If your main focus is to handle administration more effectively, having an online store built with a system such as Magento will allow you to manage your data and orders more effectively through the backend. Your admin login will display your individual dashboard showing information such as sales by day, week, month, year or 2 years; along with popular search terms and amounts of recent orders. The easy to use menus also allow you to generate reports about sales, product information such as low stock and best sellers, and shopping cart information including abandoned carts – perfect for creating management reports!

If your focus is better order management, the orders page allows you to easily view full order details as well as issue invoices, place orders on hold or cancel them completely by clicking on a single button. When the order is ready to go, a single click allows you to mark the order as shipped and the system issues a notification by email keeping your customer informed every step of the way, allowing you to provide a high standard of customer service.

If you have a large product base, you may require integration with an accounts system such as Sage or QuickBooks which will allow you to synchronise your stock/costs with your website.

Knowing what you want the website to do for you before you begin to build the online store means that your ecommerce developers can build the functionality into your store saving you time and money.

If you do not have a great deal of technical knowledge but want to be able to manage your ecommerce updates in-house this means you will need to make sure that your website is built in a CMS system which will allow you to add and edit information on the website using a WYSIWYG editor. CMS systems allow you to update images and text as often as you need to without having to pay an agency to make the changes for you.

Another very important aspect to consider is the hosting of your website. Very often people will search for the cheapest website hosting available which doesn’t always mean the most reliable or the best for your requirements.

Ecommerce websites can require a lot more space than a regular website (just think of all those product images and data!). You also need to consider the bandwidth allowance for your hosting package; larger online stores can attract large amounts of visitors and whether they buy or not they eat away at your bandwidth. When your bandwidth allowance has all been used up, the website won’t display until the limit resets – not great if your customers can’t get in to your shop to buy!

Hosting can also affect your search engine rankings. Last year Google started using site speed as a new signal in determining website rankings, and although fewer than 1% of search queries are affected, it is still a good idea to make sure your website loads quickly. Page load speed isn’t just important to search engines but also to your customers, remember – you only have 8 seconds to make an impression and the longer your page takes to load the more likely it is that the impression will be a bad one!

You may want to consider dedicated hosting to increase your site speed, this may cost you a little more but ultimately you would have a much larger disk space (allowing you to add vast quantities of data to your website ) as well as providing a potentially unlimited bandwidth.

Another important thing to consider is the payment gateway on your ecommerce website.

If you choose to include an on site payment gateway where customers enter their payment details directly on your website, you would require an SSL certificate to protect those details and avoid identity theft. Many browsers now include a pop up alert indicating that a website isn’t secured if there isn’t an active SSL which puts most users off of placing an order.

Including a pop out payment gateway on your ecommerce website such as Sage Pay means that you no longer require an SSL certificate as the pop out is already secured. Although an SSL is no longer required to protect payment details, you may still want to protect the other information entered such as name and address details.

Your ecommerce web designer will be able to recommend the best kind of payment gateway for your needs.

Finally, scalability is an important factor to discuss with your ecommerce developer. Important things to consider regarding scalability are:

• How far will your ecommerce website be able to accommodate your growing business? If your orders dramatically increase, will your website be able to cope with this easily?
• How easy is it for your ecommerce store to be able to grow? Can new functionality be added easily or will this require a large amount of work to allow for store development?

Although many businesses start out with a small ecommerce website, they can find that a little as a year down the line they require a more complex ecommerce store to handle the needs of their growing business. Investing in a more feature rich ecommerce website at the beginning can save time and money for your business in the long term – after all, your ecommerce store should bring you a good return on your investment, and once the sales start to flood in the store should pay for itself.

To read Parts 1, 2 & 3 of the discussion visit the links below:

Ecommerce & SEO: The important part you play
Ecommerce & SEO: Knowing your market
Ecommerce & SEO: Your People

Dani
Impact Web Solutions Ltd
Ecommerce Web Design Leicester

Successful online stores can generate large volumes of traffic and sales, and just the same as your bricks and mortar shop you will need someone to deal with the various stages of the transaction.

Some online stores choose to include a virtual assistant to answer any questions the customer may have before purchasing; if you use virtual assistants it is important that someone is available at the computer at all times in case a chat request comes through to ensure that you deliver a high standard of customer service.

