eCommerce News & Resources by oscommerceuniversity.com

SEO is a dominating concern among store owners.  So much so that for many site operators it is almost the ONLY thing they focus on. In her article SEO – Is It All You Need? Michelle Symonds challenges this flawed assumption, and offers a number of other  issues which should be considered or addressed by store owners.  Those include Social Media, Website Design, Traffic Analysis, EMail marketing, and Quality Data Capture.

Social Media:

Ms Symonds issues a call to action here, suggesting that store owners embrace Facebook, Twitter, blogging and social bookmarking.  Unfortunately, she fails to justify this based on any useful metric, then calls for the use of ghost writers or ‘social media marketers’ .  This is hardly ethical given the fundamental premise that social media is based on relationships between people.  Still – Social Media marketing offers a viable alternative to search engine marketing.

Website Design:

Look-and-feel, usability and functionality are indeed key factors which can make or break a web store.   Ms. Symonds point about including a call to action is certainly important.  I would go further.   Make sure your account creation and checkout routines function smoothly and efficiently, maintaining data accuracy throughout the process.   Test them multiple times, checking that required data elements are actually required by the site software, and that mistakes in data entry are handled gracefully – with the user being able to correct those mistakes and still complete the process.  Bottom line – it does not matter how effective your call to action is, or even whether one exists, if the cart can’t perform its tasks accurately and completely.

Take care that usability does not compromise security.  Effectively layered security often requires a few extra clicks in each process.  They’re well worth it.   Trust, or the lack thereof, is a huge factor in sales resistance.    If cutting clicks leaves your site more vulnerable to penetration (and if often does!) its not worth it.  Nobody trusts a site that spouts malware, and disclosure of personal information by crackers can cost you far more than you’ll gain by cutting one or two clicks per page.

Traffic Analysis:

Ms. Symonds makes some very good points about using Traffic Analysis to drive marketing activities.  But traffic analysis can also be used to monitor the security environment.  This requires that you know your software, and be aware of what is normal in the URL’s used to access it.   Traffic Analysis tools such as Google Analytics can also be used to CONTINOUSLY monitor your site for flaws in critical processes such as the checkout and account creation funnels.  Why wait until your cashflow is completely gone to realize your cart has technical issues?  Traffic analysis is about much more than marketing, and it is time the eCommerce industry realized that.

Email Marketing:

Ms Symonds makes the case for Email Marketing as a means to retain existing customers, reaching potential new customers and establishing brand recognition.  All well and good, and I’ve seen many store owners do quite well with this.  But, don’t neglect the opportunities to establish trust by using safe email practices such as using client certificates to verify the originating address, ssl certificates to secure account URL’s and un-obscured cart native urls to route clients to the information you want to share with them.

SEO is important stuff indeed – but site operations optimization reigns supreme.

I’ve been subjected to a bit of distraction lately. The office has been sinking.

Well, not literally sinking, you understand, but definitely moist. It began about a month ago when my better half noticed moisture in the carpet. A lot of moisture.

This drew our attention. It was surrounding a book case so we scurried to save the contents, move the furniture and begin the diagnostic process. The water was clear, which thankfully let out sewer blockage as a potential cause. Unfortunately, we were unable to immediately rule out groundwater leakage, a broken water pipe or act of God.

It happened on a weekend of course, immediately after the complex staff left for the day. The remainder of the weekend was spent soaking hydrogen dioxide from the rug, and hoping for a cessation in the persistent precipitation. Ok, constant rain, damn it. It took three days to get a thorough examination finished. This involved partially demolishing a wall, revealing one small hole in a pipe. It had to be the main fresh water inlet for the entire building and it was. By this time, the water was starting to rise – and primary line or not, I was doubtful that the small leak we had located was sufficient to account for the amount of water soaking the floor of the center of our connubial bliss. A plumber was summoned, but by this time another weekend had arrived, and of course they were unable to locate the cut off valve for the building. This ran to another 3 days of delay while they arranged first to locate said cut off valve, determine it was nonfunctional and arrange to turn off the water for the entire complex. This to repair a leak less than an sixteenth of an inch in diameter in a two inch pipe. Oh joy.

We were advised not to expect immediate relief from our inundation (Latin inundatus, past participle of inundare, see water) - it was expected that water would continue to seep from soaked dry wall for another (you guessed it), three days. This though the dry wall itself was largely, well – dry. I informed our plumber and the maintenance supervisor that I doubted this strongly based on my extensive experience in nursing urological disorders in a tone that was dry if not rye.

Three days later, the river still ran. In fact, it ran rather more strongly than before. Again, I visited the maintenance supervisor and issued him a situation advisory. Once more he inspected the source of our fountain and again, dry wall suffered the indignant abuse necessary to fully expose the source of the flow. While moisture was visible, and the presence of the leak was clear, the source remained elusive A consultant was called in – and the culprit finally localized. It was beneath the concrete. More calls to plumbers, and bids solicited. Not good news. In this southern town, obtaining a bid alone can take 15 to 30 days. Still, not all news was bad. The persistent nature of the issue finally drew the attention of the complex manager, who revealed to her new maintenance supervisor the availability of a carpet extractor and blowers. The situation began to improve.

So, as I write this entry I am listening to the tune of a high speed blower which attempts in vain to dry my soaked floor coverings and contemplating just how much I have accomplished in the past month despite my frequent towel soaking and spinning evolutions and contemplating search engine optimization. Why? One of my better events of the past month was getting to chat with Pitstop (Darel), a denizen of the CRE Loaded forums with a significant interest in SEO techniques and a number of opinions which closely match my own. We have begun a series of posts in the universities forums to address this topic, and will be referring to this entry from time to time to point out some important SEO do’s and don’ts.

Check the forum link CRE Loaded Hints and Tips section for more SEO commentary from both Daren and myself, and have a dry day.