harges should be clearly shown on your ecommerce website. The majority of internet users shop around for the best price before committing to purchase so hidden charges such as tax and shipping costs that haven’t been factored in can cause shopping cart abandonment – something that all ecommerce store owners want to avoid! Avoid abandonment by clearly displaying these costs either on the shopping cart BEFORE you get to the payment screen or by including them on the product page and increase those conversion rates!

ptimisation, be seen in all the right places! Having a fabulous ecommerce website with all the bells and whistles is great but it is no good if people can’t find it! Optimisation such as including product and service names in page titles, keyword rich descriptions, an xml sitemap, Googlebase feeds, etc can all help to ensure your website is visible on the major search engines.

agento websites – giving you that little extra! All ecommerce websites designed and built by Impact Web Solutions are created using Magento. Magento is a feature rich ecommerce platform with more than 3,500 extensions allowing us to create fully bespoke websites tailored to your company’s individual needs. Having a website built in Magento allows you to present a robust shopping experience to your customers, encouraging cross-selling, social shopping and the all-important conversion to sale.

enu’s – leading the way! Having clear navigation on your website allows not only human visitors but also search engines to quickly find their way around your website to locate the information or products they are searching for. Many people base their navigation on the 3 click rule meaning that the information your visitors are searching for should never be more than 3 clicks from the homepage, although this is a good rule to work by it doesn’t necessarily have to be a maximum of 3 as long as there is a clear hierarchy that visitors can use to find the items again.

nquiries. Contact details on your website are a must! Whether you choose to include your address, phone number, email address or even social networking profiles, visitors should be able to contact you. Another way for visitors to contact you is to include a contact form on the website. Whichever you choose, responding quickly is important, within 8 hours if possible – good communication helps to build positive relationships with your customers and encourages brand loyalty.

eferrals – check it out! Happy customers may choose to tell others about your website, so including features such as recommend a friend and the ability to share links on social networking sites are helpful.

heckout – All work & no pay makes your website a sad store! The payment process on your ecommerce website should be as simple as possible to use. Providing the option of ‘Guest checkout’ can lessen the chances of shopping cart abandonment, as can single page checkouts which allow shoppers to shorten the payment process and make their payments quickly.

asy peasy! Make your ecommerce store easy to use, easy to navigate and easy to buy from! If everything is quick and simple, your sales such flourish!

For more info about Impact Web Solutions Ecommerce visit http://studio2online.co.uk/e-commerce.php

Dani
Impact Web Solutions
Ecommerce Web Design Leicester

Three of the best ways you can do this online are through search engine promotion, social networking and with the use of email marketing campaigns.

Search Engine Optimisation

The goal of a search engine optimisation campaign is to make your website as search engine friendly as possible so that search engines recognise your website as being the best match for your keywords when they are typed into the search bar. By optimising your keywords, search engine promotion aims to give you greater visibility on the web.

With over 85% of the search engine market, Google is the most important search engine in terms of rankings.  Search engine promotion is not just about rankings though (although 36% of online shoppers do associate search engine placement with company prominence) but also about making sure people can find your website under a variety of relevant keywords to increase your traffic and in turn increase your enquiries, sales and profit.

As search engines crawl and rank various different pages on each website they visit, it is important that search engine optimisation is completed throughout the website. By optimising each page of the website individually, you can ensure that your website ranks well within various search results – this is especially helpful if you provide a broad spectrum of products and services.

A large majority of users won’t enter a website through the homepage, so each page should be treated and optimised as though it is the homepage. Important things to include are:

• Navigation – Don’t leave your visitors stranded once they’ve found your website! The rule is that you should never be more than 3 clicks away from the homepage, although this is a good rule to follow the most important thing is to make sure your navigation is clear and easy to follow no matter how many clicks away you are. Having clear navigation also help with search engine promotion as it allows robots to gather additional links from your website and crawl them.
• Content – Make sure that each page is content rich. Yes, pages are ranked individually but where they are ranked will be based on the content of each individual page. Having good product or service descriptions containing relevant keywords partnered with search engine promotion strategies provided by your search engine optimisation specialists will help to push those pages further up the rankings.
• Tags – Individual page tags are important from a search engine point of view. Page tags should reflect the page contents rather than being generic i.e. Company name or Contact, Product, etc.
• Don’t leave your customers or search engines in any doubt about what your product is – make sure it is reflected in the title tag, page description, image tags and product descriptions. Don’t keyword stuff your page, but make sure important information such as product names, colours, sizes and common alternative names are included.