Once the purchase has been made online, someone needs to process the order – to ship the product to the customer, resolve any issues upon receipt, deal with any returns – basically anything you would do for a regular customer entering your shop.

Considering the size of your business and existing client base can give you an idea of who is best to manage your online shop. If you have a small business with a couple of orders a month online, you will easily be able to manage the online shop as well as the running of your bricks and mortar business.

If you have a medium sized business generating regular daily orders, you may need to allocate the management of your ecommerce website to another member of staff.

Large businesses may require several people to concentrate on the management of their online store only.

Not only do you need to consider who will process your orders, many online stores are CMS based (content management system – this allows you to update the website yourself) so you will also need someone that can make regular updates to the site. Your ecommerce web designers should offer training on the system, meaning that changes such as adding new products, making changes to text and even changing images (although some images may be part of your websites template so you may not be able to edit them all) can all be completed in-house.

Regular website updates are critical, not only do they offer your customers something new and give them a reason to keep returning but also, search engines love to see that you are regularly updating your website so they know the information is current.

It is also important to consider who will work with your search engine optimisation company to ensure your campaign is targeting the areas that are most important to you. As your business progresses and the market changes, your keyword focus may also change. You may choose to expand into new locations or related product markets so your campaign will need to grow with your business to include these changes.

As you suggest new focuses to your SEO engineer they will be able to come back to you with suggestions and data for the best possible keywords and phrases to drive traffic to your website.

Your SEO engineer will also be able to provide regular reports showing where your target keywords are currently ranking, this along with regular telephone contact will allow you to monitor any changes and focus on any problem areas to resolve them quickly.

The social media aspect is also important to the promotion of your website. Google and Bing both recently confirmed that content posted on Twitter and Facebook can have an effect on the rankings of regular websites. Building up relationships through social networking sites also opens your business up to a wider audience and helps build better brand awareness.

Writing regular blogs on topics relating to your target market also provides a great opportunity to include your websites keywords. Sharing useful information through social networking websites via your blog can also attract your target market and new followers as many people use the search facility to find posts relating to specific interests.

Finally, online marketing such as email newsletters and promotions emails are a great way of keeping your subscribers up to date. Offering a ‘subscribe to newsletter’ link allows visitors to ‘opt in’ to receiving your updates so you already know that the people receiving the information are interested in your products or services.

Email newsletters can be quite time consuming to put together, often taking around a day to put together and check before sending. Although this can seem like a lot time and you may question the benefits, newsletters keep your subscribers up to date and keep your brand fresh in their minds until they are ready to make a purchase. Email newsletters can be a steady source of new enquiries.

Making sure you have the right people to handle all of the aspects of your online store allows you to decide exactly what you want your website to do and to consider the technical requirements and scalability of your systems and services.

To read Parts 1 & 2 of the discussion visit the links below:

Ecommerce & SEO: The important part you play
Ecommerce & SEO: Knowing your market

Dani
Impact Web Solutions Ltd
Ecommerce Web Design and Search Engine Promotion Leicester

Some things to consider when defining your target market are:

• What is your target area? Are you targeting local, regional, countrywide or global?
• Are you targeting businesses or consumers? If targeting businesses are they small, medium or large? If targeting consumers is it important to target families, couples or even the single market?
• Are you targeting the budget or premium market? Are you looking to sell lots of lower priced items or a few higher priced items?
• Who is most likely to purchase your products or services? Are they gender specific, for certain age groups or are they targeted to a certain activity, lifestyle or hobby?

Identifying your ecommerce stores target market at an early stage means that you can attract the right customers and not waste resources by targeting the wrong people. Targeting the right market allows you to achieve a higher return on investment.

Understanding your target market allows you to find the best and most relevant keywords for your website from the very beginning and gives you the perfect opportunity to ensure your website content is rich in these keywords. Knowing your market means you can search by location, price and specific interests and find the keywords that are most likely to drive traffic to your website.

Customers with a set budget may include words such as ‘cheap’ in their search terms, whereas people searching for more expensive products may include words like ‘luxury’ or ‘designer’. Using the correct keywords is important for successful conversion rates as targeting the wrong keywords is unlikely to attract suitable customers.

Knowing your target market is not just important when choosing keywords for search engine promotion but also when considering the design, layout and functionality of your website.

