Whether you’re developing a new website or refreshing your existing online presence, you should be thinking about visibility and how your target audience will find you. So it’s a good idea to make sure that you include a blog in your ongoing marketing plan.

We’ve said before, in previous blogs, that your web content should always carry a SEO value and adding blogs on a regular basis to your website is an excellent way for visitors, (and by that, we mean potential new customers), to discover your site. If the content in your blogs is relevant to your audience, (and it should always be), adding these items of news, opinion and comment regularly, is a great way of building trust in your brand and generating loyalty from your existing customers.

Keep it fresh, keep it relevant.

High search engine ranking positions (SERPS) is the most important aspect of marketing your website and producing blogs on a regular basis (we always recommend you add at least two blogs every month), will contribute greatly to your ongoing SEO practices. As Google is always on the lookout for fresh, new content, adding blogs will play a vital role in maximising your SERPS; and as each blog should concentrate on a subject that’s relevant to your audience, the keywords you include will also help to drive traffic to your website.

Share and watch it grow

In just a very short time, by adding regular blogs to your website, the volume of content will grow significantly which will increase natural incoming links and therefore visibility against subject-relevant searches. By submitting your blogs to high quality and relevant directories, you will create even more incoming links that should help to generate traffic and by sharing your blogs on social media platforms, you will increase your website’s visibility even further. Here at Alchemy Internet, we share our blogs via LinkedIn and Google+ and we are always amazed at the number of views these achieve (and the volume of incoming sales enquiries this activity generates).

Blogs are a sales tool, but selling isn’t just about telling; inviting comments from your readers provides you with a 2-way channel to engage and communicate with your audience. Your blog will often include your comments or opinions on a particular subject that has relevance to your audience and these offer them the perfect opportunity to tell you what they think; we are often surprised by our readers’ responses and have sometimes been able to develop an account as a result.

Accessibility for the growing mobile audience is something that you should also think about; no doubt your web development partner has incorporated a responsive design into your new website, (if they haven’t, give us a shout), and your blog should also include some relevance for people on the go.

Finally, keep it up! Failing to keep your blog updated shows your audience that you don’t really care about how your businesses looks to potential new customers, but it really is worth the effort. But if you’re stuck for an idea of which subject to write about, or you need help writing something of value to your target audience that includes all the necessary SEO content, or you simply don’t have the time, we offer a blogging service that will increase the visibility of your website and drive more traffic to your business.

How does your blogging activity help you with driving traffic to your website?

Are you thinking about blogging regularly but not sure where to start?

Do you have any blogging tips you’d like to share with us?

Nominet has promised further details closer to the release date (as yet, unconfirmed), but we do know that the .uk version will be released soon and if you already own .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, etc. then the new .uk version will be automatically reserved for you for up to five years to prevent cyber-squatting.

For example, as the BBC owns the domain bbc.co.uk, first refusal on the bbc.uk domain will be offered as a matter of course.  Although final costs are yet to be confirmed, we expect it will be identical to registering a .co.uk domain name, but we’ll keep you posted when we get more information.

You may wish to just sit on your new .uk domain and not actively use it (to protect your trademark or identity) or you may wish to use it as your new primary domain name. There are a few draw-backs if you choose to change your domain extension, (these also apply if you’re thinking of changing your whole domain name) so if you’re considering it, ask yourself the question “Why?”  What is your reason for changing your website address? Unless you’ve changed the name of your organisation and your existing domain no longer makes sense, here are several reasons why we recommend that you don’t:

• Search engines often discredit, or at least “sandbox” new domain registrations in an attempt to stop new “spam” websites from appearing in search results. Domains that are established for at least a year seem to hold more credence in results; a general rule being, “the older the better”

• You will lose the value of all the other sites that link to your domain name; changing will render those links invalid and will require you to rebuild them

• Search engines don’t like mirrored websites and may penalise your rankings if you have multiple websites that have identical contact but several addresses

There are already a few misleading offers being sent out to people for securing .uk domain names and if you receive any offer, you should check the small print carefully. Nominet has released a statement on misleading .uk registration offers that we recommend you read.

