also got another secret project unveiling early next year :-)

The blog palmerwebmmarketing.com is a constant source of inspiration for anybody whos runs a website or is involved in SEO and online marketing. We have posted adaptions of his articles on our blog in the past. Today we want to introduce you to the person behind this blog: Justin Palmer. In the following interview he talks about his life as a SEO specialist and blogger.

Who is Justin Palmer?
I suppose you can say that since my teen years I’ve been addicted to the internet. After studying eCommerce in college, I went on to work with an online Christian apparel retailer, C28.com. Last year, I started Palmer Web Marketing, and began to work with clients.  With the time that I don’t spend consulting or blogging, I love spending time with my beautiful wife. We love traveling, cooking, or going to the beach.

How did it all start? What is the idea behind your blog?
As most things do, the Palmer Web Marketing blog didn’t start with any grand vision, it just slowly evolved. I suppose I started blogging because I believed I had something more to contribute to the field of eCommerce and web marketing. Until I started blogging and consulting, I spent all my time with C28.com. (whom I still work for). With the success and astonishing growth we experienced at C28.com, something inside told me I could help other companies too, even if it was only through blogging.
As I started writing, I found that I enjoyed writing “Top 10, 25, etc.” list type posts. I suppose I enjoy writing this style because I enjoy reading this style. I like that you can easily scan these type of blog posts, and pick one or 2 practical tips and immediately apply them for your own business. That’s my goal, to always inspire my readers with practical insights that they can use for their own specific situations.

When did you start your blog?
My first blog post was in July of 2007.

Which blog-software do you use?
After a brief run using a WordPress.com hosted blog, I switched to WordPress.org on my own domain. I love the wordpress software and the flexibility it allows.

How many readers visit your blog in a month?
Right now, I average about 15,000 visitors per month.

Why do you blog? What motivates you?
I think the primary force that motivates me is wanting to inspire website owners to grow their business. Another inspiration for blogging is my own personal development and learning. I love the fact that I can write a post on a topic that I think I know everything about, and yet learn so much from my reader’s comments and input. Blogging, whether you’re on the reader or writer side, is the ultimate learning experience.

Do write for any other blogs?
Currently, no. I have considered starting some niche blogs on the topic of customer brand evangelism and online apparel retailing. However, so many ideas and so little time… J

Your favourite post on palmerwebmarketing.com?
I think my favorite post would be “10 Costly Assumptions“, which I wrote a few weeks ago. I think this post sums up the top mistakes we all make as website owners when we fail to think like a customer, but rather like a business owner.

Please name 3 blogs that you would like to recommend to our readers?
Only 3? That’s tough. My favorite eCommerce blog would have to be the Get Elastic Blog. I also love Avinash Kaushik’s web analytics blog.
For marketing in general, no one beats Seth Godin.

We thank Justin Palmer for this interview.

What is the idea behind your online store?
www.CheesyBug.co.uk was created to give web presence for CheesyBugToys

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
I was looking to start my own business having become disillusioned with working for other people and having worked in retail for my entire work life starting my own retail business seemed like the obvious choice. I had been selling items on ebay for a while and it seemed like the correct choice for me to create my own web presence. I didn’t really know what to sell, but it was suggested that I look at Educational Toys; I searched the web and found a company willing to supply me and it snow balled from there. We started online trading in September 2005 and www.cheesybugtoys.co.uk was created.

Could you tell us about your professional life before you started your online store?
I had worked in retail prior to starting the business and managed a number of high profile sports stores.

Do you work fulltime or part time for your online business?
Everyone works full time at www.cheesybug.co.uk

Which shop system are you currently using?
We currently use a 1&1 Professional Shop Package. This suits our needs and whilst being reasonably priced is compatible with most major card payment systems and search engines.

Which payment systems does your Shop offer?
We currently offer Credit Card payments via Protx which allows us to accept MasterCard, Visa, Maestro, Delta & Amex and also offer Paypal. There are no current plans to add any others.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
We can keep expenses to a minimum and do not need to keep high volumes of stock. An online presence allows us to target a wider range of customers.

Do you also run a physical store?
We do not run a physical store.

Does your store have any special features or functions?
The store has a fully functioning search facility. Customers can create their own account, preventing the need to fill in delivery details every time they order. It automatically broadcasts product feed to Google Base and other search providers.

What measures have you taken to increase consumer confidence?
We have signed upto a number of safe shopping sites, with the main focus being on the Trusted Shops agreement which gives our customers a Full Money back Guarantee. A recent review of our Terms & Conditions and these are emailed to our customers once an order is placed as well as being visible on the site.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
We have taken several steps to optimize our online shop for search engines like Google. We are also investing in Google AdWords Reviewing the titles and descriptions of our products and including relevant keywords and information to become more search engine friendly.

What are you currently working on?
We are currently working building relationships with a number of other retailers and suppliers. In retail you just can’t sit still, so we are looking at sourcing new products and expanding our offer. We have also recently signed new agreements with our carriers to provide an improved service to speed the delivery of our products.

For more information click here or visit the Tusted Shops Shopprofile of cheesybugtoys.co.uk.

What is Unitedprint.co.uk?
Unitedprint.com is a Europe-wide association of online print shops and unitedprint.co.uk is a full subsidiary.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
The aim of making printed products easily available for the general public.

When did your shop open?
Unitedprint.co.uk was opened on the 9th of March 2007 and our first shop (print24.co.uk) was launched on the 1st of July, 2006.

How did you start setting up your online shop?
We programmed the system ourselves. This way the conditions perfectly fit our needs and, essentially, the needs of our customers.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
Our advantages against a conventional print shop are the easy and straight-forward handling, the price and our employees’ professionalism.

Are you working full time?
We are working full time for our online shop.

