So, you have become the proud owner of the online store. Well, I wish you achieve your online business objectives. Certainly, you must have worked really hard, invested a lot of money, and took real pain in planning, designing and developing your e-commerce website. Here, I would like to ask you a few questions which are: “Are you sure your online store will enjoy web traffic that can fulfill your business objectives and goals?,” “Do you think your e-commerce website or online store would get higher ranking from search engines?” and “Have you integrated your marketing message in this online store and is it perfectly made to get this message across?”

Well, it is not enough to have an online store or e-commerce website made. In this age of fierce competition, online marketers have to leverage the online marketing strategies available to promote their business and generate leads. Such strategies require hard efforts from the marketers and are really crucial. If you do not implement online marketing strategies then you won’t enjoy web traffic, cannot generate leads and moreover your website will be lost in this virtual world of Web.

Following common online marketing strategies must be used to market your products or services over internet and attract web audiences.

1. E-Mail Marketing –
   Very important and still a gem for marketers. E-mail marketing gives you a platform to get in touch with your target audience and customers. It helps two way communication between you and your clients or prospects. All you need to do this build a list of e-mail ids of your visitors and send them, newsletters, information about offers, schemes and events on a regular basis. E-mail marketing is a direct form of marketing and connects you well with your audience.
2. Search Engine Optimisation –
   Importance of SEO or search engine optimisation can never be ignored. SEO is a long term process and help your website get higher search engine rankings. Today, almost 80 percent of web audience refers search engines to find out a website that serve information, products or services they are looking for. If your website is search engine friendly then it will certainly get good traffic volume which you can convert to achieve your business goal.
3. Pay Per Click Management –
   After you successfully launched your online retail store, the first online strategy that you can utilize to market your store is PPC or Pay Per Click. It is an exclusive advertising model or a type of paid search marketing. It is really cost-effective and offer promising results quickly. In PPC, a marketer has to pay only for the clicks that online visitors make to get redirected to your website from search engines.
4. Banner Advertising –
   It is a type of display advertising on internet. The primary idea behind banner advertising is same i.e. to get a stream of web traffic flowing into your website. Marketers advertise with the banner ads of their website on popular websites. The idea is to get your information or marketing message exposed to a lot of online visitors and attract them to visit your store and convince them to buy your products or services.
5. Social Media Optimisation –
   In the present web scenario, the best way to market your business online is social media optimisation. Today, the trend is social networking through several websites. Social media optimisation (SMO) is almost no cost way to advertise or market your business and build a solid customer base. You can reach masses and enhance your online presence and brand reputation. Also called as Social media marketing (SMM), SMO gives you an opportunity to interact with web audience and let them form opinions about your store or business. It helps you create buzz.
6. Video Marketing –
   Sometimes words fail to paint pictures and impress your target audience or your online visitors just browse through your website and do not read content. In such condition, you have only a few minutes to impress your audience and get your marketing message across. To do this video marketing serves as the best online marketing strategy available. Simple, you can upload a video of your product or message to your website. Web audiences, usually watch videos and understand what you want to express. It is an impressive way to address your online visitors personally and convert them.
7. Online Press Release –
   Just like traditional press releases, online press releases help you share your news / views, opinion or information about events, products, services, etc. with online visitors. Press releases help you generate traffic to your website which gets redirected from PR directories or websites. Online press releases help you build and maintain strong public relations.
8. Blogging –
   Blogging is not a new online marketing strategy. However, it could help you tremendously with your marketing objectives. Blogging help you share your views, information or news with web audience. It gives you a platform to interact with them directly. By blogging you can inspire online visitors to participate in online discussions and provide you an opportunity to find out what your web audience thinks about your products or business.
9. Viral Marketing –
   Viral marketing is nothing but a new form of traditional word of mouth advertising. Here marketer can create a buzz around his website, products or services and business. Viral marketing give opportunity to marketers to improve their brand awareness. It creates a buzz and inspires audiences to share your marketing message with their friends, family or relatives on social networks and through other mediums. It is very effective medium but requires close monitoring otherwise you may end up with ruining your brand image.
10. Web Analytics –
    It is not an online marketing strategy as such but it is the back bone of all your online marketing efforts. The best advantage of marketing your business online is that you can track the performance of your campaigns and make necessary changes as desired. Web analytics help you understand visitors’ behavior, their responses towards your marketing efforts. Web analytics can measure the effectiveness of any of your online marketing campaign.

