Making your website a commercial success can be difficult, we all know that. However if you could pinpoint one thing that acts as a catalyst for success, what would that be?

Well let’s start by detailing all the other important factors you need to get right in turning your website into an e-commerce behemoth.

Usability

This is of huge importance to how many sales you make through your website and if you get this wrong (or ignore it) this will result in your website not fulfilling its potential. Usability is a major issue affecting your bottom line and improving this will have a strong positive effect on your ROI. Basically, Usability is the process of removing the ‘roadblocks’ from your website that stop potential customers from buying.

Online Marketing

If you are not receiving quality traffic to your website then there will be no one there to buy your products. And if you don’t receive traffic then it will be really difficult to perform website usability testing . The best way to generate traffic is through search engines and for this you will need some SEO or PPC services to drive this traffic from the search engines to your website.

Many businesses spend thousands of pounds on their website but have no budget for marketing it.  If you are one of these businesses then I  have a question for you – how will people ever find your business?

Some businesses reply to the question of marketing by saying “We don’t have the budget at the moment for this; we are waiting to see how the website does first before we invest in online marketing”.  I can save you time and tell you right now – nothing will happen if you don’t properly market your website. When deciding on taking the leap into e-commerce you must budget for marketing, otherwise your flashy website will just gather dust. You have just spent £1,000-£5, 000 on your website, surely you want a return on that investment.

Demographic

Another much overlooked area but essential to the success of your website is Knowing your customers. I cannot emphasis enough the importance of knowing the demographic of the customers who buy your products. Do your research as this will help determine how your website looks and will influence your SEO and PPC strategy.

If you have a blog this will also help you determine what to write as you need to write engaging content that your potential market will relate to.

1 Defining tip to make your ecommerce Website a Success

So ok, now we get to the most important factor that overrules all of the above. If you already run a successful website then you should already know the answer to this. The answer is a Sound Business Model

So many websites fail because they simply don’t have a sound business model. So many people still think that making money on the internet is easy and all you have to do is throw a website up there and watch the money roll in. Those days are long gone and without a sound business model then forget it! Get that right then use the recommendations above and in no other order!

You may or may not have noticed that there are no images on our website containing Yahoo! logos or screenshots. This is because in a recent email I received from Yahoo! they told me that Evolution can’t use any of their images or material. See quoted email below.

Dear Kevin,

At this time we are unable to grant www.movinonup.com the right to use the Yahoo! logos or screenshots.

Thank you,

Michelle

Permissions Agent

Yahoo! Inc.

I felt I did the correct thing and asked Yahoo! before using any of their material. What annoys me is that they have said no. There was no explanation as to why we can’t use their material, and in my opinion there would have been no harm in showing a Yahoo! logo now-and-again to illustrate to you, our valued readers,  an idea of the stories content

It’s not that we report on Yahoo! that often because, to be honest, Yahoo! don’t do or say anything interesting very often. But it would have been nice to use said images from time to time.

It’s not that we don’t like Yahoo! here at Evolution – we recently wrote an article Search Engine Shopping Services Reviewed reviewing the search engines as a shopping portals and Yahoo came out top. It’s just hard to illustrate certain things when you can’t give people examples.

In the future we will be using this image below to illustrate an article about all things Yahoo! as we would not want to become biased and stop reporting on the occasional meaningless Google copying update they may have done.  Only kidding! (or am I?)

Not Courtesy of Yahoo

I have also included a video below that you may find of interest. It is an interview WebPro news has done with some in-the-know people  regarding fair use policies. I would also welcome an explanation from Yahoo to justify their decision below.

Here at the Evolution blog we always try to give you the best news and helpful advice in bite sized chunks. However on this occasion I will have to go against that methodology and notify you of this hour long video presented at Google I/O 2010, hosted by Matt Cutts and some of his web spam team.

Matt and Co. dissect some websites that have been submitted for review to see how well they fair from a SEO stand point. They offer some great advice on how to improve your visibility in the search engines and  how you can safeguard your website and blog from hackers.

So considering the length of this video I will stop talking now and let you enjoy the show.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hk5uVv8JpM[/youtube]

It’s that time again to review Google’s web analytics TV. Hosted by Nick and Nash, these videos give you some great insight into how to get the best out of your Google analytics data. The analytics TV show format, involves Nick and Nash answering viewers’ questions that have been submitted via Google moderator.

Highlights

I found this episode particularly interesting on a wide ranch of analytics topics. I have described the most notable ones below.

How to Track PPC Loyalty (40 seconds)

Tracking when a PPC referral resulted in a conversion can be difficult, and Nash indeed admitted that this is not really possible with Google analytics. However, you can set it to track the first or even the last referral, but the extent of customisation that can be done with analytics is very limited. Nash also went on to say that using search funnels in AdWords and Analytics can also help you get the data you are looking for.

Sharing Custom Reports in Google Analytics (2 mins 23 seconds)

This is a question that I have wondered about myself. When you create a custom report it doesn’t seem to show up if for example, another person logins into this account using different login details. This can be annoying if you want to show a client who has a separate login a custom report. Well it seems that the only way to share this report is via the shared link that you can send to people. Not ideal but a solution of sorts.