Search Engines are changing the way they rank websites with an increasing emphasis on providing good quality content. Off-site links are still valuable but are beginning to have much less overall impact on how a website ranks. Good quality links are as important as good quality content.

Social Networking

Social Networking is fast becoming an important part of most companies’ marketing plans. Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook attract vast amounts of visitors on a daily basis, so they are the perfect place to make sure your business is seen.

Companies with social networking profiles can keep their customers and fans up to date with all the latest news and offers whilst also making their company or brand more accessible. Satisfied customers can ‘share’ your information and offers as well as their own experiences with their friends – an important part of the growing trend for social ecommerce.

If your target market is other businesses rather than consumers, there are social networking sites such as Linkedin and ecademy that allow you to link with other businesses whilst promoting your company and selected products or services.

The majority of social networking websites are free to join and create business pages on. Some social networks such as Facebook allow you to place a paid advert on the website.

Although social networking content is offsite, some search engines such as Google and Bing have started to include social networking content when ranking websites so this may have a positive effect on your search engine rankings.

Email Marketing

As I mentioned in Ecommerce & SEO: Your People, email marketing is a great way to keep your brand and products fresh in the mind of potential clients.

Offering a ‘subscribe to newsletter’ box on your website allows people who are already interested in your products or services to sign up for regular updates from your company.

Sending a regular newsletter allows you to keep subscribers up to date with the latest product launches and company news as well as allowing you to pass on useful tips and information. With email marketing campaigns you can also set up landing pages providing further information, and a good email marketing system should allow you to monitor the success of your campaigns.

Email marketing is also perfect for sending promotions and special offers to your subscribers keeping them up to date with all your best offers and encouraging brand loyalty and regular purchasing.

Newsletters can also be added to your website providing a new source of keyword rich information which integrates perfectly with a search engine promotion campaign.

Email marketing can be a steady source of enquiries and sales for your business.

Email marketing provides almost instant feedback, allowing you to monitor bounced email addresses and remove them from future mailings, view who opened your emails and what they did with them and see who has clicked on your links so you can see exactly what your customers are interested in and send better targeted emails in the future.

To read Parts 1 – 4 of the discussion visit the links below:

Ecommerce & SEO: The important part you play
Ecommerce & SEO: Knowing your market
Ecommerce & SEO: Your People
Ecommerce & SEO: Technical Requirements and Scalability

Dani
Impact Web Solutions Ltd
Search Engine Promotion Midlands

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

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

Studio 2 Online also redesigned our ecommerce online store in Magento, giving it a fresh new look and making it much easier to navigate. Since the redesign of our website, we have experienced our best month to date! Thank you Studio 2 Online. And I have to say that the Magento eCommerce system makes the website so much easier to manage.” Patrick Green – Window Wallpaper

Window Wallpaper are a Leicester based supplier of glass window film including decorative window film and frosted glass film. Window Wallpaper is a very thin, self adhesive vinyl film, specially designed to give the appearance of frosted or etched glass. Window Wallpaper is bespoke, affordable and extremely easy to install (if you don’t believe me, check out their how to install page!). Window films are long lasting and are a cost effective alternative to replacing windows in order to gain added privacy.

Not only do they supply a range of bespoke and budget privacy window films, they also provide a wide range of decorative window film including modern and traditional designs suitable for both windows and doors.

