eCommerce and Marketing News & Tips

Duplicated content - the Myth is busted by Google

Google has been on the warpath to dispel some of the rumors that have been circulating the net about...

Duplicated content – the Myth is busted by Google

Posted in SEO News and Analysis September 22nd, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

Google has been on the warpath to dispel some of the rumors that have been circulating the net about their policy towards duplicate content. Not only have various videos been made to address this issue, but several have been created to specifically explain what the real policy towards websites that post duplicate content for the sake of increased Google rankings.

Greg Grothaus of the Search Quality Team is one of the many members of Google that has taken the offensive on this issue, and posted a new video on his team’s YouTube channel to explain the difference. It gives a great, simple explanation about the differences between duplicate content and spam, and denies some of the information that has been posted online.

Designing Tips For Your Business Website – Part II

Posted in Web design's Tips September 20th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

In our last installment we began discussing the tips that can help you create a successful and attractive website, which will meet all of your customers needs. Those first two tips were keeping it simple, and sticking with a plan. Both of these are rather general, so today I would like to discuss a few targeted tips that can help you to make sure that you have as effective and helpful an ecommerce site as you possibly can.

Bobkatgifts.net website design review

Posted in Web design's Tips September 14th, 2009 by admin - Comments (2)

Given the same lines of products and price ranges, which elements make one store a success while the other a failure? Besides services and such, researches have shown us that the way you arrange elements in your store has direct effect on the conversion rate (in other words, your bottom line). While there is no foolproof guide which can be applied to every situation, there are lessons we can learn from trials and errors. In an attempt to find out the better way to design website for high conversion, we decide to review online stores on our blog to find out what to do and what to avoid. Please keep in mind that all these are our subjective opinions and we would love to hear from you!

This week, we will review Bobkatgifts.net, the owner of the website has allowed us to post a public review of his website here.

Keeping Customers Pleased With Your Service

Posted in Marketing September 10th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

Unless you are in some industries where you wouldn’t want the customers return to you or have them tell good things about you, keeping customers happy is one of the utmost important tasks a business has to do. (BTW, if you know any industry falls into the above industries please let me know. Even the ‘death-care” industry cares about their customers).

customer service

Viral Marketing & Link Bait Basic: Part I

Posted in SEO News and Analysis September 5th, 2009 by admin - Comments (2)

Over the last decade the Internet has become the primary resource for laying the groundwork and expanding on business principles. It is for this reason that more people are turning to various marketing methods that will help them compete with the millions of businesses that cover every edge of the endless World Wide Web. This 10-week article series will be dedicated to going over the uses, basics, and benefits of two popular online business models: viral marketing and link baiting.

We will start today by looking at what these two marketing methods are, and how they can be used to promote a company, product, service, or website. From there we will explore different ways of using these methods every week, as well as finding examples of when they are used. By the end you should be close to an expert in the world of SEO, and able to begin applying these principles to your own site.

Zencart + Ajax made easy (part 3)

Posted in Zencart September 1st, 2009 by admin - Comments (13)

As an update to the long delayed series Zencart Ajax Made easy, I have uploaded and make the package available to you all.
First of all, this whole package doesn’t contain any specific javascript plugin itself, it only:

receives the “request” from the client’s browser,
decides whether the request is Ajax request or not
returns content on json format if the request is Ajax.

Designing Tips For Your Business Website – Part I

Posted in Web design's Tips August 31st, 2009 by admin - Comments (5)

The business world is, by definition, competitive. But when you are dealing with ecommerce you have to expect an added level of intensity in that competition. The Internet has created a never ending resource by way of online business, and many have moved to take advantage of that. This means that web entrepreneurs have to go that extra mile in attracting and keeping a customer base. The first step to achieving this is through effective web design.

You would be shocked to see how often an online business uses shoddy design and a bad layout, and so loses the trust of potential buyers. This three-part series, updated weekly, will be dedicated to ensuring that you don’t make the same mistake. These tips should help you, the business owner, to design an effective website that put off the right kind of image, and attract the customers your company needs to thrive and expand.

Zencart, is it time to move on?

Posted in News & Discussion August 26th, 2009 by admin - Comments (28)

Last year, the Zencart developer team has announced a new Zencart version 2.0 to be released by the end of the year, every user was excited with the news. More than 9 months passed since then, and now it is “you’ll get it when you get it”. Kim at zen-fu.com told me:

A client said to me “All this secrecy is very uncomfortable, this is my business were talking about…”

As I have put it before, Zencart is an open source project developed by a closed team, the people inside the team don’t want to open up to ideas and opinions from people who use their products. We don’t know exactly what’s going on, who is working on what, and when can we expect things to be done to plan ahead. All this gets to your nerve over time, especially if you have worked on it long enough (like me).

Using canonical link tag on Zencart

Posted in News & Discussion August 26th, 2009 by admin - Comments (1)

Just a few days ago I posted an article about canonical link tag and how it helps your zencart stores, in that article I also warned about certain misunderstandings regarding how canonical link tag works and how should it be used. I later took a step further and brought up this question on seomoz.org, a rather well known and trusted source for seo info, below is the quoted question and answer for those who are interested.

Move your Zencart store to a new domain/subfolder – SEO Tip

Posted in SEO Tips,Tips & Tricks August 25th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

This is a very common issue, as much as you would try to avoid doing it, sometimes you have to move your zencart folder somewhere else, either to a new subfolder or to a new domain. In such cases, it is very important to redirect all visits to the old links to the new locations.

Below is a nice snippet that will help you accomplish the dirty job.

<?php

// index.php on old site
// Get the requested page and redirect to new site url
// from skipwater - yellow1912 - gjh42 20081213
$new_domain = "www.mynewsite.com"; // if you do not change domain, simply enter the current domain here
/**
* example 1:
* site: http://www.mynewsite.com -> $new_store_path = "";
*
* example 2:
* site: http://www.mynewsite.com/sub1/sub2 -> $new_store_path = "sub1/sub2/";
*
* example 3:
* site: http://www.mynewsite.com/sub1 -> $new_store_path = "sub1/";
*/
$new_store_path = "store/";
// do not edit code below
$request_type = ((isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && strtolower($_SERVER['HTTPS']) == 'on') || (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] == '1') || (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_BY']) && strstr(strtoupper($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_BY']),'SSL')) || (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST']) && strstr(strtoupper($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST']),'SSL')) || (isset($_SERVER['SCRIPT_URI']) && strtolower(substr($_SERVER['SCRIPT_URI'], 0, 6)) == 'https:') || (isset($_SERVER['SERVER_PORT']) && $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] == '443' ) ) ? 'http' : 'https';
$qstring = ($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] != '') ? '?'.$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] : '';
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header("Location: {$request_type}://{$new_domain}/{$new_store_path}{$qstring}");

Place the snippet above in your oldsite/path-to-zencart/index.php (you should rename the current index.php to index.php.back and create a new index.php file just for this purpose).

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