Content Driven eCommerce - Create and Manage Search Engine Optimized eCommerce Content

Lifestyle brands and enthusiasts alike come to us at Web Shop Manager (WSM) because they are passionate about what they do and need a vehicle to translate that passion to fellow enthusiasts. Their dream may be to turn that ‘hobby’ that keeps them up all night into a legitimate revenue stream. It is one thing to have a phenomenal eCommerce website designed for conversions, for fellow enthusiasts, but it is also incredibly important to articulate that passion in a way that helps the consumer make the decision to trust your brand.

Whether you are in the Automotive Aftermarket, Action Sports Retail, Travel and Adventure, Pet and Animal, or Powersports industry it is important to not only sell products that you feel passionately about in a beautiful branded package, but you will need to back that up with substance/content too.

Why would I focus on content for my eCommerce site? Shouldn’t I be concerned about conversions instead?

It is less about being concerned about content versus conversions. It is the marriage of the two that is most successful. Great content will help increase desirable conversions.

Content creation can help to differentiate yourself amongst your competition. Customers of Lifestyle brands are not impressed by giant warehouses or broker drop shipping arrangements. They want to buy from fellow enthusiasts that share their pastime. It is important to differentiate your brand from the big warehouses and big giant conglomerates which may or may not have a human that answers the phone. The case is different with your vision; you are a real human with years of hands on product experience, and ideas how you would handle it all differently if you only had the platform to do it. Those site visitors will never know what makes you different unless you tell them.

Content creation will help improve your organic search results.  Search Engine Optimized content will help boost your Google Page Rank helping you to ride up the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) organically!  Google would much rather have eCommerce websites pay for AdWords. However, with WSMs Automated SEO the more SEO friendly content, the more Google will have to index. Write something of value for both humans and search engines.

Content creation can help create an eCommerce website that will bring the same visitors back time and time again. Typically when looking for a new product to purchase it is unlikely that you will walk into a store and make a purchase the very first time you go in. You might notice what they have, take mental stock, and leave to continue your comparison shopping. However, let’s say that store offers free classes in an area that interests you, weekly newsletters that let you know about events in your area, and weekly in store specials, interaction with knowledgeable staff, you will be more apt to remember that store, and come back when you do want to make a purchase. This is NOT unlike the eCommerce customer experience. Create a “sticky” eCommerce website with valuable, interesting, and SEO friendly content which will allow you to become the store of choice with the time for purchase arises.

eCommerce Features for Creating SEO Friendly Content

When examining why shopping cart abandonment occurs there are a multitude of factors that can play a part and consumer confidence is certainly a notable one. The addition of content to your eCommerce site can help boost confidence while reducing the barriers that inhibit conversion. Utilize FAQ Pages to answer all the questions that might keep someone from ordering from you. When a customer calls in with a question, add it to your FAQ Page to help reduce call volume and lead site visitors to conversion 24 x 7. 

The Photo Gallery can be used to show gear being used in the field and then each image or content in the description could by hyperlinked to the product itself. Using real installation shots does wonders for relating to enthusiasts. It is one thing to see a shiny new truck accessory glimmering in a catalog, but is entirely different than seeing it installed on your dream truck.

Utilizing the News/Blog feature of WSM is one of my favorite areas to create SEO optimized content including Meta tags, and the ability to create a library of articles that are of special interest to your target market. From there you can link to additional site pages, do a top 10 list of gear for newbies, or experts, link to the products, or embed YouTube videos from your YouTube channel. Do not forget to blog about products that you not only sell but have used yourself. Why did you like it? Who would you recommend it to? Create a product review of your own products and establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

Resources and Links works similarly to FAQs, however in this case you can create pages of local, regional, or state specific resources for your enthusiasts. For example, related websites with descriptions of what can be found there can be helpful to have all in one concise location for your target market. This will keep them coming back to your site time and time again for you, their number one resource. Not to mention all those wonderful SEO descriptions using keywords and phrases you could use.

An eCommerce Site that is Constantly Being Added to is a Happy, Healthy eCommerce Site

Content creation is something that happens over time. Take a minute to look at your About page that you wrote when your eCommerce store was first launched two years ago. I bet there are a number of things you would like to write differently now. I bet there are also new site pages, blog posts, and FAQ pages that could be hyperlinked to from the About page that would help your customers keep moving around your site rather than bouncing off to a competitor.