If your target is a younger market, you may want your website to be more eye catching with more activities and things to do. If you are targeting an older market, something cleaner and easy to navigate may be preferred. If your target is businesses then a professional look and feel are best.

From a technical point of view, this also allows you to decide the types of functionality you want to include. Websites targeting businesses may want to include features like having to register for an account to view prices or even special loyalty based prices for certain customers.

Consumer focused ecommerce websites may want to include features like ‘send to a friend’ so that visitors can share product recommendations and increase traffic through word of mouth; or shareable wish lists that allow visitors to save items for future reference or share on occasions like birthdays or Christmas.

Knowing your target market is important to the creation of your ecommerce website, but this is also the perfect time to identify your competitors and check out their online store to get a feel for how they target the market. I’m not suggesting you copy their website by any means, but knowing your competitors and understanding how they work will allow you to identify things that could work for you as well as things you wouldn’t want to include.

Having a list of websites you like (whether relevant to your target market or not) along with information about your target market gives your developer a better understanding of what you want to achieve with your website and allows them to suggest options to enhance your online store further.

Read Part 1 of the discussion at Ecommerce & SEO: The important part you play.

Please feel free to contact us with your comments via Twitter @impactwebsolns or ‘Like’ us on Facebook.

Dani
Impact Web Solutions Ltd
Search Engine Optimisation & Ecommerce Web Design Midlands

This week I will be discussing ‘You’ and the important part you play in the creation of your ecommerce website and it’s promotion. Over the coming weeks I will be covering ‘Your Market’, ‘Your People’, ‘Technical Requirements and Scalability’ and ‘Your Marketing’.

So let’s begin with….

You

Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer developed a hypothesis called ‘Implementation Intention’ which is the idea of planning goals in advance; adding as much detail as possible (how, when and where as well as solutions to any problems you may encounter) for greater success. Implementation Intention is something that very much applies to the creation of an online store.

Making the decision to create an ecommerce website is not something you should just pass over to your website designer, after all – no one knows your business as well as you, so you are perfectly placed to add input into how your store should function.

Before contacting an ecommerce specialist, spend some time putting together a list of things you want your website to do and include.

Things you may want to consider:

• How do you want the online shop to look and feel? E.g. clean and minimal or vibrant and young.
• What do you want your customers to be able to do on your website? E.g. Add items to wishlists, recommend products to a friend, leave client reviews for purchases.
• What do you want the website to do for you? E.g. Is your main focus to increase your turnover or are you looking for a better way of processing your orders and handling administration?
• How do you want your ecommerce website to interact with existing websites? E.g. Link from an information or sister website to the online store, link to an information site.
• How important is it for you to be able to update the website yourself? Is the system easy to use and will you receive training on how to update your website or would you prefer to pay the designer to complete updates for you?
• Do you have product information and images available to provide to your web designer to speed up the product import process?
• When do you expect your ecommerce store to launch? What are your timeframes for individual sections of the website to be completed i.e. designs, products added to the website, testing.
• What will your role be in the creation of your online store? How much time will you need to invest in getting the site up and running?
• Will your website be built in an SEO friendly way? Is this included in the build costs or are there additional costs? How does this work link to a full search engine optimisation campaign once the website has launched?
• Where do you want your web designer to be based? Local companies will be more accessible.

Once you have decided what you want for your online store, your developer will be able to work with you and advise you of the best ways to not only achieve the things you have requested but recommend other options to enhance your store and achieve your overall goals.

By highlighting any problems you are looking to solve at this early stage, you can work with your ecommerce specialist to find the best possible solution. From experience, you are the best person to say how your business works and what you want your website to do; your ecommerce specialist is the best person to tell you how this can be achieved from a technical point of view (if you aren’t technical ask them to explain in a jargon free way!).

Please feel free to contact us with your comments via Twitter @impactwebsolns or ‘Like’ us on Facebook.

Dani
Impact Web Solutions
Ecommerce Web Design Midlands

SEO/SEP/SEM – Ok, so let’s start with the basics. What on earth is SEO (also known as SEP and SEM)? Well, SEO stands for search engine promotion (SEP = Search Engine Promotion, SEM = Search Engine Marketing). Search Engine Optimisation is basically making your website as friendly to search engines as possible; so that your website will appear higher up in the results (the best place to be is on the first page, preferably in the number one spot).