Which payment systems do you offer?
We offer Advanced Payment, Cash On Delivery, Credit Card, Paypal and Debit Card.

Where are your customers located?
unitedprint.co.uk primarily appeals to business customers, such as advertising agencies, graphic designers, printers and event organizers. But even if you are not an expert in printing you can use our freedesign tool on the website to create your own flyers, business cards and much more.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
Our marketing activities are focused on search engines and affiliate marketing. Besides we are conducting a direct marketing campaign at the moment.

What are your plans for the next months?
It is our primary goal to increase our customers’ confidence in us and to deploy the given resources ideally.

Customers can design their own brochures, business cards, letterheads etc. with the help of this configurator.

What have you done to increase consumer confidence?
We consider the following features in all our actions:

• Top quality – controlled production with up-to-date technology
• Fair price – best price offers inclusive – no hidden costs
• Promptness
• Satisfaction guarantee – trust and security
• Highly recommended helpdesk and service.

If you want more information click here for the Shop or take a look at the Shop profile at Trusted Shops.

What is Tailerstore.co.uk?
tailorstore.co.uk is the web shop of Tailor Store Sweden AB for our customers from the United Kingdom. The aim of this web shop is to provide a tailor made offer to customers from the UK.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
The big advantage of doing e-commerce is to be able to reach a huge amount of potential customers. A web shop makes it also easy for the customer to do shopping from a familiar environment like the living room and avoid all the stress that comes along with going shopping in stores like finding a parking space or fighting yourself through a crowd of people in the shopping mall. On the other hand we can offer our products cheaper as we do not have those high costs for rent and clerks. This assures a big competitive advantage.

When did your shop open?
Tailor Store started its online business in the 1st quarter of 2004 but at that time under the name “Tailor Shirts”.

How did you start setting up your online shop?
Our online shop is a self development. The current online shop is the 3rd version with a much better user interface, more choices and flexibility.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
As mentioned earlier, our customers can get their highly individualized shirts from Tailor Store with some clicks from their couch at home. With Tailor Store it’s even fun to spend money online. Just look at the shirt designer interface which is very easy to use. We also try to design the order processing as transparent as possible. The customer can at any time go to our online shop, log in and check the order status to see if the order was approved by us after checking measurements or if the shirts were already produced. The biggest advantage will always be the price. To get a comparable product in a store the customer would have to spend at least double as much money.

Are you working full time?
Everybody employed at Tailor Store is working full time.

Which payment systems do you offer?
Tailor Store proposes credit card payments. When a customer pays by credit card his order is directly marked as paid. This decreases the lead time as we do not need to wait for the payment to arrive. Besides that, Tailor Store does not charge extra for credit card payments. Other payment alternatives for our UK customers are ClickandBuy and PayPal.

Where are your customers located?
Our main target group are people with knowledge about online shopping. We put our focus on males between 20 and 60 who need to wear shirts on the job. Other segments include males who like to wear shirts in their free time and females.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
We have taken several steps to optimize our online shop for search engines like Google. We are also investing in Google AdWords and try to put more emphasis on banner advertisement.

With the store’s Shirtdesigner you can customize and design your own shirts choosing from a big variety of colours, fabrics and cuts.

What have you done to increase consumer confidence?
We believe that giving the customer as much information as possible is crucial to build up confidence. Our online shop contains many pages with information about our products, our service and who we are. Last but not least we are convinced that a short response time on customer inquiries is a must.

What are your plans for the next months?
We are planning to extend our production capacities to be able to deliver our products even faster. Our main product the tailor made shirt will soon get optional embroidery and we will launch a new product: the tailor made piqué shirt.
For more information click here or go to the Trusted Shops Profile of Tailor Store.

What is Bombero?
Bombero are retailers of contemporary interior accessories, gifts, furniture and lighting – a collection that includes designs from Europe’s most innovative manufacturers and most talented designers. Our aim is to give our customers the best product design, product quality and customer service available, both in our hight street store in Bangor (Northern Ireland) and online shop. We always try to make shopping with us a completely enjoyable experience.

Why did you decide to start an e-commerce business?
By the end of 2005 we were trading very successfully from our high street shop and we were looking for ways to take us to the next level in our development. To grow, we knew we needed to reach a broader customer base than we could from our high street store alone. We began seriously to consider trading from an online shop.

When did your shop open?
Our high street store opened in November 2003 and our online shop in May 2006.

How did you start setting up your online shop?
We identified the ISP and an online shop software package that we felt met our needs in terms of cost, reliability and ease of use. We didn’t want a huge capital outlay and we wanted software that we could manage ourselves. By May 2006 our online shop based on epages was opened and we were receiving orders.

What are the advantages of your online shop against a high street store?
Together, our online shop and our high street store have been a great success. Many of the costs and skills are shared by both: The same stock and warehouse space service both , the same staff operate both, so skills learned in one can be used in both. The enormous benefit of online trading is 24-hour opening: our online shop is always open. We can receive orders at anytime and process them during normal working hours.

Which payment systems do you offer?
Our online payments are processed through WorldPay and PayPal.

Where are your customers located?
Our customers are mainly based in the UK and Ireland.

What did you do to increase the visibility of your shop?
We promote our website in local newspapers and magazines. Advertise on search engines and sell on shopping comparison sites. We encourage suppliers and others to create links to our site.

What have you done to increase consumer confidence?
Consumer confidence is fundamental to online trading, which is why we sought Trusted Shops accreditation. We also try to reassure our customers by having clear and constructive terms and conditions.

What are your plans for the next months?
We plan to refine and improve our offer, bringing new and exciting designs to our collection and delivering the best possible customer service.

For more information Check out the store or have a look at the Shopprofile at Trusted Shops.