No tracking for Right Clicks? (6 mins 4 seconds)

This never occurred to me, but if you right click on a link on a webpage and select view in new tab or window then Google analytics may not track this in analytics, as the JavaScript is not being executed. Interesting. This is good to know but can you do anything to resolve this issue? Nick does go into more detail on how to get around this in the video.

ecommerce Tracking Sales figures not Accurate (14 mins 52 seconds)

If you use the ecommerce tracking feature in analytics, then I’m sure you have wondered why this data is never 100% accurate. As explained in the video, there are two main reasons why this happens.

1) Sometimes the ecommerce tracking code may fail. (Although we were assured that this kind of thing is very rare but can cause analytics to not track a transaction.)

2) A person who visits your website may have JavaScript switched off. Google analytics tracking code uses JavaScript, so if JavaScript is switched off in the browser then the ecommerce code will not be executed.

This would account for the small percentage of differences you may see in your analytics transaction figures and the ones you see compared with those in the back-office of your website.

Google Analytics app Gallery

If you are looking for some cool little apps that you can use to extend the features available in Google analytics, I would recommend you visit the newly launched Google Analytics apps Gallery for some cool tools.

Where has the Asynchronous Code Gone?

One thing that was not mentioned in the video, but is worth a mention here, is that you may be wondering where the link to get the asynchronous code has gone in Google analytics. Well don’t worry it hasn’t disappeared, it is now the default code in analytics. Just remember to place it before the end of the <head> tag instead of the <body> tag which was the suggested location in the previous version.

Nash touched on the subject of the asynchronous code and said that this can increase your websites loading speed by up to 30%. So if you’re still using the old code then maybe it’s time to go back into your profile settings of Google analytics and grab the new code.

And Finally

Well that’s about it for this review, but I would really recommend you watch episode 9 as there are some really funny questions asked in this episode. Two that are worth a mention are: How to I track visits from pigs? And using Google analytics for time travel (where we’re going we don’t need analytics).

As always you can submit your question for inclusion via Google Moderator. You can enjoy episode 9 below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndtcegN31pU[/youtube]

One of my favourite blogs has to be Google’s conversion room blog, as this gives you a host off helpful hints, tips and case studies on how to improve conversions on your website.

More traffic does not necessarily mean more sales. If your website is not optimised for conversions, then a lot of this traffic will just simply go to waste. I wrote an article on Sitepro News last year going into more detail on the subject of how SEO can bring you traffic, but that it’s up to your website to make the sale. It’s called SEO can lead a Horse to Water but you Can’t Make it Drink

By doing A/B and multivariate testing, you can optimise your website for conversions and maximise ROI. This is like letting your customers design your website.

An excellent free tool to conduct these invaluable tests is Google’s website optimizer. This is a very easy tool to get started with; you just need to set up what you want to test and insert some tracking code into the relevant web pages and you’re ready to go.

The blog post entitled 7 ways to improve your call to action goes into great detail on how to improve your landing pages. If you use PPC then you really need to read this post as it’s sure to give you some great ideas to help increase your conversions. I would note though, and it’s mentioned in the post, not to just blindly change your landing pages without testing first. A good idea is to only change one small aspect of your landing pages at a time, and using Google’s website optimizer, track the results of your test. Please note there is no such thing as a failed test, as you will always learn something from cunducting the experiment. If you are familiar will optimising your PPC ads for best click through rates, then you will be familiar with this concept.

The common mistake that people make is trying to give their potential customers too much choice on the landing page. We all like choice but giving the visitor too much can lead to confusion. For example a supermarket who had 20 different flavours of jams on sales noticed when the reduced the choice to just 6 flavours they sold a much higher volume of jam.

The 7 ways to improve your call to action, covers topics such as:

1. Large call to action buttons
2. Supporting your call to action
3. What’s in it for the visitor
4. Reducing the number of choices
5. How to deal with competing offers
6. Repeating your call to action
7. Creating a call to action on your category pages

The post also mentions a very interesting video by Barry Schwartz called “The paradox of choice” which you can watch below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM[/youtube]

You may or may not be aware but a while ago Google updated its algorithm to show websites in the search results in the UK that are not just UK specific pages. This included webpage’s and TLD’s (top level domains) that may not be specific to the UK.

In a webmasters video yesterday Matt Cutts answered the question that seemed a lot of people have been asking “what is the state of the UK SERP’s?”

In the previous series of webmasters videos Matt briefly commented on this subject. He subsequently also posted an article on his blog going into more details titled More about generic TLDs in (say) UK results.

I would have to say for the most part I would agree that the UK results should include relevant results that may be from .com domains heck Evolution is a .com.

I quote Matt from the below video:

I don’t think you always want every UK search to return only the UK stuff; you want to return .com’s that are relevant to the UK.

This is all well and good for an informational search, however when you start to search for products you want to buy you soon encounter problems as it starts to show webpage’s that the products are in dollars or only ship to the U.S. I have personally come across the problem on many occasions and feedback from friends and colleagues reinforce this. I must say this is very annoying.