So, once again I would like you to congratulate for your online store and remind you to use online marketing strategies discussed above to be successful in all your endeavors.

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Since this final article focuses on the importance of design in the usability of ecommerce websites, let’s get back to the basics of design. To begin with, design has been defined as ‘the purposeful or inventive arrangement of parts or details’. To put it simply, design in relation to websites is an amalgamation of appearance and usability. Design more often than not defines the user experience and is important to the functionality of a product, especially when everything depends on how a product is perceived and used.
Thus in an E-commerce website, a well-defined website design will influence how the user perceives your website and spur their interest to further explore it.  

Strategic image placement

While shopping in the off-line world, you may have noticed how supermarkets create elaborate floor plans to attract your attention and ensure that you browse through all the products in their various aisles. You must do the same for your eCommerce website to attract online shoppers and compel them to browse and purchase products from you.

You can start by creating something like a window display that one would have in an off-line store. All you need to do is to strategically place images of the products you sell, for each of your departments various sections.

Audio-visual product descriptions

The image of your product should be accompanied by audio-visual content that demonstrates how your product is used and displays its features along with the user benefits. Research has proven that online shoppers are extremely video savvy and prefer viewing a product in real time, instead of merely reading the product description. By incorporating product videos on your product page, you can create a potent ecommerce solution.

Create product review and rating sections

Alongside your product image and description, your ecommerce site should also include a customer review and rating section to further augment your sales. When customers are given the liberty to rate and review your product it improves your sites credibility while allowing customers to interact with one another and delivers prospective buyers with unbiased information. Once again studies indicate that ecommerce sites which include customer reviews and ratings increase product sales by well over 25%.

Recommend relevant add-ons

Most online shoppers in the buy-mode are quite literally an easy target to gain you sales, if only you play it right. While browsing, they are most likely to click on the first link that comes their way. Hence it makes great business sense for you to place relevant product suggestions on the product page of every item they browse. For instance, if you sell sportswear, on your product page for trainers, you could suggest add-ons like a nice pair of coordinated track pants or socks to go with it. While this add-on suggestion may involve some extra scripting and require a more elaborately designed website, it is sure to benefit you with additional shopping from your customers.

Create last-minute deals

Now that the customer is heading straight towards making the payment after finalising his order via your shopping cart software’s interface, don’t leave him by himself. Continue to engage him with exciting offers. Create last-minute deals that he would find interesting and therefore difficult to resist. The last-minute deal is an extension of the earlier recommendation offer; however it’s more of an impulse purchase.
All you need to do is offer an affordable item that will again accessorise or add-on to the product that the customer is purchasing, which makes him believe that it is important to add to his shopping cart, especially at the price you are offering it to him for. Most shoppers will buy-in to this last-minute deal offer in the belief that these extra items will not make too much of a difference to the total amount.

Single-page checkout

While an ecommerce website should be visually appealing, it must also include an important usable feature of a single-page checkout. Thoroughly verify your e-commerce shopping cart solution, as the checkout process is built into it. When customers realise that they have to keep on clicking through your web store’s checkout process to make a purchase, they will certainly get bored and sign-off midway in the shopping process.

Finally, gaining greater profits is not merely about attracting more customers to purchase from you. It is much easier and advantageous to attract the same number of customers to buy more from you. As you are achieving this increased profit without paying more for additional traffic or optimizations.

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In the first article of this 3-part series on ‘Ecommerce Site Design and Usability Guidelines to Gain Sales’ we discussed how navigation plays an important role in ensuring that customers purchase products from your website. In this article, we continue to highlight additional usability areas like user-friendly links that should be incorporated in order to prevent poor merchandising and convert your website visitors into customers.