As you spend time on marketing, allow for time to be spent on content that has already been created. Evaluate already written content for invaluable inspiration to keep moving forward with content creation

WSM is an eCommerce solution for enthusiasts. We work day and night to translate your enthusiasm into a successful eCommerce website that draws traffic in and increases sales. WSM is committed to walking each enthusiast through the web design, and development phase, answering any questions you may have as we go along. Becoming an eCommerce partner is our top priority because creating eCommerce websites that sell to enthusiasts better than any other eCommerce  company out there is what keeps us up all night.

If you would like help being set up for success, and having open dialogue with an eCommerce web design firm that has your best interest in mind, please schedule your free demonstration today.

eBridge Software and Web Design Solutions Form Partnership to Offer Web Shop Manager eCommerce Integration to Over 40 Accounting/ERP Systems

This partnership allows Web Shop Manager merchants to integrate web sales orders, update inventory and shipping details automatically to over 40 major Accounting/ERP packages.

BURLINGTON, Ontario [June, 2011] – Web Design Solutions, Inc., a leading eCommerce software provider and eBridge Connections, a world leading provider of accounting software integration solutions, announced today their partnership aimed at providing ERP software integration to Web Shop Manager merchants. As the number of retailers deploying online stores continues to rise, many merchant platforms fail to offer an effective way to integrate sales data into accounting packages. As a result, resources are unnecessarily devoted to the manual keying of data during order processing. This partnership will provide Web Shop Manager merchants with an integrated online solution, facilitating a streamlined business processes and eliminate the need for costly custom solutions, resulting in a fast ROI for the merchant and savings in both time and labor.

With hundreds of happy customers and counting, Web Design Solutions’ highest priority continues to be customer experience with fanatical in-house design, development and support from real humans. “We aren’t a template website factor, at Web Design Solutions we produce one of a kind personalized designs for each of our clients. Our mission is to ensure your online store not only survives, but thrives in this tough economy through innovative eCommerce website design techniques and eCommerce strategies based on solid creative foundations.” Dana Nevins, Founder/CEO Web Design Solutions, Inc.

The eBridge integration platform currently supports connectors for 40+ of the world’s most popular accounting packages, including products from Microsoft, SAP, Sage and Intuit. “Providing an easy to use, SaaS-based platform merchants can plug into is our vision moving forward,” said Colin Brown, CEO of eBridge Connections “The ability to connect the accounting package or ERP to a merchant’s eCommerce store unattended, will significantly reduce errors and allow the merchant to direct their attention to other business needs.”

About eBridge

eBridge Software delivers powerful SaaS-based accounting integration that connects and automates vital business processes. The universal solution supports an ever-growing list of 40 accounting and ERP systems including Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, SAP, Intuit, and many more. With connections to more than 20 popular eCommerce carts, thousands of EDI trading partners and leading CRM platforms, eBridge Connections has become the integration platform of choice for businesses worldwide.”

40 Accounting Packages | 1000’s of Connections | Millions of Documents

About Web Design Solutions and Web Shop Manager

Located in sunny San Diego, CA, Web Design Solutions is specialized in the creation of Content Driven eCommerce Websites using their revolutionary SaaS-based eCommerce Content Management System, Web Shop Manager. Web Shop Manager is breaking new ground combining intuitive content creation tools and powerful conversion boosting marketing such as live chat, an integrated blog, enterprise level guided navigation systems, and a true 1-step fully optimized AJAX checkout to reduce bounce/abandonment rates.

For more information contact:
Sales & Business Development
Web Shop Manager
Tel: 619.663.9306
E-mail: sales@webdesignsolutions.com

Your new ecommerce website is attracting visitors in droves and you are getting more sales than you ever did before. This will keep you busy for awhile but eventually you will want to raise the bar even more. You can always increase you marketing spend to try and bring more visitors to your site, but what if you can just get more sales from the visitors that are already there?

The more information that you can gather from the visitors of your site, the more you can make your decision based on facts and less on intuition. As an e commerce website your #1 goal is to sell products! So wouldn’t you love to know how many of your visitors intended to purchase a product, but for some reason ditched their filled cart? A sales funnel can disclose this exact information to you. 

Understanding where within your funnel the sale was lost can help you understand where you should re-word content, improve images or lower prices. The remainder of this article will outline how to set up your sales goals and funnels within Google Analytics, if you have not set up a Google Analytics account yet please read our article on How to Set up Your Google Analytics Account.