Title Tags – The Jewel in the Crown

Apply the right title tags – these are highly relevant to the page they refer to and therefore highly valuable to optimising your website with search engine visibility. Title tags should be made up of the key words and or phrases that best represent the body, (and the keywords) of the content within a page; for example, valuable and efficient title tags for this page could be:- website page title heading tags SEO

Be aware that Google only recognises a Title Tag of a specific size – too short and the tags you apply to a page title will not achieve full value, (after all, we’re talking about optimisation), too long and you dilute the value of each tag; a decent rule of thumb is to stick to roughly 60 characters (including spaces), or about 6-7 words.

Heading Tags – Telling It Like It Is

Although you may not see the immediate impact of the Heading Title, it is one of the basics required for a solid SEO foundation. Over time as you regularly add fresh, new content Heading Tags should include the actual phrase that the content within the page is about and will help your web visitors to find the content you want found.

Description Tags – Keeping It Short And Sweet

These should logically include an excerpt from the content within a particular page and, according to Google, they shouldn’t be more than 80 characters long. For example, a relevant Description Tag for this page would be:- Apply the right title tags – these are highly relevant to the page they refer to… Don’t be tempted to repeat these excerpts within your website as they may have a negative influence on your SEO!

Other Tags that should always appear on your web pages are the Alt Tags that are applied to the images; whilst they have little SEO value, they will help visually impaired people browse your site. If hovering a mouse over an image, audio text readers will describe the image and a text description will also appear while waiting for a slow loading image to appear.

Are you planning a new website and confused by all the tag options?

Does your website need to cater for the visually impaired?

Why you should keep it simple when designing your new website

Keeping the design of a website simple is one of our golden rules; maintaining simplicity is THE most effective factor to consider if you’re thinking about a refresh or a brand new website. Website design is not just about producing a work of aesthetic brilliance, or spewing as much information as you can muster all over an unsuspecting online audience – it’s about producing a functional tool for attracting traffic and converting visitors into customers.

Achieving simplicity is a little like a swan gliding majestically across the calm water while underneath the surface, webbed feet are paddling away. It takes quite a lot of thought, discipline and effort from both the guys in our studio and our clients, to makes sure that each website design we produce is as effective a sales or marketing tool as possible – and that means keeping things simple.

Firstly, we need to understand what is essential to achieve the objectives for the site; key information, vital calls to action, links that engage visitors, colour-schemes that work best and so on..– we’ll call this list a.

List b considers what would be nice to have; from the perspective of the website owner, and the target audience. Provided nothing here detracts from list a, or is cost prohibitive, it can stay, otherwise it’s out.

Here are a few things that the guys in our studio always consider when choosing the necessary design features for our customers’ websites:

Content is the king of good website design, and whilst your landing page must have your key value message; too much content is clutter that you won’t need, it distracts visitors and will probably cause them to leave. Visitors to your website always ask what’s in it for them, so decide on a headline and a tone that makes it clear immediately.

You must offer clear navigation; if you have too many tabs on show visitors to your website are going to head for the hills. A website should be an easy place to be and should be simple to use; if 20 percent of the design elements deliver 80 percent of the overall value, you’re on to a winner. Crisp fonts and instructions will also enhance the visitor experience. Check out any major search engine or social media home-page and you’ll see some examples of how simple is perfect.

Speed is always good; web users have a short attention span and a slow-loading website is a real turn off. Faster is better, and your design should have a minimal download overhead, so don’t be tempted to include any functional elements that don’t deliver sufficient value to the site, Your new website is probably going to incorporate responsive design to make it more accessible to mobile internet users; keeping it simple will also help to maximise your appeal to this growing population.

Build your site more quickly with a designing plan that is simple; simple code is easier to test and debug if necessary and the backend should always be as simple as your frontend to make website maintenance as hassle-free as possible.

Visitors are more likely they to share you with others if they have a good visitor experience. Keeping it simple will help get your website seen by a wider audience. Some visitors will even share you because they appreciate how simple your website design is.

Optimising form and function is all about achieving a balance; maximising the performance of a website and maintaining clarity in design is what designers seek to deliver…or they should!

Are you working on the redesign of your website and have a question about simplicity?
Does your new website need to have lots of functions/features but still be easy to use?
Do you have any experiences of websites that are over-designed – share some examples with us?

Alternatively, see our sister site for IT Support Services In Surrey.

