eCommerce Platforms for Your Business

Looking for an eCommerce shopping cart that will meet the needs of your business and stay within your budget can seem overwhelming at first. Shopping around to find the right solution can be a daunting task.   Wading through the seemingly endless varieties of shopping cart packages can take many hours and can be very frustrating!   Each company boasts that their system is the right one for you so determining which platform to run your eCommerce business requires time and patience.  Here are some points to keep in mind when purchasing an eCommerce shopping cart system.

Easy To Use Interface
The interface should be easy to use and understand for both you and the customer. Any eCommerce system worth its salt should be able to import products from an excel sheet, organize them into categories and track inventory.  Writing descriptions and modifying products should not be a difficult task.
On the consumer end, your eCommerce shopping cart should be easy to navigate and the checkout process must be simple and secure. Your products should also be categorized and displayed in a logical and intuitive way.

Search Engine Friendly
If people can’t find your eCommerce site then you’re not going to make any sales. Clean code and the ability modify URLs and header tags should be standard.  Your website’s loading speed must be fast and without any lag.  Lag is any noticeable delay that the user experiences when accessing your website.

Analytics and Reporting
A good eCommerce system will have the ability to track traffic, search queries, shopping cart abandonment, most viewed items and have automated sale reports. Knowing who is coming to your site, what they’re buying, their likes and dislikes, and how they are finding you can go a long way in shaping your marketing strategy.

Marketing Promotions and Tools
Promoting products, offering an email or newsletter sign-up, free shipping options and up-sells are a few features a shopping cart are the features of a superior shopping cart. Getting the customer to the site is only half the battle!  Encouraging them to purchase items is a lot easier if your eCommerce system is equipped with the ability to promote your products.

These are just a few pointers and suggestions when looking for an eCommerce system.  Here at InteractOne, we offer Magento eCommerce and osCommerce shopping cart solutions. If you are interested in either system for your business please contact us to learn more!

Magento plug-ins are one of the many reasons to consider a Magento shopping cart for your business’ eCommerce platform. These plug-ins or extensions provide a level of usability and functionality not matched by other shopping cart systems. There are plug-ins to make Magento faster, improve SEO, track email campaigns, improve website search and much more. Here are a few that are not only free but effective, a must for any Magento shopping cart.

Fooman Speedster – This extension takes all JS (JavaScript) and CSS (cascading style sheets) and combines, compresses and caches it, significantly speeding up Magento. It is relatively easy to install and, with speed becoming more important for both web users and search engines, this is one Magento extension not to ignore.

Lazzymonks Twitter – Including social media with marketing efforts is a must today. Lazzymonks Twitter extension allows easy integration of Twitter into Magento. It displays Twitter feeds in your menu and allows you to update your Twitter status from the admin panel.

MailChimp ECommerce360 Reporting – Using email as part of your marketing strategy? MailChimp simplifies measurement of ROI. This Magento extension takes away all the compiling and processing of excel spreadsheets and simplifies it into easy-to-read graphs and charts. It measures email clicks and follows them until a purchase is completed!

Canonical URL’s for Magento – This extension protects your content from duplicate content penalties. By inserting the link rel=”canonical” to the head of all your magento pages you can ensure that your site gets credit for the unique content it provides.

There you have it; some free advice about free Magento extensions & plug-ins from InteractOne, a certified Enterprise-level provider of Magento. For a full list, please visit http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect .  If you have any Magento extensions you feel should be listed, or any questions about installation, feel free to share your comments below.

You have decided to implement a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign to drive traffic to your website, increase conversions and tap into the millions of consumers shopping for what you offer on the internet.  Which keywords or key-phrases should you target? While instinct might tell you to go after the keywords and phrases that best describe your business, it is best to research your competition using those same keywords, variations on keywords, and a cost analysis of the effort and time required to implement your keywords versus the amount of traffic they may generate.

First to give credit where it’s due, your instinct is right - make sure your SEO keywords specifically fit your business.  The key word here is “specific.” If you are a car window repair shop, choosing the keyword “windows” will get you nowhere fast. If you are a local New Holland tractor dealer, trying to rank with the phrase ”New Holland” might put you into unwanted and unprofitable competition with several large cities around the world. If you are a coffee shop, tempting as it might be, you have little chance with the keyword “coffee” alone.

Do you see the trend? Make sure your keywords are on-target, ownable, realistic and not easily mistaken for another subject entirely.

Once you’ve built your list of keywords it is time to analyze how many people are searching the web using those keywords. Two free tools that do a good job of this are Google’s Keyword Traffic Tool and Wordtrackers GTrends Tool. Follow this rule of thumb: if a keyword generates a ton of searches, it will be harder to rank organically through an SEO campaign.  If you find that your keywords have too much competition, try adding the town, city or state name. Also, try longer-tailed keywords; for example instead of  “windshield repair” try “windshield repair Cincinnati” or “window repair shop in Cincinnati.”

Your current rank for a keyword or phrase, the amount of competition for the same keyword and the current state of your website are all important factors in estimating SEO campaign costs. Writing articles and submitting them, optimizing website code, text, images, creating and monitoring social media to support your site, and the creation of new website content all must be taken into account.

Determining the proper keywords for your SEO campaign is an ongoing process. Setting and forgetting just isn’t possible. Constant traffic analysis, keyword position reports, and frequent website updates optimally tune your website for SEO.  Like most things, experience and first-hand knowledge are paramount. Start your SEO campaign on the right track with the proper keywords and you’ll gain the experience to make your website highly competitive by constantly refining your SEO strategy.

Having landing pages that are oriented around the keywords of your Pay-per-Click (PPC ) campaign is a must. Many times companies point all the keywords in their PPC ads towards their home page essentially making their customers do two or more searches after they arrive at the website. These extra searches often discourage the customers, leading them elsewhere to do their shopping.  Any Internet marketer will tell you that the first few seconds a person is on a website is critical. In those seconds he or she is going to decide “is this the right place for me or should I go back to search…?”.

Another critical aspect that is often left out of the PPC campaign and off the landing page is a call to action.  A call to action should be prominently displayed on the landing page encouraging and giving instructions on how to initiate the transaction. A common rule of thumb for any type of business – online or not – is “If you don’t ask, you don’t sell”.

Pay-per-Click campaigns are a great promotional tool and a great way to garner instant traffic to your website; however, poorly set-up campaigns can prove to be a waste of money. By ensuring that that you are pointing your customers to the products and services they want and encouraging them to make a purchase you are on the right track to a successful Pay-per-Click campaign.

When potential customers search for your business online what are the results? The best case scenario would be a link to your website at the top of the first results page with links to positive reviews and content you control on the rest of the page. Worst case scenario is your competitor’s website or negative reviews at the top of the first results page with a link to your website nowhere to be found.

No matter where you are in the above scenario there are steps you can take to ensure that the results for a search of your of your business’ name are positive and bring customers to you instead of scaring them away.

1) Create a Static Website or Blog for your Business. This is not as intimidating as it sounds. Today you can set up a simple website or blog that will provide your business with an online presence for less than $20.oo a month. Keep in mind that this type of website won’t be winning any awards in design but will provide search engines with content on your business that you control. Blogging platforms such as WordPress are edging out static websites in popularity because of its ease of of use, functionality, and the ability to update text and design with little or no coding skills.

2) Get involved in Social Media. The great thing about social media is that it is free! The three top social media sites I recommend are Twitter, facebook, and LinkedIn. Facebook and Twitter are great internet marketing tool that allow you to engage your target market. You can use these platforms to update customers on your products and services, changes in hours, industry news and any other sources of information that might appeal to them.

3) Set up Local Listing Accounts. This also a great way to put your business on the web for free. Yahoo, Bing, and Google all have local listings/maps that allow you to post a summary, images, video, contact info and hours of your business.

4) Be Pro-Active. Search the internet for blogs, websites, forums, online news outlets and any other type of website that is related to your business or industry. On many of these sites you can make a profile for your business and leave comments and respond to questions.  If you see any negative reviews or postings about your business make sure you reach out immediately to resolve these issues.

Creating an online presence for your business that attracts customers instead of repels them only takes a few hours to setup and a few hours a week to manage. As more and more people log-on to the internet to find a business or to learn more about a business they plan on working with, you can bet your online reputation is going to play an ever more important role.

Where is your target market online? Sounds like a simple question, but many online marketers endeavor to sell online without knowing if, where or when their target market is online.

Lets take a step back and define “target market online”. Target Market Online (TMO) – defines when and where your customers and prospective clients are using the World Wide Web.

For example, is your TMO heavy Google users, do they frequent the news sites, read blogs, watch YouTube, do social networking, hang out on online forums, the list goes on and on….

The reason it’s import to answer the question “where is my TMO” is because it has, and will have profound ramifications on the scope and cost of ones online marketing efforts.

Marketers that know where their TMO is are able to much better server their customers and prospects with precisely targeted information and advertisement creating value in their marketing efforts and bolstering their brand as a “Gold Standard” in the online marketplace. To market any other way online relegates marketers to the masses of spam who eventually fade away as more end more online marketers “get it right” and tailor their efforts to precisely meet the needs of their TMO.

At InteractOne we specialize is helping our clients find out exactly if, where and when their Target Market is Online, ensuring our clients take the appropriate steps needed to deliver a precisely targeted and appropriate online marketing message.

