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Before any serious undertaking that requires your time and effort, you always make a plan – and your e-Commerce website should be no different. The truth is, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. But what exactly goes into an e-Commerce website plan? Having a solid plan of action can help you more easily measure your results, test new marketing avenues and stay connected with your target audience. By having an e-Commerce plan, you’ll be able to see what’s working, rather than guessing and hoping for the best. Let’s take a closer look at some of the points you should consider when taking your e-Commerce website from concept to creation.

1. Research and Strategy

The core focus of any e-Commerce website design should be clear communications between the web development company and the client. It is very important that the designers and developers have a clear understanding of the company, the product and the industry as a whole. Discuss your target audience and brainstorm possible keywords that potential customers might use to find your company or your product. Taking this all-important first step will ensure you don’t blindly waste marketing dollars trying to reach or convert the wrong type of customer. Using this strategy virtually guarantees that your efforts to focus in on the right types of customers are well-rewarded, saving you time and money.

2. Planning

This involves setting down all the requirements for the new e-Commerce site as well as its participants. What are the requirements for users? Content? Search? Landing pages? This is the time to ask yourself crucial questions regarding how much (or how little) knowledge someone must have about your product or service to make a purchase. Are they simply aware of it or are they searching specific item numbers and names? Knowing this information will help you pinpoint exactly how your customers are finding your online store, as well as how long they’re staying and which pages they’re visiting. It can often make the difference between a broad, general information search that yields no results and a specific product name or price comparison that turns into a sale.

3. Information Architecture

Here you’ll consider the navigation and layout of the site as well as best practices for overall user experience. How easy is it for your potential customer to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily? Following best practices in information architecture is key to overall user satisfaction and a higher conversion rate. Understanding how customers browse your site is key to giving them what they’re looking for without a lot of hassle or wasted time. The sooner your e-Commerce website can resolve their needs, the more likely they will be to make a purchase and come back again.

4. Design

This will be the visual representation of your site. Often created as a Photoshop template, pieces can be moved around and adjusted during the design phase to create a professional, customer-oriented style that best captures your brand and focus. Having a professionally designed website is paramount to the all-important “first impression” a potential customer gets of your site and its credibility. If the site does not project a style that is attractive and pleasing, the customer may mistakenly infer that the products sold will not live up to their expectations. Equally as important, website design plays a key role in determining usability. Put simply, the customer experience in surfing your site and finding the products they’re looking for will have a direct impact on how many site visitors actually convert into buyers.

5. Construction

This is the “nuts and bolts” behind any solid, reliable e-Commerce website, including client and server-side applications (front end and back end programming), quality assurance testing, integration of third party tools and other solutions that will make your e-Commerce website scalable as it continues to grow. Ensuring that third party tools, backend applications and other components work seamlessly together contribute to the overall user experience and repeat purchases. Think of the website construction as the support framework of a house you’re building, and web design as the outside of the house – the siding, well-groomed yard and welcome mat that make it feel warm and inviting. Without properly constructing the framework, the house would fall apart.

6. Migration and Launch

The final step involves moving the site from a development server toward live launch. Revisit each of the aforementioned areas again for a final test to confirm that everything works, the brand message is conveyed and the navigation is seamless and properly leads someone to making a purchasing decision.

When developing an e-Commerce site plan, you can filter these steps into three main areas — Research and Strategy, Planning and Information Architecture. Ecommerce Partners has developed a very detailed outline of this plan known as the Ecommerce Requirements Specification or ERS. These are the essential “building blocks” for your website from start to finish.

An ERS, done right is the formula for a well-ranking, well-developed website that converts. Throughout the process, it should be streamlined enough to keep with best industry practices while being flexible enough to account for new developments and added growth.

By keeping these e-Commerce development points in mind when drafting your new site, you’ll be able to enjoy greater conversions at a lower cost than trying to plan-as-you-go and hoping for the best. In the end, following a well-rounded e-Commerce site development plan will ensure your new online business keeps customers (and search engines) coming back while opening the door for more expansive growth in the future as the e-tailer landscape continues to evolve.