When planning your new website or looking at ways to drive more organic search-traffic to your website, you’re probably already thinking about SEO. For years, we have been building websites that are fully optimised at the time they go live and advise our customers that ongoing attention to SEO is a must for maintaining their site’s visibility, (rankings) reach and effect. Every business that we deal with wants more people to be aware of their brand and often invest time or money (or both) in PR as well.

Many of our customers are already working hard to make sure their site is found by people looking for what they sell; search engine optimisation doesn’t have to end with their website. PR activity and content marketing can also benefit from some careful thought, and by taking note of these simple tips, organisations can work smarter to maximise rankings, reach and effect.

Here are 5 essential tips for bringing a touch of SEO into your general PR activity:

•              Build website links across all your online media coverage – if you’re spending time and money producing blogs, posts, tweets and press articles, you should make sure that you include relevant links back to your site. It may be obvious to you, but it’s amazing how many businesses fail to make their site more visible and accessible to an even larger audience.

•              Build keywords and tags into your PR – you’ve woven them in your web pages, so make sure that your PR materials have them too. If you’re adding press items as new pages onto your site (and you should, as part of the ongoing SEO efforts I mentioned earlier), they will help more of the people looking for what you sell, to find you. We work with a couple of web copywriters that can produce branded PR materials that work in line with your site optimisation to make this easier for our customers.

•              Target press releases like you target your web content – PR is not just about exposing your content to the largest audience possible; it has to be the right audience, in the right place and at the right time. Incorporating SEO into your PR can help you target and reach the most valuable online audience. By the way, you should make sure you publish something that’s newsworthy and not just bland content stuffed with key-words – You won’t fool anybody and Google recognises could penalise your site.

•              Use social media to boost your SEO and your PR – this is the most effective platform for producing high quality links and shares and social sharing has now become the number one driver for SEO ranking. Social media has not only brought us a great new medium for discovering targeted content, it is also changing how information sources (by this I mean search engines), are delivering the content to us. Of course, this means that you will not only need to produce content that pleases search engines but content that users will engage with and share. Social media provides you with a bunch of great tools to analyse the reach and effect that your content is having.  Assessing the value of your SEO efforts helps you fine tune your marketing messages for even better results.

•              Pictures paint a thousand words – I know that’s a cliché but Image-led social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest offer a great opportunity for optimisation. After all, the word optimise means to get the most from, and tagging your PR images with keywords and targeted brand terms will extend your reach and effect even more. Don’t be shy, say cheese!!

Whether you engage with a PR agency, an SEO agency or you’re taking care of it yourself, think SEO when you think PR and you will continue to reach out to the right online influencers and customers.

• Do you struggle to manage your own PR and SEO efforts internally?
• Is your business getting the most from your target audience and online influencers?
• Are you looking for a cost effective way to get more visitor traffic to drive more sales?

Of course, the visual display and functionality are important elements of website design and my team produces websites for lots of different customers, each representing all the right brand values and delivering positive user experiences. But well written (and regularly updated) content is hugely valuable in terms of search visibility and visitor conversion; using the correct key search words and phrases will help you to score well with Google (let’s be honest, Google is the primary search engine we all care about scoring with), and adopting the language of your target visitor will help drive more click-through.

Producing the right copy for a website should never be regarded as a one-off exercise; here are a few points to consider when producing the copy for your website
• Your business and customer base evolves over time and your copy should adapt in line with this
• Your industry never stands still and news (that appeals to the interests of your target audience), needs to be communicated regularly to build your content layers
• Not all the copy you produce for your website will generate instant interest; your analytics tools will help you to identify the pages that perform best in converting visitors into customers – test alternative versions of news or updates to see how you can increase customer engagement.

Like the visual and functional aspects of successful website design, good copy should always have your business objectives in mind. Good content begins with a strategy; without a purpose, the content will not reach out to your target and you will be unable to measure the impact it has. Before you produce any content, decide what you want written, why you want it written, who will read it and how you will measure its effect.

Be consistent with your messaging.

If your website depends on regular updates and news to maintain the appeal to visitors and customers, you should make sure the tone and language of any new content is consistent. The personality of your business comes through from the content right across your site.

Make sure what you say is accurate.