Deliver precise product information

Just suppose a website visitor has managed to narrow down your product list and discovered the product that he wants to purchase. Now, he needs to further feel comfortable that your product is the appropriate one for him based on the information you’ve provided. As an online e-tailer, you have a great advantage of displaying comprehensive product information unlike a printed brochure, which has limitations. However, the information should be conveyed in a factual, informative and interesting manner. You should refrain from merely highlighting product specs and instead focus on delving on the resultant benefits to the customer. This way, you will spur on the customer’s interest to purchase your product.

In addition, you need to place a thumbnail photograph of the product which the customer can enlarge and view from various angles.

Display product prices

The fact that your website visitor can view the price of a product, while trying to make an online purchase is often a deciding factor in converting him into a buyer. In viewing the price, he has the option to compare dealers or make a decision to purchase directly from the manufacturer. This ability has effectually been found to increase conversion rates by as much as three percent. Alternately, if the price is not displayed the customer has to go through the laborious process of clicking through to every dealer to review their price, which violates the ‘reduce the number of clicks’ thumb rule.

Ensure your credibility

While a new customer visits your website with the intention of purchasing your product; he is simultaneously filled with trepidation on several parameters, as to whether he can trust you; from delivering him value for his money, to protecting his identity despite the data you hold. He has concerns as to whether he will receive the product he purchased from you and if you are going to sell his confidential information to blacklisted sites.

You need to overcome this critical credibility hurdle by incorporating a declaration statement to the customer stating, ‘We will never give out your e-mail address for any reason.’ You further need to enhance your credibility by listing your physical address on the website as well as including a photograph of yourself and key company associates and possibly shots of your office building too.

Display out-of-stock Dealers

It is interesting to note that more than half of all customers commence their online shopping with product searches on a retailer website. This is evidence of the fact that consumers do have preferences when it comes to where to shop. Therefore it is important to include relevant dealers in your listing even if their products are out of stock. This is simply because if you do not include some dealers you could deter prospective shoppers from purchasing at your site. You can still show the dealer who stocks the product, mentioning that it is currently out of stock, giving the consumer the option to wait if he so desires.

Avoid delays during product purchase

Now, that your customer is well on his way to purchase a product from your site, you need to make the process easy for him. More often than not, several online sites end up haggling customers with questionnaires just as they are poised to give them their sale. This practice of trying to collect customer data at such a moment is less important than clinching the customer sale. You run the risk of detracting your customer and losing his trust and resultant sale. Reserve customer data collection for a later stage, after the order is placed and the sale is yours.

Finally, the potential of usability should go beyond navigation and extend to website design and placement. It is as critical as navigation in advancing usability and ensuring you bag that online sale. In my 3^rd and final article on ecommerce design and usability guidelines I look forward to sharing with you insights on the finer design aspect of ecommerce websites.

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While in the past I focussed on website design tips in general, this time round I’m packing in specific information on how as an ecommerce website owner you can increase your online sales by incorporating succinct navigation and usability techniques into your website’s design. Several research insights indicate that ease of navigation is crucial in enhancing user experience, leading customers to make purchases from well laid-out websites.

Clear navigation leads the way

As an astute marketer you can’t afford to lose your customer as he navigates your site to make a purchase. Reduce his burden of having to figure out what to do next by guiding him to the product he desires to purchase, in a way that is simple and easy. Else you stand the chance of losing out on a prospective customer and potential sale.

Review your website’s status quo

Before you embark on the path to helping your customer navigate your website, you must first review your website’s status quo. The best method to find out whether it is usable enough is to find a test shopper and sit besides him as he navigates your website. You will be surprised at what this test experience throws up. More often than not, you’ll discover that poor merchandizing, insufficient and inaccurate information coupled with lack of credibility prove to be deterrents in clinching the online sale.

Construct structured buy-paths

Generally, a customer has two obvious paths to follow – an optimal one that spurs him on directly to the sale. The other, a long-winding one includes several diversions and areas of interest, which may not necessarily be relevant to the customer. Naturally, the choice is to choose the optimal path. You must be aware that the optimal path too offers myriad possibilities like providing the customer with the option to purchase the product offline, straight from the manufacturer or online from a retailer or reseller. Ideally the customer has made up his mind in advance as to what product and path he’s interested in embarking upon. Thus if he is unable to find the path that interests him, he will out of sheer disgust discontinue his purchase process.
It takes time and effort to incorporate structured buy-paths into your site, but it is definitely worth the trouble. Along the buy-paths you can include short stops where the customer can browse through accessories, product information as well as compare products too. But remember to include a prominent link that leads the customer back on track to his original purchase.