For help with developing an ERS of your own, Contact ECommerce Partners for a free consultation and price quote at 1-866-431-6669 or email dennis[at]ecommercepartners.net.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Key members of our team returned last night after attending Internet Retailer 2009 Conference & Exhibition (IRCE), hosted at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. This was an outstanding event with 5,000 e-tailers in attendance. I had the pleasure of presenting some of our search engine strategies to a group of over 600 online retailers, along with co-panelists Duncan White and Marissa Colwell. Specifically I spoke about local web optimization and Google Product Search. Sharing some of these techniques falls in line with our policy of full transparency to our clients. Other topics included in the presentation entitled, 10 ways to Improve Your SEO Rankings were Search Engine Optimization 101 and other ways to supplement an already strong SEO campaign using some of the new features of Google, such as video optimization and optimizing blogs for inclusion in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Being a speaker for Internet Retailer was an honor. The theme for this year’s show was, Rising Above the Economic Storm and I was glad to represent Ecommerce Partners in helping merchants grow their website presence through search marketing techniques and SEO-friendly development following some best practices. The goal of any respectable online marketing firm is to educate the consumer before a buying decision is made. We and other e-commerce merchants at IRCE were glad to participate as Internet Retailer is a top authority in the eCommerce space. To be named one of the IR Top 500 is the golden egg of internet marketing. For those of you who have not yet had the experience of attending, I’d recommend registering for IRCE 2010 when the time comes, to get a feel for competing in the retail space online.

Kudos to Internet Retailer and my co-panelists Duncan and Marissa and I look forward to next year’s event!

Popularity: 3% [?]

It is estimated that 20% of all searches have local intent, especially for restaurants, insurance, legal, retail, hotels and other types of companies within the service industry. A recent comScore study revealed that 61% of local searches result in purchases. These overwhelming statistics show that millions of potential customers are searching the internet, then buying online, calling for more information or making purchases directly from local stores – those are numbers you can’t afford to ignore.

Reaching more customers in your area doesn’t always mean printing out reams of flyers and hitting the pavement. Now more than ever, even potential buyers in your neighborhood are hitting the search engines first, looking for local bargains and researching information where your company is the perfect fit. Google Local Search can help you secure a spot in the top of the search engine for searches done by residents in your town, city, state or region. Here’s how.

Local search isn’t just reserved for small mom and pop stores anymore. Even large mainstream companies are narrowing their focus to attract more customers to their individual bricks-and-mortar stores. For example, a significant revenue stream for Boston Market is its catering service. If you’re looking for catering in New Jersey for your big event, would you trust just any caterer or would you go for a well-known brand like Boston Market that serves consistently good food? Notice how Google Local Search has helped Boston Market secure 7 of the 10 top spots for catering in New Jersey.

Companies who dominate local search results acquire greater name recognition and brand loyalty among local searchers. Visitors rationalize that placement at or near the top of a broad search like catering New Jersey equates to reliable and trustworthy sales and service.

As you’ll see, search results and a map come up well ahead of any other organic results when you search Google. Whether you already have a local listing or not, there are several other things you can do to keep your position strong in both Google Local Search and elsewhere on the web:

• Reach Out to Local Directories – Start getting local placement by listing your website through Google’s Local Business Center. The next step is to add your site to Yelp, online Yellow Pages and other local directories for two reasons. First, you will obviously garner visitors through direct traffic from these websites. Second, these sites are considered to be authorities by Google, meaning that placement will actually give your local Google results a bump in rank for the targeted search term (e.g., catering in New Jersey). Note that this placement does not necessarily translate to higher rankings in the standard organic search results, just local. The real benefit comes from Google’s placement of local results above all other results on the page. Keep in mind that some of these directories are free and some are not. You should start with free placements and measure results to determine if it makes sense to list your business on some of the paid directories to further enhance results. You may find that manual submissions take a great deal of your time that can be spent more effectively. If that is the case, then consider ECommerce Partners for periodic syndication to numerous local directories.
• List All Store Locations – Be sure to list all of your storefronts if you have multiple locations. Each physical location is entitled to its own listing, so take advantage.
• Get Great Local User Reviews in these Directories – Reviews of local businesses often come up near their local results in the search engines. The more reviews you have, the more you solidify your high ranking in local results and help ensure your site comes up when a user from that area is searching for your product or service.
• Optimize Your Website For Organic Listings – It stands to reason that having your site appear in the local results as well as the natural listings will yield greater click-thrus and brand recognition. So, use proven SEO techniques in conjunction with the local placement methodology discussed in this article to reach more customers
• Matching Domain Registration – Match your public domain name registration address with the one you’re optimizing for. This is just common sense for a local business.
• Include a VCard – Although it is not required, a vCard helps separate your physical address and contact information from the rest of a web page. The universal tags are a recognized standard that search engines understand. Simply put, this microformat is embedded in a page to allow a search robot to decipher this information quickly and efficiently, rather than guessing which part of the page contains an address. At present, there appears to be minimal benefit to search results, however it may be used more in the future as such webpage organization becomes more widespread.

Several other local and regional directories include Yahoo Local Merchant and Ask Business Search.