If your site quotes facts and figures, it’s vital that these are accurate; misquoting a source can raise false expectations with your customers and damage your reputation. Copy that contains spelling errors or poor grammar makes it harder for customers to get the message and sends the wrong message about your brand. In fact, a recent study conducted by transcription and translation specialists, Global Lingo, shows that almost 60% of UK online customers would NOT even buy from a business website that used bad grammar.

Your content MUST be relevant and engaging.

Visitors to your site are always asking themselves one question – what’s in it for me? So, whether your website is designed to inform, educate, entertain or for commerce, your content must appeal to your customers, make them want to read and help them make decisions during any buying cycle.
You need visitors to your website to read and absorb your content; using questions within the copy will increase the levels of their engagement e.g. “Did you know that by migrating your IT infrastructure to the cloud, you could save approx 70% on software licencing costs?” Follow this up with a strong call to action.

Your content should be compelling.

Make it easy for visitors to take relevant actions (the actions you want them to take). Our designers will produce strong visual signposts for each key call-to-action (always in the customer’s eye-line), but the calls to action must link customers to the most relevant follow-on page, like add to basket, call for an appointment, find out more, register to receive, etc. Social bookmarking and share with friend tools will also help extend the reach of your content t a wider audience.

Produce worthy new content regularly.

While this is important, it’s usually overlooked once your new site goes live. Link your blog or newsletters to your site but don’t over-commit yourself to a task that you can’t maintain; a blog with no updates or a social media profile with no new posts can damage your brand because readers will assume that you don’t take it (or them), seriously.

Adding new content to your website should be regular and worthwhile:
• Add a blog at least a couple of times every month and vary the subject from product news to articles or comments that are relevant to your brand
• Add content that supports your key products and/or services , such as maintenance tips and buying guides
• Promote your new content; post a headline and link on your Facebook page, tweet about your new content or include a snippet in your customer newsletter.

Many customers choose to produce (what they call) their own text; after all no-one knows your business or your products as well as you do – right?”. However, if producing the content for your site is a task too far and you don’t feel comfortable tackling this important element of website design, don’t panic! Alchemy Internet offers content production services to all of our customers. We have worked with a small number of copywriters (each with their own specific experience and knowledge), for the past couple of years and I’ll usually recommend that customers involve the right one early in the web design process. The appointed copywriter works alongside both our customer and our web architects to help define the objectives of each page and how these can consistently promote your products and services in the right way, to the right audience.

Are you struggling to compose the content for your new website?
Do you need help conveying your key sales messages?
Will your website need valuable new content on a regular basis?

If you answer yes to the above, why not contact Alchemy Internet? We can help you produce content that conveys, compels and converts.

I recommend responsive functionality to all my clients; when redesigning or building a new website. Clients will consider the design, functionality, user interface and content, and to ensure the best accessibility – responsive design. This is so important for several reasons:

1. Mobile internet use is increasing all the time; creating incredible access to your chosen market. This mobile-web savvy market demands optimum display and functionality from your site – whichever device they use – and a responsive web design means your site will always provide the best user experience (UX). The happier the visitor, the more likely they are to return.

2. You can keep better track of all your web stats; recording and reporting on web analytics and visitor information for each different device platform can all be viewed from a single console.  This helps with identifying areas that need improvements or specific attention and can ultimately make significant improvements to your business.

3. SEO is boosted; this is often a must-have for digital marketing strategies and mobile friendly websites are becoming an essential component. Keeping the content for each device platform within a single set of code (this is what makes it responsive), means that Google rankings are not diluted when it finds multiple versions of the same content.

4. Managing your site is quicker and easier with a responsive web design; when you post an update onto your site, it appears and functions properly across each mobile internet platform. Imagine doing that multiple times for every new post or update to your site – it would take way too long, and time is money!

5. Better PPC performance; with Google AdWords targeting tablets, smart-phones and laptops alike, you get better value from a single landing page that makes managing your PPC campaigns easier.

6. Google recommends responsive website design; the search engine with over two-thirds market share regards it as industry best practice for to crawling, indexing, and organising content efficiently. This will help with your rankings!
Google also prefers responsive web design because content within a single website and URL for all device types, makes sharing, interacting and linking much easier for users. And that helps with your visibility!

The best web design for your business will depend on many factors; the objectives of the website, the target audience, whether SEO and Ad campaigns are required and so on. But as virtually everything is available on the move, every online business is going in for a website that can be viewed and used on smart phones, iPads, iPhones, tablets, laptops and desktops.

