This is part two of the article series. Click here to read part 1.

Here is what we will be covering in the video!

1. Christmas Party in July
2. Pre-Game For Site Outages?
3. Preparing Your Tech Stack and Software Infrastructure, Site Speed
4. Meet With Your Team about Site Uptime Monitoring an Risk Management Security
5. Hardwire your team’s internet, upgrade your internet speed, Get your gear in check!
6. Decorate your website like you decorate your house
7. The 4 main types of overlooked upsells

Lets Get Started!

1. With our very first holiday season in the era of Covid-19 right around the corner, how can businesses prepare their online stores for the increase in virtual shoppers?

• First things first, lets make sure our website does not go down on the most important weekend of the year, or even the most important shopping season of the year right?
• No Matter Your Business, get in touch with your host or shopping cart provider and ask the tough questions
• How can we OVERLY prepare for an influx in traffic
• What are ALL of my options?
• Most hosts allow overflow, but...

It comes with little surprise that as the pandemic grows, the demand for safe, one-stop online shopping options grows as well.

The numbers reported by big-box retailers reflect this logic. Target reported the strongest quarterly sales growth in its history.

Walmart touted unprecedented earnings in Q2 which led to a 97% revenue boost from just last year.

Amazon, the behemoth that it is, banked a net income of 5.2 billion in Q2. And Shopify, the namesake in e-commerce, noted $714 million in Q2. 

This all shows one thing: If you want to scale your business online, now is the time to do it -- and yes, it is possible to do it even if you are a small business.

While You Were Sleeping, Walmart Announced a Partnership with Shopify, and Shopify Announces A New App To Compete With Amazon.

Now, if you’ve been caught up with the news around Amazon’s growth, allow me to steer you in another direction: Shopify. 

The Shopify e-commerce hosting platform is growing rapidly....

Michael Aldrich was an English inventor, innovator and entrepreneur. 

In 1979 he invented online shopping to enable online transaction processing between consumers and businesses, or between one business and another, a technique known later as e-commerce.

Sadly, he died 2014, he was 73.

The first online transaction was, by some reports, marijuana sold by Stanford students to MIT students via the Arpanet account at their artificial intelligence lab in 1972. 

However, the first online shopping transaction on the Internet took place some 22 years later.

With the headline “The Internet is Open”, the August 12, 1994, issue of New York Times chronicled the sale between two friends of a Sting CD. 

The Times said, “The team of young cyberspace entrepreneurs celebrated what was apparently the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to...

Shopify have launched a new app called ‘Shop’ – and with it potentially an entire new business – that they intend to compete directly with Amazon.

From early signs, the company appears to believe this new business could be bigger than ‘Shopify’ itself, and may be the next stage in a total rebrand of the company from ‘Shopify’ to simply ‘Shop’.

The app that allows you to buy directly from any brand through the app that signs up that has a shopify store.

That is over 500,000 stores. Currently amazon has over 2.5 million sellers. Off to a good start!

Shopify’s ‘Chief Product Officer’ Craig Miller calling it ‘one of Shopify’s most significant products ever

Shopify will no doubt be hoping the app takes space on users’ home screens, taking some of the attention they use currently to shop at Amazon, Ebay, alibaba, etc.

Currently Amazon's biggest competitors are Alibaba, Google, Walmart, JD,...

I did some research and I was shocked at the amount of people searching for "ecommerce classes near me"!!!

The best way to learn e-commerce is through online courses! First, you can learn how to build an e-commerce website for free with the link to lessons below-

Classes are free, but E-commerce carts tend to cost around $20-$40 a month to start, like shopify.

However, what people really want to learn is how to actually sell products online This is why I created the $97 e-commerce help club. 

Its $97 a month, includes consulting through our facebook groups, and you can cancel anytime.

I made this class from my 15 years of experience from this point of view - If I could go back and do it all over again, how would I do it?

Check out the link below for the link to the free class, and the link to the e-commerce help club.

https://www.beefysites.com/e-commerce-help-club

Answered in under two minutes, in this short video I discuss what types of business are allowed to be open and recession proof!

First I must say, you HAVE to check with your city, county, and state first.

A quick google search: what type of businesses are allowed to be open in California.

Remember, things can change week over week during a lock down or quarantine, so check often, and really don't trust what you read on social media, yikes!

We quickly found out that we are allowed to stay open according to our state, city, and county laws because we make personal care products such as hand sanitizers, etc. 

What types of Ecomm stores are recession proof? Which ecommerce stores are considered essential?

Also of course anything essential like grocery stores, hospitals, and more

So the bigger question, how do you make sure you are in a quarantine proof, or even better, a recession proof business moving forward?

First of all, many of you might already be there, first you need to check....

This week Wal mart announced a new partnership with shopify, which means they might just start competing with them soon.

However, These days Amazon is generally dominating the e-comm space. Amazon in the USA in general takes up 50% of all online transactions, and growing!

Even though Amazon has around 50% of the USA under their wing, that also means that 50% is NOT!

Also, companies such as target and shopify are introducing new versions of their companies that are direct competitors

How do you thrive without being on Amazon?

• Answer the phone, and encourage phone calls
• Try Live Video Chat
• Have free same day local delivery
• If you are a brand, make sure your product is NOT available on amazon, control you distribution
• Make sure you shipping times and fees are competitive
• Design and UX to impress on your website, Amazon is a little too "shoppy" for some people

Yes, it is possible, and check out the E-comm help club to learn more!

Is E-Commerce Without A Shopping Cart Possible? Selling products online without a shopping cart?

My store started in a 70 square foot room over 15 years ago, 
back then you had to sell your firstborn to afford a cart!!!

There was no shopify, squarespace, wix, godaddy, etc, and
amazon was only selling books!

We started as an ecommerce store without a shopping cart! I learned how to build a website from a flyer at costco!

https://www.beefysites.com/e-commerce-help-club

You can still sell products online without a cart too, actually, its not a bad strategy, here is why-

Upsides to ecommerce without a shopping cart:

• You would be suprised at the amount of people that prefer to shop this way
• Phone orders get almost 2x the revenue as a shopping cart order, more personable. 
• Live chat is an option as well, hook it up to your phone!
  
  Downsides: 
• Harder and more expensive to attribute where the sale came from, to connect it to any marketing efforts or spend
• It takes a...