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...

Can’t login to your Zencart admin? Here is the solution

Posted in Tips & Tricks August 22nd, 2009 by admin - Comments (2)

Today we installed a new Zencart for our client at obtainingmoksha.com and we ran into a very annoying problem: we keeps getting redirected back to the admin login page without any error at all. Thinking it’s the usual cache error of Zencart, I cleared out the browser’s cache. That didn’t help. At this point, we suspect it might be a session error, so we use the Fix cache key module which save us many times before. The cache path is now updated but we still can’t login @_@.

At the same time, on the front page we also had this error (with Zencart debug turned on)

Fatal error: Call to a member function add_current_page() on a non-object in /path…./autoload_func.php on line 90

Online Business Basics: Overcoming Failure

Posted in eCommerce August 20th, 2009 by admin - Comments (2)

The dot come bubble

The online business boom really garnered a ton of media attention about 10 years ago when “dot com” was one of the most heard terms on television and in publications like Newsweek. That type of online business was completely unexplored territory and definitely had its ups and downs. Today, the online business world is a different place but is especially ripe for the picking if you have the drive and motivation to make it happen. It sounds scary but the number of people who attempt to form an online business compared to the number that actually succeed is extremely low. Some circles will swear as many as 90% will fail.

Zencart SEO Problem – Is your site indexed?

Posted in Tips & Tricks August 17th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

Has your store been open for months and still not get listed in search engines? Do you see a sudden drop in search traffic after updating your cart or changing your store template? Perhaps Google is not indexing your Zencart store?

Problem 1: incorrect robots meta tag

You may be a victim of “noindex” misuse!

Here is how to check:

First, go to your store, right click and choose “view source” or “view page source”
See if you can find this string: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”/>. The string is usually located just above the tag </head>
See if the string above appears on the main page on your store

The string above is telling search engines to avoid indexing and thus listing your site on the search results.

When good looks do not equal good sales

Posted in eCommerce August 17th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

According to a new research conducted by Bianca Price PhD of University of South Australia, the power of “gorgeous girls” at the counter has some very clear limits. Regardless of whether or not the product was related to appearance (for example, a mobile phone compared to mascara) if the female customer perceived the staff member to be better looking than her, she was less likely to purchase the product.

Good looks don't convert to sales?

This may raise some eyebrows but it’s something I suspected all along (I never liked salemen who are better looking than me :p). How does this apply to online selling, you ask? Well, there are several take home lessons from this research for online marketers and business owners:

Zencart canonical link – will it really help?

Posted in Zencart August 17th, 2009 by admin - Comments (5)

Google has announced the use of canonical link tag not too long ago, and other search engines also follow this move. Some of you might have never heard about this term before so I will give you a very brief definition here:

Because of the use of dynamic urls, one single web page can have more than 1 valid urls (address) pointing to it. Google as well as other search engines will more than likely pick of these links as official link and the others are flagged as duplicated content. The problem is that we are not sure which link will be picked. The canonical tag allows you to do just that: to tell THE LINK you want to use as the official one.

Online Business – What you need to know to start an online business

Posted in eCommerce August 16th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

online business

There can be no doubt that the online sector is the largest growing business arena today. Almost every company, large or small, is attempting to establish a profitable and efficient online presence. For some organisations, this means the creation of an ecommerce site, for others it simply means setting up a professional website, to act as a store window. However a company decides it can best make use of the World Wide Web; there are a whole host of challenges to be overcome. Below we will take a look at some of the issues face by a business wishing to establish itself online, and discuss how these can be overcome.

How to easily edit your Zencart template

Posted in Tips & Tricks August 13th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

In this post I will show you how to use the 3 most powerful tools to tweak and edit your Zencart! Please note that I make some foolish assumptions here: I assume you know a bit about php and are familiar with HTML and CSS.

First, if you have never used Firefox, it’s time to get the fox
Once you have Firefox installed on your computer, you can now grab the bug

Zencart SSL/TLS – do you really need it?

Posted in eCommerce,Tips & Tricks August 12th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

Ehh? SSL? What is it?

SSL: Secure Sockets Layer (this is the predecessor of TLS)
TLS: Transport Layer Security

What are they: cryptographic protocols that provide security and data integrity for communications over networks such as the Internet. TLS and SSL encrypt the segments of network connections at the Transport Layer end-to-end. (wikipedia)

Why is it important (technically): The TLS protocol allows client/server applications to communicate across a network in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. TLS provides endpoint authentication and communications confidentiality over the Internet using cryptography. (please view the wikipedia link above for more info)

Starting an online business – Tips from an owner

Posted in eCommerce August 10th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

The Trials and Successes of an Online Business

I have been the proud owner of an online business for just under three years now, and it hasn’t always been easy. In fact, I would go so far as to say that until recently it hardly seemed worth the huge efforts I was putting into keeping my business afloat. But now that my life has finally settled down, and I have been able to start bringing in regular profits, I can say that the dues I paid were well worth it.

But that doesn’t mean you have to go through the same trials I did. If you are thinking about starting an online business, or you have been running one with less than stellar results, you don’t have to learn the hard way by trial and error. Instead, you can learn from my mistakes, and follow these guidelines to getting started, and running a successful, profitable online business, no matter what niche you settle into.

Speed up your Zencart development by using Single Listing Template

Posted in Add Ons August 8th, 2009 by admin - Be the first to comment

Are you spending too much time on your Zencart’s template? Zencart currently uses different listing template file for different listings:

For homepage you have at least 3 main listing:

Special products
Featured products
New products

For other listing pages you have

Category listing
New product page
Special product page
Featured product page

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