Columbia Maryland – 4 January 2010. Allergy Grocer, an online grocer that provides specialty allergen free foods relaunched their Magento shopping cart on InteractOne Ecommerce servers. Initially launched in December 2009 Allergy Grocer was experiencing slow load times and issues with their “Shop By Allergen” attributes. InteractOne was able to migrate the site from the previous host and do a database level rewrite of the “Shop By Allergen” attributes – all with less than 6 hrs of total downtime (most of which occurred after business hours EST). InteractOne has also been able to assist Allergy Grocer with custom shipping options, enhanced order fulfillment, email marketing, email auto-response and promotion development. With month over month increases in website traffic, lightning fast load times, higher conversion rates and increased sales Allergy Grocer looks to continue it’s partnership with InteractOne in providing the ultimate online shopping destination for allergy free foods. Visit: AllergyGrocer.com

Website loading speed is one of the most important features of your website. To much load time and you can lose a potential customer entirely. A study released by Akamai Technologies, Inc. in September showed that “2 seconds is the new threshold in terms of an average online shopper’s expectation for a web page to load and 40 percent of shoppers will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a retail or travel site.” This threshhold is only going to continue to be pushed as customers speed expectations grow.

Search engines are also adding speed to their page ranking requirements, this is evident with Googles upcoming Caffeine update. In a recent interview Matt Cutts, the man in charge of Google’s Webspam Team, said “speed hasn’t played a role in rankings in the past, but that may very well change.”

So how do you speed up your website? The best fastest and easiest way to speed up your websites performance is to look at the websites design. Are there large bulky images, tons of java & flash script? These need to be eliminated and at the very least optimized for performance.

Another variable to look at is your Websites hosting company. Are the severs they provide made for the type of site you have?

Many times the performance issue has to do with age. Code builds up and is outdated, the website platform hasn’t been updated and is vulnerable to bugs and hacks, and like most things the newest version is just plain better. Instead of updating these issues one by one, many times a complete website redesign would be the better and cheaper alternative.

For eCommerce sites a high performance option would be Magento. The Magento platform combines performance, ease of use, and awesome looks into a seamless package. This platform is used by many major retailers for these many reasons and can be parred down or expanded depending on your needs.

For websites that require good looks, speed, and the ability to be updated from any PC WordPress is an excellent platform. With almost endless styleing possibilities, lightweight code, and a host of free plug-ins that can boost performance and functionality this platform has set the standard in Content Management Systems (CMS).

Whether you need to go through your sites code line by line to streamline its performance or your going to opt for a complete redesign one thing is for certain, speed will effect the success of your website and its importance will only continue to grow.

Released to the public March 31, 2008 Magento has revolutionized the way business is conducted online. The front-end (what the customer sees) is user friendly, eye-appealing, fast, & secure. The back-end (the seller admin panel) is easy to use, has built in intuitive functions (taxes, product quantity, shipping, payments,  ect), is secure, and is  easily upgraded & configured to the needs of the business. See Magento Features.

Today you are more than likely using Mageno if you shop on the internet. Many large retailers and businesses using Magento for their Internet presence such as 3M, The North Face, Stussy, Samsung, & homemedics just to name a few. The reason for this is simple, it is a versatile complete package that is a true asset to any online business.  You can see this flexibility when visiting different sites that use the Magento platform.  Some don’t look anything alike! The only thing in common are their functionality and ease of use.

Here at InteractOne we realized the magnitude of what such a system could have on the e-commerce world and adopted Magento shortly after its release.  We have many custom Magento Designs under our belts and even a few Magento fixes from clients who unfortunately got taken advantage by an adolescent developer.

If you have any experience with Magento based eCommerce sites please feel free to link to them in the comments section and tell us your experience with the system. If you are interested in how Magento can successfully be integrated into your business model please fill out the contact form on the right and a InteractOne representative will contact you shortly.

So your going to take the plunge! One of the first steps to building an online presence is picking and registering a domain name. Should it be the name of your business? The name of your main product or service? Or should it be a acronym of both?

The answer lies with your customers and future customers. What would they prefer? Is it easy to remember? Is it related to what your business offers? Also you should consider how search engines will perceive the name.   Think of  search engines as a really picky customer (after all they are there shopping for info).

Sometimes you aren’t able to get the exact domain name you want. Don’t worry this is not the end of the world. Search engine optimization or customer satisfaction does not solely rest on the domain name. We have many clients with unique domain names that we have implemented successful internet strategies for.

Another thing to keep in mind is buying different variations of your domain name. You can point these domain names at your homepage or different product/service pages that they relate to.

A good idea is to sit down and brainstorm a list of of potentials. A good site that will aid in the process is Network Solutions . There you can search for potential domain names and find related domain names if the one you want is taken. You can also find contact info on domain name owners if you are willing to bargain for a domain name.

Once you pick a domain name you can register at any of the major internet registrars such as Tucows, GoDaddy, Network Solution, or many others.

Remember if this process is intimidating or you need an experienced professional on your side for negotiating a domain name buy contact us and we will be glad to be of assistance.