SERP’s – SERP’s or Search Engine Results Page’s are the lists of websites/results that appear when you type words into the search box on a search engine. SERP’s usually include a link to the website, a short description about what the website includes and a page title which usually includes keywords that describe the products or services on the website. You will often find that the words or phrases you have searched for are often included in one or all of these areas but most likely in the page title.

Keywords/Keyphrases – As the name suggests, keywords and keyphrases are the ‘key’ words and phrases that describe the products or services offered on the website. Some keywords may consist of single words – but these are often the hardest to achieve top place results for. Also, as people most often use more descriptive phrases to find the exact results they want, it is often wise to use a combination of more specific words such as adding a brand name or a location.

Keyword Reasearch – Again, this is as the name suggests. Keyword research involves putting together the list of words and phrases that people are most likely to enter into a search engine to find your website, or specific pages of your website. Intelligent keywords are the most important keywords to look for. A common mistake it to try to guess or assume what people may look for, often based on a technical or product knowledge that a customer may not have. Search Engine Optimisers will look at your website content from different angles (product specific, nonspecific) and then research how many people are searching for those phrases, how much competition there is and where your website currently ranks. Their research often throws up a whole list of words and phrases, all relevant to your potential visitors that may have never even crossed your mind!

Page title – The page title is a piece of code on the website that is visible at the top of your browser (in the very top grey bar or on the page tabs in your browser). The page title also displays on search engine rankings. Page titles have a lot of influence over search engine rankings which is why they should contain your best keywords. The page title shouldn’t be used for your company name as it’s unlikely that people will search for your company name. Most importantly though, page titles should contain no more than 66 characters so it is important to keep your page title relevant and to the point.

Meta tags – Meta tags are lines of information in the website code, not visible on the website pages but visible to search engines. Two of the best known meta tags are the ‘meta keyword’ and ‘meta description’ tags.  The meta keywords tag is where website or page relevant keywords are placed – although Google have confirmed that they no longer use these tags for ranking websites in their search engine, other search engines do use these tags so it is still an important piece of information to add. The meta descriptions tag is very similar to if you were to promote yourself on Twitter. The meta description is a 150 character (you can include more characters but this is the cut off on Google results) summary of your website, products or services and the perfect opportunity to include a few nice juicy (but always relevant) keywords!

Alt attributes – Now we all know that sometimes, for whatever reason, the internet breaks! Often you will visit a website and where there should be an image there is just a little red cross. No matter how many times you refresh that page or right click/show image, it’s just not going to show so you’ll leave the website disappointed that you will never know what that picture was! Now this is where an Alt attribute (also known as an alt tag or alt text) saves the day! Alt tags are written descriptions of the image contents that show if the image is unavailable.
Alt tags are also helpful little critters providing a description for audio readers used by visually impaired website visitors. Following on from this, search engines use alt tags in a similar way. Search engines are unable to ‘see’ images, so rely on alt tags to understand the content of the image. Although alt tags can be used for keywords, the keywords should always be relevant.

XML sitemap – Imagine that your website is a city. The search Engine Spider comes along in his little car to visit all the various attraction’s in your city but since this is his first visit he has no idea where to go – oh no! But the clever spider knows what to do – phew! He looks at his xml map and finds directions to all the highlights! And because Mr Spider had such a great time gathering all that information he can go ahead and share it with everyone else!  (And for the normal people reading, an xml sitemap is a page of links to the different pages on your website).

Blackhat – Blackhat refers to techniques used in search engine promotion which do not conform with best practice guidelines. Blackhat technique basically involve trickery and deception to manipulate search engine results. Blackhat techniques are bad and can lead to your website being removed from search engines completely!

Spiders/Robots/Crawlers – This is the program or script used by search engines to gather and store the information from your website. Crawlers have a list of links to visit, as they go through these links they gather further links from that page and add them to a list to visit later. Websites on the lists are visited regularly to look for any updates but due to the vast amount of information available to search engines there may be a delay in gathering new information and displaying any changes – this is one of the reasons that search engine promotion is a long term commitment rather than an overnight procedure. You can find more information about spiders and crawlers here.

If there are any terms or phrases you would like explaining, or if you have any questions about search engine promotion you can send us a message on Twitter @studio2online or follow us on Facebook.