I believe that this algorithmic change does not work effectively enough and Google should really make steps to correct it as Bing is only a click away. Matt did say that Google are looking into this and would invite anyone who has specific instances of this should notify Google. Come on Google surely you don’t expect us to sort this problem out for you. Should this not have been sorted before you implemented these changes? I believe that Google offer some wonderful services and as a fan I’m concerned about the state of their search results.

Have you experienced this problem with the UK search results? Let us know.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vLHMzI9tVM&feature=youtube_gdata[/youtube]

Google have just released a couple of new cool adverts to promote Google chrome. However I think Google may be marketing this to the wrong people. The first video that you can see at the foot of this post emphasises on Google extensions. I have two small problems with this. 1) Google themselves know that most of the people that use the internet don’t even know what a browser is never mind what an extension is. They know this as they did the research themselves see the video below for more information.

2) Also if you are going to promote extensions there are far better extensions that they could of highlighted than the ones in the advert.

Don’t get me wrong I love Google Chrome and it’s my browser of choice and I think it lends its self best to the average user as it is very fast and simple.

The second advert highlights the translation function that Google Chrome has which I think is excellent. You can see both of the new adverts below. What do you think of the adverts? We would love to know your thoughts. Also do you know what a Google Chrome extension is?

Whatever happened to the internet being the great leveller? Once the internet was a place no matter what the size of your business you could still make an honest living. The latest announcement that Bazaarvoice and Google are teaming up to show Bazaarvoice reviews in the Google search results seems to maybe be extending this gap.

Is it just me or is anyone else concerned about this move? Don’t get me wrong, I have heard great things about Bazaarvoice and I’m sure they offer an excellent service. Furthermore I think the searchers would greatly benefit from customer reviews in the search results.

The thing that concerns me about their service is that it is out the reach of small businesses who are trying making a living online. Yes we do have local business results to help small businesses and we also have Google shopping which is also free. However there are two problems that I have with Google shopping 1) its not very popular and 2) one of the factors to get your products ranked well is reviews and most of these reviews come from  sites that charge you to be included. I would ask Bazaarvoice if they offer a package for small businesses that’s affordable.

A contradiction

Although Google shopping is no way near as popular as other services, it is free. So you cannot blame Google for not helping the small business in that respect. Google is also always trying to improve this service. Google is the only search engine that has development their shopping portal themselves, both Bing and Yahoo have acquired other companies to achieve this. Bing and Yahoo shopping portals are a great deal better than Google’s, but like I said, they just acquired their portals and it is not free to list your products. I heard a rumour that my colleague Brian was writing a review of the search engines shopping portals so watch out for that!

It should also be the responsibility of businesses themselves to encourage reviews on their products. Google would be  reluctant however to show reviews that were on your own website as these can be easily manipulated. That’s why they show reviews from independent sites.

Maybe it’s just the way of the world that businesses with the largest budget are going to dominate the internet much like they do offline. In saying all this there are many ways small businesses can still get the exposure they need in the search engines. This can be achieved with the help of a good SEO company and long that may continue.

How is your business doing online? Is it becoming more and more expensive? We would love to hear your thoughts.

People just don’t seem to be getting the message about the keywords Meta Tag and to be honest I really would rather be writing about something else. People just don’t seem to understand that this Meta tag is dead and really is not worth your attention.

Google doesn’t take them into consideration and neither should you. This has been highlighted in the recent Webmasters help video on its YouTube channel. Where Ryan asked if there was any reason why he should be spending more than 5 minutes creating Meta keywords.

Matt Cutts began by explaining about the Meta description tag and gave some great advice of best practices for this and at the end of the video said:

Keyword Meta tags, I wouldn’t spend any time at all on that, personally

If you still haven’t got the message then you can watch the full video below. Enith of thi rant.

Episode 8 of Web Analytics TV has arrived in this new episode from our friends Nick and Nash as they answer more of your analytics questions via the Google Analytics moderator website.

This is quite a long video reaching over 25min long and as excellent as these videos are I think it would be very helpful to the viewers it they included a table of contents in the video or at least  a time frame next to each question when that question starts. Although I would recommend that you watch the entire video, sometimes it can be good if you could go straight to the questions of interest.

There were a lot of questions and subjects covered in this video but I have included a few here that you may find of interest. If you would like to see a full list of the questions then you can visit the Google Analytics blog.

One question asked was, ‘can you use events as goals?’ This indeed would be a very handy thing to be able to record as a goal as you may want to record a download as a goal conversion. However Nash explains that this is not currently possible in Google Analytics. He does however go into more detail on the Occam’s Razor blog on how to track this.

Another interesting question was ‘what is the difference between absolute visitors and unique visitors?’ Nash was encouraging you not to look at absolute visitors at all and this feature will soon disappear in analytics to avoid any future confusion.

Finally I would also like to mention a subject that was brought up and I’m sure that you have all seen if you use Google Analytics. You will sometimes see traffic coming to your top level domain and also your index.php page or similar. The reason for this is when you define your default page in analytics settings you need to specify your homepage. If you want it all to display as / you just need to leave this field blank.

Please see the full video below: