Category — e-commerce

Introduction

This module allows you track all of the keywords used to search you website. This can be helpful because it can give you an insight into what your customers actually need.

Installation

Step 1: Open admin/includes/boxes/report_dhtml.php

at line 20 where it says:

add right after:

step 2: open includes/modules/pages/advanced_search/header_php.php

at the end, add the following:

step 3: open includes/modules/pages/advanced_search_result/header_php.php

find the following line (around line 54):

add right after:

step 4: Upload all files included in this zip file to your catalog

step 5: import db/rawseo_keyword_reports.sql into your database

You should now have another menu item under reports called “Rawseo Local Keyword Reports”.

Download

All files for this module can be download here.

What is google products?

Many people don’t know that google has a search engine designed for products called google products. This service can be used to get more traffic to products on your website.

The first step is to signup with google base. Next, You can start adding your products.

There are a few ways to doing this:

1) one at a time

This is the easiest way to add a product. Google provides a step-by-step interface for adding individual products. This works well if you only have a couple of products.

2) Data feed

This format makes it easier to update large amounts of products at one time. Your feed file can be in a variety of different formats: text, XML, or shopping.com/shopzilla feeds.

Here is an example feed (all of these fields are required):

More information about this can be found here.

After your feed is setup, you can schedule when you want google to retrieve it (daily,monthly, or weekly) by clicking “create” under the schedule column. You just need to specify a link to the xml file (on your webserver).

3) google base data api

This is an XML based api that allows you to add, update, edit, and remove product information from your feed. More information about this can be found here.

What is Open Commerce?

From oscommerce.com: “osCommerce is the leading Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, license fees, or limitations involved.

The goal of the osCommerce project is to continually evolve by attracting a community that supports the ongoing development of the project at its core level and extensively through contributions to provide additional functionality to the already existing rich feature set.”

Why Shouldn’t I use it?

1) no separation of logic and presentation

Smaller applications can be created without separating logic and presentation, but when an application gets as large as oscommerce, there needs to be some kind of templating system in place.
A templating system can also be used to cache dynamic pages and improve the overall performance.A good, scalable system needs to be engineered from the ground up. It looks to me like it was hacked together with pieces of code here and there

2) difficult to integrate into an existing design

out of the box, the cart works fairly well. If you want to make any drastic design changes, you will run into major issues.

Although it is free, and this may be intising to many companies, the time and labor cost of updating the cart to suit your needs ends up being more than many of the commerical carts available.

3) security

a) Although it is updated, #1 makes it very difficult to make updates without having to manually open up each .php file and make the changes yourself.

b) By default, there is no password protection in the admin section. If you are not familiar with apache or basic authentication (which isn’t that secure), anyone can edit/remove/delete your product information.

c) When oscommerce was first built, the latest version of PHP was 3.0. Because of this, old and insecure practices were used to build the core of the system. An example is register_globals. I found a great guide here to run oscommerce without register_globals.

4) cannot have multiple sizes of image previews

5) admin navigation issues

a) hard to do shipping cost per item (with different items having different costs) per country
b) editing product descriptions seems a little awkward. overall, it looks like it was developed for a programmer, rather than a store owner.

commercial

cubecart – http://www.cubecart.com/
sunshop – http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/
miva mercant – http://www.miva.com

open source

interchange – http://www.icdevgroup.com/
magento – http://www.magentocommerce.com/

Another alternative to Oscommerce is a fork of the original project called Zen Cart.

Although it is based on Oscommerce, Zen cart fixes some of the issues above:

• The admin interface is secured with a username/password, which is encrypted in the database (SSL can also be used for further security)
• It runs without register_globals by default (no modifications necessary)
• XHTML template system
• A more advanced product management system

It is freely available and can be downloaded here: http://www.zen-cart.com/.

I found a case study today about how a popular e-commerce site made a few simple design changes and increased its annual revenue by $300 million.

Introduction

The website was a simple design: two fields, two buttons, and a link. The fields were “Email Address” and “Password”. The buttons were “Login” and “Register”. The link was “Forgot Password”. It’s a form most users on the Internet have encountered at one time or another and seems like it should be pretty straight-forward and easy to design.

The problem wasn’t with actual layout or design of the form, but where it appeared in the checkout process. If a customer wanted to checkout, they were presented with a screen to enter in their username/password (previous customers) or register for a new account (a new customer). Customers were forced to create an account.

Assumptions

The original developers of this site thought that repeat customers would be able checkout faster and that first-time purchasers wouldn’t mind the extra steps involved in the payment process.

A usability test was performed and there were many complaints. First-time users didn’t like the idea of being forced to register. Many people also didn’t want to give out details such as a personal email address for fear of getting spam/unwanted messages. Repeat customers were also frustrated. Some couldn’t remember which email address or password they used to complete their order.

The fix

The registration button was completely removed and in it’s place is now a continue button with the following text: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”.

The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000.

Original article here

E-commerce has been around since the early 90s under many different names, but one thing is clear: people want something that is easy to use, navigate, and checkout. When the idea of shopping online was first introduced, most people online were un-familiar with the Internet and retailers could pretty much design an e-commerce site in any way they wanted (as long as the user could figure out how to checkout). Nowadays, most people have a certain level of expectation when they arrive at your site.

The following are 7 tips that will help you get better conversion rates by making it easier for your visitors use your e-commerce site:

1) use breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs help a customer figure out how deep they are within your site structure and make it easy to get back to where they were. They also can help improve related search-engine keywords.

2) Local search

Not only will this make it easier for your customers to find your products, but if all of these queries are logged, you can get ideas for future products or services.

3) Don’t require registration before checking out

Many customers don’t feel comfortable registering for an account (because they have so many or they just don’t want to give you their email address because of privacy concerns). It is better to give them the option to sign-up with an account than to require it (you also might want to explain to them the benefits of signing up with an account such as receiving important product updates, discounts, and being able to manage their account info).

4) make sure your “add to cart” button is easily readable

If the checkout buttons are not visible to your users or they do not stand out in some way from the rest of the page, you will have a difficult time getting them to purchase your products. The smallest changes in color or font have been proven to increase conversions and sales.

5) Show the price of the item, taxes, shipping, and any discounts clearly before the user has to pay

Customers want to see how much they are spending and what their total is up to after each item is added to a cart. People looking for a deal or are on a budget will be comparing your prices to your competitors.

6) call your site a shopping cart

Calling your shopping cart anything else will confuse potential customers.

7) make it easy to remove cart items

Make this easier by having a remove button. Don’t make the mistake of only providing a way to decrease the quantity.