Analytics Goals Are Great, but Funnels Are Better

To initiate the process you will want to log into your Google Analytics account and from your Overview page click edit on the account that you want to set up a Google Analytics Funnel. Next, find your Goals section. You will then select one of the four sets to set up your new goal in. You have four sets within your goal section and each set can have up to five goals, this allows you to have up to 20 goals per Analytics profile.

You will then want to come up with a name for your goal. Typically an e-commerce website goal will be a Sale, but you can set up additional goals such as a Sign Up or Subscription.  Make sure you set the goal to On so that Google will start tracking this goal. If in the future you wish to stop tracking a goal you can turn it off but still save all of your old data.

Your goal position is the order that it will appear in the list of goals within your analytics account. The type of your goal will typically be a URL Destination especially for ecommerce site. Once you click on the URL option, more fields will appear bellow.  You will want to select head match and enter the URL that appears when a sale or conversion is complete.

How To Get A Simple Google Analytics Funnel Set Up

Next you will want to identify what the steps of your funnel are. For a Web Shop Manager e-commerce funnel the steps will usually follow a funnel like this…

• Add product to cart - /cart.html
• Proceed to Checkout ex.url - /checkout.html
• Confirmation or Thank You - /thankyou.html

If you do not have a Web Shop Manager site, your funnel may include more steps such as Shipping Page and/or Billing page. In that case you will need to add additional steps to your funnel. Either way you will want to place a test order on your site to ensure that you are adding the correct URLS to your analytics funnel.

Once you have identified all the steps of your funnel you can begin to add them to your goal. You will add the url and an appropriate name for that step. You do not need to add the Thank You page URL to your funnel, since that was already added as the Goal when you first began. Prior to saving your page your Analytics page will look something like this…

Testing Your E-Commerce Analytics Funnel

Congratulations, you have now set up a Google Analytics Sales Funnel! In order to ensure that you did everything correctly I would highly suggest that you places a test order through your site and see that all parts of the funnel got tracked. I would then either clear your cache or ask a friend to begin placing another test order but to ditch their cart at some point. By complete these two tests you can see that your sales funnel is working correctly.

At Web Shop Manager, we passionately stay on top of all eCommerce trends to help our customers grow their businesses.   Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/webshopmanager to get updated when we post more guides and tips for using your website to its fullest potential.

Develop a Better Converting Web Shop Manager Website with Google Analytics

Information is power, and with the astonishing amount of information that you can get from a Google Analytics account you will start making better decisions for your company’s website. The purpose of using Google Analytics is to observe your website’s traffic, monitor your site’s goals as well as your shopping funnel, track your email campaigns, banner ads and social media efforts, create customized reports and dashboards and so much more!

If all of this sounds way over your head, do not get discouraged. Utilizing your Google Analytics account to its fullest potential should be an ongoing project. You do not need to try and figure out how to use all of its features in one day. The purpose of this article is to provide you instructions on how to set up your account, add the tracking widget to your WSM site and create site ‘Goals’ to be tracked.

First, you will need to set up your Google Analytics account. When entering your URL, make sure that you select HTTP or HTTPS depending on your site. Web Shop Manager eCommerce sites are HTTP sites.

Web Shop Manager Makes Using Google Analytics Easy

Now that your account is created and your profile is set up, it is time to start tracking! For all of our Web Shop Manager (WSM) website design clients, we have made tracking conversions with Google Analytics so easy. Typically you would need to add a tracking code onto every page of your site, but with WSM simply log into your site and edit the Template section of your site. You can find this page in the backend of WSM within the Content section. For most WSM accounts you will have one template titled Default, click edit template and paste this widget code {{google_tracker id='UA-XXXXXX-X'}} just before the </body> tag in your template. (see left image)         You will now need to replace the Xs with your UA number. To get your UA number from your newly created Google Analytics account go to your Analytics Settings page and click on Edit under the Actions column. (see below image)

Then click on Check Status on the top right hand side of the page. Your tracking code can be found and copied from that page.

Once you have added this code to your template page make sure to Save Changes. Now Google will begin tracking information from your website. Even though tracking has started, I would recommend allowing at least two weeks for it to gather data before you start making decisions based on these statistics.