Window Wallpaper, a long term client with Studio 2 Online, already had an existing ecommerce website which we built for them many years ago but when they heard about the great features available with a Magento website they decided to rebuild their website in the Magento system and at the same time to give the website a fresh new look. Window Wallpaper also decided that this was the perfect time to sign up for a search engine campaign.

The most important thing when rebuilding the website was to give it a cleaner look so that the products were the main focus of the site, to make the website easier to navigate and to ensure that customers could find the information they required quickly and easily.

The first thing we did was to reduce the amount of information on the homepage by splitting the products available into 4 main categories, Patterned frosted window film, House number or name window film, Value frosted window film and Plain frosted privacy window film; this meant that we could display larger product images and then use the hover over to expand the box to provide additional information.

Hover over feature:

Each of the four picture menu’s (as well as the text side menu) link to their own product gallery for that style of window film, again the gallery of products has the hover over feature to give a larger, clearer view of the product.

Hovering over feature:

To give customers a better idea of how the products look when installed, Window Wallpaper have included a gallery of different window films in use on different glass surfaces around various homes.

Clicking on any of these example images opens up a larger slide of the image whilst darkening the rest of the website to give a better focus on the product.

By clicking onto a product on the shopping gallery, you will be taken to an individual order page for that specific design of window film.

The truly great thing about the Magento system is demonstrated here, prices can be generated for bespoke items based purely on the item specifics such size. Window Wallpaper have also included a special offer on their window films, Buy 2 or more exactly the same and save 10%, this is automatically calculated when the item is ordered making it quick, easy and budget friendly for their customers!

The website also includes the basket details on the right hand menu so you can not only see how much you have spent so far, you can also see how many items are in your basket and a preview image of the item. If you find a product you like better, you can remove the one you want to replace by simply clicking the cross next to the item, removing the item from your basket without even leaving the page you’re on.

When you have finished shopping, the checkout on the site allows you to checkout as a guest or to register for an account.

By checking out as a guest, you can quickly complete the checkout process without having your personal information stored. If you plan to become a regular shopper, registering for an account can save you time in the future.

As a registered user you have your own individual dashboard:

You can store multiple billing and shipping addresses, you can also view previously ordered items and reorder them. Going through the checkout process as a registered user means that you can select billing and shipping details from a drop-down of your stored contact details, making the whole paying process much faster.

It is not only the system features that make the Magento ecommerce system so great, changing the Window Wallpaper website over to the Magento ecommerce system has much improved the site speed which is especially important as Google rankings are now linked to site speed.

The speed of the new ecommerce website, together the search engine promotion services provided by Studio 2 Online have already seen the Window Wallpaper website climb to the top spot on Google, which as you can see from Patrick’s quote has driven much more business to the website and given them their best month ever!

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Ecommerce Web Design Leicester

Research shows that most people don’t click past the third page of a search engine, so if your website isn’t on the first three pages there is a very good chance that your potential customers will be going to your competitors who are on those pages. If your product or area of expertise  has a lot of competition, you may find it difficult to rank well as you are pushed down the rankings by larger companies or those whose websites are regularly updated and perfectly optimised.

Once your website has been optimised, it is important to keep up the momentum with regular updates both on-site and off-site to maintain those top positions.

Long term client Discount Mobility Plus Ltd, a Midlands based supplier of mobility scooters and mobility products, last had a search engine promotion campaign with Studio 2 Online four years ago, but after noticing the effects of that campaign were starting to wear off they decided to recommence their search engine promotion services for their websites discountmobilityplus.co.uk and mobilityscootersplus.com.

Discount Mobility Plus are a family owned company, providing high quality mobility products to customers worldwide but predominantly to the UK market. Their products are price checked daily and adjusted to ensure their customers always receive the best price.

We are currently concentrating on promotion for their website Mobility Scooters Plus and although the campaign is still relatively young, we have already seen one of their keyphrases rocket from position 74 to 40 in less than 1 month, whilst other keyphrases make their way up the first page.

