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Effective use of Traffic Exchanges
Like them or love them, traffic exchanges always seem to get an opinion out of people. Some people can't see the point and others love them to death. Sure, a lot of the time you are only going to find other people trying to punt their opportunity in...
Find Out How Microsoft's Plans Could Make Your Subscribers Beg You for RSS Content!
Microsoft recently announced that they will be releasing a new browser version sometime this summer. The new browser version was to be released with Longhorn, the code name for their next operating system to replace Windows XP, but they decided that...
How to make your affiliate sales take off in a hurry
Affiliate programs are probably the easiest and simplest way to achieve business success online. Indeed there are many online entrepreneurs from all over the world making a very comfortable income from various affiliate programs. Yet there are...
Is It Possible To Make Money From Blogging?
Copyright 2005 Jugglingmum Do you have a Blog or Personal Online Journal? If the answer is yes, did you know that it’s possible to earn money from your Blog? I earn plenty from my own Blogspots – maybe not enough to think of retiring in the near...
Is Your Site A Rich Feast Or A Dogs Breakfast? Part 1 of 2
It had started out as a prank, a practical joke to play on some of her ostentatious yuppie friends. They had always had the last laugh at her expense and now it was to be her opportunity for revenge. Half an upturned can of Pal surrounded by...
Search Engine Crawlers and Dynamic Web Pages
There are misunderstandings and confusions in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world in regard to search engines indexing of dynamic web pages. It has been claimed that search engine spiders don't index/crawl dynamic web pages well. This...
Strategies to make your Blog More Interesting
Copyright 2005 Mal Keenan Putting up your business blog is an advantageous way of establishing your presence on web. It’s no longer just about putting plain texts up on your blog. With continuing stream of new software, publishing tools and...
The Basics of Making Money with Blogs And AdSense
Copyright 2005 Mal Keenan
Google AdSense is undoubtedly the most popular Pay Per Click (PPC) program in the industry today. By enrolling your site under the said program, AdSense will display a series of ads on your pages. You stand to earn every...
The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo
Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the last few months. The indexing robot, Yahoo!Slurp, has become erratic. For some sites, the robot will view all pages, but only add a few to the Yahoo database. For other sites, sub-domain...
Your Affiliate Business and Taxes
Starting a home-based business on the Internet is easy you say. You have your web page built, your affiliate links and you're ready to go. Not really, you need to make sure you have all your i's and t's crossed when it comes to taxes. Getting...
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Building eCommerce Websites that work - Part 3
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir
An interesting eCommerce success factor that isn't precisely overlooked, but which is often thought about more in terms of being a way of feeding the search engine spiders has to do with providing content. In a very real sense the customer's job is to consume. That's why you're in business.
Think in terms of providing the information your customers need to do their job of consuming. What does that mean? Consider what you sell. The content on your site needs to focus on your products - whatever they happen to be. Reviews and comparative information on the items available through your web site can help focus and direct your customer to what they need, want and can afford.
Too often eCommerce sites use only marginally relevant information as content - or content that may match the general theme of the site but has nothing to do with what's being sold, promoted, etc. That could be more or less adequate as spider food, but it isn't going to help your customers do their job of consuming your products.
The better you combine these two goals - informing your customers and feeding the spiders - the better you'll do at both. Irrelevant search listings are pretty much a waste of your bandwidth. What you want is highly targeted customers interested in what you're offering and since the search engines love focused content and integrated sites, make that work for you.
And I'm not suggesting blatant repetitive hyped up sales copy. You want to inform, compare, offer added information that will help focus your customers. Use your content to develop desire and provide comparative information on similar products at varying price levels. Remember: desire not need.
While we all need things - and while you may be convinced everyone absolutely needs your product - we mostly buy based on desire - because we want it. The better you do at turning that need into immediate desire, the better your site will perform.
Again, not a fevered sales pitch. That's likely to turn off a large number of customers. Examples, stories and carefully chosen (and real) testimonials can support the process, too. Using video and/or audio can have a dramatic impact. Let your customers draw the obvious conclusions.
Along with providing plenty of comparison and review data, good search facilities are essential for a large eCommerce site. This also means that if you use a
searchable product database that your keys and descriptions must be well-chosen and the links from search results to pages work smoothly and easily.
While we've talked earlier in this series about the importance of providing various ways to enhance the social aspect of your site, it's also important that customers be capable of using it without assistance. Never over complicate your site or your processes to the point that it's no longer obvious what to do to buy something (or complete whatever desired action you are focusing on).
A typical customer should be able to go from front page to product page to order page to thank you page easily and without hesitation or confusion. The simpler and cleaner the process, the better for you.
If you can manage it, test with 4 or 5 basically internet illiterate people. Watch carefully what they do, where they hesitate, what seems to cause confusion - but don't talk or help during the process. Then go over everything with them in detail working with your observations and their thoughts and feelings. Your site may be obvious to you, but is it obvious to anyone else?
And when you think you've covered anything, a few pairs of new eyes (or checking out your competitors' sites) can give you a whole new to-do list.
Your eCommerce site is an intentional business creation. Every aspect should be organized around what you want the site to do, what kind of visitors you want and what you want them to do. Everything on your site should be there for a specific reason that contributes to your goals for the site. And everything should be tested to be certain that it actually does contribute.
It's your site and your business so never take anything for granted, never assume something works if it can be tested. And never stop testing. With careful attention to detail and on-going testing you'll be able to make incremental improvements over time that will vastly improve the productivity of your eCommerce web site.
About the Author
Richard writes, teaches and consults on business presentations, eCommerce, site building and programming. Visit http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites for eCommerce resources and links and check http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites/blog for opinion and ideas.
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