PTP Retail Web-Store Subscription
www.thepersonalizedgift.com

FAQ's - Frequently Asked Questions:

1. What are Personal Touch Products (PTP) Retail Web-Stores?

Personal Touch Products has developed a comprehensive subscription based retail web-store designed exclusively for our personalized gift retailers. The PTP retail web-stores were created to provide a simple and enjoyable website experience for your customers and allow them to design and order their personalized gifts online. As a web-store subscriber you can customize your online store with your own business name and contact information and select from several color schemes. You can also Activate or Inactivate products based upon your current inventory. Additionally you can set your own standard price and run sales if and when desired.

2. Do I have to purchase the website, or how does this work?

PTP provides you with a subscription based web-store that will allow you to sell Personal Touch personalized gifts to your customers. You do not actually purchase your web-store. PTP is the owner of the website and will act the web-host for your online store, and maintain your web-store on its servers.

3. Can I host the PTP Website myself or transfer the website to another webhost?

PTP manages the website and online web-stores on its own servers. Doing so allows PTP to manage features, intellectual property and security.

4. Will my customers' transactions be secure?

Yes. Online payments will be processed through PayPal. PayPal uses the latest in Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology as well as other security features to process payments.

5. I noticed that your sample website shows "www.thepersonalizedgift.com" in the URL. Can I display my own website name in my online store?

Yes. And this is recommended so you can maintain your own website name indefinitely. This can be performed any time after the completion of the web-store registration process. This option will require that you acquire your own domain name (URL) from a Domain Registrar such as godaddy.com.  See the next question.

6. How can I display my existing website domain name in the browser address bar instead of thepersonalizedgift.com?

This option assumes that you already have or will acquire a domain name (URL). Your Domain Registrar can assist you with this process, but here are the basic steps needed to accomplish this. Create a new DNS CNAME record. (You will need to do this through your domain registrar.) Point this DNS CNAME record to your PT Online Store sub-domain. For example: thepersonalizedgift.com/yourstorename where yourstorename = the Store Name that you specified or will specify during the PT web-store registration process. Once the CNAME record is created, login to your PTP Online Store Administration and change your Domain Alias to YOURDOMAIN.com.

7. Will you advertise my Online Web-Store or submit it to the search engines?
PTP does not advertise or submit web-stores to the search engines. We believe that the marketing and advertising your store is best managed by you, the store owner. It is also our belief that search engine placement has become more about dollars (to the service providers) than anything else. In the past, the majority of search engines picked up the best sites for particular keywords and listed them at the top. Today, to get to the top of most search engines you will need pay an SEO expert or bid for pay-per-click keywords (PPC) that you pay for each time someone clicks on your link. This can get expensive. The places at the top of the search engines are of course limited, and thus have become very expensive Internet "real estate".

8. How do you recommend that I promote my Online Store?

Merchants can promote their online web-store address in a variety of ways including business cards, email, advertising to existing customers, online advertising at related websites, referrals, word of mouth, etc. We also recommend placing your contact information with your website address on the back of each gift that you sell. Online merchants can also create a link from an existing website(s) (if they have one) pointing to their new online web-store.

9. How soon will I start to get orders from my customers?

Your online store will be ready to accept orders after successful registration and setting up your PayPal and Shipping Methods. The level of web-store sales you achieve will depend solely upon your efforts and your ability to market your online store. For customers to find your website, you first need to let them know that you exist. Rolling out a new website can be an exciting event so be sure to let everyone you know when your website is up and running. And be sure to ask them to visit your web-store and share their thoughts with you. Without marketing, you may receive a few sales every now and then but marketing is a fundamental step to the success of any business or website so we suggest that you develop and follow through with a marketing plan. Try different approaches and build upon the methods that work best for you. With consistent effort you can build your own list of happy repeat customers. Stay in touch with your customers by e-mail, or mail and be sure to let them know when you?re running a special. Send reminders and notices to your customers regarding the next major upcoming holiday.

10. How do I receive payments from my customers?

Via PayPal on-line payments. If you don't already have a PayPal account you will need to open one before your web-store can accept payments. If your customers do not have PayPal, they can still make on-line payments using their credit cards through PayPal. Here is basically how it works. PayPal acts as an on-line bank and will accept payments from your customers. When your customer pays for their order, PayPal takes their transaction fee (approx. 3%), and deposits the remaining funds into your PayPal account. You can use your account to pay for other on-line purchases or transfer any available funds at any time into your checking account without incurring additional fees.

11. How does the Web-store calculate shipping charges?
Your web-store administration control panel will allow you to set flat-rate shipping fees for domestic and international orders. You can decide to ship domestic only or allow international orders. 

Your on-line web-store can be set-up as quickly as 1 business day from completing your web-store registration and payment. You will receive a confirmation email upon completing the registration process and making your initial payment.

13. Are there any requirements and how do I get started?

This offer is available to PTP customers only. To get started with your new web-store; simply complete the registration process.  If you're not already a PTP customer, you can get started by purchasing any of the Gifts on Art Start-up packages from www.personaltouchproducts.com

14. How much does it cost?

Your web-store was designed to be self-maintained but PTP can provide you with two web-store technical assistance incidents within 7 days of registration at no cost. Additional web-store technical support can be purchased at the rate of $25 per incident. (one incident includes one issue or question requiring up to 30 minutes of web-store related assistance)