E-commerce tips by Steve Jobs

As many other Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+ users I felt sad and a bit shocked by today’s news. Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple. It is truly an end of an era for Apple and to all of us Mac, IPhone, IPad and IPod lovers.  Everyone can learn from this almost magical CEO, here is how you can improve your e-commerce using his methods:

Design

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.”

Creativity

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

Business

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

Life

“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Here is one of the greatest speeches Steve Jobs had, Stanford graduation:

E-commerce tips by Steve Jobs

mage-shop.com, arrowhitech.com

Top 10 Things Customers Expect from Your Online Store

Oneupweb has recently put out some interesting research which includes the top 10 consumer expectations that influence purchase decisions.

Let’s take a closer look at these items:

Pricing/shipping information clearly stated – 95.5%

No surprises here, as several studies have found that “sticker shock” (the unexpected inflation of final price due to shipping and taxes) is the number one reason for cart abandonment.

Crutchfield does a good job presenting not just the price but shipping, warranty and servicing prices on this product page:

Looks credible and trustworthy – 76.5%

If you’re not a household name, you can improve your site’s “trustworthiness” by having a clean and professional design (yes, first impressions count). Security badges, store ratings and a mailing address on your contact page can also help.

You must also avoid things that scare off your customers like expired SSL certificate warning messages (even the largest sites can fall victim to this).

Product displayed on homepage – 70.8%

Most online stores show products on the home page, but not every site. For example, Abercrombie and Fitch:

The study does not specify whether customers prefer to see individual products merchandised on the home page (such as bestsellers, new arrivals, featured items, etc) or simply be shown product (in a banner, rotating Flash presentation, or other creative). But when you consider that the goal of the home page is to keep the customer interested and win a click deeper into the site, it makes sense that the customers would like some idea on what to explore on your site without fudging with menus or search boxes.

Just showing product is not enough. The way you design and merchandise your home page has an impact. If you’ve been reading Get Elastic for a while, you will recall some A/B tests we did for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store. One test looked at home page design. We actually found better results showing categorized mini-menus above featured products. Bounce rate, conversion rate and average order value all improved with the test version.

Visually appealing – 66.7%

Similar to looking trustworthy, consumers also consider the look and feel of your site. There are several low-cost tools to help you gauge whether your site is aesthetically pleasing (using real people’s feedback!)

Total cost calculator (shipping, tax, etc) – 59.1%

Showing taxes and shipping before checkout will likely reduce checkout abandonment. But don’t expect it to dramatically boost conversion rate. Rather, more people will abandon before checkout if the additional charges are too high. Customers appreciate you providing these tools, so you do win some warm-fuzzy points.

Search function – 48.2%

The larger your product catalog, the more important site search is to your ecommerce success. While it’s rare to find an ecommerce site without a search box, it happens, even among some of the most famous brands.

It’s not just the presence of a site search box that matters, it’s also the functionality of search. Web users are becoming more comfortable with Google’s “suggest” feature, the search engine will suggest terms as the user types. More and more e-tailers are adopting autocomplete tools to improve usability and relevance of search results and reduce “zero results found” occurrences. It’s possible users may expect suggestions, and even product results, as they type, rather than after they hit “submit.”

Search result usability is also important. Customers expect filtered navigation to further refine results by attributes that are meaningful to them (category, price, star ratings, color, size, etc).

Killer search result pages provide filters, the ability to sort results, prices, stock availability, large thumbnail images, product description snippets and add-to-cart/add-to-wishlist buttons.

Privacy statement – 45.5%

Though the legalese can be overwhelming, some people do look for privacy policies (though they may not read them). It’s important not just to have one but to make it easy to find wherever the customer experiences “privacy anxiety” on your site.

Onsite customer reviews/testimonials – 40.9%

There are plenty of studies that tout the popularity of ratings and reviews with customers. Reviews reduce the risk of making a bad purchase, and show an online seller is trustworthy when negative reviews appear.

Review content can also help your search engine rankings as a wider variety of keyword phrases appear on your pages than your product description alone (provided your reviews do not appear in a frame that is not read by search engines).

Testimonials are not as common (and not always as believable since only the glowing testimonials are published), but they can give the customer a bit more confidence in transacting with you if you’re not a big brand. Marketing Experiments has tips for using testimonials effectively.

Online customer service (live chat) – 32.5%

Not only can live support help customers figure out your site, locate products or ask questions, one study found that 76% of customers wanted to chat about checkout problems, which could prevent cart abandonment.