Responsive web design is fast becoming standard practice; all the sites the team in our studio design are built to maximise the reach and effect that being responsive can achieve. When you’re planning to invest in a new website for your business, ask yourself these few simple questions:

• Is the mobile Internet user important to my business?
• Are web stats and visitor information valuable to my sales or marketing?
• Do I want good search rankings with Google on all device types?
• Do I want management of new content & updates to be easy?
• Do I want to get the best returns from PPC and AdWord campaigns?
• Do I want my content to engage with a wider audience?

If the answer to all or most is yes, then a responsive design will give you the best results. We’ve been building responsive websites for all type of clients and the feedback we receive on site performance as a sales tool is always extremely good and that the initial investment always pays dividends.

If you have a question about responsive web design, Get in touch with Ben. I head a team of creative designers, developers and digital marketers that specialise in websites & bespoke apps of all types and scale.

Alchemy Internet is a division of Alchemy Systems International.

The internet only became fully commercialized in 1995, but online advertising had already been brought to life in the early stages of the dot-com boom.

It is now almost expected for a company, even a small one, to have a website to show where they are at the very least. And with the numbers of towns, cities; companies opening and closing down all the time, there is going to be a LOT of competition.

Search Engine Optimization

The science of putting yourself where people are looking on Google. For multinational corporations that will mean the top three results on a keyword that has thousands or more searches a day. For smaller companies, the first page of something specific and relevant to their area of expertise will do nicely.

Most companies will want searches connecting from keywords in the “Chunky Middle” and “Long Tail” for two simple reasons. First, those sections will become more and more specific as the user gets a better idea of what they want, and smaller companies normally provide one thorough service instead of several split across different areas of trade. And second, there is a lot less competition involved.

The Tools You’ll Need…

• A keyword analyser, Google AdWords being a free, and user-friendly example
• Accurate page titles, and URL’s that match them to make your site easy to track and show the user exactly what they’re getting

…And What You’ll Do With Them

On your keyword analyser you should search for keywords that feature in your page titles or your websites name, or things that match those or what you do closely. Remember, your looking for specific and relevant. Most analysers will show you how many searches a keywords receives over a period of time, and how tough the competition for it is. And the same for several similar keywords that the analyser picks out.

Ideally, you want the keywords you choose to be low competition for relatively high search rates. More usually, choose the ones closest matching that have the best number of searches for low, or if you’re growing lots then medium competition. Bring out a selection you think work best and then liberally sprinkle over page titles, page URLs and meta description. Don’t try to use any keyword that looks promising, even if it is completely different to what you are offering. This is called “cloaking” and when discovered, which it will be if you want search engines to find you, it incurs harsh penalties.

It is pretty simple to do at it’s heart, but to do right, this needs time and consideration. Keep in mind to build sites for users, not for search engines. Search engines get the business by delivering users to sites that fulfill their needs, so they will rank you up for a high performance, trustworthy site.

You can also pay Google for an advertised slot, and this will most likely increase click’s into your site, but organic (read: earned) results are much more trusted, as demonstrated below.

If You Have A Lead, Keep It

To customise your WordPress login area, typically on this URL your-domain.com/wp-login.php, you need to add the following in your theme’s function.php file.

Change the login Logo

The default image is the WordPress logo. You can change that image simply modifying the file path. You can add you image and adjust width and height if necessary.

function custom_login_logo() {
    echo '<style type="text/css">
    h1 a { 
        background: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/img/logo.png) 50% 0% no-repeat !important;
        width:243px !important; 
        height:83px !important; 
        margin:0 auto !important; 
    }
    </style>';
}
add_action('login_head', 'custom_login_logo');

Change the login URL of the login logo

Normally when you click on the login logo, by default it goes to WordPress.org. The following will change it to your own homepage.

function change_wp_login_url(){ 
	return get_bloginfo('url');
}
add_filter('login_headerurl', 'change_wp_login_url');

Change the Title of the login logo

If you want to change the title attribute of the image you just replaced use the following code.

function change_wp_login_title(){ 
	return get_option('blogname'); 
}
add_filter('login_headertitle', 'change_wp_login_title');

The most prominent brands in the world are defined by their colors. Think of McDonald’s golden arches, the name Jet Blue, and UPS’ slogan, “What can Brown do for you?” These companies, and many others, strategically use colors in their logo, website, and product to appeal to customers. As a B2B marketer, it’s important to think about how you utilize colors and what the colors you choose say about your business.

