Jan
22
You’ve got a new e-commerce site. Congrats! But you still have a long road ahead of you. Hopefully, you already have a plan for marketing your website. If you don’t, here’s a good jumping off point;
- Create and upload XML sitemap and notify major search engines.
- Set up google analytics account at google.com/analytics/.
- Set up google webmaster tools, yahoo site explorer, and MSN webmasters accounts
- Create a product database in excel and upload to google base.
- Social bookmark in delicious, stumbleupon, google bookmarks.
- Add a local business listing to google and yahoo.
- Submit to industry specific directories & dmoz.org.
- Yahoo! offers a shopping directory where you can bid to place your products (pay per click).
Additional Tips;
Consider offering your product to affiliates through cj.com or shareasale.com. Other publishers get a commission for each completed sale on your website.
Be sure to make your e-commerce site content rich. Add a “how-to”, a “FAQ”, or other expert advice type article related to your product. For instance, if you sell swimwear, consider writing a fitting guide to help women find the right type of suit for their body type, or perhaps a few paragraphs on the latest designers and patterns for the current season.
Dec
3
10 signs you probably aren’t ready for an e-commerce website
Filed Under E-commerce Design | 4 Comments
Based on my experience with clients who have physical store locations and don’t want to miss out on this new craze called “the world wide web”, I’ve come up with some signs that may indicate you may not be ready for managing an e-commerce website. Feel free to use this as an interview checklist before signing on new clients.
1. You do not know how to resize a photo.
2. You want to send the designer the ACTUAL product to scan to put on your website.
3. You want your store to be designed to *literally* look like the storefront of your physical location. Windows and all.
4. You do not know the difference between natural search results and PPC/adwords.
5. You want to duplicate amazon.com for $300, and it has to be done by friday.
6. “If I build it, they will come” is your marketing plan.
7. You think your e-commerce company isn’t qualified because they won’t show you how to use a digital camera or operate quickbooks.
8. Your plan for taking payment online is to have customers email you their credit card number & order
9. You still use a dial-up connection with AOL
10. You’ve never actually shopped online
Oct
6
Today we recap “What’s New With Retailers & Search Marketing”, presented by Search Marketing Expo (Oct 6, 2008, NYC).
As previous and future blog posts will reveal, SEO for e-commerce is quite a different beast than SEO for an informational website. With the holiday shopping season quickly approaching, Now is the time to really be getting your e-commerce websites marketing in gear.
May
30
Web Design Color Swatches
Filed Under Blog Design, Design General, E-commerce Design | 2 Comments
Ever get ‘creative block’ when you’re just desperate for inspiration, and need that little boost to get you started? Check out these graphic color swatches. Feel free to use as you wish. Post what you come up with and send me a link.
Apr
29
All About Site Structure
Filed Under Blog Design, E-commerce Design | Leave a Comment
This First, lets start with the two types of site structure – physical and virtual. Both types are important for different reasons. Physical site structure is important to show search engines structure and organization; Virtual site structure is important for users to be able to navigate the site. Lets look at two examples.
Physical site structure: we have a homepage, or index – with 4 categories. Within each category are 3 pages. the directories and URL’s should look like a family tree:
http://www.mysite.com/
http://www.mysite.com/category1/
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page1.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page2.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page3.html
This is important so that search engines can not only better navigate your website, but can also put more ‘weight’ on certain pages. In this case, a search engine (SE) would see the index page as most important, then a category page, then the lowest level pages as least important. By placing all pages at the top level, or in the root directory, such as below – SE’s will assume all pages are equally important.
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page1.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page2.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page3.html
Virtual site structure: Regardless of physical site structure, google can also follow the links on a website. If a site’s navigation can show SE’s a structure, SE’s can better understand the importance of your pages, and better index your website. This can be done via a sites navigation, and/or by using breadcrumbs. To use navigation to show a virtual structure, A website can display the main categories, sub-categories, and pages within the subcateories within the main page or within the main navigation, as shown on Jcrew.com. In this particular instance, I’ve clicked “womens”, then “sweaters”. On this page, you can also see which subcategories fall within the category “sweaters”, which is within the category “womens”. Hopefully, you haven’t used javascript or ajax, and SE’s can properly follow your links.
Sample of “silo’ed” navigation:
Home
Category_one
Category_two
Category_three
-subcategory_three_a
- – page-one.html
- – page-two.html
-subcategory_three_b
-subcategory_three_c
- – page-one.html
- – page-two.html
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Mar
13
SEO basics checklist.
Filed Under Blog Design, E-commerce Design | Leave a Comment
New to SEO? Not so new to SEO? Here are a few items that should be at the top of your ‘to do’ checklist, regardless of your SEO savvy.
- Meta & Title tags
- Internal page linking
- XML sitemap uploaded & ping’ed
- Links to authoritative, external websites
- Google & Yahoo! local profiles, if applicable
- Directory submissions listings (geographic / topic specific)
For a more extensive checklist, click here.