Contact ECommerce Partners to capture local traffic through Google or Yahoo. Our experienced search professionals will help you grow your business using local search traffic. If you prefer, call for a consultation and price quote at
1-866-431-6669 or email dennis[at]ecommercepartners.net.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Gain Access to Shoppers Who Are Ready to Buy

It used to be that doing a simple search on Google for a particular product would return relevant content sites only. You had to actually drill down and find the shopping results on your own. Until recently, Google only had a small shopping link at the top of the page that generated very few clicks; you may remember when they launched this as Froogle. Now, Google’s Product Search feature, also known as Google Shopping puts direct links to products right at the top of the search results. If you run an ecommerce site and you’re interested in putting your products at the top of the list, keep reading to learn how to send look-to-buy shoppers directly to the product page in question.

For example, let’s assume you’re in the market for a baby sling. Not just any baby sling, but an ergonomic, Earth-friendly product that will keep both you and your baby comfortable while making it easy to organize everything you need in one complete front pouch. You type your exact requirements into Google and get this as a result:

BabySling.com comes up first in the search results as well as prominently
in Google’s Product Search results

These results show us several things. First, you’ll notice that the exact baby sling you want is on sale compared to similar sites, and babysling.com appears number one in the search results for the precise item you searched for. Second, you’ll see that Google itself has become smart enough to know that the more detail you put into a search, the more likely you’re shopping for a particular item and the more likely you’ll buy from the first result that spells out exactly what you need.

What Does Google Product Search Mean for You?

Google Product Search is a shortcut to optimizing your product for the search engines. Just as if you were optimizing each page — carefully researching keywords, tailoring your content and building your landing pages, you don’t want to just dump all your products into Product Search and hope for the best. It makes sense to optimize your product listings so you have a greater chance of appearing at the top – even when competition is strong. Our research and real-world findings indicate that Product Search optimization is different from traditional SEO. The shopping engine looks for exact matches in customer search queries as well as details in every possible product attribute a consumer might think of, such as size, color and brand.

From Google’s point of view, the fresher and more relevant the content – the better. The search engines (and resulting visitors) aren’t happy clicking on a product only to learn that it went out of stock months ago. It’s because of this that Google requires you to submit new products every 30 days. You’ll keep everyone abreast of new additions while laser-targeting each of your products to become an exact match for a very detailed search and likely purpose.

How to List Your Inventory in Product Search

Google provides a way for shopping sites to submit inventory to Product Search. For one or two items, it’s very easy and can be done manually. Submit each item one-by-one using the form. There are fields for title, price, description and more. We’d also recommend including some optional information, such as color and size.You also have the option of uploading each product image directly, or pasting the URL of an image from your website.

How ECommerce Partners Can Help

With 10 or more products in stock it makes sense to provide a data feed of items pulled from your database. It’s understandable that not every ecommerce site owner has the time or know-how to build a database driven product feed and properly optimize each item for Google’s new Product Search. We’ll get your entire inventory online, complete with pictures and descriptions, whether it’s several to several-thousand products you want to sell. After all, you have a business to run, inventory to stock and products to ship! Customizing each product for top results might be high on your list of to-do’s, but somehow it always gets pushed to the back burner as new items arrive and more critical things warrant your attention. ECommerce Partners will manage the technical details of your online marketing while you focus on running your company.

For help with Google Product Search optimization and data feed development, contact Ecommerce Partners for more information. If you have a B&M storefront then be sure to ask us how we can put you at the top of Google’s Local Search listings as well.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Although nothing is certain in today’s economy, ecommerce remains a beacon of possibility and profit. Your customers don’t have to leave home to buy your products, and it’s often more cost-effective to host a virtual storefront than a brick-and-mortar one. Ecommerce sites are well positioned in this turbulent time. However, with the economy in flux and competition intensifying now is certainly not the time to become complacent.

Although analysts have cut estimates in almost every sector, including Ecommerce, they agree that ECommerce will continue to see growth in 2009. While expected to be slower than 2008, nonetheless, analysts believe there will be growth.

“While the overall retail pie shrinks as consumers cut back their overall spend, consumers will still continue to shift their wallet share to the web channel”.

Forrester then adds:

“According to projections from Forrester Research, U.S. online retail sales are expected to rise 11 percent to $156 billion this year, excluding revenue from travel. However, that will mark a slowdown in the overall growth rate, which was 13 percent in 2008, when online retail sales totaled $141 billion, Forrester says. Report: Online retail could reach $156B in 2009

So should online retailers just be happy they’ve picked the right industry? Well, despite the overall growth in ecommerce revenue, online shoppers now have many more options to choose from than they did just a few years ago. As a result, the competition is tougher, the market more fragmented, and even small differences between shopping sites can substantially impact purchase decisions. The ecommerce businesses that will thrive going forward are those that analyze their current strategy and position, and take every step possible to stand above the crowd and improve their customers’ experience.