Research has found that different colors provoke very different reactions in people. Integrating your brand colors in your logo, landing pages, product, and more will help you achieve the highest impact. Find out how each color can help you connect with your consumers.

There are tons of mistakes that online retailers make every day, all of them avoidable with a little careful planning. And even if you’re already committing some of these mistakes, most of them are easy enough to fix. Avoiding them will greatly improve the experience of your customers.

Below are 15 of the most common mistakes that e-commerce sites make, as well as advice on how to avoid or fix them. Take the advice under consideration before embarking on a new e-commerce project or when thinking over your current ecommerce site, and make efforts to follow the recommendations outlined here.

1. A lack of detailed product information

When you’re shopping in a brick-and-mortar store, you have the advantage of being able to pick up an item, feel it, look at it from every angle, and read any information on the packaging or labels. Shopping online removes that interaction. Ecommerce sites need to do the best they can to improve upon the in-store shopping experience.

How often have we gone to an online store and found their descriptions to be completely lacking? And if a customer is left wondering about the specifics of a product, they’re more likely to go look for the information elsewhere. And unless your site’s price is significantly lower than your competitors’, they’ll likely just buy from the other site.

What to do about it

Provide as much product information as you can. Sizes, materials, weight, dimensions, and any other pertinent information depending on what the product is. For example, in an online clothing store, you might include the fabric type, sizes and colors available, a size chart (usually linked from multiple products), the weight or thickness of the item, the cut and fit of the item, care instructions, and comments about the brand or designer. Using descriptive words rather than simply technical terms can have a greater impact on the consumer.

Examples

2. Hiding Contact Information

Consumers want to know that they’re dealing with a real company when they hand over their credit card information. They want to know that if they have a problem they’ll be able to talk to a real person and get the help they need. If your site doesn’t provide any contact information, or hides it so the consumer can’t find it easily, they’re less likely to trust your site, and therefore less likely to do business with you.

What to do about it

Put your contact information in an easy-to-find place on every page of your website. The most obvious places to put your contact information are either in your header, the top of your sidebar, or in your footer. Provide multiple means of contact if possible. A contact form, email address, phone number, and mailing address all add to the level of customer trust. Remember, too, that the more expensive or technical the product you’re selling, the more likely a consumer is going to want more contact information.

Examples

3. A Long or Confusing Checkout Process

This is one of the most damaging mistakes an ecommerce site can make. You have to make it as easy as possible for your customers to hand over their credit card information and complete their order. The more steps you put between them placing an item in their cart and actually paying for it, the more opportunities you give them to leave your site without completing their purchase.

The ideal checkout process includes a single page for consumers to check their order and enter their billing and shipping information, and a confirmation page before they submit their order. Anything more than that is only an obstacle to completing the checkout process.

What to do about it

Follow the ideal model as closely as you can. If you have to include other pages, try to make them as quick and easy to fill out as possible. Combine pages if you can, and use two-column layouts for certain sections (like putting billing and shipping information next to each other) to make pages appear shorter.

Examples

4. Requiring an Account to Order

This ties in directly to the previous item. If you require a customer to sign up for an account before they can place an order, it’s another obstacle you’ve placed in their path. Which is more important to you: getting the order or capturing customer information? Remember that the second option may mean losing some customers.

What to do about it

There’s an easy fix for this. Instead of requiring a customer to sign up for an account before they order, offer them the option at the end of their ordering process. Give them the option to save their account information to make placing future orders easier or to track the status of their current order. Many customers will opt to save their information, and you won’t be driving away customers before they’ve completed their order.

Examples

5. An Inadequate Site Search Engine

If a customer knows exactly what they’re looking for, many will opt to use a search engine instead of sifting through categories and filters. You need to make sure that the search feature on your site works well, and preferably has filters for letting customers refine their results.

How often have you searched for a product on a large ecommerce site and been returned with hundreds of applicable results? While the variety of options can be nice, if half of those results are nothing like what you’re looking for, it’s more an inconvenience than anything else. Including a way for customers to filter their search results by category or feature eliminates this problem.