Live chat can be reactive, where a clear call-to-chat appears on your site, and the customer initiates the conversation, or it can be proactive, where the system triggers a chat invitation based on user behavior.

Links to social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) – 22.7%

I was surprised to see that over 1 in 5 consumers expect to see social sharing tools on a commercial site. I can’t imagine the absence of social links would deter someone from making a purchase. Perhaps this stat is the result of how the question was worded. Today’s customers might expect to see these links because so many sites have jumped on the social network bandwagon, but that doesn’t mean they use them or are more likely to purchase because of them.

Though social sharing buttons increase the likelihood the product will be evangelized by your visitors, your site can also take a performance hit (as some have found with the Facebook Like button). This may not be worth it, as we know that site speed is one of the most critical factors in bounce rate, customer satisfaction, loyalty and conversion. (Fast page loads was an item I believe is missing from this questionnaire, it should be #1 or #2!)

Do you agree with this study? Think #10 is way out of left field? What important elements of the sales process was missed (perhaps omitted from the questionnaire?) Speak your mind in the comments!

Read more: arrowhitech.com, mage-shop.com

5 Awesome Simple Steps To Find Your SEO RankScore

The aim of this post is to give you a gauge of the most important SEO metric for your website – your search engine rankings. Often, we find ourselves searching for our keywords on Google to see where we rank. That gives us a binary result – a ‘yes/no answer’ i.e. you’re either ranking well or not. But while performing this periodic ritual, we miss recording something more valuable. And what’s that?

Imagine you’re playing a game – and all your rankings in that game are put up on a scoreboard, next to your competition. The score-keeper runs some calculations on the rankings, and comes up with a total score for each contender. Those scores are then put up on a totem pole (a pole where ranks are put in order from top to bottom), so you know exactly who’s winning & who’s losing. You then track this score over-time to witness your improvement (or decline); and make changes to your SEO strategy when necessary. Such a score would arm you with precise knowledge of your competitive rankings & tell you where you stand on Google in one go, wouldn’t you agree?

That’s the concept behind RankScore, and that’s why I feel it is important to share it with you. By the end of this post, you’ll be able to determine your own RankScore (with the help of a simple Excel sheet), and know the RankScore of your competitors too. You ready? Let’s jump right into it then.

Step 1: List your Keywords

In the first step, simply list down all your keywords together (preferably in an excel sheet). In the next column, write down your website name/URL, and highlight the whole column.

Tip: the more keywords you enter, the more awesome analysis you’ll get

Step 2: Know your Competition

This is important! You need to know who you’re competing against. If you already know your top 3 competitors (atleast), skip this step. If you don’t, perform a search on Google for your main keyword, and note down the top 3 competitors. Now, enter them next to your website like this:

Step 3: Find thy Standing

Where do you rank on Google? More importantly, where does your competition rank? Let’s get searching! To do this, you can either use free tools available online that allow you to check your rank on Google, or do it manually yourself. What we’re trying to do here is fill in that sheet with actual data that can be used for our analysis in the next step. The final version may look something like this:

Step 4: Analyze

Done checking your rankings for all keywords? Great! It’s time for your hard-work to pay off! The first thing you should do is find out your average rankings. This will tell you the exact number of #1’s, Top 10s, Top 30s & Top 100s you have. The formula I use to calculate this is:

=COUNTIF(B3:B6, “<=10″)

The above formula will tell you the number of Top 10s that are present within a keyword cell range. To put this in your sheet, simply change the B3:B6 to your keyword cell range, and “<=10″ to whatever criteria you want to apply (for eg: “=1″ for to find the number of Position 1s).

Next, let’s run a formula to get the actual rankScore. For the sake of simplicity, here’s a formula you can use right away:

=(COUNTIF(B3:B6, “=1″)*5)+(COUNTIF(B3:B6, “<=3″)*4)+(COUNTIF(B3:B6, “<=10″)*3.5)+(COUNTIF(B3:B6, “<=30″)*2.5)+(COUNTIF(B3:B6, “<=50″)*1.5)+(COUNTIF(B3:B6, “<=70″)*1)+(COUNTIF(B3:B6, “<=100″)*0.5)

Put this formula below all your rankings and replace the “B3:B6” with the range of your keyword cells. This formula basically counts all your rankings, gives a specific score to each position range (for eg: 5 points if you are #1 for a keyword), and then sums it up for all keywords. There it is, your RankScore! This is how it all looks at my end:

Step 5: Take Action!

