Welcome to ShoppingCartBuzz – a Blog that helps entrepreneurs with their online e-commerce ventures.

My name is Louise Desmarteau and I’ve developed e-commerce websites for just under 6 years now.

In 2004, I decided that I wanted to develop an online business selling some sort of product. At the time I made this decision I had no idea what a payment gateway was, how to install an SSL certificate or even what product(s) I wanted to sell and where I would get them

After much reading and research, I found a dropshipper that I felt comfortable with and that I felt was a fit for me. We added 1,000 products, manually adding them to the shopping cart system with help from the dropshipper supplying images, weights, etc.

Managing the online business was easy until the time came when sales began to increase and issues started arising with products damaged in shipping, out of stock items, etc. These were all new concerns and issues to address. My point being, be prepared! It is critical to provide great customer service and if you have a dropshipper that is unreliable, guess what, so will be your customer support.

Our first Christmas season, we had sales of 5 figures and the phone rang off the wall. I still had a full-time job and I was lucky enough to prepare ahead to have 2 weeks off to handle orders. My point, be prepared!

I ran the business for 5 years and in the process learned to develop e-commerce websites for a living with customers approaching me asking who designed my site. So, ultimately my full-time job became web development.

In 2009, I sold the site I created back in 2004. It was ranking in the top 10 on Google and had been #1 on Yahoo for 2 years for the main keywords.

Overall, my experience was fantastic, but that is not always the case. It is important, be prepared. Read, analyze, read more and keep learning because that is what your competition will do. Start small and build over time. Don’t get impatient.

Why ShoppingCartBuzz?

I wanted to dedicate this site to helping other small business entrepreneurs to learn the skills needed to succeed and for them to share their own experiences and promote the flow of information.

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I hope you enjoy ShoppingCartBuzz and that you’ll learn a tip or trick along the way.