A common question we get is if it's possible to change templates. People pick a template on startup, and there is no way to change this from within the Control Panel.

Trials showed that template choosing can cause untold chaos, if done incorrectly. We often customise stores for people, and people think that their changes will come across to their new template - which isn't the case.

However, it's very easy to get your template changed. You simply mail us, letting us know which template you'd like to choose from (after checking http://signup.freewebstore.org) - and please mail us from your authorised email address, otherwise we will have to go back and forth for authentication issues.

You know that annoying FreeWebStore.org advert across the top of our free sites? Well, I'm afraid it's a necessary evil. For one, it helps us make money and keep our operation active. We needed to raise our profile pretty damned quickly upon launch, and that has helped us no end.  

However, we are about to change the way in which it helps us make money; by making you more successful. We are giving this space across our free sites to you, our clients. All of you, free users, paid users, everybody.

Keep an eye on this blog for more details as they become available.

Sales across the board are up: Google Product Search is helping people make sales.

Where this is really helping out are the stores that either are very new, and haven't yet found their way onto the main search engine's index, or stores with no domain names.

I also note that the products sold through Google Product Search generally adhere to the 12 points discussed in our release article. I know it's a pain, but it really helps to put that little extra effort in.

Hello - we've had a couple of people in touch lately saying they got a mail telling them their store is now cancelled.

This can happen if you get a new credit card, and your card number changes. If this does happen to you, drop us a line through your control panel, and on the next subscription date we will simply send you a new bill, which can be paid there and then. If you let us know this is the case, we will ensure your store keeps running in the meantime.

A common query is how to achieve location-based postage.

This can be done very effectively through Product Options. There is the ability to add a product option that must be chosen (i.e. no "no thanks" option). So at purchase-time, the user selects their location and continues to have the product cost ammended accordingly.

http://www.freewebstore.org/support/controlPanel.html#addoptions details how to add product options

We have to let the user specify the delivery location, as although it is possible to detect the country a user is in, this would require the user setting each potential country with an associated cost. Also, delivery addresses are not always the same as the browser's address - so we will have to ask for the location anyhow, to make sure.

I was just checking to see if my 12 tips for Google Product Search was yet searchable (no luck, I'm afraid! And as we're an established, high traffic site, we do get indexed more often!)

I did however find a very interesting article with 12 tips for better AdWords, written by a guy named Michael Wong.

Here it is  (or open in a new window)

A handful of us have been having a protracted conversation over the past two weeks regarding the benefits of allowing our users to categorise their categories. Sounds odd? Well, yes. It is and it isn't.

Soon we will unleash a nice little search engine for you guys to use internally. We don't want to go down the route of being Yet Another Search Engine as well... that's been done to death, and it's not what we do here at FreeWebStore - but we do feel there is an intrinsic benefit to our members - as shoppers as well as sellers - in being able to check out what other people have to offer. We have a cracking community here, but we are all isolated and distant from each other.

If we have a search engine, then why not a category too? After all, we already have thousands of stores people putting products into categories, but not the same categories. At this rate, we would have over 40 silver jewelery categories, six horsemanship equipment categories, countless kid's clothing categories, etc. And of course, that would be plain unusable.

You'd think allowing a store to categorise their whole store may be an idea, but many of our stores sell various types of things. So it looks as though soon you'll be asked (ever so nicely) to choose categories for your categories. This will not have an effect on your store, but will help us launch our new community site.

Part of this community site involves putting you guys in touch with one another. I know for a fact that one of the silver retailers would love to be in touch with some of the other wholesale suppliers, but we cannot facilitate this without one of us emailing each of the customers, and the waiting for a response from each allowing us to pass on contact information.

Now, if our users can browse a central category structure, and send little messages to one another, even hook up and add mutual links or list each other's stock, that would streamline things greatly. This is my present responsibility, developing our new community site.

It will be tough to get absolutely everyone talking to each other, but I know from first hand experience that our customers are a friendly lot on the whole! I have a handful of people in mind that would love this service, and we plan to encourage members to use this service for extra product slots and whatever other back-scratching favours we can dish out effectively!

If you have any thoughts or ideas as to what you'd like to see or  use in such a community site (opt-in, of course, and totally private - only members will have access), please drop me a line and I'll do what I can to include the best  ideas into the build plan.  

Update - the silver store who offers wholesale that I was thinking of was www.store.Nine50.com.au - based in Oz, but I know there are always opportunities. They're a friendly bunch of people, so drop them a line if you're interested!

Also, they are supporting a great cause - from their site: Nine50 is committed to helping break the poverty cycle in Peru through child sponsorship. Every store which stocks and successfully sells Nine50 Jewellery will enable us to sponsor another child in Peru.

Nine50 has a goal to sponsor 100 Peruvian children by 2010.

We have had many heated discussions regarding Google Product Search lately.

Basically, we were on two sides: Those wanting GPS to be available to everybody, and those wanting it to be available to subscribers only. Nobody suggested charging subscribers extra for it.

Whilst we do do all we can to make things as flexible and free as possible, we are running a company, and we do have to make money - our server farm is expensive, as are programmers like myself! The argument was: Will the Google Product Search facility create so much publicity - on a free store - that it will pay for itself?

Ultimately, we decided that this is a subscriber only service. What swung this for me personally was more a moral factor than a business factor. We know people list often... less than salubrious "items" on our stores, and we move quickly to remove these items and stores (we're talking more personal 'services' than anything else... for those interested!).

Now imagine how our credibility would be trashed, if suddenly an exotic, exciting, in-depth back-rub, offered on one of our stores, found its way onto Google Product Search, using a utility we provided carte blanche access to. We have suddenly made one of our problems a problem of somebody else. We cannot allow this to happen.

We know that our packages cater for every side of business out there. We know that small businesses have to think carefully before spending every pound, it's not too long ago we were in a similar situation. But we offer small businesses the firepower to sell like big businesses, and in providing the ability to put your products in front of hundreds of millions of potential buyers, we are confident we offer the best value on the web.

- update: I have found one other company offering an upload to Google Product Search, and they charge £7 per month. This is just for the upload facility, assuming the client already has a site.

Also, we will soon (tm) be offering the ability to have your store name beside your products. At present this would require you providing us with your Google Base passwords (you could set up another if you use GMail, etc, we don't need your life's password!) but we are working closely with the Google API to see ways around this.

Hello, I have to admit I feel kind of silly writing this - for one I don't know anyone else who may read this (but we're working on that) and for two, I always dislike trying to write things "about me", it always comes across as very very uninteresting when I read it back!

So I'll be forumulaic - I'm Steven, a developer with FreeWebStore.org. I work on the development and planning on FreeWebStore.org, and more often than not the graphical side of things (so you have me to blame for the ever-so lovely reflection effect you see everywhere) and have been doing for some years.

Whilst we were developing FreeWebStore.org, we were in constant touch with our beta testers, and the feedback we received was tremendously helpful. We are very keen to explore ways in which we can forge relationships with absolutely every one of our community (who is willing!), and spent some time thinking how we manage to do that as our numbers grow.

With that in mind, we're currently ploughing our way through a mass of projects that will enable us to keep in touch with the FreeWebStore.org community - this blog (which is being developed as I type this) and a new community site, where we can all meet up to swap ideas and suggestions about FreeWebStore.org - and the wider e-commerce world - as well as your allowing you to introduce yourselves, your business, and your WebStore. Also we will be developing an internal news system, so you can keep abreast of current developments within the community from your WebStore control panel.

Once we have the community site running smoothly, we'll let you know.

In the meantime (and beyond, I suspect) please feel free to use this blog to communicate with me, have discussions or ask questions. I sincerely hope I will be able to be as honest and open as I can be, and hopefully we can start a great conversation going which will help shape the future of FreeWebStore.

Oh yes, I have to thank a friend of mine, Duncan Halley for referring this blog software to me. If you're looking for a usability expert, or (it pains me to add) a custom web site, his portfolio is well worth checking out. Of course, after you've checked out our design centre! (Accessible from your Control Panel)