I was looking for some tips on writing Meta Tags this morning and I came across a great article on eHow: How to Write Description Meta Tags.  Check it out and spice up your Meta Tags.

Now customers can shop across all our stores at Shop @ Flying Cart.  Your products will be promoted automatically in the “Featured” and “What’s New” section.  My favorite feature of all is the Daily Top 40!  Compete with your fellow stores to see if your product gets to the top of the list.  Rankings are based on views and sales.

As you may notice, Shop @ Flying Cart is still in beta - we have some really big plans for it.

Two questions you might have:
Q: Why aren’t my products showing up in the search results of Shop@Flying Cart?
A: It will take one day for your products to be processed in our system and added to the search. We catalog all the products once per day.

Q: How can I improve the placement of my products in the results ordering?
A: Give your products descriptive titles and write carefully worded descriptions. Our search looks at these two items, plus brand name, department name, and the name of your store. The more specific you are, the more likely it will be for people to find your products.

We just added a feature for all you bloggers out there (something we highly recommend to do).  Easily add your blog to your store navigation menu.

Here is how you can do it:

1. Login to your store Headquarters

2. Click on the “Store” tab

3. Click on the “Homepage sub tab

4. Enter in the link text (i.e. Blog, MySpace Page, Main Site, More Info, etc.)

5. And your link.  Make sure you include the “http://:” in the URL

Here are some sites you can use for this new feature

Blogging Sites:

1. Wordpress (What we use)

2. Google’s Blogger

Social Network sites:

1. MySpace

2. Create a Facebook Page for your store

3. Ning

We wanted to add a little culture to Flying Cart.  Now, every time you login to your store headquarters you will see a greeting in another language in the upper right hand corner.  Scroll over it to see what that greeting means and where it is from.

We will be down for a few hours for a security update this Sunday.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but trust me you want this update.

Check out your store. We just changed the way we make thumbnail images. Less pixelated and sharper. Enjoy!

Customizing the colors on your store site is one of the easiest ways to make it your own. In the past we have offered pre-defined color schemes, as well as custom CSS, but these were still limiting. Our new color tool allows you to set your own colors for any region of your store design, as well as set your own text colors and font styles, with the ease of point-and-click color selection. You can choose your colors and preview how they will look all within the same page.

Those of you who don’t know CSS or don’t want to mess with it now have an easy way to customize the look of your site. We dare you to make something really crazy looking. Seriously, if you want to, now it’s possible. Look for the new color tool in your store Headquarters on the Store > Colors page.

What people are saying:
“I am totally in love!!!” - Baby Town USA

“Just wanted to say THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! for the new color tool…makes it sooooo much easier for those of us who don’t have time to mess with learning the ins and outs of CSS but want more a more customized look…. we love you too! THANKS AGAIN!” Erin Breland, The Blue Daisy & Co.

Track your inventory. Sit back and relax, you can now stop worrying about over selling.

Enter in your product quantities and choose whether you want them to display in your store after they are sold out. Get email notifications when things sell out. Ease your mind knowing you won’t oversell. This feature is only available to Pro customers.

How It Works
Step 1: When adding (or editing) a product, select “Track Product Quantities”

Step 2: Select “Continue selling after stock reaches 0″ (good if you know you can get more easily) OR “Mark the product SOLD OUT when stock reaches 0 and stop selling” (good if you have a limited supply)

Step 3: Enter in the amount you have in the Quantity box. When you are on the edit page, you can enter a different quantity for each color or size of the item.

When customers purchase items in your store, the quantities in stock will be updated on the products that you are tracking.

If you have chosen the option to stop selling a product when it becomes sold out, it will no longer be displayed in your store. If you have a product with multiple colors and sizes and only some of them are sold out, customers will not be able to add the sold out ones to their cart. After products are sold out you are still able to view and edit them in your Headquarters.

Email notifications

You have the option of receiving an email when your products sell out. This is turned on by default and can be turned off on the Store > Settings page in your Headquarters.

Note to Pro customers

If you opened a store with us before May 12, 2008, have more than 50 products, and would like to track quantities on ALL of your products, please send us an email. We can turn it on at once for all your products and set a default quantity, which will save you the work of doing it manually.

Our most requested feature yet! Now you can charge shipping based on total weight of an order.

How it Works

Step 1: Login to your store Headquarters and navigate to Store -> Shipping

Step 2: Click on the drop down and select “Ship by Product Weight” and hit Save

Step 3: Specify shipping prices based on weight ranges

Step 4: All your products will now have an editable Weight field added to them on the edit pages

Step 5: Go to each product page and specify how much each item weighs

Your customers will be charged based on the total weight in the cart.

Now you can add multiple pictures for each product. Show all the angles, zoomed in photos, different colors and styles.

Here is How it Works:

1. Login to your headquarters and upload your images on the product page.

2. Set a primary image. This is the image that will be displayed as a thumbnail on your homepage, department, and brand page. *Optional

3. Link up your images to specific variations. For example if you have a t-shirt available in green and blue match the green variation to the green t-shirt picture. This way the image on the customer receipt and cart will match up. *Optional

I’m really excited to see how all of you use this feature.