The search engine promotion services provided by Studio 2 Online are already making their website easier to find in the major search engines, and this teamed with the recent changes we made to their ecommerce websites to improve the usability make shopping with Discount Mobility Plus and Mobility Scooters Plus a simple and stressfree experience.

The ‘Help me choose a scooter’ feature means that customers can easily find their perfect scooter by entering details such as budget, portability, battery life and speed; and the compared items feature means that if you’re struggling to choose between the scooters shown in the results, you can have all the product information displayed in an easy to compare table.

Mobility products are a necessity to aid the customer in their daily lives, and the customers usually visit a store knowing exactly what they require.  The websites are extremely easy to navigate with the products in clearly labelled sections, as well as there being a search box which enables the shopper to search for specific requirements.

Not only do Discount Mobility Scooters and Mobility Scooters Plus provide an extensive range of high specification mobility scooters, they also provide a range of other mobility products including riser recliner chairs, adjustable beds, powered wheelchairs and walking aids. With over 15 years experience in the mobility market, they offer a vast amount of product knowledge and excellent customer service.

We are confident that over the coming months the websites will continue to climb to the top of the search engines.

Studio 2 Online provide website optimisation uk wide, so if you would like to see your website on the first page of Google, why not give us a call on 0116 2758456 to discuss our search engine promotion services.

Dani
Studio 2 Online
Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

I had expected this lack of cash to have had a negative effect on ecommerce but was surprised to see that yet again, spending figures are up, showing that an ecommerce website is a valuable asset to any company!

According to statistics.gov.uk, the number of adults who bought or ordered goods online within the past 12 months reached 31 million in 2010 – representing a massive 62% of all adults in the UK.

Tina Spooner, director of information at IMRG, said: “With 31m UK consumers now shopping online, the internet continues to be a lucrative channel for retailers that can adapt to shoppers’ changing behaviour during these uncertain times.”

Statistics show that the most popular items currently being purchased online are clothes and sporting goods with 52% of shoppers buying these products. Shoe and clothing sales increased by 24% compared to the same time last year, although accessories increased by a massive 74% year on year!

According to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index published last week, August saw British shoppers spend a phenomenal £4.4bn online. Online sales year to date are up by 15% on last year, higher than the predicted 13% increase.

Sales of electrical items increased to the highest average since October 2007 at £211 per person, an increase of 28% compared to the same time last year.

IMRG predict online sales for the whole of 2010 to reach £56bn. UK consumers spent £250bn over the last decade, and IMRG and Capgemini predict that the UK online market will grow by 110% over the next decade. By 2020, it is predicted that ecommerce will account for 50% of all retail sales.

If these figures are to be believed, the benefits of backing up your bricks and mortar shop with an ecommerce store speak for themselves. As vat rates rise, along with prices, consumers will be looking to alternative sources for better prices. As we enter the busiest time of the year, I think we will be seeing record sales as people rush to buy before the vat rise!

Bruce Fair, managing director at Kelkoo, said: “There’s been a sensational appetite for consumer electronics and gadgets this summer with headline releases including the iPhone4, the Dyson Airblade and the introduction of 3D TV. We expect to see spend on electrical goods rise even more as we approach Christmas, with the excitement already building for new motion capture gaming formats from Xbox 360 and PS3 at the top of many people’s lists.”

But is having the facility to just sell your product online enough? Cameron McLean, general manager for merchant services at PayPal UK believes the way we sell online may need to adapt to become more aware of social networking: “The face of online retail is set to change considerably in the next ten years as the rise of social media creates a collective shopping power. Our latest research shows over 16 million shoppers (34%) are already creating peer reviews online and 36% usually refer to reviews before making a purchase.  Over one in 10 (12%) internet users are already a fan of a brand, retailer or product on a social networking site, such as Facebook and this trend is only going to go up. In response we expect online retail to become a much more collaborative experience for consumers. Just as gaggles of shoppers used to hit the high street on a Saturday, now shoppers will share reviews, highlight great deals and ask their peers’ opinions of purchases at any time of day, via sprawling social networks.”