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Promoting Your Facebook Store

March 30th, 2012

Getting the word out about your Facebook store, or offers and specials you’re having is pretty easy! We promise that once you read through this, you’ll know what we mean by EASY!

Link to Your Facebook Store

Once you’ve added the store to Facebook, and positioned the store tab well for fans to see, you can link to your Facebook store from anywhere. This can be a post in Facebook to announce it, or even a newsletter or email you’re sending out. Your Facebook store URL would be as follows: https://www.facebook.com/Wazala/app_147605761926866 – Just replace the page name Wazala, with your own page name as it appears in your own Facebook URL.

Facebook Specific Offers

So let’s say you want to offer your Facebook fans a coupon code to entice them to buy. The Wazala’s social promoter engine, can help you get the word out. Whenever you add something newsworthy to your store, like a coupon code or place a product on sale, Wazala reminds you to post this on Facebook and/or Twitter. It will provide you with suggestions for your post that you can edit to your liking, and with a single click, this post can be posted to your Facebook page without you ever logging into Facebook! Go ahead try it, we know you’d love it and your fans would appreciate the love.

Happy Facebook Selling!

Getting Your Facebook Store Seen

March 23rd, 2012

In our last blog, we outlined some features about the Wazala Facebook store and how easy it is to sell on Facebook directly to your fans. With a few clicks, you’re done and open for Facebook business!
Now that you’ve added the store to your Facebook page, it’s important to make sure that people know it’s there. Positioning the Wazala store app for visibility on your Facebook page is as important as your “Come on in. We’re Open” sign on your brick and mortar store, it’s how people know they can come in and buy.

The tab section of your Facebook page is located under your cover photo, to the right of the About button, (just like our photo above). As a default, the photos tab will be in first position and this is not changeable at the moment, so we recommend placing the store tab next in line, just like we did.

To change the position of your tabs/apps:

Click the arrow on the right hand side of the app section
Place your mouse over the tab you want to change the position of
Click the pencil tool in the right hand corner of the app
Swap the tabs around until you get the order you desire

To change the picture of the tab and wording

Open your Page’s admin panel (top right-hand corner of your page)
From the Manage menu, select Edit Page
Select Apps from the left sidebar
Click Edit Settings under the Wazala app
Type in the Custom Tab Name and click save
Click Change next to Custom Tab Image
On the next screen, click Change next to the existing image
Follow the instructions that appear for uploading a new image

There you have it, your store is positioned well on your Facebook page, and others can’t miss it.

Promoting Your New Product

March 14th, 2012

Got a new product in your online store? Hooray! New things are always exciting, but the tough part is getting your customers excited as you are. There are many steps you can take to ensure that your product launch is a successful one, and we hope these would help.

Have a Goal in Mind
What are you trying to accomplish? Coming up with a promotional directive is a great way to lay the foundation for your promotional campaign. Do you have a set inventory and wish to reach a certain amount of sales? Maybe your new product open doors to attract a new customer base? Or are you trying to up-sell, or get previous customers to come back for more. Setting an ambitious but realistic goal will help you to hone your promotional tactics and measure the campaign’s success more efficiently. If your goals are usually similar from launch to launch, the results of these campaign can be A/B tested against one another to hopefully give insight on which tactics work best for your products.

Get a Good Mix
Every product launch should involve a familiar mix of tools, such as newsletters, press releases, social media marketing, and even paid advertisements. Making sure to utilize all these venues can help increase your sales. In addition to using your go-to means of communication, you should also try to add something new into the marketing mix, be it a guest blog, a YouTube video, or even a Pinterest post. Try as many new avenues as you can. It can’t hurt, and might prove to be extremely rewarding if utilized effectively.

A Fresh Product Description
No one wants to buy something that sounds boring. So make sure to add some spice to your descriptions, and add cool images that really make the product pop. Checkout our earlier posts on writing killer product descriptions, and showcasing your product pictures well.

Facebook Contests
Facebook contests are a great way to get people involved and excited about a new product. Have people upload photos, videos, or post on your wall. Get creative! The prize doesn’t have to be huge; maybe the winner will get your new product for free. In order to enter the contest, each person should have to like your page, which will gain you fans and raise awareness about your brand and the contest. Offer everyone who enters the contest a discount on your new product, which will in turn give them more incentive to buy.

Feature It
A simple tweak to your website home page to feature your new product can definitely help. Place it on top and make sure to state that it is available for sale. You can also create a new category in your store as “NEW ARRIVALS” and add it there. New and returning customers like to see that you’re constantly adding new goods for sale. This tweak can also help in attracting a new audience, especially if you’re product is unlike anything you usually sell.

These are just a few of the many options available to you when promoting a new product. Just find out what works for you, and run with it!