What to do about it

Make sure the ecommerce software you’re using has a good built-in search engine, or look for plugins to extend its functionality. Ideally, an ecommerce search engine should let users search by keyword and then refine results based on the categories your site includes. Let users sort their search results based on standard criteria (most popular, highest or lowest price, newest item, etc.) as well as eliminating items that don’t fit within a certain category.

Examples

6. Poor Customer Service Options

This is similar to the hiding contact information bit above. You need to make it easy for customers to get in touch with you if they have a problem or question. Make it clear what the best way to contact you is if they have a technical question, a sales question, or they want to return an item. Offering a help request form for customers to fill out can instill more confidence than just an email address.

What to do about it

Use a ticketing system for customer service inquiries, especially if you don’t have a phone number available. Make sure that you post a FAQ that covers common questions customers might have, like what your return policy is or what to do if they need to order parts or replacement items.

Examples

7. Tiny Product Images

Since consumers can’t physically handle the products you’re selling before placing an order on your website, you need to do as much as you can to recreate and improve upon that experience. Tiny product images don’t effectively do this.

What to do about it

Either provide large images right on the product page or allow users to click on an image to zoom in. You want users to be able to view the image as large as is practical on an average monitor. This means an image that enlarges to 1024×768 pixels is a good size to aim for.

Examples

8. Only One Product Image

Unless your product is delivered digitally (and even sometimes if it is), you’ll want to provide multiple images from different angles. An image in each color, of the front, back, and sides, and even detailed shots of specific features can all go a long way toward making a consumer more likely to buy from you.

What to do about it

This one’s simple: include more images. Four or five images of each product are ideal, offering enough views to allow a consumer to feel comfortable that they know exactly what they’re getting.

Examples

9. A Poor Shopping Cart Design

Your shopping cart is an incredibly important part of your ecommerce website. It needs to allow users to add multiple products, to revise the quantities or other options about those products, and it needs to remain transparent at the same time. Not exactly the easiest thing to do, right?

What to do about it

Make sure your cart lets a user add an item and then return to the last page they were on. Even better: allow them to add an item to their cart without ever leaving the page they’re on (by using a mini cart). Let your customers edit the quantities of items in their cart or remove an item from their cart. And let them preview what shipping charges will be before they start the checkout process.

Examples

10. Lack of Payment Options

There are plenty of sites out there that only allow users to pay with Visa or MasterCard, or to only pay with a PayPal account. There’s no reason for this anymore. What about the person who has an AmEx and doesn’t have or want a PayPal account? What about the person who doesn’t have a credit card and wants to pay straight from their bank account? You need to provide as many payment solutions as is practical to optimize the number of orders you get.

What to do about it

Use a payment service that lets customers pay with each major credit card, and preferably also with an electronic check. Adding a PayPal checkout option increases the choices your customers have, making them more likely to purchase from you. Considering different consumers have different preferences when it comes to making online payments, catering to as many as you can means you’ve expanded your customer base.

Examples

11. Not Including Related Products

You’ve probably noticed when you go to a brick and mortar store that they group similar products together, or otherwise make it easy for you to find products that are related to you. They’ll put a battery display in the electronics section, or include cell phone cases near the cell phones. The same can be done on your website, and can increase add-on sales for you business.

What to do about it

Use an ecommerce platform that lets you include related products on product description pages. A platform that will let you manually choose related products can also give you a big advantage, since you may see relations that a software program doesn’t (such as coordinating clothing pieces to create an outfit).

Examples

12. Confusing Navigation

There’s nothing worse than trying to find a product on a site with confusing navigation. Or even worse, an online store that doesn’t use categories or otherwise separate their merchandise to make it easier to find a specific type of product. The same goes for sites that have categories with no products in them or with only one or two items. Why even bother with a category?

What to do about it

Think through your categories and navigation elements carefully before you start putting products in your catalog. Make sure that every category has at least a few products in it, or else group smaller categories together (or include them in larger, similar categories). Make it easy for customers to look through different categories, get to their shopping cart, and otherwise move around your site.