Yep, about time! Now that you know where you stand, it’s time to think about your future steps & the action you’re going to take on them. If you have a lower score vis-à-vis your competition, change your SEO strategy. For more insight, compare your averages too (your number of #1s, Top 10s etc.). If you fare great on both these aspects, great job – be proud of yourself!

Read more: arrowhitech.com, mage-shop.com

Magento: Module testing and integration methodology

At the moment, Magento has dozens of module vendors with hundreds of different modules. Each of the vendors have their own methodology and coding standards that often clashes with another module from some other vendor. In order to have a stable environment, there are some steps that you could take before transferring your freshly obtained third party module to the production server.

The first rule of dealing with the modules is that there is no “out of the box and working” installation. Magento is built in a way that gives developers a lot of freedom to shape it as they see fit. The module you have purchased might not have any bugs and most likely will work on the default installation right after you install it, but how will it interact with other previously installed modules? Or some custom code you have added? You’ll most likely agree that this is something that you might want to check.

How NOT to do it

Imagine you have a blank project in front of you. You have defined functionalities you will need to cover and decided to get a certain amount of modules from the market in order to cover them. The worst thing you could do is install them all at once and run the tests afterwards. This is a reliable way to make such a mess with your Magento installation that you will end up with a system that is very difficult, if at all possible, to debug. Yes, it might look as a shortcut that could save you some time you should be spending on proper testing, but you will end up having to wipe everything out and start from scratch much more often than not.

What should be done

If your modules are stored in archives, do not unpack multiple modules directly to your Magento installation at once. The obvious reason is that you will be automatically starting multiple module installation the next time you open admin panel. The not so obvious one: If two modules are using the namespace fallback mechanism to override the same core class, you will be forced either to overwrite a file or cancel extraction. The first option will wreck the first module that used namespace override. The second method will leave you with partially extracted archive and a task to manually pick and delete files that were extracted in order to start over. Ideally, module producers should avoid using the “app/code/local/Mage/…” type of overrides, but sadly it is not the case. Always extract the archives in separate folders somewhere on your computer (other than Magento’s folder) and run a quick check to see if there are direct file conflicts. (Exta tip: use version control system of your choice.)

Install each module separately. Always run through the whole process of module installation, including clearing cache and resetting session by logging out and back in your Magento admin panel after each individual installation. Even if a module is built on best programming practices, chances are that you will not be able to use it until you do this. Having your session and cache clean for the next module installation can prevent unnecessary issues during the installation process.

Get familiar with module’s documentation There are hundreds of modules out there. You are not expected to know the details about each one of them and what they are supposed to do, how are they supposed to do it and what should not be expected as a feature. Knowing the exact intended functionality of a module will help you to better understand how it can be used, how it can be modified to fit your needs and will help you in the potential debugging process. This step will also help you define what exactly should be tested before completing the integration.

Configure the module in the admin panel… repeatedly. This will help you define the exact configuration for the module as well as test different settings. Some modules are built in a way that you will need to find an exact configuration that will allow it to function without clashing with other modules. This step is especially important for modules that are using AJAX calls on the same page in frontend – like some AJAX based layered navigation and AJAX based add to cart with lightbox. It is also important for modules that are playing with URLs. Testing to confirm that each of the module’s key settings are working is also useful, since it will allow you to better pinpoint a bug or a conflict later, during the development.

Perform a quick code and database inspection. Some of the module producers out there are not following the best practices and standards in developing modules for Magento. We have seen situations where even core files are modified by the module, which is something that should be avoided at all costs. These cases are rare and are usually linked to just a few producers, but it will not hurt to check anyway. Take a look at the overwrites in the files and overrides in the config.xml and detect potential conflicts with other installed modules. Do a quick inspection on database modifications done by the module as well.

Write down any potential bugs, missing features, issues and conflicts and add module’s name to the note. You should also remember that even if everything went well during your testing process, code and database inspection and configuration, you might still get some bugs later in development. It’s good to know previous issues you had during the installation and testing of the module as it can help you define the source of the current ones.

Read more about Magento: mage-shop.com, arrowhitech.com

5 SEO Mistakes To Be Careful Of

When I first started building websites of my own many moons ago, I read almost everything I could lay my hands on about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I could foresee the importance of search engines then and wanted to be ahead of competition. Soon, I knew by heart the methods needed to improve my websites’ search engine rankings by leaps and bounds, or so I thought.