Dani
Impact Web Solutions
Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

In fact, 81% of all Internet users enter a website via a search engine. Search engines follow any link they can find and add lots of pages from the same website to the search results, making the chances of landing on the homepage just as likely as landing on any other page on the website!

So think of your online store as a bricks and mortar store. You want as many people as possible to enter your shop, so you open every single entrance – doors, windows and since it’s Christmas even the chimney! Now think about which departments in the shop these entrances are closest too and make a sign for each one e.g. ‘Enter here for Search Engine Optimisation‘, ‘Ecommerce web design this way!’.
Obviously you don’t want these signs to be massive, so little and often is the key. Make sure the signs are relevant, I don’t want to enter through the entrance marked ‘Search Engine Optimisation Midlands’ to find ‘Ecommerce Midlands’, that means I need to go searching for the right entrance and that will mean I’m unhappy by the time I get there!

This is exactly how your search engine optimisation should be, a handful of content relevant keywords per page giving you greater product placement in a wider range of search engine results, and a better chance of being found for all of your products.

As long as the keywords are relevant to your products and services it should be easy to add them into the content of the website. Product descriptions are a must in an ecommerce store as the customers are unable to physically touch and see the products, so base their decisions purely on the information provided, and a high quality of data also increases conversion rates. For a successful online store, products don’t always have to be the cheapest but they should be the best value! Even if your competitors are selling the exact same product you should still convince them that yours is the best! One important way to convey better value is with a professional looking website.

Websites that have been created in free site builders or created in WYSIWYG editors such as Frontpage often find it hard to compete with websites that have been custom built by a professional web designer – remember ‘Beauty is in the eye of the mouseholder’ and the visual aspect of a store is a must for most serious shoppers who want to deal with a professional organisation rather than someone who is going to take their money and ‘do a runner’.

Another way of conveying your market value is with good search engine rankings for the products and services you offer. 36% of online shoppers associate search engine placement with company prominence, something that you would expect from a reliable company, providing great value and service!

Intelligent keywords are crucial for attracting customers to your online store, which is why we get to know your business before we provide suggestions for the keywords that would be of most benefit to you. If you would like to discuss how a search engine promotion campaign could help to increase sales for your ecommerce website, call us on 0116 2758456.

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Ecommerce & Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

On this day each year, shops often stay open for 24 hours, they cut prices by massive amounts and some people are even given the day off work as part of the Thanksgiving holiday! Ecommerce also plays a big part in Black Friday with online sales on this day reportedly hitting $595 million in 2009, an 11% increase on the previous year’s sales.

According to figures provided by PayPal, 2009′s Black Friday saw a 20% increase in online payments year on year, and PayPal mobile payments increased by 140% compared to an average Friday. Black Friday is confirmed as the busiest shopping day of 2009 with Cyber Monday having a greater amount of ecommerce sales.

Website owners have been busy planning this year’s Black Friday marketing for months, changing PPC campaigns to highlight their deals, changing website design, creating email marketing campaigns, adding new stock to the websites and applying discounts. It isn’t just our American friends that can take advantage of these deals either, large online stores like Amazon are offering hundreds of Black Friday deals across all departments with many at less than half price!

British companies with American customers are also giving Black Friday discounts, meaning that Black Friday is fast making its way across the water!

Black Friday isn’t the only major shopping day on the calendar though, there is also Cyber Monday, the first Monday after Black Friday, and this has more effect on the UK market. According to The Guardian, UK online retailers are now referring to Cyber Monday as the busiest online shopping day of the year! Cyber Monday is commonly the 1st Monday in December so it isn’t surprising that the busiest shopping day happens to coincide with the last pay day before Christmas!

In November 2009, IMRG Capgemini reported that British shoppers had spent £5.3billion online, but despite the growth in sales, the speed of the growth had slowed. The slow-down of sales in November is partly put down to the economic climate, and with an emerging trend for retailers offering seasonal price cuts and promotions in a bid to attract more customers back to the high street, it seems people are holding out for the best deals and bargains closer to Christmas.

In December 2009, sales were £5.46 billion, a 17% increase in sales compared to December 2008. This year, it is predicted that online sales in December will reach £6.4 billion.