Prominently placed product buttons

If your customers are unable to find your product where they want to, then there’s no way they are going to buy it. Your product buttons must be in easy view of the visitor and placed prominently on the homepage, making it amongst the first things a website visitor notices. It has been researched that placing product buttons on the upper left hand side of the page layout; contrasting it in colour or size from other links and supporting it with page layout design that guide the eyes toward the button works successfully.

Focus on product winnowing

You could own a site that offers customers a comprehensive product catalogue, which will definitely satisfy the requirements of a broad range of customers. However your website should allow product winnowing, whereby customers can narrow down the product search list to the desired item. There’s a possibility that if you offer the customer a little too many choices, you may end up confusing him and losing the sale. However, if narrow down your choice list, allowing the customer to easily find what he’s looking for, your sales could look promising
Your first link that throws up in a search on a product name should lead to a product description page to ensure optimal results. This will ensure that site visitors are within easy reach of relevant product resources, images and corollary buy paths.

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A job gives a fixed monthly income. In today’s world everyone wants to Earn More, Earn Big! It has become all the more possible due to the Internet Revolution. You just need a website to get started and establish an online business. Some of the fundamentals for conducting an online business are explained below:

@ Unique Product: Your product should have an edge over other products of the same line. It should be innovative with some special features, better utility, and most importantly affordable. It can soon become hot in the market if it is adapted by different stratas of the society. If people realize why your product is unique it will be successful.

Tip for E-Commerce: Search engines like google, yahoo or msn can help you find websites selling your product.

@ Competitive Price: Study your competition. Every entrepreneur should do his homework of analyzing the prices of its competitors. Your product is a new entry in the market; people will consider buying it only if it offers better utility at a comparatively lower price.

Tip for E-Commerce: You can find the prices listed on the websites along with the product descriptions.

@ Business / Commerce Platform: You need to opt for a platform that has low operating costs. If your business has low overheads then you can pass on the benefit in the form of low prices to your customers.

Tip for E-Commerce: Register a domain and establish your business on a website. That is E-Commerce!

@ Shopping Experience: Your customers should have an enriching shopping experience with you. You need to provide them clear instructions.

Tip for E-Commerce: You can incorporate a Free Shopping Cart in the initial phase. Once your e-business picks up, you can go on for subscribing one.

@ Good Customer Service: You need to understand; “What your customer wants”. After comprehending their situation effectively, you should deliver them with what suits their needs. Answering to their queries and clarifying their doubts should be done in the first place. Satisfaction of the Customer rather than high profit should be prioritized for building a strong brand name.

Tip for E-Commerce: You can make an interactive website, provide contact forms in your website, and give your email id, chat id, telephone number, mailing address etc so that your customers can interact easily.

@ Follow-up: Just selling your products to customers is not enough. As a business you should follow up and take feedback about the usefulness & limitations of your product. This feedback is gold since it can help improve your product. Next time your customers will experience better product utility. In this way you win life long customers.

Tip for E-Commerce: Maintain a database of your client’s details, like their email id, birthday date, anniversary date etc. Send them wishes on these occasions and request for feedback on your products. This will help to build the basis of a relationship.

Comscore reports that retail ecommerce sales growth was only 11% in Q1 2008 compared to 17% in the prior year 2007. So you need to get cautious in following the above points with full efficiency. But you can certainly Start Growing with E-Commerce Now!

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The online shopping experience is not very different from the real world one. In the real world, on a general shopping outing one encounters a wide variety of shop owners pitching their wares in unique and creative ways. From roadside vendors displaying their colourful wares and vying with one another to pitch them by yelling out loud in markets, to quaint shops displaying enticing products outside and shop billboards ranging from the mundane to the weird and funny beckoning you to enter. The online world offers an equally compelling call to action trying it’s best to target a specific, niche audience in the process.