Unfortunately, not all my websites were able to achieve great SEO as well as I had desired. Some websites were ranked pretty high and were sitting on the first page of search engine results for years; while others did not even make it to page two. Looking back, I saw that I had committed countless mistakes in my quest to SEO my websites. And through the years, I had learned from my mistakes and had managed to put these websites back on track, though it did take some time. Today, I have put together a list of 5 common SEO mistakes to be careful of, that I would be sharing with you, so you don’t have to learn it the hard way like I did.

Mistake #1: Wrong Keywords

Choosing the appropriate keywords is the most important part of the SEO process and yet the most common SEO mistake ever. Most webmasters, regardless of beginners or experts, commit the crime of applying keywords that THEY think best suit the website, instead of what keywords the search engine users pick to look for information offered by these websites. Most of them failed to realize that their keywords are not necessarily the ones that their targeted readers choose to search with. So do ensure that you do keywords research first and one way of doing so is through Google’s free Google Keyword Tool.

A tip here is to concentrate on keywords that have lesser competition and higher monthly searches. This way, you get less competitive sites but comparatively higher traffic, thus elevating your chances of ranking high in the results page.

Mistake #2: Keywords Saturation

I’m sure you have come across some sites which seemed to be saturated with the same keywords. Some webmasters believe that by stuffing the website with the keywords over and over again, the search engines would be able to detect them better. While this may hold some truth few years ago, it is not the case these days. In fact, most popular search engines today would penalize websites that have excessive keywords and poor content.

Regardless of whether it was done intentionally or unintentionally, cramming keywords in the websites or articles should be avoided. Do ensure that you produce quality articles and not quantity keywords only!

Mistake #3: Duplicating Content

Seen an article in another website and think that it’s so well written that you are tempted to just “borrow” it for your website? Don’t even think about it. Not only would search engines drop your site from being indexed but you would also be committing the ultimate crime in writing i.e. plagiarism. It is not worth the trouble.

You may be able to get away with it once or twice but what happens after that? You have to think long term and you definitely have to put in the effort.

It is not easy to come up with quality articles and sometimes you may encountered writer’s block but do persevere through it and your readers will come to appreciate it. So will the search engines.

Mistake #4: Not Doing Any Site-keeping

Like housekeeping, you have to consistently monitor and manage your website’s SEO progress. This is because search engines are changing their algorithms every so often and in order to maintain your high ranking, you would need to constantly put in SEO efforts besides updating your websites.

Mistake #5: Using Black Hat Techniques

Most people are tempted by the less-effort and quick-result offered by black hat SEO techniques like invisible text, doorway pages and overstuffed unrelated keywords. These are short-term and therefore, should be avoided. Bear in mind that search engines are improving their techniques too and will heavily penalize websites found to be using black hat techniques. Do not every use any black hat SEO techniques!

Read more about Magento: www.arrowhitech.com

From: hellboundbloggers.com

Magicento – PhpStorm plugin for Magento development

This post is intended for all Magento developers who use PhpStorm as their IDE. It’s about Magicento – free PhpStorm plugin for Magento developers.

Features in Magicento:

1. Goto

Magicento extends PhpStorm goto functionality in a way that you can now use goto also for factory methods and templates. You can go to destination class from factory method by using middle click (Ctrl+click, Ctrl+B).

Also, at the same way, you can go to any phtml template from layout xml file.

Clicking at any Mage: dispatchEvent call brings you to observer definition for corresponding event.

2. Class recognition for objects 

You can use Alt+M (Option+M) to assign class for certain object that is defined through factory method. That is very useful for code completion.

3. Creating modules

Click Alt+M (Option+M) -> Create Module anywhere in a file to save time while creating Magento modules.

I hope this post will be useful for all Magento developers that use PhpStorm.

http://www.mage-shop.com, http://www.arrowhitech.com/

Magento SEO: How To Optimize A Magento Product Detail Page

Product detail pages are critical for ecommerce sites. They are also the ones Google and other search engines have the most trouble with.

While Magento provides some basic search-engine-optimization capabilities out of the box, search engines still face challenges when crawling the pages of a Magento-powered storefront. This article will focus on the product detail pages. It is the first in a series where I will review the SEO changes you can do to a Magento setup. The idea is to make it easier for the search engines to find, index and rank the pages — without alienating your users. These detailed SEO changes will dramatically improve the search performance of Magento product detail pages, making them much more effective at doing their job. In subsequent articles, I will go over the changes to other important pages like main category pages, sub-categories, internal search pages, etc.