Hints About Your Google Analytics Profile

Get the most out of your reports by updating your Website Profile correctly. Since your home page can sometimes get linked to as two different URLs you should add www.website.com/index.html to your default site so that Google does not track www.website.com and above as two different pages. You can learn more about Google Analytics default url on Google’s Analytics help page.  If you are an e-commerce site, then make sure to select YES to e-commerce reporting. These seemingly minor changes will help you analyze more accurate data from your new analytics account.

The Most Important Step to Setting up Your Google Analytics Account

Since the Goal of almost all eCommerce websites is to create conversions, we will need to set up analytics Goals to track your conversions. Conversions vary for different website owners. Most often they are a sale, but they can also be a request for more information, a Contact Us form fill or a sign up for your monthly eNewsletter.

Whatever your goal may be, you will need to determine what URL will equate a conversion for you. Examples of URLs triggered by conversions are a Confirmation Page, an order Thank You page, or any other page that can only be seen by those who have completed a conversion.

Now, go back to your profile page, click on your account name and then click Edit under the action column (you should be on a different page than where you retrieved your UA number).

Select one of the four goal slots available and select Edit. Enter your goal URL and goal name, (purchase, eNewsletter, Contact, etc) and then turn the goal ON.

Since you have already added your tracking code and now you have created a goal, you will not only be tracking visitors but conversions as well. There are a couple ways to see if you set this up correctly. If you typically get at least a few orders a day you can simply wait for an order to come in and see if your account tracked it. If you want more instant gratification, you can place a test order (or test eNewsletter sign up, etc) through your site and check to see if it got tracked.

Want More Google Analytics & eCommmerce Guidance?

Here at Web Shop Manager, your success is our success. We strive to stay on top of all eCommerce trends and to relay this information to our users. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/webshopmanager to get updated when we post more guides and tips for using your website to its fullest potential.  We will continue our ‘Help With Google Analytics’ blog series next month were we will cover Funnel Tracking!

ADP Lightspeed and Web Shop Manager™ eCommerce Data Integration

ADP Lightspeed is an Order Inventory management and processing system. Used to take orders and monitor physical inventory. From www.adplightspeed.com “ADP Lightspeed dealer software products help dealers maximize: parts inventory control, business processes, sales management control, service management control, rental management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and dealer profitability.”

ADP Lightspeed is not the first third party software provider that Web Shop Manager™ (WSM) has integrated with.  WSM integrates with QuickBooks using the QuickBooks web connector, Shipworks, Authorize.net payment gateway, and can automatically import product data from database such as DCI-Catalog Rack for the Automotive Aftermarket industry. WSM’s ability to interface with third party software is what helps to make it the most comprehensive eCommerce Content Management System.  With WSM we have the ability to help our clients make more money more efficiently.  One way is with eCommerce developments like ADP Lightspeed data integration.

Inventory Management Software and eCommerce Content Management System

Real time data integration with ADP Lightspeed means that our customers can process orders, manage content and products from the WSM CMS and the following data is automatically imported to ADP Lightspeed:

1. New orders made on WSM
2. Customer information, order details, etc for the new orders
3. The ability to update Order Status' from ADP Lightspeed (canceled, backordered, complete, etc)
4. Brand Information for mapping in Lightspeed
5. Sales tax selections within WSM System>Configuration
6. Enhanced product information from the customer’s selection

Enhanced product data importing from WSM to ADP Lightspeed meant that combinations of product options, for instance red-small t-shirts or medium small t-shirts, would need their own specific SKUs and inventory management controls within WSM. WSM answered this challenge with Product Options with Inventory Management the WSM inventory management software. Within each product in WSM, product option configurations can be assigned essentially creating sub-products. This eCommerce feature enables products listed within WSM to map with ADP Lightspeed.

Comprehensive Powersport Dealer eCommerce Solutions

Because WSM is a proprietary eCommerce CMS, we can adapt and make changes as necessary to accommodate the challenging needs of our eCommerce customers. We can now offer ADP Lightspeed data integration to our Powersport Dealer clients to help them be as successful as possible. 

When it is time to start looking for a customized eCommerce solution for your company be sure to request your one-on-one CMS demonstration. We pride ourselves on the fact that you have constant contact to real human’s when you need it most.  If we are able to help you design the eCommerce website of your dreams we certainly will.  Contact WSM today for more information about how you can start moving towards the eCommerce partnership your company deserves.