E-Commerce and Evolve Blog
Today’s Post-Lunch Links Coma will be dedicated to e-commerce. Specifically, how to customize e-commerce platforms, conduct proper SEO, set up the platform for success, and much more!
First, are you running an e-commerce website and need to do some SEO work? Take a look at this automatic SEO e-commerce case study posted on Wordtracker.
Smart SEO can make your online business more successful by focusing your efforts on the searches (keywords) your buyers are making. This case study shows how Wordtracker Strategizer can save you days of research trying to find those keywords, planning the actions required to target them and reporting your results.
Our case study is TahoeMountainSports.com, the website of a real world shop that like many makes a significant proportion of sales online and must do so profitably.
Using TahoeMountainSports.com as a guide, you’ll see how you can use Wordtracker Strategizer to help increase your own website’s visits and response.
Fantastic look at SEO for an e-commerce website. Odds are we will incorporate this information into packets and presentations for potential clients for Evolve Systems.
Search Engine Journal has another great resource posted on Top 15 Free Things Each E-Commerce Site Should Do After Launching. Two of the more common ones we recommend to clients all the time:
3. Submit to DMOZ and other free niche directories
- The Open Directory Project or DMOZ is one of the best free links you can receive. Every new site (e-commerce or other) should submit their site to DMOZ upon launch. Due to the incredibly large amount of entries, it may take a while (months) for your site to be included. Be patient, high quality sites are often included. If you operate as a micro site or an affiliate site – well then try your luck somewhere else.
- There are usually also a number of niche directories you will be able to submit your e-commerce site to. If it is well designed and visually appealing, submit to any number of CSS galleries and directories. If you sell Bar Mitzvah cards, try submitting to Jewish directories. Get creative with your searches and you should find some easy, free, and relevant directories well worth your time and effort to submit to.
*Note – Don’t forget to submit to free local directories!
4. Sign up for Google Analytics
- Google analytics is a no brainer for any website, e-commerce or not. It is completely free to use and is a very capable analytics program – sufficient for most of the sites online. All you need is a Gmail address and then place the analytics code on your site, and you are good to go.
*Note – Do not forget to set-up goals and conversion funnels. Also remember to filter out your own IP address and the IP address of anyone else that works on the site. Last, you may want to take advantage of one of the newer features and install page load time tracking.
One word about online directories: we’ve noticed that many of the best, highest trafficked online directories require you to pay excessive amount of money to be a part of and gather links from. This may be worth it to your company if you have the budget monthly to sign up for these directories, but many companies often don’t have the budget or see the return on investment for some of the more highly priced directories. Don’t think you have to shell out $1200 a month just to directories in order to build quality links, it can be done for much cheaper.
Get Elastic, the e-commerce blog, looks at 9 Ways to Build Trust in Checkout. If customers don’t trust your checkout process, if they don’t trust the visual look and rhetoric and design of your website, then they are unlikely to want to do business with someone they consider untrustworthy. These tips from Get Elastic are excellent ones, and help get both designers and owners in the mindset of visitors of their e-commerce platform.
Have you been following the innovations the American market is seeing using QR Codes? They aren’t a new technology, having been used in Japan for over a decade, and QR Codes do have drawbacks, specifically being tied to mobile phones, dedicated QR Code readers, and often a wi-fi or network connection, but they are fun little tools to work with. And we think they have a place in E-Commerce.
Hope you all have a great weekend! Stay cool, stay safe, and enjoy this beautiful Minnesota weather!