What Should We Optimize?

There are two classes of SEO elements that need to be optimized on any given page: Those that the user can see on the page and those that primarily the search engine bots can see. The first we call “user visible” and the second we call “machine visible.”

User-visible elements. The user-visible elements are everything a person can see both on the product detail page and in the search engine results page. Examples of these are the breadcrumbs, the main navigation, the layered navigation, and the product description.

Machine-visible elements. Machine-visible elements are what the crawlers see behind the scenes in the source code. It’s where we should start our SEO work. Examples of these are rich snippet markup, search friendly video markup, and meta data.

It’s fairly common to see developers who forget about users when making SEO changes to a site. They’ll change the title tag and make it a long string of keywords separated by commas, but forget that’s the “enticing” message they will present to users — in search engine results — to motivate them to click further. To do the job right, you have to make all of the SEO changes while keeping the site intuitive and usable.

What Are We Trying to Accomplish?

The main goal is getting more traffic and sales. But in order to do so, we need to look at the critical intermediate steps.

1. Increase crawling. If Googlebot can’t find a product detail page, it won’t rank. We address this by submitting comprehensive XML sitemaps and by stopping the spiders from entering infinite crawl spaces  such as those caused by layered navigation.

2. Increase indexation. Getting a page crawled doesn’t necessarily mean it will get indexed. We can get more pages into the index when we increase the page’s reputation with more quality inbound links, add more unique content, and eliminate duplicate content issues.

3. Improve ranking. While you can directly affect crawling and indexation, rankings is something we can only affect indirectly. We do this by making sure each page focuses on a small set of keyword opportunities. A page must realistically rank on its relevancy to the search query and its reputation.

4. Improve search results presentation. By tweaking the titles, meta descriptions and adding rich snippet markup, we can make the product detail pages appear more appealing in the search engine result pages. This will increase the click-through rates.

Improving the Product Detail Page

Let’s look at a sample product detail page. I’ve highlighted the most important elements that need to be changed in our template.

How to increase crawling.

First, let’s get the Magento SEO basics out of the way. Then we’ll focus on canonical URLs and eliminating duplicate content. Note that the steps below will vary based on the specific Magento theme.

Step 1: Go to System > Configuration > General > Web > Search Engines Optimization.

Step 2: Go to System > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog > Search Engine Optimizations.

Step 3: Enable automatic XML sitemap generation. Go to System > Configuration > Catalog > Google Sitemap > Generation Settings.

Step 4: Add robots meta tag with value “noindex/nofollow” to the following pages: “My Account,” “My Wishlist,” “My Cart,” ‘Checkout,” and “Login.” These pages are not useful to search bots. To do this, you need to use layout updates. For example, this is how you add it to “My Wishlist”:

In your Magento installation, open app/design/frontend/base/default/layout/wishlist.xml

Before the closing , add

<reference name="head">

<action method="setRobots"><value>NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW</value></action>

</reference>

Repeat for the rest of the wishlist pages sections in the file.

Step 5: Verify the canonical tags are working properly. For example, different product image views should have the same canonical tag.

How to increase indexation.

Step 1: Avoid using manufacturer provided product descriptions in the details section. Put the extra effort to make them unique and make sure they contain at least 100 words.

Step 2: The related products section is excellent for interlinking similar products and for passing page reputation from the most popular products to the less popular ones. Carefully consider this when adding or updating the related products section.

Step 3: The product reviews contain valuable user generated content. Ideally, they should be on the same page as the product to bolster the amount of written content. Unfortunately, Magento doesn’t provide an easy way to do that. They appear in separate URLs. I’ll address this in detail in a future article.

How to influence rankings.

Step 1: Make sure the product name is part of the title and is the only H1 on the page. For most ecommerce sites, the product name is best keyword the product detail page can rank for.

Step 2: The second best keyword is generally the SKU or any unique product identifier that user might use to search for the product. Surround the unique product identifier with an H2 tag.

Improving search results presentation.

We also want our page to look its best on the Google search engine results page, or SERP. Here is how we do that.

Step 1: Provide enticing titles, and meta descriptions. Consider them “organic ads” users will see in the SERPs. They must motivate searchers to click. You can control them easily via the admin panel.

Step 2: Add Schema.org rich snippet markup and your product pages will stand out in the search results. Explaining this step in detail would take a separate article.

Read more, Magento Extension