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Posted by admin on February 23rd, 2009

So what exactly is RSS? When we talk about RSS we’re not talking about ‘Rock Star Supernova’, the reality tv formed super group consisting of ex members of Mötley Crüe and Guns ‘n Roses… We’re talking about Real Simple Syndication. It’s a way of letting your users / customers subscribe to your website so they can immediately know when you update your content. You’ll see many websites using RSS more and more, especially news websites or blogs. Those websites will have constantly changing content and new articles / items that help to keep users abreast of current news etc. That type of information becomes infinitely more useful when you can update your website with a new item or article and then ‘tell’ a user that you’ve made a change. That’s what RSS does, it keeps a constant eye on user specified websites and tells the user when the website has been updated. Think of it like email; if I was to send you an email right now, your email provider would let you know with some sort of audible/visible alert, or by displaying the fact you have new email with a (1) showing you that you have 1 unread email (doh!)

Below is my RSS reader of choice – the Safari Web Browser (fig. 1.). It has an RSS reader built right into the browser, so I never have to leave the window when I’m online and a new story is sent out by a website. On the far right of the menu bar I have a folder named ‘RSS’ (fig 2.) – and you can see that right now I have ’91′ unread updates to the websites I subscribe to. When I click on that folder you can see a menu appear with the different websites I’ve subscribed to and how many individual web updates there are (fig. 3.).

When I click on any one of those individual websites I’m shown a screen that lists the new updates – I can click on any of those and go directly to that page on the website (fig. 4). Without ever having to go to the website and trawl around for the latest updates, I can have them delivered to my web-browser and instantly get access to the most current information.

 

So how can this help you and your ecommerce website? Magento, our powerful new ecommerce back-end allows you to automatically generate an RSS feed for things like new products, special offers etc. Whenever you add a new product to your site, your users can immediately know. If you have a special offer you need to push out to your customers, you can use an RSS feed to get it in front of them straight away. Alongside other marketing, your RSS feeds will become a compelling method for your customers to interact with your website – instead of waiting for a weekly or monthly mailshot telling them of your latest offers, they can subscribe to your RSS feed and instantly take advantage of your offers as soon as they are online. It also increases social interaction with your website. For example, if you have a special event coming up you can create a wish-list of perfect gifts, and then let your friends and family subscribe to that list as an RSS feed. And because it’s dynamic – the RSS feed will update whenever you update the list, and let everyone in your party know instantly! You can even forgo being sent emails regarding your orders; simply subscribe to the RSS feed and whenever your order status changes you’ll be updated vis RSS without clogging up your inbox!

All in all it’s a great way of keeping in constant contact with your customers, without being too overbearing, and letting them feel like they are in control. It’s an even better way of increasing your sales potential.

Parb Johal
Web Design Team
Studio 2 Online eCommerce web site designers Leicester
Always designin’ for the masses, because none of us are as powerful as all of us…