We have entered an era of open competition, where fierce competitors and accumulation of best-practices have had a significant impact on the way we all do business. You can compete and win in this crowded and sophisticated market, but it takes a well-thought-out ecommerce strategy. Working with an experienced partner to continuously improve usability and visibility is what allows ecommerce sites to maintain an edge in this environment. The right partner in this case is one that continuously works with a large number of ecommerce sites and can get much faster and more in-depth insights on improving conversion rates, attracting traffic, and adopting other best practices. This type of data-mining and insight that we have at Ecommerce Partners isn’t otherwise available when you manage only one ecommerce site, or even a handful.

Improving your customer’s experience and increasing your online visibility can yield significant results. For example, you can tremendously boost your website revenue by making your website more user-friendly; making sure it shows up in relevant searches (SEO), optimizing your products for Google’s shopping engine (Google Product Search);  getting your business to show up in local search results (Local Search), optimizing your products for image and video search, and more. We’ll discuss these in more detail in upcoming blog posts.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Leading Interactive Agency Receives Top Honors for Consumer Website

New York, NY—July 21, 2008—ECommerce Partners, one of the leading digital interactive agencies widely recognized for building successful businesses online, has been awarded Ad Tech’s 2008 Limelight Award for Best Business-to-Consumer Transaction website. ECommerce Partners received top honors for its e-commerce site Anthony Logistics for Men, a men’s skincare brand. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 19% [?]

Ever been frustrated by the competition?  Let’s face it – they have huge advertising budgets and, well, you don’t.  What if I told you that there was a way to use their search engine rank to get some more attention for your own ecommerce site…would you be interested?

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 21% [?]

According to a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the number of Internet users who use search engines on a daily basis as been steadily rising over the past six years.

A similar study by the group in 2002 reported that about one third of users visited search engine sites daily, but that number has increased to an impressive 49% this year making the importance of search engine placement and visibility even more evident to those doing business online.  This only goes to substantiate what ecommerce website development experts have been saying for years now.

The same group authored a study last year that reported on average that 8 out of 10 Americans use the Internet to explore and educate themselves on their hobbies and interests.  This information can easily be translated into dollar signs for online businesses that take the initiative to cater their copy and content to focus on niche interest groups such as these.

There are a few additional statistics that may do more to capture your attention as well.  For example, 66% of college graduates use a search engine daily, as opposed to 32% of those with a high school diploma (or less).

When it comes to income, more is more.  The higher the income, the more likely they are to use search engines daily:

• 62% of people making $75,000 or more annually
• 56% of people making $50,000 – 74,999
• 34% of people making $30,000 – 49,999
• 35% of people making less than $30,000

What about the ages of these potential customers?  This is how the same study breaks down on age lines:

• 55% of 18 – 29 year olds
• 54% of 30 – 49 year olds
• 40% of 50 – 64 year olds
• 27% of 65 years and older

As for the gender debate, the study has a lot to say as well:

Data collected since 2002 show that men who use the internet have consistently been
more likely than women to integrate search into their daily lives. The percentage of
online men who search on a typical day has risen steadily from 33% in 2002 to 53%
currently. The percentage of women has also risen, increasing from 25% in 2002 to 45%.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The process of SEO is possible one of the most often misunderstood and troublesome techniques on the Internet and in no arena is it more important than in the area of niche marketing – especially when it comes to small and medium-sized businesses.  The harsh truth of the matter is that regardless of how cutting edge your ecommerce web design may be, without proper and consistent use of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques you are just doing the doggie paddle in a wading pool.  By practicing and employing a few simple ideas though, you’ll be the Michael Phelps of SEO in no time flat.

Popularity: 17% [?]

With such a tremendous number of ecommerce web sites competing for the same customers it may leave you wondering if it is even worth the effort in the first place. 

The thing to keep in mind here is that it is normal to be overwhelmed but you shouldn’t let that paralyze you into inaction.  The more the Internet marketplace grows, the more the buying public is leaning toward niche market websites that specialize in one focused area – in other words, sites that do one thing and do it well.  Smaller businesses have a distinct advantage in the online market, but only if they are taking full advantage of the opportunities available to them.

Sales, marketing, web site design, ecommerce shopping cart, paperwork…with so many things to think about already, perhaps it is time to bring in the experts to help you create an ecommerce web site solution that best suits your particular needs.

Ecommerce Partners is poised and ready to help you take your online business to the next level.  Our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Team can custom build a program based on your budget, service requirements and goals, as well as making a determination of where your business stands currently as far as the competition and your web site’s visibility within the major search engine databases.

Need to freshen up your online presence?  Our New York web design gurus are ready, willing and able to deliver the right ecommerce solution for you and your online business.  Whatever your needs, the ECP team can help you find the solutions that can bring your business into the forefront of the Internet marketplace.

Popularity: 70% [?]