Tina Spooner, Director of Information at IMRG, comments: “Despite a continuing decline in consumer confidence, the online retail market is growing ahead of our expectations, with a double-digit rise in yearly sales recorded in each quarter of 2010. Concerns over the impending Government spending cuts, VAT increase and job security, together with falling average households’ disposable income, are all contributing to driving this positive e-retail performance as consumers turn to online retailers to secure the best deals. During the fourth quarter we estimate that the UK e-retail market will reach £17.4 billion, with sales during December alone reaching around £6.4 billion as shoppers flock online during the festive season.”

This is certainly a positive message to anyone with an ecommerce store, and a stark warning to those without. And if Tina’s prediction’s are correct, 2011 should see a further increase in ecommerce sales as the effects of the vat change and spending cuts take a greater hold.

It is predicted that over the coming years, ecommerce will grow to such a rate that it will account for almost half of all retails sales – so the question is, can any business afford to be without an ecommerce website?

If you are considering an ecommerce website for your business, why not give us a call on 0116 2758456 for more information.

Happy Shopping!

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Ecommerce Midlands

The online book is built using html5, the latest version of the code that all websites are written in, and explains many of the most common computer jargon terms. The 1st section of the book explains what the internet is and how it works, following sections cover interesting topics such as cloud computing, computer languages and codes (such as html, javascript, css and html5), the importance of using an up to date browser, cookies, online security risks (such as phishing and malware) and 3d browsing.

Check it out at http://www.20thingsilearned.com/home and don’t forget to share it with your friends!

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Search Engine Promotion Midlands

Firstly, we don’t think our client is stupid. In the current economic climate, we completely understand that when someone comes along promising the same results for less money, most people will jump at the chance.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in another blog post that once you have a campaign running and it has gotten you to the top of the search engines, it is important to keep up the momentum. As with any industry, there will be some things that are common practice for everyone but there will also be things that some companies do that others don’t, this is why switching to a new provider may have a detrimental effect on your search engine rankings.

Pick & Pack Express are a Leicester based fulfilment company. When Pick & Pack moved away from Studio 2 Online, their website was ranking in position 1 for the majority of their keywords, with other keywords ranking in position 2. After just 8 months their keywords have fallen from the top spot with many around the bottom of the first page, causing a slight drop in enquiries from the website.

So how do you know if your SEO company can really achieve the results they promise?

Here are a few ways to check the kind of service you can expect:

• Do they research and suggest keywords and keyphrases for you? At Studio 2 Online, we spend time getting to know your company and your website BEFORE we start researching keywords based on the services and products you provide. We check how many people are searching for those keywords, how many companies are competing for those keywords and where your website is currently ranking, and then we provide all of this information including additional keywords and keyphrases that we think may benefit your campaign.
• Ask the search engine promotion company what happens if they don’t achieve your agreed targets within the set time, do they give you a free period where they continue to work on the campaign at no extra charge or do they give you the money back?
• Do you have an allocated SEO engineer or account manager that you can contact for updates? Do they send you reports to show you how your campaign is progressing? How often do you receive updates? Is everything ‘transparent’?
• Speak to the search engine optimisation company and ask if they can provide details of a client (or two) that you can contact, if they are doing a good job their customers are the best people to tell you!

Look a little closer, what do you see?

• Find out where they are located and search for ‘search engine optimisation [city]’, can you see them? If they are going to promote you, it’s always good to know they can promote themselves first!
• Visit their website and read carefully, does what they claim sound feasible?
• Look for testimonials, a portfolio, success stories or an ‘our clients’ page.
  Are their testimonials from ‘Jane Doe, CEO’ or are they from ‘Jane Doe, CEO of Doe Ra Me Music School’? Without knowing who their clients are, how much can you trust the quotes?
• Visit their clients websites, look at the words in the grey bar at the top of your browser (see below) and then type them into Google, do they rank as well as the search engine promotion company claims?

And the no no’s….

• Does the seo company suggest creating ‘shadow’ domain names that point to your website, creating a ‘doorway page’ filled with keywords accessible only to search engine spiders or hiding text in your website code?
  Google says to avoid these practices as they are often used to promote other websites and may actually harm your search engine rankings, and potentially even get you removed from the rankings completely. One thing we noticed, keywords on the Pick & Pack website have been linked to a business directory owned by the same company they were being promoted by, no wonder there was a drop in rankings when Google have said to avoid this kind of practice!
• Does the company claim they are affiliated with Google? There is no such thing as a Google affiliated seo company, in fact Google says ‘Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google.’
  * Please be aware that a Google Adwords Professional is completely different to claiming an affiliation, a Google Adwords Professional is someone who has joined the Google AdWords Certification Program and taken an exam to show that they demonstrate knowledge of the latest AdWords tools and best practice techniques to effectively manage AdWords campaigns.