Competitor study

Closely observe your main competitor’s websites to see how they attract their targets through their USP. Also, study their positioning on search engines, the keywords and URL they use. This study is not meant to be an end in itself, rather it should serve to enable you to identify how you can position yourself differently and draw competitor traffic to your website.

Keyed on target

On the face of it, getting the greatest number of hits vis a vis your competitors in the hope of drawing higher sales, seems the wisest thing to do. However, in reality it doesn’t work that way. You need to target as many people as you can from a specific target group by offering a product or service that is customized to them. It’s possible that your target market is geographically determined by region. In that case you must consider optimising your keywords for local search.

Supposing you have created water-proof socks through the use of breakthrough technology, you wouldn’t want to sell it to just about anyone, but rather to people who would best use it like mountaineers, trekkers, people living in damp environmental surroundings and such like. However, to do that you need to populate your website with appropriate content. Your web copy must include relevant information and keywords that will appeal to your target audience. Use long key phrases to increase your scope of being found in search engines when users search for information on your product or area of expertise.

Active forum participation

Search for online forums that are relevant to your product and join them. Be an active participant by engaging in discussions that will give you feedback on what your target audience is saying, their grievances and expectations. Transform yourself into a respected and authoritative subject matter expert by giving advice and sharing tips. Another means to further advance your objective involves including a link to your website in your forum signature to attract qualified traffic.

Once you have discovered your target audience and those who have the greatest need or affinity with your products or services’ your battle is half won. To fully win, you must continually work to engage these prospects and convert them into avid customers.

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Man, you’ve done some great SEO, your eCommerce website is ranking high on major search engines and traffic leading to your website keeps increasing. But is this considerable traffic and top ranking leading to increased sales through your website? If it is, then you’re doing a pretty good job of converting prospects to customers; if not, then your ranking to conversion ratio is low and you might just have figure out how to capitalise on your high search engine rankings.

I’d like to share with you some smart and simple tips to improve website conversion rates that have succeeded for my customers. A common error that most website owners indulge in is to focus only on attracting traffic. But if little efforts are made to rectify simple website issues, it can lead to huge improvements in conversion rates. Listed below are my 5 quick tips to take your website visitors to the next level.

Easy accessibility and navigation

As soon as a visitor lands on your website, he must immediately be able to identify who you are, i.e. what business you are into and how you can benefit him. Use bold headlines and short paragraphs to catch his attention, as readers online tend to quickly scan text instead of reading through word-by-word. In this way your website is accessible and easy to attract attention to anything that is relevant rather than distract visitors away from your site.

Time is money

This adage works well for you as well as for your customers. Don’t waste your visitor’s time by trying to extricate irrelevant information, especially something that would involve the discretion of the user and impinge of his right to privacy. While it is prudent to collate critical information like shipping address, payment terms, etc; give your visitor the option to fill in less important information if he wants to instead of making it compulsory.

Initiate interest with information

Any credible eCommerce website will do more than merely function as an online catalogue. It will include relevant information on the product the visitor shows interest in purchasing. This information could be in the form of articles, customer testimonials, product reviews and the like. It will serve to aid him in the initial stages of his product purchase decision-making process.

Honesty, the best policy

Be direct, don’t beat around the bush as far as your product and pricing is concerned. If a product of yours will not be available in stock for a while, be honest enough to mention it. Rather than incurring the loss of a frustrated user who after having read all your product details, adds it to his cart and proceeds to the checkout payment process, only to discover that the product is out of stock.

This is true even for pricing, when visitors discover that delivery or shipping pricing is an added expenditure in addition to the cost they will incur on the product purchase. Ideally, it makes sense to display approximate delivery costs of countries your products are most often delivered to.

Clear Call to Action

If a user decides to buy a product from your site; he needs to add it to a shopping basket by clicking on a button or a link. However, this crucial button needs to be visible to him without the need to scroll, as several visitors are uncomfortable with scrolling. You should have an ‘Add Product xyz to your basket’ button, bold and around the top of the page. It need not be ‘in your face’ type of attention-grabbing call-to-action, rather an evident and visible one. This helps in a definite increase in sales as your visitor feels guided into the next step in the buying process.

Above all, make a concerted effort to differentiate yourself from your competitors by defining your product USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Because, finally this is the basis on what you target visitor to your site in the first place – converting them into customers is a matter of great attention to detail in creating a memorable customer experience.