Examples

13. Not Including Shipping Rates

There’s no good reason not to include accurate shipping rates on your site. I’ve abandoned purchases on numerous occasions because it said something like “We’ll email you with an accurate shipping quote for approval before processing your order.” When shopping online, I want to be able to complete my order all at one time, without having to wait around for an email to decide whether the shipping charges are too high. Include your rates on your site, no matter what.

What to do about it

Most major shipping companies and the USPS offer shipping calculators on their website, and there are plugins or widgets available for most major shopping cart systems to figure shipping charges on your site. Use one. If you can’t use one for some reason, then use a flat shipping rate that’s high enough to cover whatever it is you need to ship. For particularly heavy or large items, you can always include a freight surcharge in the price (just be sure to indicate that’s where the additional cost is going).

Examples

14. Not Including Store Policies

Before a customer buys from you, they’ll likely want to know what your shipping policies, return policies, and other store rules are. And there’s no reason not to post this information in a FAQ or somewhere else on your site. Making your store policies clear upfront can save a lot of headaches later on from customers who are unhappy with an order they’ve placed.

What to do about it

Use an FAQ or store policies section on your site to spell out exactly what your rules are for different kinds of customer interaction. It’s something that can save you tons of problems down the road.

Examples

15. Not Putting Focus on the Products

The goal of an ecommerce site is to sell products (or, at least, that’s what the goal should be). If your site puts more focus on bells and whistles or the design itself, it’s not achieving that primary goal. Make sure your site displays your products first, and everything else second.

What to do about it

Think about how products are displayed in brick and mortar stores. While an in-store or window display may show a lot more than just the products for sale, they all contribute to showcasing the products in their most flattering light. Do the same with your website. Make sure that every design element present is doing something to showcase your products in their best possible light.

Examples

Voltier Digital & Plastick Media have put together a great infographic, with some interesting stats:

• 1000 people post to Tumblr every 60 seconds
• 2000 people check in to Foursquare every 60 seconds
• Social media accounts for 24% of all time spent online
• 250 million photos are uploaded to FB every day

Who doesn’t share content on social media?

Also interesting to note is the statistics for people who do not share content on social media.

• A look at Twitter stats shows that only 47% of Twitter accounts are active and half of the registered Twitter users follow 2 or lesser number of people.
• 11 % of Facebook accounts are inactive.

Social media and brands:

The infographic presents some great trends for social media used by brands for promotions:

• It has been noticed that 70% of adults who use social media also shop online.
• 53% of active networkers follow a brand on social media.
• 60% of those who use digital methods to research about the products they intend to buy, learned about it on social media sites.

For more statistics, here is the infographic:

The group has expanded from its traditional markets (railways, shipbuilding, defence, semiconductor manufacture and HT testing) , to include manufacturers of Earthing Products and High Powered Laser products, large Power transmission and Distribution OEMs and Regional Electricity Companies.

Objective

• Redesign their ‘IST Power’ logo to stand-out more.
• Redesign the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Pages to be easily updated via a content management system.
• Build a blog to post all their latest news articles and case studies.
• Optimise the website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Result

Launch Website

Information

URL: http://www.istpower.com
Our Services: Web Design, Content Management System, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies Used: Wordpress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery

Squire Energy also provide a full range of other services including professional consultancy (focussing on gas related projects), isolations and diversions of existing gas supplies, gas metering and general help and advice to developers and building services consultants.

Objective

• Redesign the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Pages to be easily updated via a content management system.
• Build a blog to post all their latest news articles and case studies.
• Optimise the website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Result

Launch Website

Information

URL: http://www.squireenergy.co.uk
Our Services: Web Design, Content Management System, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies Used: Wordpress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery

They were early to recognize the importance of Biomass to the government’s (country’s) commitment to carbon reduction and as an essential component of fuel security going forward into the 21st century.

The company is now a market leader with clearly defined goals of becoming the sector’s premier supplier. Taking their lead from Scandinavia and Austria they have developed a clear understanding of the benefits and limitations of Biomass heating and have sourced, from the best appliances available, those appropriate for use in the UK market.

Objective

• Design the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Pages to be easily updated via a content management system.
• Build a blog to post all their latest news articles and case studies.
• Optimise the website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Result

Launch Website

Information

URL: http://www.naturespowerbiomass.com
Our Services: Web Design, Content Management System, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies Used: Wordpress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery