What the New Small Business Plans Mean for You, the Business Owner

Posted in eCommerce January 31st, 2010 by admin - Comments (1)

As the economy slowly begins to bottom out, opening the way for improvement, there is one major point that seems to be being proven again and again: small businesses will be a major part of that recovery. Without an emphasis being placed on the smaller businesses that have suffered for years under the dominance of large (and often corrupt) banks and businesses, the job market will continue to slow, and the annual revenue will once again decline on a country-wide basis.

Because of this fact, those who watched President Obama’s address may have noticed that small businesses were a main focus of the direction of the way forward. Several plans have been put into play that will help small businesses once again prosper and become more focused in a new era of the job and business market. However, the opinions of how much these plans will help are mixed, with some feeling as though it will not be enough, and others saying that something is better than nothing. But what will it mean for you, the small business owner? Read more…

Exclude zenid query parameter from your Google Analytics to get better site reports

Posted in SEO Tips,Tips & Tricks January 31st, 2010 by admin - Be the first to comment

To track the customers and save their information, Zencart utilizes cookie and session. You will see Zencart usually automatically appends a random string to the end of your links on the very first page of your visit to your site.

For example, if you are not on your website now and you open it in a new window, you will the links look like this:

http://yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=products_all&zenid=asdsadlkadjlqwjdascdas

http://yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=specials&zenid=asdsadlkadjlqwjdascdas

If set up correctly, when you click on one of those links, on the next page load you will see all link appear without the zenid string. Also, if set up correctly, those links with zenid appended to them should never be displayed to search engine (check your settings under Admin-Configuration: Prevent spider sessions should be set to True).

However, that setting does not prevent zenid appears in some of your reports you get from Google Analytics however (assume that you use G.A). For example, if you check your “site overlay” you might be in for a surprise, most of your links might have a 0% click rate, and you know this cannot be true. If you look closer, however, you will discover that the zenid is in those links. This perhaps can be explained by 2 reasons:

1. Although zenid is never shown to search engine spiders, it does get shown to normal visitors for the reason given above.
2. In any case, the links with zenid are recorded by Google Analytics and since each customer is assigned a different zenid per visit session, the links then appear to be different links

http://yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=products_all&zenid=asdsadlkadjlqwjdascdas

http://yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=products_all&zenid=quheyiuahdkjasndkajoi

(from Google Analytics point of view, the 2 links above are totally different)

The cure to this is surprisingly easy. Google knows that some parameter(s) in your links should be ignored, and it allows you to do so by the Exclude query parameters setting which only takes a few minutes to do. For all Zencart store, zenid the one you MUST exclude, and depend on the customization you have done on your store you may decide to exclude some other params as well.

I hope this info will help you to use G.A more effectively in the future.

Basic HTML for startup business owners

Posted in Web design's Tips January 25th, 2010 by admin - Be the first to comment

Do You Need to Know HTML for a Business Website?

If you are like me when I first start your business and you try to handle anything you can to save your money, or if you are in charge of editing content of the site (even with the assistance of those What You See Is What You Get WYSIWYG text editors), basic knowledge of HTML is a must.

I’m not going into great details regarding html code here, W3C is a great place for you to learn all that for FREE. Please have a look at that page, at least just skim through it to get the basic ideas of how website “work” in general. Read more…

Simple Seo Url + Zencart news

Posted in News & Discussion January 24th, 2010 by admin - Be the first to comment

Recently some hosts have made a move to php 5.3x, this causes a bunch of problems for many Zencart store owners because ZC 1.3.8a and older versions of SSU are not compatible with php 5.3x.

If one day you find your website suddenly stops loading, first thing to do is to contact your host to see if they have made any recent changes on the server. If they upgraded to php 5.3x, you should go to Zencart and grab the patches for php 5.3x

For stores that are using SSU, we have also released a new version for SSU just a few hours ago which fixes compatibility issue with php 5.3x (this version also has some changes that should improve performance of SSU)

  1. Please download new version on eazyecommerce.com
  2. Please also upgrade module manager
  3. Make sure you clear up SSU cache after upgrading

The Basic Principles of Branding

Posted in Marketing January 22nd, 2010 by admin - Be the first to comment

Branding is one of the most important elements to any business. Without a brand you cannot create customer loyalty, which will keep your profits from flourishing. It is more beneficial to keep a customer than to find ten new ones, which should show you just how crucial establishing a brand really is. It will also make you recognizable in a crowd, which will draw in new customers that will, in turn, become loyal shoppers of your product or service.

But it is one thing to know what branding is; it is another to know how to do it. The main thing is knowing the principles behind it, so you can begin creating a plan for marketing your business. Each one is another step that you have to check off before you know you are making the progress necessary to becoming a recognizable brand. Read more…

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