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In my past posts, I have touched upon the importance of optimising eCommerce websites to attract search engines and users. As the main objective of any eCommerce website is to attract visitors to purchase products or services. Thus every eCommerce site should be created bearing this objective in mind. This time round, I’d like to focus on the necessity of conducting a thorough research and analysis while creating an eCommerce site.

A) Strategize

Do a thorough analysis of your current website design and marketing strategy and establish the areas you need to focus on. You must source information or ideas that will help in future website ranking efforts. Without an initial analysis it can be difficult in the long run to establish the outcome of your efforts.

B) Competitor analysis

Understanding your competitor’s niche is critical in enabling you to create your unique selling proposition. Study the varied keywords your main competitors are showing up under on various search engines. This will help you determine how you want to position yourself as well as select additional keywords or phrases to use on the search engines.

C) Keyword research

Everyday millions of keyword queries are carried out on search engines. Analyse different keyword and phrase combinations that are apt to include within your site copy and design elements. You can collate keyword data using industry keyword tools like Wordtracker, Overture Suggestions, Google keywords etc.; as well as through site query statistics and actual search engine queries that users use to search websites.

D) Design basics

A fulfilling online shopping experience is a fundamental requirement for an eCommerce website visitor. Visitors should be able to access the appropriate page in a minimum of one or two clicks. The focus of an eCommerce web design should primarily be about the layout. It is crucial to catch the visitor’s attention and the areas that attract them when accessing a web page. Research on this topic suggests that the middle left side area draws great attention, followed by the portion at the centre of the page. These layout techniques create a simple navigation path for the visitor.

E) 1) HTML Sitemap

Create an extensive HTML sitemap for visitors to navigate as well as for those who are disabled or use text-based browsers. Sitemaps are web pages consisting of your most important and content rich pages. A sitemap will also assist search engines in discovering all your website content, so that they can scan it to include within their search results. Large eCommerce sites have several pages that need indexing and can really benefit from a sitemap.

2) XML Sitemap

You also need to include an XML sitemap to enable search engines to regularly track your content and product updates. These sitemaps are special files that contain links to the most important sections and pages of your site. XML sitemaps can be transmitted electronically to major search engines. While dynamic sitemaps are optimal, manually updated sitemaps can also be useful. eCommerce stores that require updates of their catalogues at regular intervals must consider incorporating an XML sitemap to enable search engines to find new products and the updated old ones.

Finally, ensure that you include simple and clean navigational elements and a site search that are easily accessible. Link all your pages back to your homepage and help pages like FAQs, forums, blogs, etc. Cross-link your topical content across your website so that search engines can pass the value to other content rich pages and users can easily find the content they are looking for. Google transfers the Page Rank (PR) to other pages on a site if you link one page with PR to another page with related content.

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By and large, I have observed that most eCommerce sites are very poorly optimised. From delivering extremely drab content consisting of mundane product descriptions, to vague internal linking and zero user-generated content, eCommerce websites face manifold SEO challenges. I believe that SEO has a much greater role to play in eCommerce websites than in normal content websites, since eCommerce websites generate greater income per visitor. So even a miniscule increase in online traffic entails large revenue generation and makes it prudent to invest in an effective SEO solution. Besides, the ability of the voluminous amount of content residing within the average eCommerce solution to target both predictable and unpredictable (long-tail) search phrases is very high.

While general optimisation of an eCommerce site is pretty similar to content sites, several pitfalls exist that are specific to eCommerce sites. Let me review these key issues and the underlying solutions for you.
Create Simple and Search Engine-Friendly URLs

Since most ecommerce sites are database driven, the shopping carts by default are not search engine friendly. This poses a huge dilemma for search engines, as they are unable to properly navigate your product pages. Having your homepage indexed by a search engine is not enough as online users are often searching for specific products. To exemplify, if you owned a menswear store, you would observe that while ‘men’s office shirts’ is what some users would search for, most would key in a specific brand name. Ideally, URLs should consist of relevant keywords, not irrelevant ID’s or other parameters. If your website sells branded products, build an optimized landing page for every brand. If you don’t have the liberty of using URL re-writing software, you can try limiting the number of variables passed in the URL.