Happy Selling!

Tips on Packaging Your Order

February 29th, 2012

You’ve made a sale, congrats! Somebody wants your product and has paid good money for it. Now the only thing left to do is get it to them. Though this seems like a simple task, there are a things you should consider when packaging your product to get it to your customer safe and on time.

What to Protect?
Think about how the package is going to be sent and what elements you should prepare it for. Postal and carrier workers have a nasty habit of throwing light packages during the sorting process (sometimes even heavy ones). Packages go through a lot in the process of being shipped, be it shoots, conveyor belts, or a fall of a truck. Therefore, as a rule of thumb you should pack your parcel so that it can withstand about a 3 foot/1 meter drop onto hard concrete. You should also take precautions against elements such as weather and friction.

What to Use?
There are variety of materials that you can use to package your product. You need to find the one that best suits what you are shipping. Different materials suit different products better, and doing your research on available boxes and shipping envelopes helps. How the product needs to be presented may also have an effect on the material. For instance, you could use a clear plastic material if the customer needed to be able to clearly see the product, the magazine industry does it, and it helps spread the word about you as it’s making its’ way to your customer.

Is It Fragile?
We’ve all had fragile items break on us. It’s tragic, but inevitable. But what causes fragile items to break, and how can you decrease the chances of this happening to your product en-route to your customer? Fragile items can break by hitting the ground too hard, or by getting twisted or crushed. To combat this, your package should not only cushion against impact, but should also have a rigid structure. Make sure that nothing can move within the package. This is especially true with glass items, where even if you have an extremely strong outer package, if it is loosely packed, it will most certainly break.

Hope these tips help and have a wonderful day!

What’s Your Plan B?

February 14th, 2012

It can happen to any business at any time. It will more than likely happen to your business at some point. Something will go wrong. It could be your servers crashing, your power going out, or your even your supplier’s fault. In any case, it pays (literally) to be prepared. Here are a few tips on making sure your business is ready for whatever storm may come its way.

Keep A Key Under The Rug
Backup everything important, including customer lists, employee data, and inventory. Keep it someplace safe that is not your primary location. You may also want to take a look at backing up your data online for a reasonable fee.

Make Sure Your Covered
If you don’t have insurance for your property, it would probably be a good idea to look into what policies would suit your business. Property insurance reimburses you for the cost of any damages to your equipment or buildings. You should also check out business interruption insurance, which will help you in case your business has to shut down temporarily due to unforeseen events.

Have More Sources
What if one of your main vendors shuts down? Do you have a plan to keep your business up and running in that event? Look into other possible places to get the supplies you need in case of a shortage. Make sure they can also deliver on time and set up your action plan.

A good source is the US Small Business Administration, they have a few tools that may assist you in creating a disaster plan that is right for you.

New Orders Are Now Simpler To Deal With!

February 6th, 2012

Our team has been working on a new Order tab design, that not only allows you to sift through your orders with ease, but helps making your order fulfillment faster. It’s out, it’s colorful and we hope you like it as much as we do.

The latest release of the Order Page allows you to clearly mark orders that require your attention with different statuses and colors. The hover-over preview allows you to take a quick look at the order without loading a new page, and of course, searching for a specific order is now even easier!

An added bonus we’re sure you would love to know about is the ability to print out an order receipt (with the order total) or a packing slip (with no mention of payment total). This is found in every order view page, click on Print to preview and proceed.

And last, for those orders you wish to remove from your daily view, a newly added Archive status allows you to store this order away and come back to it at anytime if you need to.

Hope these features improve your fulfillment of orders! And stay tuned for a lot more to come!

Musicians This One Is For You!

February 1st, 2012

We’re happy to announce the release of SoundCloud integration within Wazala! This integration allows you to set up a music shop with a few clicks, and grab music you wish to offer for sale, from SoundCloud into your Wazala store. We feel many musicians already using SoundCloud will benefit from the easy upload and set up of their music for sale. Not having to go through the creations of separate products, waiting for loading time and doing it over and over again.

The process is quite simple. In the Product tab, you will find the option of importing your tracks from SoundCloud, Once you click on that, an authorization page appears and you need to login into SoundCloud.

Once you allow Wazala access, your tracks will be listed. Here you can choose which tracks to import, state the price and if you wish to activate them for sale. Wazala can also import the genres as categories.

The import will start once you confirm. Depending on the size of your files, this should not take long. Once the import is complete click on Done, and you will be able to see your tracks listed as products for sale.

Customers will as usual, be able to preview the song, and once purchased the delivery is automated and secure through a masked Wazala URL.

It’s that simple, it’s quick and the best thing you can make money selling your music! Rock on!

Some Tips For Showing Customers You Care

January 15th, 2012