When in doubt, Google it. Google has become the end-all-be-all of internet information. This means when we create our new e-commerce store, we need “The Google” to find us. We need a framework to begin with that makes Google finding us that much easier. We need an SEO friendly solution and a marketing plan for the first months after development.

In the world of online marketing, the main goal should be to convert visitors to customers. Traffic definitely bodes well, but conversions tell the tale. So let’s start with step one, building the site so they will come.

Choosing an E-Commerce Solution

An e-commerce solution wasn’t as readily available or trustworthy in 2000 when I first looked into them. The consumer opinion on buying online was just starting to change. Ebay was moving at great strides and consumers started to turn to the internet for shopping. Quite rapidly its become a global sensation, with many e-commerce solutions presenting themselves. One of the first, and my favorite project is the osCommerce solution. There are others, but I’ve mainly focused on the one, as it can be daunting to the learn the code behind each and every cart solution.

There are others out there. Joomla has various extensions you can use to facilitate a sale online. ZenCart is also a viable solution.  SquirrelCart, digiShop, Interspire, among hundreds of others. Each one probably has its difficulties. While deciding on a cart to base your site, consider how well the solution does the following.

1. How easy is the template to use?

2. Does it have a healthy support forum?

3. Does it provide a solution for your merchant account?

4. Does it support SEO friendly URLs?

5. Does the community offer addons for the cart to do specialized things?

There’s a lot of planning to be done. Selling something online may mean tailoring the site to do specialized things, like calculating quantity via attributes, offering digital downloads, or adding fields for custom text imprints. The product dictates how the cart will function. Once you’ve found a cart that will work for the product you’re selling, then it’s time to develop the design.

Designing the e-Commerce Store

I use the osCommerce solution, so my first steps in designing a new store are to write out all the contributions the store will require. I make a list and prioritize them. If I have developed a similar store, recently (meaning with any updates, etc.) then I may copy over the base of the store and start at least a few hours into the coding. If not, then I get to work adding functionality like the STS template system, which makes designing the store so much easier. Then I add contributions that affect many pages, like the QTPro contribution, which makes it possible to calculate quantity by attribute. I also beef up the site’s SEO functionality, using various contributions.

At this point in the process, you may need help or you might do it yourself. Either way, you should be on your way to creating a store. In my experience, a store evolves over time. After creating the base, the design takes shape and you begin to hammer out details like payment modules, template tweaks, and filling pages with products.

e-Commerce Products

We want to sell our products. It’s why we made a store. So we need to showcase those products in a very favorable light. This doesn’t mean we wax poetic about the product, but we do need to describe it in detail. This even goes for shampoo we might sell. Everything should have some sort of description, preferably between 100-200 words, depending on the product of course. If there’s not much to say about your product, like if it’s a beach towel, then you can create a bullet list describing its qualities.

• Cotton
• Imported
• Measures 33×66″
• Two ply front
• Vibrant colors

You get the idea. Think about the qualities of your product, identify them in a unique way, and do it uniformly for each product. Your presentation means a lot to buyers. Having a mish-mash of descriptions, buttons, or functionality can lead to confusion and buyers retreating to other sites.

SEOizing Our Product Descriptions

Is SEO dead? I don’t think so, but I think for the most part a proper description of an item will net the best results. We could emphasize certain keywords, like beach towel over and over, but keyword density aside, it takes away from the user experience. We’re not selling to search engines, but to people.

The best thing to do would be to create bold informative titles on a product page, have healthy descriptions that do not stray from focusing on the product, and high quality photos of our product. Don’t ever underestimate the power of a good photo. I know I have seen some photos that make a good product look second-rate. The photos should also have the product information in alt tags. Who knows — your beach towel may be listed high in the Google Image Search.

Conclusion

If you’ve got this far on your e-commerce store, then you’re prepared for the grueling work of marketing said store. I’m still learning the ropes of marketing an e-commerce store, but I hope you’ll all join me in the journey. I’ll be writing the second parts of the Marketing an e-Commerce store story over the next month. Feel free to let me know what software you’ve used, how you describe your products, and of course how you market your e-commerce store. It’s a win-win, right? Unless you’re selling beach towels too. Then we’re in trouble.

I have a lot of enthusiasm for the Internet. The sheer volume of things I can learn really sparks my interest. This is why I do all my work behind a computer, forsaking my eyes and back for an opportunity to learn and invest in website development and blogging. Is there a better way to live?

I’ve been dropping Entrecards this week, trying to softly launch a new website I started. I’m going to showcase the site later on this week, but I’m a little nervous. Here’s why. I thought of the site idea last February. The premise was to help bloggers gauge what’s wrong with their site. [site's trademark secrets removed] Alas, I’m too much of a newb with PHP and MySql to make the site work without spending thousands of dollars I don’t have. I went the more economical route.

I changed the idea, for now. The site is a Yahoo! Answers type site. It’s specifically setup for bloggers. You can ask questions, answer other peoples questions and earn points for doing it. The site is very infantile right now, but it is ready to use. To bootstrap its use, I’m offering 50 EC credits to the users who write the first 50 questions on the site. There’s a limit of five questions a day.

Visit RSS Cop.com - The Blogging Answer’s Site

So my question to you, readers. Do you like the site? What could be improved? Do you think you would use the site? Is it a waste of time? Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Recently I’ve been developing a few e-commerce stores. One of the stores has requested my help with building steady traffic to the site. Similar principles apply to an e-commerce store as to a blog. The idea remains the same — build backlinks to increase your site’s authority with search engines. Of course, no one knows the Google algorythm, but the trade secret doesn’t make it any less obvious to site builders that a link back to your domain from a respected source can net you significant jumps in search standings.

It’s not the only thing that matters though. As I’m thinking about ways to increase this store’s visibility on the web, I’m noticing a few stark differences between this store and a blog.

• An e-commerce store doesn’t have regularly updated content, and thus can’t take advantage of search services like Google’s blog search. There’s no pinging.
• Tailoring the content on each product description page should net the best return when it comes to SEO.
• Obtaining linkbacks for a product site remains a difficult challenge, whereas a blog tends to receive linkbacks organically.

So the differences set this project apart from my normal marketing of a blog. I’m in the habit of building traffic to blogs utilizing blog community sites. I also venture into forums, using my site as a signature, and also answer questions on Yahoo! Answers with links to my site. So this project has me looking at marketing a site in a completely different way. Social networks will all but disappear with this site. There’s not going to be any Digg traffic or Stumble visitors to it. So how do I build traffic to it?

Think Outside the Box

There doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule. The Yahoo directory, DMOZ and others would be essential. The e-commerce site would need authority though. We need quality links from well ranked sites. One possibility could be wiki’s, AboutUs.org, WikiPedia (if the content was non-commercial), and others. I could still utilize Yahoo! Answers, but might have to branch out in the field of the e-commerce store to post comments on blogs and create connections with site owners.

I do own quite a few high PRs websites that have been around since the late 1990s. I’m fairly certain a link from one of these sites should benefit the site in the long run. I’m trying to stay positive, as the product niche for this store is saturated with big players and independent powerhouses.

I’m thinking of turning this SEO adventure into a series on this blog. Would this be something my readers would be interested in reading about?

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I’ve been wondering this recently. What makes a blog successful? Do you count the number of subscribers and measure that against other blog giants in the industry? Do you count the amount of money your blog makes? To answer this question, we first need to determine your blog’s purpose.

Why do you blog? Take a minute to think about it. I’ll wait.

Many may blog to vent, provide information, sell a product, advertise an idea, or simply to expound on hot topics in their particular niche. Now tell me – what does a succesful blog look like? Does it have high subscriber numbers? Does it have a sleek appearance? Does it nail down content on a regular basis? (What?)

 A blog’s success depends on our own definition of our blog. One blogger may be comfortable with a blog’s few readers, while the next blogger wants a thousand and one people to open their RSS feed daily. The difference is in perspective.

Do you look at your blog as a business?
If you do, for a moment consider it a brick and mortar store. The more customers that walk through the door, then the more potential sales you’ll make. Stores do things for a rhyme and a reason too. Don’t think the 80’s music softly pedaling you through the store aisles isn’t by design. It is. Grocery stores have an entire science behind placement of products on shelves, location, and all. They want you to find this, so you then realize you need something else across the store.

The same principles apply to a good blog. A person may come in looking for SEO tips, and realize they’ve found a goldmine and explore further into the store. The repeat customer is the RSS subscriber, so the RSS feed count does make a difference, when considering the success of a blog as a business. It doesn’t mean as much as constant traffic, but you need folks coming through the doors, right?

A blog as a personal outlet
This type of blog derives success from far different metrics. The personal outlet blog frees a person up to spout political rants, to editorialize on current events, to gossip, mudsling, parlay, and otherwise vent in a secure place. These blogs do become vastly popular. They sometimes even morph into blogs as a business. Once the traffic comes into the site, their ad space revenue starts to add up. These blogs take a liking to it, and often times the blogger will kick down cubicle walls to be at home. They have a pioneer spirit.  As soon as that happens, they rely on the business aspect, and the walls of a personal blog’s success crumble away as well.

In the beginning though, a personal blog’s metrics lies with the quality of writing. Like me, many of you have probably experienced the exuberance over RSS numbers, but the real challenge, and the real joy comes from the writing and the process. Blogging becomes a lifestyle. It’s success everyday when we interact, engage, and entertain strangers through an online medium. We are writers, poets, pranksters, and socialites. That’s the success of the personal blog. It’s a unifier and a societal lens.

So to gauge your blog’s success you should first consider your blog’s purpose. If you want to make money, then success may have to wait for dollars and readers to sign up. A personal blog finds success when it reaches a true voice, when the author finds themselves laying in bed with an idea too good to lose to sleep. They stretch, find a pad or laptop and jot it down for its birth on the web the next day.