Incorporate Keyword-rich Anchor Text

Proliferation of keywords in your navigation is passé and of no value in SEO. Rather, incorporate keyword-rich anchor copy that links to your important pages. Ensure that you link your product category pages with individual product pages through anchor text that contain relevant copy instead of vague phrases like ‘know more’, ‘click here’, etc which keep search engine spiders clueless about your products or services.

Ethically Cloak Session IDs in URLs

In order to track visitors, shopping carts insert session IDs in their URLs. This deters search engines as it creates an infinite amount of duplicate content that search engines have to crawl through. A simple way to handle this issue is to detect search engines by accessing the HTTP_USER_AGENT variable and turning tracking off for them. Technically, this is referred to as cloaking. However, it is ethical cloaking, as you’re using this functionality to show search engines what your visitors can see instead of showing them information that your visitors cannot see as is the case with malicious cloaking.

Internal Website Search Optimisation

Since your visitors reached your website through a search engine, they would expect your internal website search to work equally well. I have observed that whenever new visitors visit a website through a search engine, they will search through your website for the exact same term they keyed into Google. Thus it is elementary that you optimise your internal website search function too.

Clamp down on Unnecessary Page Ranks

eCommerce websites have several redundant pages like ‘Add to Cart’, ‘My Account’, etc. that do not require PageRank. These page links essentially negate the PageRank of your product pages as there isn’t any need for them to be viewed by search engines. The solution lies in hiding such pages from search engines by enabling access to these pages via form or JavaScript-based navigation. A much easier method to deny search engines access would be to use robots.txt and raise the page ranks of your relevant pages in the process.

Once you address these key eCommerce website optimisation issues, it is very simple to create SEO in other areas of your website, like increasing link popularity, adding keywords to your title and heading tags, and other relevant SEO requirements.

Finally, ensure that you work with an eCommerce service provider who is capable of doing everything we’ve mentioned above. If you are however unable to get them to work around the suggestions, then we’re just a click away.

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Presently the world is buzzing with Ecommerce. People claim to have shopped online and paying with their credit cards. Some one is purchasing the grocery online while others are waiting for the best offer to buy digital products. On the professional front most of the people report to their offices while a few sit at home, work on the internet and earn from their computers itself. In some cases the earnings of professionals working from home are higher than the ones going to office regularly. So it has become a mystery now. If you want to unfold this mystery you should read ahead.

It has all become possible with Ecommerce. It can be explained as “Electronic Commerce” where people can sell and buy products electronically.

It is very easy to enter and experience this Business Model. By making a single Ecommerce Website you can also earn a handsome amount of $$$$$. Below is a quick brief of making an Ecommerce Website:

• Decide a Theme: It can be products centric or information rich site. You need to decide whether you want to sell products, or provide some very useful, important information on your website. For instance you might know some A.C manufacturers and you would choose to sell A.Cs. In contrast supposedly if you are a Psychology Lecturer, then you might want to build your site on the topic of Psychology and sell tutorials.
• Creating your content: Your content should be simple and analytic. You should explain the features of your product or service very clearly. It should be persuasive, sufficient enough to coax your site visitor to buy your product.
• Make your content Keyword Rich: You might use the Free Keywords Suggestion Tool to shortlist the keywords being searched by people and use the same in creating your content. The keyword rich content will be helpful for you to get found on the search engines.
• Accept Payment Online: You should integrate Credit Card Payment Structure in your site so as to accept payments online.
• Invite Search Engines: After preparing your site you should submit your site to the search engines. Make sure that you have optimised your pages effectively. Creating meta tags, targeting keywords, properly interlinking the pages is the beginning of the optimisation process.
• Popularise your website: You will need to make your website popular on the internet. Talk to friends, send your website information to business associates, participate in forums and you will see a gradual increase in the natural traffic to your site.
• Attaining Natural Rankings: Gradually after your sincere marketing efforts you would see your website appear naturally in the search engines. It is the best source of receiving the natural, targeted traffic. Once you reach here, means you have built your virtual real estate. This will be your stage to work hard but party harder.

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