These suggestions can help you to spot an seo company that may not be all they seem but unfortunately there are still those companies that do appear to play by the rules and provide great service but are unable to provide the results you expect.

Google does recommend using search engine promotion companies to provide services which may improve your rankings, they also recommend that the perfect time to sign up for a campaign is during a redesign or the launch of a new website so that you can work with the company to make your website search engine friendly from the beginning.

Google also recommend that before you sign up to a campaign, you familiarise yourself with the basics of search engine promotion by reading Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.

If you would like to discuss how Studio 2 Online can work with your company to improve your search engine rankings, please call us on 0116 2758456.

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

It has been said that a good website design should be like an aesthetically pleasing shop window, but we don’t just want your customers to window shop, we want them to walk into the store, throw their purchases into their basket and head on off to the cashier!

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a lazy shopper. I want everything to be where I can find it, I want to know exactly where the bargains are and I especially like it when you go into a shop and some helpful person has created a mini outfit at the front of the rail drawing my attention to other products I may have missed.
I don’t want to have to flag down the assistant and ask for advice because the information isn’t available and I absolutely do not want a long, drawn out, complicated checkout procedure!

And the same applies to online shopping.

This is why I ♥ Magento. Let me explain…..

When you shop online, you can’t ‘manhandle the goods’. You can’t pick it up, you can’t feel the material, you can’t try it on in the changing rooms and dance in front of the mirror to Girls Aloud to see just how fab you’ll look on Saturday night (ok, so maybe that last one just applies to me), you have to base your choice entirely on the information provided on the website.

Magento allows you to add multiple product images, use the sliding zoom to view a larger picture and to drag the image to the exact part you want to see, making sure that you get the best view of your product before you commit to buy!

Magento also includes a product comparison tool so that customers can view items side by side, showing all the relevant details in an easy to view table helping them to find the most suitable product.

Predictive searching helps your customers to find the item they are looking for in the quickest possible time, this is especially important if your store has a vast amount of products on offer. Magento search even displays how many products are available under each of the suggested products/phrases.

It is easy to retrace your steps and find that product you viewed earlier, Magento shows your recently viewed products saving time and making your customers more likely to buy!

Want to come back to an item later? Why not add it to your wishlist! You can create several wishlists (which can be emailed to a friend, especially helpful since Christmas is coming *wink*). You can add comments to each item on your wishlist, again a useful tool in the run up to Christmas for making a note of who you are going to buy it for or even just to remind yourself how great the item is! And the best part of all, you can add the items straight from the wishlist to the basket!

Looking for an item but got a budget? No problem, you can sort items based on price, name or other variables.

The shop by menu also allows you to view products based on group details such as colour, size, price band and brand.

Magento allows you to easily create customer specific pricing, one website we have worked on has over 5,000 products giving 1.5 million custom price combinations! Custom pricing is perfect for rewarding your regular customers with lower prices or even for offering special prices to your suppliers.

The Magento checkout makes paying for items quick and easy. The checkout offers the choice of registering or checking out as a guest, allows you to ship to a different address, and integration with a pop out payment gateway such as PayPoint means that you can take secure payments without the need to purchase an ssl certificate.

Most importantly, our Magento ecommerce websites are built with full CMS functionality, and Studio 2 Online give you all the training you need to update your website as often as you like.
Studio 2 Online designed and built the ecommerce store for Pineapple Shoes, when it launched it looked like this…

The Magento system has allowed them to easily update the website and it now looks like this…

The client made the changes to the website in-house cutting out the need to pay an external company, the ability to make changes in-house makes the store a valuable long term sales tool which actually saves money AND earns money at the same time!

I’m sure you’ll agree that all of these features make Magento a pretty phenomenal system.

If you would like more information about how a Magento ecommerce store would improve your sales, why not give us a call on 0116 2758456.

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Ecommerce web design Leicester